Very sad. Another independent bookstore bites the dust. In an email to customers (and a blog post) Friday afternoon, the owners of College Park’s Vertigo Books announced they will shut down for good on April 24. The announcement was accompanied by several parting shots at online shopping behemoth Amazon.com, which the owners more or less explicitly blame for their shop’s demise.

Starting today, everything at Vertigo Books is marked down 20 percent. Vertigo, which started in Dupont Circle in 1991 before making the move to College Park, specialized in carrying African American authors as well as international studies tomes. The store will host a “free form wake and potluck” on Saturday, April 18 at 5 p.m. to honor the store’s passing, and they invite customers to join them. Full letter after the jump.