Covid-19 Updates
Submitted by Room on Fri, 03/13/2020 - 3:37pmUpdate 4/1/2020: Hello booklovers! We have sent our staff to work from home for the foreseeable future and will only be having one person (an owner) in the store every day. We will be shipping books directly from our warehouse when possible and have changed our shipping prices ($3 for first book, .50 cents for each book after) to reflect that. Thank you so much for your continued support, patience, understanding, and bookloving.
Update 3/23: Hello friends! We are suspending the Madison-area delivery option for the time being, as we are overwhelmed and with the safer-at-home order coming into effect tomorrow, it seems inappropriate to be sending our staff driving all over town. If you are still waiting for your delivery, we appreciate your patience! We will likely be switching to media mail delivery option only, no in-store or staff delivery, and will let you know individually if your order is going to be coming by mail rather than our staff delivering. We are currently working as much as possible while keeping our staff safe (and asking them to stay home if they are at all sick), so we will be in touch soon if you have an order pending--possibly in the next day or two. Please note that our response time will likely increase as we cut back on staff being in the store, for everyone's safety. We are working to get your books to you as soon as is safely possible. Thank you so much for your outpouring of support--we love you so much and are glad to be there for you as much as we can during this pandemic.
Update 3/19: Wow, we have been floored, humbled, energized, and a little overwhelmed by the outpouring of support! Thank you so much to everyone who has placed web orders, called us, and sent supportive messages! We are processing as quickly as we can, but the high volume means we are running about a day behind on processing. We plan to catch up over the weekend.
New today: You can now purchase and redeem online gift codes on our website! These are only redeemable on our website for paper books and related products like puzzles--unfortunately they cannot be used on Kobo ebooks or Libro.fm audiobooks, both of which have their own internal gift code programs. When you purchase the code, our staff will process the order (which means it may take a bit for the code to get sent!) and the recipient will get emailed a code to use on our website. The code is a string of numbers that they copy and paste into the 'Online Gift Code' option of the web order checkout process, under 'payment methods'.
Update 3/16: As of today, A Room of One's Own will be closed to the public for the near future (at least through this week). We are available from 10am to 4pm to run prepaid orders out to you at our door if you wish--please call (608) 257-7888 or place a web order online. We are also offering doorstep delivery for free in the Madison area, and $1/book media mail shipping.Until April 10th A Room of One's Own will be open to the public from 12pm to 4pm Mon-Sun.. We will update this page with more links and information as things change.
As a space in which a lot of physical interaction takes place (people touch books as they browse), and which is not essential to public health during this crisis, we are taking steps to do our part to help flatten the curve and undercut the spread of COVID-19 in the Madison community. We want to increase social distance for our employees and our beloved customers.
We have made the above decisions to lessen exposure for our booksellers and our bookish community, to the global and national emergency that is the COVID-19 pandemic. We are taking protective measures to help flatten the curve of infection out of love and responsibility for our community. We hope that, months from now, our precautions look like an overreaction--that will mean they worked.
Although we are reducing your in-store shopping options, we are expanding other ways for you to engage with us and get the books you want or need more safely during our reduced hours!
- $1 shipping/book for all U.S. orders
- free Madison-area curbside book delivery
- cancelling face-to-face events
- buy gift certificates to use later or by phone ($10, $20, or $50)
- quarantine book lists
- uplifting and informative social media content on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter
We believe books and book reading help us feel human and connected and help us to imagine worlds outside our current one. We want to remain accessible to you for book buying without contributing to unnecessary exposure. We hope you utilize our book lists and order online, or take advantage of our partnerships with Libro.fm for digital audiobooks and Kobo for ebooks. We very much want to put books in your hands and for you to have sturdy, enlightening, and diverting TBR piles through this new time that is pushing us to be cautious with ourselves and our community.
As always, we appreciate and are grateful for your continued support and your endless love of books,
Your Room Booksellers
