Last Saturday I spent $187 at my local independent bookstore. This was not planned. I went in for one specific novel and came out with a tote bag full of books, a recommended reading list written on the back of a receipt, and an invitation to a poetry reading next Thursday. My credit card statement would call this a problem. I would call it the entire point.

I work in publishing, so I have a professional interest in the survival of bookstores. But my attachment to them goes well beyond professional. The independent bookstore is one of the last public spaces in American life that asks nothing of you except your attention. You don’t need a membership. You don’t need to buy anything. You can walk in, pick up a book, read thirty pages standing in the aisle, put it back, and leave. Nobody will bother you. Nobody will try to upsell you. Nobody will collect your data.

Try doing that at an Apple Store.

And yet independent bookstores are perpetually in danger. Not as endangered as they were in 2010, when Amazon seemed poised to eliminate them entirely, but still operating on margins so thin that a bad quarter can mean the difference between staying open and closing forever. According to the American Booksellers Association, there are about 2,500 independent bookstores in the United States. That’s up from the low point of about 1,650 in 2009, which is good news. But it’s still well below the 4,000-plus that existed before the big-box and online retail era.

So how do you actually support them? Not in the abstract, feel-good way that people mean when they post “support local!” on Instagram, but in concrete ways that make a material difference to a bookstore’s survival? I’ve spent the last few months talking to booksellers, store owners, and fellow publishers about this question, and the answers are more specific than you might expect.

Buy your books there (yes, even when Amazon is cheaper)

I know. You know. Everyone knows. And yet most people, including people who say they love bookstores, still buy the majority of their books online. The reasons are obvious: it’s cheaper, it’s easier, and the book shows up at your door. I’m not going to pretend those aren’t real advantages.

But here’s the math that most people don’t consider. When you buy a $28 hardcover from Amazon, the bookstore in your neighborhood gets nothing. When you buy that same book from your local store, roughly $8 to $10 of that purchase stays in your community. It pays the rent on a building in your town. It pays the wages of someone who lives near you. It funds author events and children’s story hours and book clubs that meet in your neighborhood.

The price difference between Amazon and an independent bookstore on a new release is typically about $3 to $5. That’s a coffee. That’s less than a coffee, actually, at most of the places people habitually buy coffee. If you can afford a $6 latte without thinking about it, you can afford to pay cover price for a book.

I buy roughly 60 books a year. About 50 of them come from independent bookstores. The other 10 are obscure titles that my local store can’t easily get, used books, or impulse purchases at airport shops. I’m not militant about it; I’m just deliberate. The difference in my annual spending is maybe $200. For that $200, I get a bookstore that knows my name, recommends books I actually like, and remains open for business.

That’s a bargain.

Pre-order through them

Pre-orders are the secret currency of publishing, and most readers have no idea how much power they hold. When you pre-order a book through an independent bookstore, several things happen simultaneously.

First, the store orders that book from its distributor, which signals demand. High pre-order numbers tell the distribution chain that a book is generating buzz, which leads to better placement, more marketing support from the publisher, and larger initial print runs. This benefits the author directly.

Second, the pre-order shows up in industry tracking data. Publishers, agents, and booksellers all watch pre-order numbers obsessively. A book with strong pre-orders from independent stores gets taken more seriously at every level of the industry. It’s more likely to get reviewed, more likely to get display space, more likely to get recommended by booksellers at other stores.

Third, and this is the part most people don’t know, many independent bookstores offer pre-order incentives that Amazon doesn’t. Signed copies. Exclusive bookmarks or bookplates. A personal note from the bookseller about why they’re excited about the book. My local store does a “blind date with a book” pre-order option where they wrap the book in brown paper with a few handwritten clues, and it’s genuinely one of my favorite things.

At ScrollWorks, we encourage all our readers to pre-order through their local store. When The Cartographer’s Dilemma by David Okonkwo was coming out, we partnered with about thirty independent bookstores for pre-order events, and those pre-orders accounted for nearly 40 percent of the book’s first-week sales. That number matters enormously for a small publisher.

Use their online ordering system

Here’s something that surprises a lot of people: most independent bookstores have online ordering. You can go to their website, search for a book, and have it shipped to your house. The experience is not as slick as Amazon’s. The website might look like it was built in 2012. The book might take four days instead of two. But the sale goes to your local store instead of to a trillion-dollar corporation, and the book still arrives at your door.

Many independent stores also use Bookshop.org, a platform specifically designed to support independents. When you buy through Bookshop.org and affiliate your account with a local store, that store gets a percentage of every sale. It’s not as much as they’d make on an in-store purchase, but it’s infinitely more than they make when you buy from Amazon.

I have Bookshop.org set as my default “buy books online” destination. My local store is my affiliate. The books arrive in about three to five days, the prices are comparable to Amazon, and I feel good about where the money goes. It took about two minutes to set up.

If your local store has its own online ordering system, use that instead of Bookshop.org, because the margins are better for them. But either way, there’s no longer any practical excuse for defaulting to Amazon when you want to buy a book without leaving your house.

Go to events

Author events at independent bookstores are one of the great underrated pleasures of literary life. They’re usually free. They’re intimate, typically 20 to 50 people in a room. The author reads, answers questions, and signs books. You meet other readers who share your taste. And you support the store, because events drive foot traffic and purchases.

But here’s the thing about bookstore events that I don’t think enough people appreciate: low turnout can kill them. If a store hosts an author event and only three people show up, the store loses money (staff time, setup costs, often wine or snacks), the author has a demoralizing experience, and the store becomes less likely to host events in the future. I’ve seen this happen. I’ve been the publisher whose author stood at a podium in front of four empty chairs. It’s awful for everyone.

Going to a bookstore event, even for an author you’ve never heard of, is one of the simplest and most effective ways to support the entire literary ecosystem. You’re supporting the store, the author, the publisher, and the practice of bringing readers and writers together in physical space. You might also discover your next favorite book, which is what happened to me the first time I heard Catherine Voss read from an early draft of The Last Archive at a small store in Brooklyn.

Check your local store’s event calendar. Go to one thing a month. Bring a friend.

Give books as gifts (and buy them locally)

I have become the person in my social circle who gives books for every occasion. Birthday? Book. Holiday? Book. Housewarming? Book. Baby shower? Three books (one for the baby, one for each parent, because new parents need books more than anyone and have less time to find them).

This habit supports bookstores directly, obviously. But it also does something more subtle: it normalizes book-buying as a regular activity. When your friends see you walking out of a bookstore with a bag of gifts, they think about the bookstore. When they receive a beautifully wrapped book from that store, they notice the store’s bookmark or sticker. Some of them start going themselves.

Most independent bookstores are better at gift-wrapping than you are, by the way. They’ll wrap the book for free or for a small fee, and it always looks better than what I could do at home with a roll of wrapping paper and too much tape. Ask for a gift receipt. Ask for a recommendation if you’re not sure what to buy. Booksellers love being asked for recommendations. It is literally their favorite part of the job.

A word about gift cards: they’re fine, but they’re not as good as actual books. A gift card says “I know you like to read.” An actual book says “I know what you like to read, and I thought about you specifically when I chose this.” The second message is better. If you’re not confident in your ability to choose, ask the bookseller. Tell them about the person. They’ll find the right book.

Talk about your bookstore

Word of mouth works for bookstores just like it works for books. When someone asks where you got something, tell them. When a friend mentions wanting to read a certain book, don’t say “check Amazon”; say “check [your store’s name].” When you finish a great book, post about it and mention where you bought it. Tag the store. Not in a performative way, but in a natural, conversational way.

I realize this sounds like marketing advice, and I suppose it is. But it’s also just being a good neighbor. If you had a great meal at a local restaurant, you’d tell people. If your local hardware store gave you excellent advice, you’d mention it. Bookstores deserve the same casual, ongoing advocacy that we give to every other local business we love.

Online reviews matter here too. Many independent bookstores have Google Business profiles, Yelp pages, and Facebook pages that are woefully under-reviewed. A thoughtful five-star review on Google takes three minutes to write and can genuinely influence whether someone walks through that door for the first time. Algorithms favor businesses with more reviews, which means more visibility, which means more customers, which means the store stays open.

Join (or start) their book club

Many independent bookstores run book clubs, and they’re consistently one of the best things about the literary community in any given town. The store selects the book, usually offers a discount on it to club members, and hosts a monthly discussion. The quality of conversation is almost always better than online book discussions because you’re talking to real people, face to face, who live near you and have different perspectives.

From the store’s perspective, a book club with 15 members means 15 guaranteed sales every month, plus those members are coming into the store regularly, which means they’re browsing, buying other things, and deepening their relationship with the space. A few active book clubs can make a meaningful difference to a store’s bottom line.

If your store doesn’t have a book club, ask about starting one. Most booksellers would love to run a club but don’t have the bandwidth to organize it alone. Offer to help. Handle the logistics, the emails, the meeting reminders, and let the bookseller do what they do best: pick great books and lead great discussions.

Buy things that aren’t books

This might sound counterintuitive, but many independent bookstores survive partly on non-book revenue. Cards, stationery, candles, tote bags, bookmarks, journals, puzzles, games. The margins on these items are often better than the margins on books, and they help the store weather slow periods.

When I need a birthday card, I buy it at my bookstore. When I need a journal, same. When I need a gift for someone who doesn’t read (they exist, apparently), I find something at the bookstore. Is this always the most convenient option? No. But it’s one more reason to walk through the door, one more way to keep money flowing to a business I care about.

Some bookstores also sell coffee, which is honestly genius. My local store installed a small espresso bar two years ago, and it transformed the space. People come in for coffee and leave with books. People come in for books and stay for coffee. The store went from being a place you visited intentionally to a place you hung out. And people who hang out in bookstores buy books. Every time.

Think about who you’re supporting when you choose where to buy

I want to end with something that might sound preachy, and I’ll try to keep it brief. Where you spend money is a vote. This isn’t a new observation, but it’s one that I think about almost every day.

When you buy from Amazon, you’re voting for a world where books are commodities, interchangeable with paper towels and phone chargers, processed through a logistics machine that treats every product identically. The book gets to you fast and cheap, and nobody along the way has to care about what’s inside it.

When you buy from an independent bookstore, you’re voting for something different. You’re voting for a world where books are chosen by people who read them, recommended by people who love them, and sold by people who believe that a good book can change a person’s life. You’re voting for a physical space in your community where ideas are valued, where strangers become friends over shared taste, and where the act of reading is treated as something worth protecting.

I know which world I want to live in. It costs me about $200 a year more than the alternative. I cannot imagine a better use of $200.

Your local bookstore is open right now, probably. Go spend some time there. Buy something. Ask for a recommendation. Tell the bookseller what you’re in the mood for and let them surprise you. Then come back next week. And the week after that. The store will remember you. The booksellers will start setting things aside for you. And slowly, without planning it, you’ll have become part of a community that exists for no other reason than the shared belief that books matter.

They do. And so does the place where you buy them.

Written by the ScrollWorks Media editorial team. Find our books at independent bookstores near you, or order through our catalog.