This year's champions of the project are Neil Gaimen and Amanda Palmer, who jointly explain:
"Choose your independent bookshop, talk to the owner or manager, and agree on what you are going to do that day. If you have a website, put that store’s buy button in a prominent place on your website, above the Amazon button and the IndieBound button. If you prefer, you can sign up on the author registry so that a store can contact you."Read their full post here:
http://www.bookweb.org/neil-and-amanda
Authors can sign up here for the author registry, not just for hooking up with an Indie bookstore eager to have science fiction, romance, futuristic romance, aliendjinn romance, mystery, suspense, horror, fantasy, YA.... authors in the shop helping readers to discover excellent reads, but also for making contact for other high days and holidays or for making autographed books available:
http://www.bookweb.org/indies-first-author-illustrator-registry
There is a map here http://www.indiebound.org/indiesfirst showing where the stores are. There are multiple events taking place in California, Florida, along the Eastern seaboard. Take a look.... and if you are a bookseller, you can sign up and join in.
My best wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving,
Rowena Cherry