Austin Texas Book Trail 2024: The Official Recap!
The 2024 Trail Map, designed by Ashley Robin Franklin
On April 27, 2024, we hosted the first official Austin Texas Book Trail — a citywide bookstore crawl spotlighting 25 locally-owned, independent bookstores. Entirely volunteer-run and operated, the inaugural trail took five months of planning to develop promotional materials, visitor experiences, and production logistics for bookstores spanning from Lockhart to Taylor. We were also covered in the press! Check out our features in CBS Austin, the Austin Chronicle, and ATX Today.
Some major takeaways from our first year:
1) We welcomed 400+ visitors with a combined total of 2000+ bookstore stops.
Visitors came from all across Texas, self-reporting from over 90 unique zip codes.
Learn more about the 25 participating bookstores and the flow of the day here.
2) On average, folks stopped at 6 bookstores. The most visits by a single participant was 19!
Plus, five lucky visitors won prizes (est. value $230 each) assembled from donations from participating bookstores. Check out the winners with their prizes here. (Here’s a more detailed look at the prize bundles.)
3) The bookstores loved it, too.
Some bookstores reported an additional $5,000 to $8,000 in sales compared to the average Saturday.
Take a look at the top 10 most visited stores, according to our attendee survey:
BookPeople (209 visits)
First Light Books (195)
BookWoman (183)
Alienated Majesty Books (157)
Black Pearl Books (148)
Vintage Bookstore & Wine Bar (145)
Recycled Reads (130)
Austin Books & Comics (109)
The Little Gay Shop (105)
Reverie Books (103)
Woo-hoo! Now, let’s get into the weekend recap:
We started the day with a kickoff breakfast at Mañana Dos in downtown Austin, where we handed out trail maps and free tacos + coffee to the early bird book trailers (thank you to our Mañana hosts for sponsoring the morning fuel).
We had no idea how many of you would show up – and from all over the state!
We greeted book clubs from Houston, father-daughter duos from Dallas, plus countless book enthusiasts from the Austin/San Antonio areas. We knew that people were excited to spend a day exploring the ~25~ featured indies on the trail, but we were inspired by the overwhelming support. One person had even mapped the day with a spreadsheet detailing estimated travel times in order to hit as many stores as humanly possible. A few of our favorites were the intrepid cyclists in the bunch. We enjoyed watching their route as they shared photos from their trail.
At the end of the day we met back up at Better Half for drinks, cake, and to swap trail day highlights. To celebrate as many sides of our local book world as possible, we invited local popup booksellers Livra Books (now a brick & mortar!) and Vignette Books, to pop up with us at the party too, and folks enjoyed browsing their tables of specially curated books.
Browse photos from the day from attendee Instagram stories here.