The bookstores. The banned books. The receipts.

The bookstores

Every store links to its own storefront. Buy through a store’s Bookshop.org storefront and that store receives the full profit from the purchase. Bookshop.org puts it at 30% of the book’s list price. newBWS earns nothing from these links; the money moves from you to the store.

Store discovery credits AALBC’s bookstore list, the longest-running record of Black-owned bookstores on the web, and the National Association of Black Bookstores directory. Each listing here is drawn from the store’s own site. The counts, by state and with methodology, are on the data page.

The books they tried to ban

30 books by Black authors, banned or restricted across 945 U.S. jurisdictions, documented ban by ban in The Ledger. Read the record there, then buy the book from a store above.

Documentation and sources live at The Ledger’s Banned Books record, the historical record arm of newBWS.

The bestseller list

The Black Bookstore Coalition publishes a bestseller list drawn from what actually sells in Black-owned bookstores. It is their work; read it at the source.

Own a bookstore? It belongs here.

Claiming is free: open your listing and follow the claim link to take ownership, correct the details, and add your storefront. Anyone can nominate a Black-owned bookstore that belongs on this shelf.