Howdy folks,
Since our inception doing pop-ups in 2020 & the opening of our brick-and-mortar in 2022, Conveyor Belt Books has prided itself on offering the finest, most electric, eclectic & eccentric selection of used-reads in the greater Cincinnati region. We've been grateful to provide a space & environment for enthusiasts of literature, writers, poets, musicians, artists & anyone looking for a good read, a rare book, an elusive classic, recent publication or strange find, or folks looking to explore the underserved, hidden, buried & obscure corners of fiction, film, poetry, philosophy & art.
We are kindly asking for your help moving from our current location at 410 W Pike St in Covington, KY to our new space in the Clifton Gaslight District of Cincinnati.
Covington has treated us exceedingly well over the last 4+ years & we're grateful for the room it gave us to expand the community around the store, how it enabled us to experiment, take risks & create unique events, but the time has arrived for us to migrate north, in the recent fashion of so many nine-banded armadillos (who have begun migrating from Texas, as a fun, non-retail-related fact).
The ecosystem around a small business carries many fragilities. One of the most precious of these is location & the access to that location. It's always been a bit of an ask getting folks to cross the river but with recent, seemingly-constant delays & issues with the highway & the impending, multi-year construction projects due for the Brent Spence Bridge, the access to our current location has become exponentially more fragile & increasingly, its effect on business has been impossible to ignore - the two weekends where downtown exits were closed were especially painful & gave a fairly grim portrait of our future here. The planned work on the Brent Spence is estimated to be 7 years, so rather than panic over the tremendous difficulties this will pose (as well as its existential implications for the store), we have decided to relocate closer to where the majority of folks who support us reside.
Our new location will be in the heart of the Gaslight District on Ludlow Avenue, in what was formerly home to the Proud Rooster diner for over 50 years. There's no place we feel is a better fit for us than Clifton & we're ecstatic to be joining the neighborhood.
This will require a substantial, serious amount of construction, renovation, remodeling, work, work (more work) & who knows what else in converting a long-time restaurant into a retail space & bringing it up to code, setting it up & opening our doors to the future.
We are looking to cover this move through a variety of loans, personal funds, events & lastly, with the generosity & kindness of anyone who is able to help us establish ourselves as a longterm fixture in the region, to continue doing what we do best & in this space, doing "more" of it.
In our years of operation we've helped sponsor numerous festivals (Talk Low Fest & Analog Fair, to name a few), collaborated on events with the Carnegie & Woodward Theatre, hosted performances from local & traveling musicians, held pop-ups in-store & helped spread word of any cool or unique events happening in the city. We present monthly screenings at the Esquire Theatre as well as monthly poetry readings, organized & led by our friend, Harris Wheeler.
We will continue in our mission to provide a selection of books that is all killer & no filler while expanding our shelves & inventory, hosting more performances, events & being, in the recent words of Marcel Proust, the greatest bookstore that was ever "formerly" placed next to a gas station (citation needed).
Kindly see below for donor perks & giveaways.
Heaven's weight in yen & concrete gratitude to y'all.
Perks for those donating to our relocation campaign:
- Any donors contributing to our move will receive 15% off for a year upon our reopening in Clifton
- Those donating $100 or more will receive 20% off for the duration of our first lease (5 years) upon reopening in Clifton
Giveaways, selected at random:
- 3 donors who have contributed $25 will receive a $25 gift card
- 3 donors who have contributed $50 will receive a $50 gift card
- 3 donors who have contributed $100 or more will receive a $100 gift card
- One donor who has contributed $25 will receive a 1st edition, 3rd printing mass market paperback copy of Jack Kerouac's On the Road published by Ballantine in 1958
- One donor contributing $35 will receive a 1st edition slipcase copy of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind, published by New Directions in 1968
- One donor contributing $50 will receive a facsimile copy of Atkinson Sign Painting, a formative, essential manual/reference guide for sign painting republished in a limited edition locally by Sign of the Times in Cincinnati, 1983
- One donor contributing $75 will receive a 1st edition, 1st printing of Haruki Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart, published by Knopf
- One donor contributing $100+ will receive Cormac McCarthy's complete Border Trilogy in their individual 1st edition/1st printing iterations
Additionally, if you'd like to help us out in any way or offer any suggestions, feel free to reach out.
We appreciate ya!