As an author who had an incredible experience releasing my work in Aotearoa, there are now two groups of people I do not play about: librarians and booksellers. My pukapuka, How To Loiter In a Turf War, was able to reach my intended audience fairly quickly (and beyond) because of the commitment, humour, creativity and white-knuckle support of bookshops, big and small. I was able to have a book signing at my local Onehunga Bookstore, an author talk at Unity Books Auckland, a Time Out Books live posting on the day it came out, and an amazing window display at the Women’s Bookshop; something every author, I think, dreams of. I experienced a week of hype and Instagram stories, and I felt like releasing my book into the world was something I could transmit successfully because of the cultural labour that booksellers do. I will always be grateful for this relationship.
As a standard-issue nerd, I genuinely love bookshops, and in particular Bookshop Day. I was thrilled to create artwork for the underground milestone of being “the annual bookshop tote bag artist” because I realised I take the day a little bit seriously.
My favourite was in Tāmaki in 2023. I was cruising around with my bookworm sister, where we ended up going on a bookshop hop: the sober, earnest equivalent of a depraved pub crawl to every bookstore in our area. We bought bookmarks, gift cards, and three books each when we said we’d only get one, spending our geek coin because it was fun. At our final stop in Ponsonby, I was grabbing the Xoë Hall tote bag when the person behind the counter clocked me, and a spontaneous book signing broke out. We ate the complimentary classic book-cover cupcakes; I think I smashed a strawberry Wuthering Heights.
In an anti-intellectual climate of AI and politicians who haven’t tried reading yet, the site of culture is now as important as the art itself, and bookstores are among the sites proving this point the most. Like the heated discussions surrounding record stores, venues and third spaces (conversations where I increasingly seem to be at the scene of the discourse crime?), I find you don’t always have to spend money to make a meaningful community contribution. It’s about presence and, funnily enough, our history.
Resistance Bookshops were founded across three NZ cities by political workers during the Vietnam War. The Polynesian Bookshop had readings, exhibitions and music, proudly carrying Pacific literature during the Dawn Raids era. The Broadsheet Bookstore and The Women’s Bookshop both carried important queer and feminist literature when it was hard to access in mainstream stores.
Bookstores in Aotearoa have always been vital for conversation, community and culture. Historically, here, bookstores rarely acted in isolation; they formed part of a wider network of magazines, cafés, music venues and activist organisations where literature, art and political organising reinforced one another. They have been sites of activation and comfort when artists and the people have needed space to philosophise, share and make sense of it all. In order to understand our values and what the future needs, sometimes we need to remember what we’ve already done well. In our case, we loved books.
—Coco Solid
The official 2026 Bookshop Day artist
Aotearoa NZ Bookshop Day: 10 October 2026
