Volumes Bookcafe opened in March 2016 with the goal of providing the Wicker Park neighborhood with a bookstore & cafe that would provide endless literary and community events. We've done that! We need your help to keep things going.
WHO WE ARE
Volumes was built by two sisters, Kimberly & Rebecca. We are both former Chicago teachers who are fiercely dedicated to promoting literacy in our community.
We started this business on a bootstrap budget & built most of it with our bare hands. However, those unexpected costs from opening the store are now holding us back from allowing us to be the best bookstore we can be.
Supporting an independent bookstore helps your community in a number of ways:
- The money spent in an indie neighborhood bookstore stays in the neighborhood.
- Each year we support schools & a variety of foundations and charitable organizations. Helping us allows us to help others.
- Supporting an independent bookstore means more literary & arts events in your neighborhood. We offer close to 300 FREE events each year.
- Independent bookstores support local authors & artists! Close to half of all of our author events are either for a local author or involve a local author/writer/poet/dreamer. We love our locals.
Our authors love us too! For this campaign we are incredibly thankful to have received help from: Rebecca Makkai, Jac Jemc, Kathleen Rooney, Martin Seay, Giano Cromley, Alex Higley, Zoe Zolbrod, Charles Finch, Michael Moreci, Kim Brooks, Mary Robinette Kowal, Kevin Coval, Lori Rader-Day, Megan Stielstra, Rachel Ruiz, Kelly O'Connor McNees, Paulette Livers, Ben Tanzer, Kristin Iskandrian, Abby Geni, Eve Ewing, Christine Sneed, Aviya Kushner, Maryse Meijer, Alex Higley, Lindsay Hunter, Gint Aras, Metropolis Coffee, Coffee House Press, Graywolf Press and SO MANY MORE!
What We Need & What You Get
In order for us to continue to bring the unique programming to the community and keep our bookstore running another year, we need help. We need at least $60k to pay off some debt so that we can keep going. A bookstore is a nickel by nickel/razor thin-margin business. We can't survive if all of our money is not being invested in the business. We need to move forward. We need your help to make that happen. We are fortunate to have an amazing team of supporters helping with this campaign to make your contribution doubly worth it.
We need your contributions to help pay off the excessive debt we took on to tackle the unexpected add-ons the city required when we opened. It has been very difficult to run a successful bookstore with a functioning cash flow when we have a great deal of $ paying off space improvements. This also helps to pay back our amazing landlord, who has helped in the first two years of our opening. Our debt is hurting our ability to function. We really need help moving forward if we're going to stay open.
We are very lucky that we have a fantastic team of authors, community members, vendors and publishers that are supporting our campaign with perk donations. You can get anything from an enamel pin and a handwritten thank you, to a book club package where the author visits your book club! Get your name in a book! Get a writing consultation. Get some Volumes Swag!
Also, we are launching our first anthology - and it's going to be BOOKSTORE EROTICA (In bold because we think this is pretty awesome). We'll have brand new contributions from the likes of Charles Finch, Rebecca Makkai, Maryse Meijer, C. Russ Price, Kathleen Rooney and MANY MANY MORE (Seriously, though - the list is growing every day)!
EVERYONE who donates/shares is invited to our birthday party on March 24th! It's a Perks Party! We will have your perks available for pick-up (if you so desire) as well as stories, music & treats!
If we don't reach the final goal, the funds will still go towards paying this debt and will be enormously helpful.
If we get more than the final goal, the money will be invested in inventory and community events for years to come.
The Impact
Independent bookstores epitomize the community value of independent small businesses.
Helping us will help to:
- Continue to provide a safe space for writers & readers.
- We provide twice weekly story times for children, author school visits, school book fairs, & book donations for the schools in our neighborhood and in the surrounding communities.
- We provide close to 300 events each year. 99% of these events are FREE and open to the public. We would love to expand our reach to offer even more!
Risks & Challenges
We realize that this doesn't solve every problem - running a small business is no easy thing. We've learned a lot in the last two years, and we now have the data to plan efficiently as the years progress. The good news is, we are growing bit by bit.
- We have a new accountant and finance team that are helping us to pinch every penny so that we can run the most efficient bookstore we can.
- We’re applying for grants to help aid in the number of programs we offer to the community at large.
- We plan on hosting a once-a-year super amazing spectacular ticketed fundraising show to help offset our event hosting costs.
- We want to open the store to more full-store rentals for private events.
We will be starting a CSB program (Community Supported Bookstore - much like a farming CSA) where customers can basically start a tab with the store - and receive an extra 5% off their purchases. In other words, pay something like $200 up front - we’ll keep that $200 in our system for you to use. This helps bookstores during the slow months!
Other Ways You Can Help
Some people just can't contribute, but that doesn't mean they can't help:
Share our campaign! If ten people contribute from your share, we will give you a $10 gift card to Volumes. This must be done using the indiegogo share tools - so we can track it!
Continue shopping with us! We are so grateful to our customers, and seeing your faces in our store is always a treat. We get to fall in love with book loving people every day. We hope to do that until the end of time.