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It’s everything people love about a bookstore, only there’s no brick-and-mortar building.
Book Club on the Go may call South Windsor, Connecticut, home base, but bibliophiles will find its unique blend of books and local artisan-crafted gifts at myriad places, from a library author event to a pub-based book club to a mini book fair at a local business to a Grown-Up Book Fair at a popular brewery.
It’s another example of how, sometimes, a penchant can become the pathway to a business.
For Cynde Acanto, that penchant was her love of books.
“I always had a passion for reading. I credit my parents for that,” Acanto said as she recounted the origins of her mobile bookselling business.
Acanto said she was leading a series of local book clubs when the opportunity to purchase an existing bookstore presented itself in 2013.
“I had a background in retail management and had an opportunity, and just went from there,” Acanto explained. And for five years, her business thrived, offering her the opportunity to make solid connections with customers and vendors.
But then she had a family, and her priorities changed.
“We did well, and I enjoyed it, but I realized it was very event-driven – author events, book clubs – and my son was small, and I wanted the flexibility to be able to attend his sporting events. So, I made the decision to close the bookstore in 2019,” Acanto said, adding that as the shop shut its doors in August of that year, she turned her efforts toward a mobile business focused on events and online book orders.
“It was fortuitous, COVID would have killed us,” Acanto said of her original brick and mortar book shop. “But the mobile business took right off, even during COVID.”
She started hosting more successful mobile-based events — book clubs, author events and book fairs right up to the COVID-19 shutdown.
“I was running four to five book clubs, all kinds of author events, but as COVID progressed, all kinds of events started getting cancelled,” Acanto shared, adding that during COVID, she cancelled nearly 60 planned events. “At that time, I built an online presence and started delivering books and contactless deliveries to people’s homes, and I would do online Zoom book clubs.”
Book Club on the Go delivered to eight local towns in Connecticut during COVID-19, Acanto said. “It was same-day or next-day at a time when a lot of the online [sellers] were overwhelmed.”
When summer came, and people started moving outdoors, Acanto said she began hosting social-distanced book clubs in area parks.
“We were doing the East Windsor senior center book club outdoors, that gave us a great opportunity to get a little back to normal,” she shared.
As the COVID-19 restrictions eased, Acanto said many of the events that had been scheduled prior to the lockdown picked up where they left off.
“We have a great relationship with the Red Heat Tavern in South Windsor for a book club called Pints and Pages,” Acanto shared as an example of this resurgence. “It’s been running since 2020; it started just before COVID.”
The Red Heat Tavern book clubs now include contemporary titles and an evening dedicated to Stephen King fans, according to the BookClubCT.com website.
Other opportunities, such as author events with the Wood Memorial Library and Museum in South Windsor, now known as The Watershed, helped Book Club on the Go recover and grow after COVID-19.
“For a large mobile live book event we have a partnership with the Otis Library in Norwich, Connecticut,” Acanto said. “They do an annual fundraiser with an author once a year, and we partner to provide the books.”
The order for the Otis event usually includes 500 books, which Acanto coordinates with the publisher and the library.
Public and private book club and author events – both in person and virtual — online new, used and audiobook sales, book swaps and book trivia events and the newest addition to Acanto’s mobile event repertoire, Book Fairs for Grown Ups, have expanded Book Club On the Go into a robust business model.
“Once we started adding the Grown Up Book Fairs, it opened up a nice new customer base for us,” said Acanto, adding that the recent Book Fairs she has hosted at locations such as the White Lion Brewing Company in Springfield and at the Shortstop Bar and Grill in Westfield have introduced her business to a new audience beyond her home base of Connecticut.
Acanto also brings an annual book fair event to Brew Practitioners Brewery and Tap Room, a fellow woman-owned business in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts, to celebrate International Women’s Day.
Acanto said the mobile book fairs “really allow me to bring so many passions together. “I always love to bring a local author and local artisans to show off their wares,” she said.
Another new addition to Acanto’s events — Blind Date with a Book — a packaged product that includes a book, a bookmark and book-related extras has also taken off.
When asked if Acanto misses the brick-and-mortar bookselling experience, she said that once she went mobile with Book Club On the Go, she never looked back.
“We were able to pivot and exist through COVID; COVID was a huge testing ground for so many businesses,” Acanto said. Once the business went through COVID, she said she knew she had a viable model.
“I can do events I never would have been able to do as a brick and mortar,” Acanto continued. “I’m doing more mobile bookselling; authors and libraries reach out and need a bookseller … we cover events in all of Connecticut and Western Mass. as opposed to being locked into retail hours.”
But being a mobile bookseller does mean you have to constantly be adaptable, Acanto added.
“I think that you have to be creative all the time,” she said. “You have to be thinking of new venues, new events and obviously, storage — holding on to books in a storage venue, transporting the books … and they are heavy!”
Her husband, she said, is a huge help with the heavy books part. She has also added four team members to help her run an expanded calendar of mobile events, so she doesn’t have to be present at every pub, brewery, book club, book fair or author event.
Acanto said those team members are poet Joe Adomavicia, author Katherine Anderson, author Jessica Bottomley, who has led the monthly Stephen King Book Club for 11 years, and Julia Merriam, who leads the monthly Pints & Pages Book Club at Red Heat Tavern.
Looking toward the future, Acanto said she’s “always striving to keep things new, and I’m always looking for new marketing opportunities for books.”
“That’s the thing about books,” Acanto added, “They bring people together in multiple ways.”
She shared the following upcoming Book Club On the Go events for January through April:
Jan. 19, 2026: at 5:30 p.m., Pints & Pages Book Club at Red Heat Tavern, South Windsor, CT, discussing “The Winter People” by Jennifer McMahon.
Jan. 26, 2026: at 5:30 p.m. Stephen King Book Club at Red Heat Tavern, South Windsor, CT, discussing “Mr. Mercedes.”
Feb. 19, 2026: at 5:30 p.m. Stephen King Book Club at Red Heat Tavern, South Windsor, CT. discussing “Revival.”
Feb. 26, 2026: at 5:30 p.m., Pints & Pages Book Club at Red Heat Tavern, South Windsor, CT, discussing a book to be announced.
March 8, 2026: noon to 4 p.m. Women’s Day Grown-up Book Fair at Brew Practitioners, East Longmeadow, MA. Sip & shop with female authors and artisans at Brew Practitioners, a woman-owned brewery, on International Women’s Day.
March 11, 2026: Stewing Over Mysteries with Author Tess Gerritsen at The Publik House, 277 Main St., Sturbridge, MA. Book Club On the Go will be the bookseller. Doors open at 6:15 p.m. Tickets will be available online at sturbridgelibrary.org or in person at the Joshua Hyde Public Library, 306 Main St., Sturbridge. Tickets go on sale on Monday, Jan. 26: 2026. Tickets include beef stew or butternut squash soup, rolls, coffee and dessert.
April 11, 2026: noon to 4 p.m. Grown-up Book air at Sonny’s Place, Somers, CT
For more information about the book opportunities offered by Book Club On the Go, visit BookClubCt.com
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