UPDATED 3/18/20: STORE FLOOR CLOSED - PICKUP ONLY : A message from the Hub City Writers Project rega

A Message from the Hub City Writers Project Staff

Starting Wednesday, March 18, 2020, our sales floor will be closed to the public until COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. We are offering curbside pickup (864-577-9349) from 10-5, home delivery within 5 miles, and free shipping from hubcity.org/books. Our clerks will be answering phones to take orders or give recommendations and keeping our store stocked. Check our social media for daily recommendations, messages from our favorite authors, and  further updates.

 

Hub City Writers Project is closely monitoring the recommendations and reports about coronavirus (COVID-19) in Upstate South Carolina. The CDC is recommending practicing social distancing: that is, staying home if you are able, avoiding large crowds and keeping your distance from others in public, and self-quarantining if you feel ill. We hope you’re following this advice--keeping each other safe is a community effort!

Here are the precautions we’re taking and how they might affect you. We anticipate that local businesses will be impacted by the current situation, and we want you to know a few ways we plan to support our community, as well as ways you can support us.

Hours

In light of the necessity for social distancing, we are shortening our hours to 10-5. Our store floor is closed to the public at this time. We are offering curbside pickup from 10-5 (864.577.9349) and free shipping from hubcity.org/books. Our staff will gladly answer phone calls to place orders and give recommendations from a distance, process online orders, bring books to your car or home. It’s important for all of us to keep our distance for a little while. Please respect the personal space of our clerks and staff (some of whom will work from home), and please be safe out there!

Hub City Press books are available on our website at hubcity.org/books with FREE shipping, and most are available wherever eBooks are sold. If you are out of town or stuck at home and want to support the Hub City Bookshop, you can use https://bookshop.org to shop us and other indies. We make some money with our affiliate with this site. 

Events

The CDC is recommending suspending gatherings of 50+ people for eight weeks. In light of this advice, we are canceling events through the end of March. Please continue to check our social media and our calendar for information on cancelations and reschedulings. We will make a judgement about April events as we know more about the evolving situation. We will be sending emails announcing cancelations and refunds of ticketed events.

In our store

We will be disinfecting all surfaces, especially high-touch locations, and our clerks and staff will be hand sanitizing between guests. Please respect our clerks’ space to help keep them safe. For the health and safety of our staff and our Spartanburg community, we also ask that our customers follow these guidelines:

• Do not enter the bookshop if you are sick. This applies especially to anyone experiencing the following symptoms: fever, cough, shortness of breath, or other flu-like symptoms.

• Do not enter the store if you have recently been in close contact with someone who has been diagnosed with COVID-19 until you’ve been cleared by a medical professional.

• Wash your hands frequently with soap and water. The folks at the CDC tell us this is preferable to hand sanitizer, but of course hand sanitizer will still keep your hands clean. 

Other ways to support Hub City

We are, of course, a non profit organization dedicated to nurturing readers and writers in our community. If you purchased a ticket for a canceled event, we hope you might consider donating your ticket toward a Hub City membership. Members receive 25% off Hub City Press titles, 20% New York Times bestsellers, and 10% everything in the store.

We are currently running a fundraising effort to move Hub City Press to an office we’ve leased behind the bookshop for moving costs, furnishing, and upfitting the space to create a meeting place for our staff to meet with other partners, authors, and more. Any donation, no matter how small, is a huge help to us while we take this exciting new step. You can take a look at the project and donate here.

For more information about coronavirus and how to stay safe

You can learn more about COVID-19 and how to protect yourself by reading up on what the CDC and the SC Department of Health and Environmental Control have posted. The City of Spartanburg has a running page of information and updates, has posted videos and hosted a podcast discussing how to keep yourself and our community healthy and safe. Please continue to follow them for updates and advice.

We hope y’all stay safe. Wash your hands; please social distance; read books! We’re all in this together.