Got your bookstore passport? Seattle launches 10-day celebration of indie bookshops

Seattle’s annual Independent Bookstore Day kicks off Saturday, April 26 with a slate of special events. But most participating bookstores actually give patrons 10 days to get their special passports stamped by almost 30 participating shops located across the region from Edmonds to Bremerton to Burien.

Even those bookstore passports were printed locally, in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood. That’s where a related bookstore, publisher, and distributor provide a glimpse of the local and global trends affecting the book business.

Arundel Books opened in its current location on First Avenue in Pioneer Square four years ago. The historic building with vaulted ceilings and ornate columns was once home to a brewing company. It’s now stuffed with fiction, poetry, art books, and more.

Molli Corcoran is the marketing manager.

“People get married here a lot, we host a lot of weddings, just small ceremonies — because the architecture’s stunning,” she said.

Phil Bevis runs the bookstore as part of his book-centric ecosystem of small businesses. His publishing company prints books across the street, and his book distributor is a couple blocks away.

Bevis says these businesses are growing, and he’s been adding staff. It’s a contrast to 10 years ago when Bevis said he would have discouraged young people from jumping into the world of books.

“Now, in one of the great surprising turnarounds of my life, I see just an open horizon for talented young people with some work experience who are considering opening an independent bookstore," Bevis said. "And I think the reason for that turnaround is the preference for young people for print versus digital.”

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Bevis said he sees a lot of customers aged 25 and younger. In a survey by the Pew Research Center in 2022, people in their 20s were the most likely of any age group to say they’d read a book in the last year.

Across the street at Chatwin Books, Bevis and his business partner Annie Brulé pursue another mission — publishing, including one imprint that partners with Indigenous authors and tribes to publish titles such as “Feeding 7 Generations: A Salish cookbook” by Elise Krohn and Valerie Segrest.

Bevis said printing overseas would mean giving up control on labor standards and environmental impacts.

“We don’t even print on foreign paper,” he said. “We print and we bind here. In terms of making things here, I’m a forceful advocate of the importance of that.”

Chatwin Books is where they printed and donated the passports for people to get stamped during Independent Bookstore Day.

A couple blocks away is Asterism Books, a showroom and warehouse for 180 smaller presses. Bevis co-founded this business with a fellow publisher, Josh Rothes. Rothes said right now the Trump administration’s tariffs are making overseas orders complicated.

“It really is just the uncertainty and lack of clarity,” he said. “Books have always been treated a little bit differently. They are tariff-free most of the time coming into the United States.”

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The U.S. government has traditionally exempted books from tariffs to promote the exchange of ideas. But there’s still been a lot of confusion as shipments cross the border — and U.S.–produced books can still face retaliatory tariffs.

Another repercussion: The latest tariffs mean more publishers are seeking U.S. sources for paper. Bevis says he just received notice that his paper costs are going up 5%.

“We’ve used American paper,” he said. “Other folks were using foreign paper, and I think when they started switching, I think what it did was increase my costs.”

Bevis said trade policies need to be more deliberate to enable publishing and manufacturing in the U.S.

“To encourage that kind of renaissance, you need intelligent policymaking that is stable for a period of time,” he said. “You can’t just flip a switch and start making things.”

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While Bevis and his colleagues ride those waves in book publishing and distribution, back at Arundel Books, Molli Corcoran said they’re bracing for 10 days of cheerful chaos as people rush around talking books and getting passports stamped.

“It’s fun and everyone’s laughing like, ‘She needs a stamp before me, she’s got to catch the ferry!’” she said. “It’s just a fun day, you don’t have to buy anything to participate, you just get to come in and — what’s better than a bookstore?”

When the indie bookstore event started a decade ago, people won discounts for visiting dozens of bookstores over a single frenzied day.

“It was like the tasting menu," Bevis said. "People would zip in the door, peek in, and be like, ‘Oh yeah, I want to come back here.’”

But in recent years the event was expanded so people could take more time. While organizers recommend checking the details with particular stores, most locations give people until May 5 to get their passports stamped and qualify for special discounts.

Vladimir Verano, a bookseller at Arundel, said even in the shadow of Amazon, he works with customers who enjoy the process of buying and ordering books through the store.

"It feels like a completion to get a physical copy of a book from a bookstore rather than getting it in the mail," he said.