We at the Reading Room CLE are, like everyone, deeply saddened by the current pandemic. At our Board's annual meeting in March 2020, we passed the following plan:
For the duration, we will focus on helping our neighbors cultivate habits of happiness at home. Our Bookstacks, Kid-Kits, and Gift Sets for Grown-Ups, which we are shipping out at and below cost, are all created to help us remember sources of light and hope while we go through this global emergency. Did you always want to read the classics? We'll send them to you. Do you want to learn to write a poem, or to grow a garden, or to make art? We'll send you a kit. Did you mean to join us for Blind Date for a Book, and not make it this year? We'll send you a bachelor book and a Fear's Chocolate bar.
We've listed these items for sale at the cost of shipping, plus a 25% donation, so that we can offer them for free to those of our neighbors who cannot afford to pay. If you can afford the list price, we appreciate your support. If you use code IAMSUPERBROKE, for a 25% discount, your only cost is shipping. The code NOREALLYSUPERBROKE will give you a 100% discount and let us ship you a box for free. We appreciate your generosity to other readers; if the discount code is not working, check back in a few days as we re-activate it whenever full-price purchases are made.
On safety, a note from the Bookseller:
I have been sheltering in place since March 9, 2020. Our inventory is all, temporarily, in my dog-friendly home, and is always decontaminated before it's uploaded to our website. I wash my hands before packing shipments; instead of our usual upcycled paper packaging, I now ship our books in polyvinyl wrappers. The tracking label that I print lets you know what time and date a box was wrapped; when it arrives at your home, you can sanitize the outer wrapper with Lysol, bleach, alcohol, or soap and water.
We only ship via USPS, because postal carriers are treated with dignity by their employer; they are paid fairly and have both sick time and health insurance. We have always done our own warehouse work, with the help of our volunteers, and although we do list our books on all of the online marketplaces, we do not use FBA.
We are an all-volunteer crew. Our interns are unpaid and so is our leadership team. We appreciate your purchases via Biblio and other online marketplaces, which help the bookstore pay for software, materials, and expenses; we also appreciate donations. But more than anything else, we appreciate your support and encouragement. Drop by our social media and leave a comment, or e-mail us at books@readingroomcle.org, any time.
