Statement from October Books
Dear October Books community
What times we live in? Apologies for taking some time to let you know our plans in this current crisis situation. We have wanted to assess all our options and make sure we are doing what is best for you all as well as our staff and volunteers, whilst continuing to provide the service of a radical community bookshop, a service needed now more than ever. We know we can’t carry on as normal, but we can look at new ways to carry on.
We have decided that our events programme will change and we will assess the risks of each individual event in line with government guidance and use online resources where appropriate. This will be a great opportunity for us to use these online tools and look at ways we can involve vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in our events programme longer term. If an event is just us and an author in the shop beaming our conversations to households who are in self isolation, then that’s fine. We are in no way experts at online interaction so if you have skills in this area and can help please do let us know…. We are looking to use Zoom as a platform for hosting events. Hampshire Refillery will still be visiting us to allow people to stock up on essentials, however all our other events this month will be postponed or moved to an online platform. We'll also be assessing our events programme for April and May, in consultation with the authors and speakers we have booked in and those who have hired our community space.
We will be taking measures in the shop to ensure risks to staff and customers are minimised and will be implementing a regular clean of communal spaces and surfaces and will ask all those who are on the premises for an extended period to wash hands on arrival and when leaving the premises.
If you, friends and family are self-isolating and need a good read or some ethical munchies, we are aiming to provide a delivery service of books and foodstuffs. We’ll also be testing out online browsing so do sign up to our newsletter (see below), or check out the website for updates. If you would like to order a book do please ring the shop, send an enquiry via the website or email us . You can also use Hive but we get a better return if you order directly from us. If you can help us with delivery of books and other products do let us know.
Alternatively, if you are shopping at the Co-op please sign up as a member and support us as one of their Community Causes here.
We’ll keep you posted with updates on specific events and longer term plans and we will be reviewing opening hours on Friday this week. If you would like to sign up to our newsletter please do so here and we’ll keep you up to date with news.
We appreciate your support during this time which is likely to be a very difficult one for all independent businesses.
Take care of yourselves and others
Warmest regards
The October Books team
