As an indie author, I feel the need to support my indie bookstores. People like me have trouble getting into places like Barnes & Nobel for book signings. We have trouble getting them to carry our books, even in our local store. However, the indie book stores don’t have that problem. As a matter of fact, when I went in to talk to Becky with Village Books, she signed me up immediately for an opening in October. She also signed me up to come talk to her book club – Chick Lit & Chocolate. Aside from being terrified by this event (honestly, I thought it would take a lot of persuading to get a book signing), I realized how much support they were giving me and all it took was me going to talk to them, in person.
The store carries my books, nicely displayed in a visible location (and right now, there’s a picture of me with an event notification that I will be doing a signing on 25 October 2014 under the books). She’s even peddled a few of my books to the book club (which just terrifies me even more that I am going to be speaking with them).
However, with the ebook revolution (and remember, I’m a huge fan of this), I realize it’s the indie stores that get hurt. B&N can change their business model to cope with the change (from what I can tell, they really haven’t embraced this, but they could). Indie stores can’t. They sell books, period.
Smashwords distribution has made it possible though for small, indie stores to sell ebooks and earn money off of them. The Village Books Online Store carries all of my books. The drawback is that you have to Blio to read them or you have to be willing to read a PDF, but tablets and even iPhones have the Blio app. And I know you can download PDF books to both the Kindle and the Nook. Since I read on both my Kindle and my iPhone (one day, I’ll get a table, but that day will be… hmmm, another electronic gadget for me to procrastinate with… not today), I have Blio installed on my iPhone so that I can purchase at least some of my books from Village Books. Unfortunately, I hate reading PDF books. So, while I do buy ebooks from the online Village Bookstore, they are limited to being read on my iPhone.
So, support your local book store. Next time you decide to buy an ebook, check to see if they have an ebook distribution company. If they don’t, you can always support my local book store heroes and buy from Village Books. Does that mean you should ditch Amazon and B&N completely? Nope. I believe in spreading the money around. If your book buying budget for the month is $20 and you have a Nook/Kindle and either a tablet or iPhone or like reading PDF books, spend $10 or so at your local bookstore and the rest on books from the store associated your dedicated reader. After all, there are books available on Amazon and B&N that aren’t available as ebooks from your local store.
And as I said, if you don’t have a local indie store with ebooks available, you are always welcome to support my favorite local indie store. 😉
Hadena James 
The closest indie book stores are at least 20 miles from me – which isn’t far but I have to go across several highways…..lol….I should remember to order from them online – though most of what I read these days is in ebook form
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my indie sells ebooks through Blio, once I get a tablet, I will buy more ebooks through them.
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My daughter gave me a kindle for Xmas a couple of years ago which I quickly filled to near capacity. Then I made the jump to aniPad mini. I found SO many of my old favorites that were now free as well as all the newer books – for me the iPad holds my whole library – old friends I’d lost in one move or another – and the iPad reputation for quality sold me. Plus the mini is the perfect size. My laptop is for computer work. My iPad mini is my library.
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I have a kindle, but got a Galaxy tablet this week. I think the part that excites me is that I’m not limited to Amazon. Don’t get me wrong, I love them, but it will be nice to be ebooks from my local store and read them on something other than my phone.
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