Earthlings! Friends! Readers! The time we have so long awaited is at hand: bookish greetings to you on this, the fourth annual Indie Bookstore Day!

Just as in revious years, indies around the country are planning a full day of author events, games, and drinking. And as always, Melville House will be dropping by stores around New York delivering treats to the booksellers that make all of this possible. This year, we’ll be including some branded Trump / Russia vodka in preparation for the book’s release on May 8. We also like to give things away on Twitter, so make sure to tweet some of your bookstore adventures our way — you might just win some cool stuff.

Here’s just a tiny sampling of what’s going on in stores around the country today:

• MINNESOTA: Gumballs? Poems? What if a store had an apparatus that could dispense both? To learn the answer to this glorious imponderable, head to Content Bookstore in Northfield. The first twenty customers to spend over $100 will also get a free tote designed by Caldecott Honoree Carson Ellis, and there’ll be donuts and coffee at 9am, for the early birds catching bookworms. Stay till 3 for the third annual book open mic, where anyone can come talk about and recommend books they love. Yes.

• ILLINOIS:  Chicago bookstores believe in cooperation. They have banded together using the mighty powers of the Chicagoland Independent Bookstore Alliance to design a store crawl that’ll leave you well-fed, well-read, and *other rhyming word*. With a $25 purchase, you’ll get a punchcard. If you visit 10 other stores during the day, you’ll get a ten percent discount for the remainder of 2018. That’s worth its weight in books. Literally.

• COLORADO: While there are many wonderful Colorado stores, I’d like to give a special nod to Out West Books in Grand Junction. Once during an interminable roadtrip, I passed through Grand Junction and enjoyed a taco and a book. It’s a charming store, and on Saturday they’ll have an old-fashioned typewriter setup with a local poet peddling poems like a prince all the live-long day.

• NEW JERSEY: We hear it’s the garden state. I’ve yet to see any gardens of particular splendor, but I’ve definitely seen some great bookstores. At Booktowne in Manasquan there will be raffles all day and door prizes. A couple authors will be coming by to do readings, including Ross Baruch. His kids’ book Truck Full of Ducks sounds like an adult making a cover story for cursing in front of their children.

This barely cracks the surface! Get more complete info on literary shenanigans in your neck of the woods at www.indiebookstoreday.com.

And remember: Booksellers are heroes! Heed their recommendations, yea, and purchase their wares, on this, the hallowed day that honors them!