Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Dear Friends, Readers, and Book Lovers,

Today we had to make a tough choice – the choice between staying open and closing our doors during this ongoing crisis. We chose the latter. Not only for the safety of our staff, but for the safety of all our customers as well. While we’re not sure how long our closure will last, we all have to do what we can to help fight the spread of COVID-19 and we feel like this is our bit.

That being said, we have a skeleton staff all set up to keep things up and running behind the scenes in preparation for the day when we can once again welcome you back into the store. What that means is we’ll still be accepting book requests and orders, receiving shipments from publishers, and shipping books out to customers. You can also expect to see new posts on our social media accounts and our regular monthly newsletters will still be arriving in your inbox as usual. In other words, we’re trying to keep things as close to “business as usual” as we possibly can.

On the shipping side of things, all customer orders will go out using Purolator or Canada Post at a flat rate of $13 for the first item and an extra $1 for each additional item. Purchases can be processed over the phone (613-742-5030) or you can place orders through our online store (https://store.booksonbeechwood.ca/). Requests can also be made by e-mail (staff@booksonbeechwood.ca). Contact-free pick ups at the store can be arranged on request as well. And if you ever feel like you need to give your eyes a break and want to listen to a book instead of read it, downloadable audiobooks can be purchased through our Libro.fm page (https://libro.fm/?bookstore=beechwood).

Since we don’t know how long we’ll be closed for, until further notice all bookstore events have been postponed. We plan to revisit them once the situation stabilizes and hopefully will be able to reschedule them. Anyone who has purchased a ticket to our Titles@Table40 event with Chris Waddell that was due to take place on March 29 will be entitled to a full refund or store credit. There’s no time-limit on this refund/credit. We are planning on rescheduling this event, so if any of you would rather hang on to your tickets until we have a new date, that’s fine too.

We might be closing our doors for now, but we’re committed to continuing to serve you all as best we can through this difficult time. There are no doubt many more strange, uncertain days ahead of us, but we figure as long as we all follow the recommendations and instructions put out by Ottawa Public Health, wash our hands thoroughly and regularly, and keep ourselves nice and busy at home, we should pull through. Just remember that we’re still here and happy help in any way we can.

Thank you so much for your continued support! We wouldn’t be here without you!

Happy Reading!
Stay safe!

–The Staff at Books on Beechwood