SAVE AND SUSTAIN BOOKWOMAN UPDATE

From the BookWoman website:

Progress as of January 7: You should find this update worth the wait: Thanks to generous and committed communities of feminists, book lovers, and “Keep Austin Weird” devotees, we’ve succeeded in the “Save!” portion of the “Save and Sustain BookWoman” campaign! Though we’re still trying to raise funds to help with move-in costs, Susan and her staff have gotten the boost BookWoman needs to re-open in new quarters. (No final announcement yet as to where, but negotiations are hot and heavy.)

Not only does our fundraising total now stand at $38,000, BookWoman had record sales in December — nearly $20,000 more in gross sales over December 2006. As Susan said (with great gratitude), “Folks shopped till we dropped!” Now the task is to find ways to sustain those sales over the long run.

Writers as well as readers are pitching in with that task. Nationally acclaimed author and feminist Katha Pollitt has featured BookWoman in her blog for The Nation. In urging readers to support the store through both sales and donations, she noted that in the early 1990s there were more than a hundred feminist bookstores throughout the U.S. “Feminist bookstores, even more than most independents, are not just places where books are sold. They are places where small-press, new, local and midlist writers are cherished and hand-sold by staffers who actually care about books, where there's room to stock offbeat items, pamphlets and magazines, and where literary and political communities are shaped through events, readings, book groups, talks, and parties. It can't be good, for either books or feminism, that there are only around 15 women's bookstores left in the United States.” Another Thing

With the emergency fundraising campaign winding down, and with the bookstore staff focused on negotiating a new location and preparing for a February move, BookWoman volunteers are now focusing intensively on long-term sustainability. In the coming weeks, we’ll be posting information about new volunteer opportunities. And we’ll post info about BookWoman’s new home just as soon as the lease is signed. Meanwhile, thank you and congratulations to everyone who gave money, time, and energy to this effort — proof once again that “We Can Do It!”

BookWoman
918 W. 12th St. (12th & Lamar)
Austin, TX 78703
Tel: 512-472-2785
bookwoman@austin.rr.com
Support your feminist bookstore, she supports you!