I received a press release over the weekend and have been dying to share it with you all! LJ Ross, yes that LJ Ross, has launched an initiative to support the North East through these difficult times and into the future. Celebrating and recognising the area as a culturally important region. In this initiative there …
News
Pass the Bookplate
Tamsin Rosewell and SF Said have been working behind the scenes for a while now organising ‘Pass the Bookplate’. With a lot of UK bookshops planning a partial open for the 15th of June this was planned as a way to support and get some more sales, at least during that first month. SF Said …
Mailing List
Recently I’ve been able to forward quite a few offers for signed bookplates and other things for indie bookshops through the twitter account and this is great but doesn’t reach a lot of people. I’ve also become increasingly frustrated with some publishing houses and how their adverts for new and upcoming books only have one …
Rising to the Challenge
I had been watching the Covid-19 crisis unfold from the comfort of self-isolation. Watching bookshops, publishers and others rising to the challenge and offering other/extra service for those that were self-isolated, those that needed extra help, and to try and keep themselves going as viable businesses. There had been many posts on social media, I …
Where do we go from here?
In the first twelve months of this blog I’ve added 1100+ bookshops to the bookshop list, made three Twitter lists for bookshops/publishers/events, written 186 blog posts, had over 10K blog visits, tweeted over 10K times and now have over 5000 followers on Twitter. I’ve been really enjoying the ride as well, meeting and chatting to …
The Harm Tree POS
UCLAN Publishing have contacted me and thought I could give a shout out for their POS pack for their upcoming Young Adult book, The Harm Tree. The pack includes 1 x standee, 1 x A4 window cling and 1 x A3 poster, and to inquire about it please contact Hazel Holmes on HHolmes3@uclan.ac.uk This was …
Independent Book Shop Week 15th to 22nd June
Another year comes around and the Booksellers Association is running another Independent Bookshop Week. IBW is part of the Books Are My Bag campaign and run by the Booksellers Association, and seeks to celebrate independent bookshops in the UK and Ireland. We do this with events, celebrations, reading groups, storytelling, author signings, literary lunches and …
Catch Up Post
I’ve had nine days off from my main job and have been able to get on with a lot of the little jobs I’ve had hanging around. The main one though is that a new feature called Publisher Profile has now been initiated, several publishers have been in touch to be part of this already. …
Plans for 2019
Now that the Christmas retail and boozing rush is over I can get on with the plans for 2019 to grow the blog. There is still a list of over 1000 independent bookshops to add to the map and blog, this is being done as quickly as I can but I seem to find two …
Adventures in Podcasting
As part of expanding the scope of the Independent Bookshop project I want to begin podcasting and exploring the story behind Independent Bookshops and their owners. The idea is when I visit bookshops around the UK (and eventually further afield) I will have professional and portable podcasting equipment for interviews and discussions. The basic package …
What A Response!
That was totally unexpected, I thought this would be a nice little project. Sleepy like, pootling along gathering information slowly and steadily. Post the map and then Bam! I’m suddenly being retweeted by Michael Rosen, getting hundreds of likes and site visits. With that there are hundreds of suggestions of other bookshops and lots of …
Bookshops Map
The initial populating of the Google Map for Independent Bookshops has been done. We will continue to fine tune this, adding more details, information and shops as we go along. The page address is http://www.indiebookshops.com/bookshops/