Claire Kirch rounds up how stores are prepping the thirteenth Independent Bookstore Day: more participating shops than last year, publisher-exclusive merch, and plenty of local-author programming. Some regions stretch the party across a week - Michigan's crawl runs all month - while NYC's Brooklyn crawls stack events April 18-25.
Affiliated partners are leaning in too: Libro.fm is running audiobook sales and "golden ticket" credit hunts, and Bookshop.org is offering free standard shipping April 25-26. LeVar Burton's role as ambassador is the emotional center - less about celebrity sparkle than reminding readers that indies are still a frontline community institution, even as online discovery keeps rewriting the map.
(Shortened and summarised to avoid devaluing the source)