It's been quite a week! I'm happy to say that we finally have our website reconfigured to take and fill book orders quickly again. (We were having some tech troubles that were slowing us down considerably, but as of this morning, those are resolved!)

Since we're not at the store, and thus are not able to accept new deliveries or sell books from our shelves, we've turned to our largest book distributor, Ingram, who will be filling orders on our behalf. If you place an order on our website, and it meets certain criteria (see below), then Ingram will automatically take that order and process it, shipping your books to you from their warehouses.

So if you need books, we're delighted to get them to you! Place your orders on www.skylightbooks.com.

BUT BEFORE YOU PLACE AN ORDER,

PLEASE NOTE:

This new automated system means

we had to make several changes

to ordering on our website.

1) We had to turn off In Store Pickup and most other shipping rates. The only shipping rates for books will be

Media Mail

($3.75 for the first book + $1.25 per additional book)

or UPS Ground

($7.75 for the first book + $0.75 per additional book).

2) Members cannot use their member discounts or free member shipping on these orders. Adding the "apply member discount" item to the order will prevent Ingram's automated system from filling the order.

3) Orders will not pass through our hands and we will not have access to tracking numbers or order status on any of these orders

4) We had to turn off all payment methods except for credit cards.

5) We can still process orders for gift cards and new/renewed memberships (from home) but orders can't include both books and items like gift cards/memberships -- only one or the other, or they can't be processed.

Obviously these limitations are far from ideal, which is why we have this feature turned off on our website during normal times. But these are not normal times, and this is the only way we can get new book orders to our customers until we reopen. Thank you for your understanding, your support, and your patience.

 

Many of you have made generous purchases of gift cards or joined us as a new or renewing member of our Friends with Benefits club in the last couple of weeks. Thank you so much for your support.

Gift cards never expire and are a great way to support us during this time. They're like tiny interest-free loans that you can redeem for books when we reopen.

A membership in our Friends with Benefits club costs $25 for one year, and gets you 10% off books, cards, and gift items, and 20% off our bestsellers and event books each month. If you choose to renew early, your membership will be extended by 365 days from its current expiration date (i.e., you won't lose the time left on your existing membership by renewing before it expires).

As I mentioned above, unfortunately, both can be purchased on our website, but neither can be redeemed or used on our website, until we're back open and filling our own orders again. But we can't wait for the day when we can get things back to normal, and honor both programs in person and online.

Looking to add audiobooks to the mix? Our audiobook partner, Libro.fm, has a promotion that we wanted to pass along:

When you start a Libro.fm membership with code SHOPBOOKSTORESNOW

you'll get two audiobooks for the price of one ($14.99), and 100% of your payment will go to Skylight Books.

 

You can also buy a one-month audiobook gift membership for $15 to send as a gift and 100% of the sale will go to Skylight Books.

 

Sign up here

 

Looking for ebooks? You'll find them on our website, sold through our ebook partner Kobo.

If you start your search from this ebooks page on our site, we'll get a commission on any ebooks you purchase from Kobo.  

 

A few generous customers have been in touch, asking if there's a charitable organization that supports booksellers in times of crisis. Actually, there is:

 

The Book Industry Charitable Foundation (BINC) was founded in 1996, with the mission of helping booksellers in need of financial assistance. Traditionally, they assist in the aftermath of natural disasters, with unexpected medical bills, or with scholarships. Now they're turning to help booksellers who have been laid off or furloughed due to the COVID-19 crisis. For the time being, Skylight's booksellers are still being paid, but booksellers at many stores locally and around the country have already been furloughed, and depending on how long this lasts, more will likely follow. 

 

If you're looking to support a book-related charity, we can vouch for BINC. They do great work.