BookBar's blog

In a year that saw revenue loss for nearly all independent businesses but revenue for Amazon was up a whopping 38% - during a pandemic and the biggest economic downturn we've seen since 2008 - we asked ourselves what we could possibly doing wrong. We dug deep into Amazon business practices and decided to emulate them in order to not only survive but thrive! Big changes are coming to how BookBar does business on April 1, 2021. We think you'll like what we've come up with... 

- By Nicole Sullivan

It has been two weeks short of one year since I wrote this blog post while everything was shut down. Little did any of us know then what a long and tumultuous year was ahead of us. My learning curve this past year has been one of the steepest of my adult life... READ MORE

Can you stand another post about all of the reasons to feel grateful in such a horrid year? This isn't the post I intended to write as I fell asleep last night, worrying about the future: the state of small businesses everywhere - most of which will not make it very far into 2021. I was fretting about the book industry facing the impacts of yet another potential monopoly with the news of the pending purchase of Simon & Schuster by Penguin Random House, the growing strength of Amazon, and the fact that billionaires like Jeff Bezos only got richer in 2020...

Introducing….Book/Bar Bundles! This holiday season, give the gift of books and booze with a curated, themed bundle from BookBar. 

This is kinda where it all began. Ten years ago I was in the midst of a seven-year stint as a stay-at-home mother to our two young children. I began craving adult collaboration and missing the satisfaction of working on a larger scale, meaningful project... READ MORE

Hi. Nice to see you again. As we sloooowly begin to re-open to our guests, it feels like a good time to (re)introduce ourselves. We have some new faces and new titles for 'old' faces. get to know our passionate, creative, and talented team... READ MORE

By guest blogger Rahem Mulatu

I want to come to you with my raw feelings of pain, anguish, tears, and a heavy heart. I want you to feel and see my vulnerability. I plead with you to not disregard or diminish my sorrow. I am grieving My Dear White Friends! You are My White Friends that welcomed me with an open heart when you saw me at the office, grocery store, library, school, park, church, movie theater, community center, gym, City Hall, and restaurants. Even though I could not show you my vulnerability because I did not want you to think

by Nicole Sullivan

This is my fourth letter in three months. I hope you don't mind that this is turning into a personal blog series. Extraordinary times call for ever greater honesty and transparency.

Read more...

by Nicole Sullivan

Chapter 7:

Every person, business, and organization has handled this Covid situation differently. For me, roughly half-way through the shut-down and quarantine, I resolved to come out of this a better person and to make BookBar a better business. Read More...

BookGive, our nonprofit organization, has been stocking Little Free Libraries each weekend in an effort to get more books to more communities. 9news tagged along with us last weekend. Check out the story HERE if you missed it.

It has been a month since my last post. So much and also nothing has happened since then. On March 27th, I had just come out of a couple of weeks of mourning for my business that I knew would never be the same, not to mention society itself. Whatever the stages of grief are during this time, I had reached my Optimism with a Healthy Does of Realism stage where I could hesitantly see some possibilities.

by Eilidh Spery

I love most books—as an English major and a bookseller, that comes with the territory. I’m drawn to different books for different reasons: some create beautiful images and scenes, some have complex twisting plots, and others grab me with their diverse, distinct characters. But the genre that has always fascinated me most is mysteries, so much so that I focused my senior year of college around studying it.  Read more...

by Marilyn Robbins

Let me start by immediately answering the question I know you are already thinking.

“YES!”

Yes!  THE ONE AND ONLY BOB is as good as THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN!

BookBar owner Nicole Sullivan shares her thoughts on her social distance, sudden free time, and the future of BookBar... READ MORE