Sarah R. on Reasons to Support Your Local Catholic Bookstore.
Yes. Yes.
If there is not a local store you are able to shop at, mail order is the next best thing. For that reason, I’m 100% behind all catholic retailers. But you’ve got to support your local shop, because they do a work the mail-order folks can’t do. Mine:
- Provides real live friendly clerks to answer questions about the faith from passersby.
- Opens a whole world of catholic thought to people who just stopped in a for a first-communion card.
- Lets you look at the books! It’s way easier to size up a book in person than on the pc.
- Supports local catholic events with a bookshop presence.
- Turns out for parish sales, allowing Catholics who would never even know great Catholic books exist to browse at their leisure.
- Provides a venue for authors to sell books and meet readers.
- Offers free book study courses — authentic, faithfully Catholic religious ed that reaches an audience your parish may not be equipped to teach.
This is not a profit-making venture. No one is getting rich stocking GKC and nun-of-the-month calendars. Book stores have miserable margins, small dealers face higher costs than the big guys, and the Catholic niche is tiny. These shops are run as a ministry.
If you knew your parish religious education program was evangelizing hundreds of non-Catholics and fallen-away Catholics, wouldn’t you put a few bucks into the special collection for that ministry?
If your parish had a full-time staff person whose only job was to answer questions about the faith from people too shy to darken the door of a church, don’t you think a little contribution towards that person’s puny salary would be in order?
Support your local Catholic bookstore.
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Here are the ones I know about in my corner of the universe:
St. Anthony’s in Greenville and Spartanburg
Pauline Books and Media in Charleston
UPDATED to add:
Queen of Peace Bookstore in Vancouver, WA
If you know of others, please add them in the combox. Or write a post with your own links.
I’m going to St. Ant’ny’s tomorrow night for a book signing by a couple of friends.
Small world, etc.
Cool. Who are the writers?
Just got back from the signing and the party, a fabulous Catholic evening. The book:
http://www.amazon.com/What-Saints-Said-About-Heaven/dp/0895558726/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321676251&sr=1-1
I know Ronda Chervin a bit though the Ballards; Ruth and Richard are friends of ours we met through Fr. Longenecker in 2008 or 2007. I interviewed Ruth awhile back about being an ikon writer, which was published in the St. Austin Review, and I put it on the blog as well:
http://platytera.blogspot.com/2009/10/ikon-writer.html
Awesome. Thanks for the links!
Yes! Our local Bookstore (Queen of Peace in Vancouver, Washington) has a large reading room where I had one of my booksignings for The Tripods Attack, along with a small chapel and kneelers. Wonderful, wonderful place without the slightest bit of pretension; totally kid-firendly, with used toys in a box in the reading room and a relaxed atmosphere.
I shop there & Steer folks there whenever I can. A Catholic oasis in a desert of secular culture, such places are the best thing to have when you can’t get to adoration, IMHO.
JDM
John – super cool. Found the link and added it.
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