IndieCommerce and IndieLite - Familiarize yourself with the IndieCommerce help page. I completely understand that when you’re in the middle of a technology crisis or you have a tech question, you just want support to walk you through it — you don’t want to wade through the FAQ on a help site. But taking a moment, when you’re not in the middle of an issue, to familiarize yourself with the IndieCommerce help page and review some of the materials provided there will benefit you and hopefully help you avoid crises and questions in the future. (It will also free up the IC team’s time to help others with answers to questions not found on the site.)
- Please ONLY email the IndieCommerce team with your IC and IL questions or concerns, and please only email them ONCE. You will receive an automatic confirmation letting you know that they received your email. They are triaging those emails and will get back to you in relation to the urgency of the matter. I promise that the IC team is working really hard right now and the system for helping people is working, as long as it doesn’t get clogged up with duplicate emails or forwarded emails from membership when stores try to bypass the IndieCommerce queue.
- Please be kind to the IndieCommerce team. Like many of you, they are working 24/7 right now, handling 250–300 emails a day. To paraphrase Pink’s interview with Ellen last week about her COVID experience: “You should be frustrated about all of this. Just not at the IndieCommerce team.”
- Please let your customers know that Media Mail is NOT insured or trackable. This is important because we’re seeing an increase in lost and damaged packages and there is no recourse for customers whose Media Mail packages are lost or damaged. To make this clearer to customers, update the Media Mail display option on IndieCommerce sites. Go to: Store -> Configuration -> Shipping Quotes. Select the “edit” option for Media Mail and manually change the line item label from “Media Mail” to “Media Mail (No tracking or insurance).”
Financial Relief - Report your Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) experience. If you have not done so already, please let us know about your experience with federal assistance at [email protected]. Your experiences help us help other stores with the process.
#SaveIndieBookstores Campaign and Events - Promote #SaveIndieBookstores. Use the digital assets we provided to spread the word and inspire people to participate. Remember, this isn’t just about raising money, but rising awareness of the indies. This is an opportunity to promote why your stores are vital to our communities.
- Participate in the publishers Bookscan Challenge. Archipelago, Beacon, ECW, Grove Atlantic, Steerforth, and Tin House are donating 100% of the profit of select blacklist titles (as a multiple of weekly Bookscan unit sales) through the week ending May 2. You can promote these titles online or over the phone to drive sales and donations!
- Promote SIB-YA After Dark, a one-hour Twitter Ask Me Anything (AMA) in support of #SaveIndieBookstores taking place on April 22 at 8:00 p.m. ET. Emceed by Isaac Fitzgerald, the event’s participating authors include Elizabeth Acevedo, Jenny Han, Maureen Johnson, Jason Reynolds, and more.
- Apply to #SaveIndieBookstores. The deadline is April 27 at 11:59pm! The application takes less than 10 minutes. (Please note: Crowdfunding eligibility restrictions have been removed!)
Last But Not Least - Sign up for the Indie Next List e-newsletter. This is one of the best tools we have to drive online sales right now. It’s easy content to share with your customers so they continue to feel connected to your store. It’s a way of hand-selling to your customers virtually. The selection is unique to the indies and differentiates us from the competition. The bigger the list of participating stores is, and the more books the indies sell, the more we can demonstrate to the publishers how effective the indie channel is. And on and on. This 5-minute action yields multiple benefits for your store and for all the indies.
- Tell us the status of your store. Open? Closed? Closed with curbside service? You can fill out the form (it takes just three minutes) and also see the results. This information is helpful to ABA for our advocacy efforts and as we negotiate with publishers on your behalf. It also helps publishers track your store’s status and helps us keep shipping vendors informed. (Note: Your information will be public on the site.)
ABA is here for you. Please reach out if there is anything we can help with. We are an incredibly creative, resilient, supportive industry. We’ll get through this, together. Best,
Allison |
