Detroit Book City Go Fund Me

Detroit Book City  is a physical, walk-in family brick-in-mortar bookstore in Southfield, Michigan since December 2017.  We started out by hosting Michigan's largest African-American Book Fair featuring 65 independent authors on Feb. 27, 2017.  The turn-out at this book event attracted over 2,500 book spectators at the family level!  That was our clue that there was "a need" to open a physical book store featuring Black literature in a metropolitan city (Detroit) that has a 46% adult illiteracy rate.   Since our inception, we've focused our energies on offering African-American & multi-cultural books (all genres), cds, dvds, vinyl albums, incense, candles, and heritage apparel, postcards, greeting cards and accessories. We sell these items for the entire family with the motto...."Every household should have a library."  




We opened our doors with 100 new & used titles now expanding to over 800 plus titles at any given time. Our inventory now include Spanish books.  We host in-store programs (financial workshops, self-help)  children's book giveaways (summer, Halloween, Christmas season), author book events , spoken-word events, and sponsored book fairs at the K-8 school level.  We giveaway free bookmarks, calendars and t-shirts to our customers all-year-round.  We have over fifty self published authors  that  sell on our author's directory or via consignment through our bookstore.  We host four annual book fairs  per year (10 total-to-date) during the months of Feb., June, Oct. and Dec. attracting independent authors from across the country.  And, finally we are the bookstore supplier for numerous non-profit organizations serving the literacy needs for the metro Detroit community.




During the month of March 2020, we all were HIT with the Covid-19 pandemic.  Detroit Book City has been closed to the public for 'in-store purchases' since the end of April 2020.  We had to cancel all our scheduled book fairs with our local  schools that month...clients included Birney K-8 School(Sfld), Victory Learning Center/CTA School (Sfld), and Harms Elementary(Detroit, Spanish students).  Our planned in-store book signing event with Author/Dr. Matthew Pettway scheduled for March 14 was also cancelled.  

In mid-May 2020, we began to convert our physical store to fully operate our on-line store www.shopdetroitbookcity.com  offering discounted books,  a $2.99 flat shipping rate on any size order, and curbside pick-up despite the pandemic.  In June 2020, we experienced an upsurge in sales to bring us back to some sort of normalcy with the help of the industry's initiative to support independent bookstores.  We have been working diligently to sustain the bookstore over the last five months shifting from a brick-in-mortar to an on-line platform -- struggling to purchase new, in-demand titles while operating on a shoe-string budget.

We've  adjusted to the new "social-distancing" world by now hosting our book fairs virtually.  The weekend of June 19-21, 2020,  we hosted our Juneteenth Author Virtual Book Fair 2020 .  Our upcoming event, 2nd Annual Fall Family Book Fair  is scheduled for the weekend Oct. 30 - Nov.1, 2020  featuring 21 independent authors along with a Harvest Time Children Book Drawing Giveaway  ~ 25 books, titled "The Undefeated" by Kwame Alexander and Kadir Nelson. The drawing to be held virtually Halloween Day, Sat. Oct. 31st.



Now it's October 2020, the last quarter of the year and book sales is slow. We have discussed launching a GoFundMe page several times since the crisis began and decided to give it a try. We are seriously concerned about the future wellbeing and survival of Detroit Book City.  As the coronavirus still plagues, we fear we will not be able to operate fully on-line or re-open the brick-in-mortar  once the quarantine is over. We are consistently looking for grants, but these alone will not ensure our short-term or long-term survival.  To close our operations, knowing that we were "growing and expanding" ...in our peak season (March 2020), would be devastating not only to us, but to our loyal independent authors and our active reading community.

Flu season is approaching and the pandemic is projected to get worse, before it gets better.  It's the Holiday season and we are not be able to host our annual Holiday Children Book Festival 2020 .  In lieu of this, we hope to raise enough funds through this fundraiser to gift '100 needy families with small children' in Metro Detroit with the following 2-3 books as Christmas gifts:  Just Like Me,  I Promise, and I AM EVERY GOOD THING.




We humbly give special thanks to our supporters as we operate in our third year of business. We need your support to sustain Detroit Book City.  These funds will help us to continously cover operation costs and expenses for the on-line store.  It will also help cover the cost to stock new, relevant multi-cultural titles, host virtual author fairs and 'giveaway books' to Metro Detroit children during the seasons of Fall 2020 and Winter/Spring 2021.  Please know that your donation will help create a bridge of security until the situation with the virus allow us to go back to operating on a more normal platform.
 
Thank you so much for any help you can provide.  We are very grateful and look forward to seeing you on the other side of this curve.  

--Janeice & Reginald Haynes