New Jersey Bookstore Crawl 2026
Second Annual crawl: June 5-7, 2026
Organized by
New Jersey Bookstore Crawl is a project of Jersey Collective. Additional co-organizers who provided support and sponsorship were Hello Art Design and Rutgers University Press.
By the numbers…
4,338 bookstore visits logged
8.5% increase from last year’s inaugural crawl!
Most people visited between 3 and 5 stores
…and 2 people went to 39
Crawlers participated from 301 unique zip codes and 7 states
Someone reported flying in from Nashville to participate, and one group of friends drove up from Maryland for the crawl!
60% of participants were new from last year
75 New Jersey bookstores participated
That’s 22 more than last year!
Tangible impacts for bookstores
Coffee, Coloring, & Crawl Guides
Cafe Willy, located in Rutherford at the Williams Center, hosted us for a relaxing kickoff event, featuring a custom coloring sheet made for us by Rad Co. Design Studio. It was so fun handing out crawl guides and chatting with the participants who came through about their plans for the weekend!
Sticker Machine Pop-Up
House Finch, a a suburban nature store in Collingswood, hosted a pop-up of our Jersey Collective Sticker Machine during the crawl! The machine was stocked with book-themed stickers designed by local artists and House Finch made the perfect detour for crawlers who visited Kiss & Tale and Inkwood Books!
Sunday Afterparty
To close out the weekend, we celebrated at 3BR Distillery in Keyport! We really enjoyed meeting the readers who came through over the course of the night—and we enjoyed sipping on 3BR’s craft beverages!