We have been so moved by & grateful for the outpouring of kind words you all have sent our way. It means *SO MUCH* to us as we work hard to keep you reading during these strange times.
But we also want to shout-out the folks who make what we're doing possible. (thread)

So we're going to take you through the process of an order and tell you along the way about the people who are also working really hard so that we can do what we do. Welcome to the Epic Thread of Gratitude!

It takes a village, y'all.

First up, you place an online order (thank you!).
Our website wouldn't exist without the tireless help and tech support of the kind folks who make up @ABAbook's IndieCommerce team. Geetha, Phil, Chanthee, Courtney, Scott, Ryan, and others—THANK YOU.

After your order is placed, Red Balloon staff find the books &/or games you've requested.

(There are a lot of people to thank for this stage of the process, so stick with us.)

First up, our staff are awake (mostly) and conscious to do this because of the delicious snacks and caffeine and very nice people at our neighbor store @BandCBakery, also known (by small children) as The Cookie Store.
(They are still doing curbside pick-up! Mmm croissants...)

The books/games/etc are in our store largely thanks to our @UPS driver, Dan, who is unfailingly nice as he delivers our ridiculous stacks of (rather heavy) boxes every week day. If he wasn't still driving to our store every morning, we genuinely couldn't do any of this.

(NO thanks are due during this part of the process to the alphabet, who continues to RUDELY make it very hard for our booksellers to find ANYTHING. We must often sing its song to appease its wrath. The alphabet is a cruel master.)

The books/games that aren't yet in our store we order in for you. #BooksellerBarb does the vast majority of this! Before she can order them, she has to figure out the best place to get them from.
We either order them directly from publishers or from the wholesaler @IngramContent.

This decision is often based on what's up with the publisher at any given time—info that comes to us from our amazing array of sales reps. Our reps are always helpful—helping us choose which books to stock, advocating for us with the publishers, telling us about promos, etc.

But during all of this our reps have been extra helpful, working really hard to keep us updated about publisher closures/delays/backorders/etc. We have way too many reps to thank individually, but to all of them we want to say THANK YOU.

Once the orders are sent, warehouse workers all over the country are picking and packing all of those books, for all of the bookstores that are still open. Imagine all those thousands of books, on their way to readers like you because of these folks.

So then, once all the books are here, we get them ready to go out to you! For shipping, we send them downstairs to our newly expanded shipping department and then our boss takes a huge trip to the post office every afternoon.

We have shipped hundreds of packages through @USPS. Without the hard work of their employees, we would be dead in the water. Those postal workers are AMAZING.
If you think they deserve hazard pay, there's a petition for that: http://chng.it/nyGKxdpzHw 

Some of you are in our neighborhood and we're delivering your books instead of shipping them. Those books first go in a beautiful Red Balloon bag—those bags come to us from local company Van Paper, who has had to refresh our stock in the last week.

All those bags go to #BooksellerHolly's son, Roan, who has spent hours and hours driving them all around the metro area to get your books to you. He'd spend even more time driving without the mapping and routing help of #BooksellerLily's dad, Mike, who's out in CA.

After all of that, you all get to read your books! Without each of the people represented in this thread, we wouldn't be able to get those books to you. Every single one of them is hard at work, often working away from home, to get books out into the world.

(And that of course doesn't even get to the huge crew of authors, agents, editors, publishers, book-printers, etc who create a book in the first place.)

These folks—often low-paid ""unskilled"" workers—are why we can do what we do and get books into readers' hands.

Our sincerest thanks to each and every one of them. And to all of you.

Keep reading and stay healthy, friends. That's how we'll make it through this.