Avid Bookshop

07/03/2025

Avid Bookshop will be closed on Friday, July 4 for a book-readin' break for our booksellers. We'll be back here at 10am on Saturday, July 5! 🎆

Warmly,
the Avid Busy Bees

05/20/2025

🤔 Is giving educators bookstore gift cards an act of resistance?

Not necessarily, but it sure *can* be!
(see slide 2)

https://www.avidbookshop.com/avid-bookshop-email-gift-card

05/20/2025

THINGS FOR SALE!

We are saying goodbye to some office supplies, furniture, and misc. stuff we no longer need. All prices are OBO. Make an offer. Buy more than one thing!

Comment on the Facebook pic or album to claim what you’d like to buy. First come, first served.

FYI: This post is going up on Facebook and Instagram. I’ll be monitoring both outlets for responses as I’m able. Don’t panic if you don’t get a response immediately!

Cash or PayPal accepted. (If you’re an established customer, you can pay with a check.)

Must pick up from our now-closed shop at 1662 S Lumpkin St in Five Points (Athens). If youre buying something from us, I’ll communicate directly with you about those details.

❤️,
Janet

05/13/2025

**GIVEAWAY TIME!!**
I came here to announce a $45 gift card giveaway, courtesy of a customer who won our last contest and wanted to pay it forward. But now I'm giving away 3! Because look what I found when tidying my office this afternoon: 2 of the gift cards we'd intended to give away on Independent Bookstore Day a few years ago. We had a couple left over, so I put them in a box in my home office, only to find them again today. But my delay is to your benefit: I've decided to give them away as future gift cards you can use once our new shop is open!

How to enter: buy a gift card valued $25 or more by 11:59pm ET on Wednesday, 5/14. You get one entry for every $25 spent on gift cards purchased by this deadline. You can buy multiple gift cards for multiple entries, or you can buy a one gift card with a value that is a multiple of $25 (e.g., $25, $50, $75...). You can purchase gift cards here: http://www.avidbookshop.com/avid-gift-card

If you have kiddos about to be released for the summer, this would be the perfect opportunity to stock up on teacher gift cards. You'll be getting teachers their top-requested gift, plus you might end up being rewarded with your own!

The fine print:
📚Prizes: one $10 gift card; one $25 gift card; one $45 gift card.
📚Prize gift cards will be activated early summer 2025 when our Barber St. shop is open.
📚Winners will be notified via email on or before Monday, 5/19/25.

Avid Bookshop is a fiercely independent, community-focused bookselling business in Athens, Georgia (and worldwide here on this very website, avidbookshop.com!).

04/29/2025

Hello, Avid Readers!

Two days remain to maximize the impact of an incredible offer: an anonymous author donor has offered to match every GoFundMe donation up to a total of $10,000—but only through April 30th. This means your gift will have twice the impact if you give by the end of this month!

You have just two days left — April 29 and April 30 — to take advantage of this opportunity. After April 30, the matching offer expires, though our GoFundMe campaign will continue.

These donations are laying the foundation for our next chapter. With your support, we’ll soon be able to host more authors, organize community gatherings, stock a wider breadth of inventory, spark collaborations, and deepen the activism that’s at the heart of what we do.

This move isn’t just about changing locations—it’s about expanding our mission and creating a vibrant, welcoming space for all of us to gather, learn, and grow. Thanks to your generosity, we’ll soon open our doors on Barber Street. While I deeply appreciate this chance to reinvent and renovate, I confess that I’m looking forward to moving on from this in-between fundraising/construction/planning phase. We miss seeing y’all IRL! The flood of love and support you’ve shown us recently have inspired us beyond words. As always, we will do all we can to give YOU the same kind of support and encouragement you’ve so generously given to us.

Thank you for holding our hands through this big leap. Let’s make the most of these last two days to double our strength for the future.

If you’ve been thinking about donating, now is the perfect time.

❤️,
Janet Geddis, business owner/founder
Avid Bookshop
Athens, GA

Link in bio! ⬆️

https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-avid-bookshop-a-beacon-in-athens

04/25/2025

Extra, extra! 🗞️ Git yer Future Gift Cards! 📖💲 Saturday is Independent Bookstore Day (IBD). IBD is among our most favorite, fun, and profitable days of the year--but we can't do it tomorrow. 😢 Skipping it is such a bummer, for you and for us. We hope that our FUTURE Avid Gift Cards can tide us over 'til Avid reopens.

We're in a strange in-between time: we closed our existing store on 4/18 and won't be open for browsing again until the new store is ready to open (late spring or early summer 2025, date TBA). Though we are continuing to process web orders, we are missing the out on the bulk of our sales income: in-store purchases. Having no store sales during this 6- to 8-week transition is adding just a leeeettle, teeny, eenie-weenie bit of stress. 😬

Luckily, we DO have something special on offer all the same, something that will help you and us get even more excited for what's to come. The Future Avid Gift Card is a gift to your future self *and* a gift to present-day Avid. Read more below.

INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Buy a Future Gift Card here: https://www.avidbookshop.com/future-avid-gift-card-0
2. Enjoy the spring weather
3. Read some books
4. Wait for us to announce our grand reopening date
5. Jump up and down: when Avid opens, your gift card will be activated!
6. Treat yourself to some goodies from Avid's brand-new location

Gift cards never expire and can be used in-store, via phone, or on our website.

Our *Future Gift Cards* will not be valid until we open our new location on Barber Street in late spring/early summer 2025 (date TBA).

04/15/2025

🐝🌿 A big Avid-y announcement!

At the end of this week (Friday, April 18), Avid on Five Points will officially close our doors. While you may see booksellers still working inside, we will closed for browsing as we transition to our Barber St. storefront. We will dearly miss Five Points and the wonderful community over here, but we are excited to show you the new Avid 3.0 storefront on Barber at the end of May.

Swipe through these slides to get all the info for what our move means for you! You can also find all this information on our website (link in bio) if you would prefer. Information regarding order pick-ups, orders while we are closed to the public, used book drop offs, and book clubs are all here. 💚 If you have additional questions, please email us ([email protected]) so that we can get your email to the appropriate person on staff!

Warmly,
The Avid Busy Bees 🐝

04/10/2025

🐝Help the Avid Busy Bees move by picking up a big stack of books from our MOVING SALE. (Yes, you read that right.)

Our move is coming up quickly (watch this space for more details 👀), which requires us to move all of the books from our Five Points location to our new digs on Barber St. Before we do, though, we're putting them on sale for you to snag at a discount.

From April 10 (today) to April 18, (most) everything in-store will be on sale for 20% off. This sale excludes all used books and books for our upcoming April events. This sale applies to in-stock books only (meaning that ordering a book from our warehouse or preordering a title won't be 20% off, but buying one of the many books we have on the shelves will).

Stock up on some April reading and enjoy the mild weather! We'll see you in the shop soon!

Warmly,
The Avid Busy Bees 🐝

04/03/2025

Avid Bookshop will open late at 12:00 (noon) on Friday, April 4th. We will resume our normal hours (Tuesday-Sunday from 10-6) on Saturday, April 5. Thanks for your understanding!

Warmly, The Avid Busy Bees 🐝

03/15/2025

If you’ve ever been to Avid, you’ve spotted the little handwritten reviews paired with booksellers’ staff picks. They’ve become more colorful and eye-catching as the years have gone on. We are all avid readers, of course, and love recommending books to you either face-to-face or via these cards that customers can read as they browse.

Our blurbs go on these cards and our website, but we also share them with publishers, the American Booksellers Association, and Libro.fm. Avid’s staff pick reviews have ended up in publisher newsletters, nationally distributed IndieNext fliers, on ARCs (advanced review copies), and even on finished books!

Today I spent a lovely hour at home, listening to birdsong through the open window while doodling and composing the text for my most recent batch of shelf talkers. Look for these in-store soon!

Btw, these blank cards are locally made! We’ve been ordering these Avid Staff Pick cards from Bel-Jean in downtown Athens since we first opened. After more than 13 years of having many bibliophile employees pass through our doors, it’s fair to say we’ve filled out thousands of these!

03/10/2025

From Janet: Want to play I Spy? Here’s snapshot of our seemingly-messy-yet-actually-organized office, taken last night around 9pm as I wrapped up a rather lovely 12-hour day.

Can you spot these?
🐜 a lil’ drawing by Luis
📖 a book by Kiese Laymon
👻 a vewwy scawwy ghost
🦥 a sloth
🛄 a tote that says “Book Nerd”

-Janet G.

03/08/2025

Will Avid struggle to survive or renew and thrive? It's up to you. 📚

Can you donate $50 to our GoFundMe today?

https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-avid-bookshop-a-beacon-in-athens