UPDATE: Little Shop has written about the grant on it’s blog this morning, stating in part…

The check came yesterday. There are no stipulations. There are no strings attached.

So … we’re buying a bus. We have absolutely no idea what we’re doing, but we’ll figure it out.

Last September, best-selling author James Patterson announced he was going to give away $1 million dollars over the next year to independent bookstores. This past week, the first round of grants totaling $267,000 were announced.  And guess what?  Well, I’ll let Publisher’s Weekly tell you…

A number of proposals sought to expand programs already in place, like one from Dave Shallenberger, co-owner of Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, Ga., who has been growing his book fair business but without a dedicated store truck to haul books. For the past two years he’s been thinking about retrofitting an old school bus and taking it to schools, where kids could visit and walk through it. Thanks to the grant, he will be able to have “Maximum Ride” all decked out in time for this year’s Decatur Book Festival, held over Labor Day weekend.

According to an NYT article on the Patterson grants, Malaprop’s in Asheville will use their grant money to replace badly worn carpeting and repair their parque floor.

Pic of random old school bus courtesy of Eric E Johnson via Flickr