Welcome to Independent Booksellers’ Week!
Independent Booksellers’ Week, a national celebration of independent bookshops, has just taken place this year, and has been a fabulous success. This year IBW ran from 18th to 25th June 2011. IBW 2012 is likely to be 16th to 23rd June, but we’ll confirm that as soon as possible. A huge thanks to all the booksellers, publishers, authors and customers who came together to make IBW this year so special. There are a lot more photos on the News page, but here’s a flavour…
White Rose Books Author Signing with Max Hardcastle
Caxton Books Kipper in the shop
Dulwich Bookshop - Grace Cheetham Sheila O'Reilly
Rossiter Books - Andy, Rob Penn and Rich
2011 Information on IBW:
News and information on the 2011 campaign is available here. If you are a publisher interested in getting involved in IBW for 2012, download our information sheet - IBW 2011 For Publishers, or email sharon.down@booksellers.org.uk. If you are a bookseller who would like to register to participate in IBW 2012, and receive the IBW POS Kit, again email Sharon and she will register you. You can also download the registration form here - IBW 2011 Bookseller Registration Form.
Independent Booksellers Week is part of the IndieBound campaign for independent bookshops, which promotes independent bookshops, great books, strong reading communities, and the idea of shopping locally and sustainably – www.indiebound.org.uk
An exciting new development for 2011 has been the inclusion of National Reading Group Day on the second Saturday of IBW, Saturday 25th June. National Reading Group Day is one of BA President Jane Streeter’s key objectives for 2011, and has been about capitalising on the current huge grassroots affection for Reading Groups in the UK. Many booksellers run groups in or through their shops, but others simply supply local reading groups with copies, or help with recommendations. There are many ways in which you can engage with your local reading groups, which are an excellent route into the wider community. Once you have established a Reading Group Community, you can hold events, literary lunches or even walks and trips, based on the Group, or on what they are reading.
We’ve been really delighted to be working alongside Book Aid International www.bookaid.org on this initiative, and we have a lovely resource pack from BAI for you on the National Reading Group Day page of the site (see Booksellers & Events), which you could use year-round. The idea behind this collaboration is that it will allow you to run a Reading Group – or encourage your customers to – at the same time as raising funds for BAI, whose main aim is to send books to sub-Saharan Africa and change lives. 
If you have ideas to share about Reading Groups and your own activity, please do email meryl.halls@booksellers.org.uk, or sharon.down@booksellers.org.uk
Take a look around this website to find out more, and visit the 2010 page to see what we did last year too. You can also keep up to date with latest news via Twitter and Facebook. Please also sign up to our RSS feed for news updates, by clicking on the icon on the bottom left of this page.
All best wishes,
The IBW Team