{"id":414619,"date":"2026-07-28T01:40:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T01:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/414619\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T01:40:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T01:40:08","slug":"los-angeles-indie-book-crawl-delivers-crowds-christmas-sized-sales-daily-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/414619\/","title":{"rendered":"Los Angeles Indie Book Crawl delivers crowds, Christmas-sized sales \u2013 Daily News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Los Angeles Independent Bookstore Crawl<\/a> launched its first-ever event over the weekend of July 24-26, 2026.<\/p>\n

And reader, it was a hit.<\/p>\n

Map: 100 Southern California independent bookstores to visit in 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

Book lovers did not crawl, they sprinted to the 13 participating bookstores for the inaugural event: Studio City\u2019s Annabelle\u2019s Book Club LA<\/a>; Westchester\u2019s\u00a0The Book Jewel<\/a>; West Hollywood\u2019s\u00a0Book Soup<\/a>; Larchmont Village\u2019s\u00a0Chevalier\u2019s Books<\/a>; West Los Angeles\u2019s\u00a0Children\u2019s Book World<\/a>\u00a0& CBW Teens & Adults; Santa Monica\u2019s\u00a0diesel, A Book Store<\/a>;\u00a0Culver City\u2019s\u00a0Malik Books<\/a>; Montrose\u2019s\u00a0Once Upon A Time<\/a>; Manhattan Beach\u2019s\u00a0pages: a bookstore<\/a>; Culver City\u2019s\u00a0The Ripped Bodice<\/a>; Los Feliz\u2019s\u00a0Skylight Books<\/a>; Culver City\u2019s\u00a0Village Well Books & Coffee<\/a>; and Pasadena\u2019s\u00a0Vroman\u2019s Bookstore<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe overperformed,\u201d said Dan Graham, promotional director for Book Soup and Vroman\u2019s Bookstore, during a phone call on Monday. \u201cThere was great enthusiasm; people wanted something like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

By Friday evening, Book Soup saw its first completed passport to all 13 bookstores, said Graham. On Saturday morning, which coincided with Vroman\u2019s summer sale, three separate registers had briskly moving lines of 15-20 people or more around the store. Graham compared the event to Christmas.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was beyond gangbusters,\u201d agreed Maureen Palacios of Once Upon a Time Bookstore in Montrose.\u00a0\u201cIt was better than Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very busy. That\u2019s all I can say. A lot busier than I had anticipated. I mean, whole sections are gone almost,\u201d said Palacios, laughing. \u201cThat\u2019s good, and we\u2019re happy to have that so we can reorder for fall and get ready for Christmas!\u201d<\/p>\n

The concept was similar to book crawls in San Diego and Seattle: To participate in the crawl\u2019s passport program, attendees could visit any of the bookstores between July 24-26, make a first purchase of at least $10 and receive a Book Crawl Passport and first passport stamp. Then they could continue on to the other bookstores (in any order) and make a purchase of $10 or more at each stop to receive another stamp.<\/p>\n

There were prizes and exclusive merch; there were authors doing special signings or acting as guest booksellers; there were books, so many books.<\/p>\n

According to data provided by the organizers, the 13 stores gave out more than 2750 passports, and all 325 finisher tote bags (and more than 51 additional people finished and will be sent finisher prizes). The stores reported between 700-1400 additional transactions above a \u201cnormal\u201d Friday-Sunday with a nearly 50 percent increase in business.<\/p>\n

In person or on social media, people were comparing routes, stores and purchases.<\/p>\n

Graham noted that \u201ca lot of people did the crawl in groups,\u201d adding to the festivities and sense of camaraderie.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think people want community around something,\u201d said Graham. \u201cSomething you can feel good about.\u201d<\/p>\n

And are there plans for a second edition? \u201cI\u2019d like to have a day or two before we talk about it,\u201d says Graham, but he\u2019s looking forward to next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully with more stores,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sign up for our free newsletter about books, authors, reading and more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Los Angeles Independent Bookstore Crawl launched its first-ever event over the weekend of July 24-26, 2026. And…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[647,48,52,51,47,50,49,72041,420],"class_list":["post-414619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-books","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-the-book-pages","tag-things-to-do"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}