Austin’s literary scene is gearing up for a weekend of celebration as readers plot their course for exploring more than 30 bookstores across the region.
This is the third year for the Austin Texas Book Trail, a two-day event organized by Michelle Zhang and Jackie Rangel.
“It’s a self-guided bookstore crawl, kind of like bar hopping, but for bookworms,” Zhang said.
The trail includes 36 bookstores in and around Austin, with stops in Leander, Lockhart, Drippings Springs and other cities.
“Most of them will have something special going on that day, whether that is some sort of perk, which is, like, a free sticker, free coffee, or 20% off — or a pop-up or an author reading going on,” Zhang said.
While buying a new book might be enough motivation to visit a shop, Zhang and Rangel said it’s not just about the sales.
“A lot of it for us is awareness and discovery,” Zhang said. “Because I feel like we’re constantly hearing from people, ‘Oh, it’s so sad, the bookstores are closing,’ and ‘Is the bookstore dead?’ And we’re, like, no, there’s new ones popping up all the time. You just have to put in a little bit of effort to find them.”
Data from last year’s Independent Bookstore Day back that up. More than 1,600 shops participated in 2025, and online sales showed major gains, despite being the same weekend as Amazon’s “Big Book Sale,” according to the American Booksellers Association.
In Austin, Zhang said bookstores that participated in the trail last year reported anywhere between two to eight times the amount of foot traffic and sales compared to a normal weekend.
Similarly to last year, the Book Trail is happening ahead of Independent Bookstore Day on April 25 and gives book lovers two chances to explore this month.
If visiting 36 bookstores in two days sounds impossible, know that that’s not the goal for everyone. Some folks will visit all 36, but there are other approaches to consider when looking at the map.
Kennedy Weatherby
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KUT News
Flutter Romance Bookstore in North Austin opened last year as the city’s first bookstore focused solely on the growing genre.
Over the years, people have focused on area to visit. Other groups have sought out genre-specific bookstores. The trail is a self-guided experience and there’s no wrong way to approach it. It’s about the “joy of discovery” and “seeing what else is in town,” Rangel said.
“It’s really about, like, people discovering something that they didn’t know about, and then coming back, and being a repeat customer or a repeat fan of the store,” Zhang said.
“We want Austin to be known as a literary city in the way that Dallas is, or other [cities], New York, Philly. There’s so many amazing, interesting literary things happening, and I don’t know if it gets the recognition that it should.”
The Austin Texas Book Trail kicks off Saturday at Mañana Dos from 9-11 a.m. and will end with an afterparty at Strangelove Coffee & Wine on Sunday from 6-8 p.m.
“It’s an opportunity to mix and mingle with bookstore owners, booksellers, the people who just went and did the trail and want to talk about it,” Rangel said.