Archive for May, 2012

Cornerstone, a division of Random House, have the following authors who are available to attend bookshop events during IBW this year.  Contact details for all authors are– Najma Finlay, Publicity Manager, T: 020 7840 8614 M: 07826 871955 NFinlay@randomhouse.co.uk

Lisa Jewell, (Before I Met You, The Making of Us) – London

Martin O’Brien, (The Dying Minutes, Confession) – Chichester

Tessa Hainsworth, (Home to Roost: Putting Down Roots in Cornwall) Cornwall

Tom Bale, (Terror’s Reach, Blood Falls) – Brighton

Good luck!  You might like to know two IndieBound facts, just while I’m writing:

• We now have IndieBound paper bags in stock and available for sale  - printed in blue, and now containing the National Book Tokens logo – contact sue.vickers@booksellers.org.uk for an order form
• We are running an IndieBound window competition – booksellers using the IndieBound POS (available on www.indiebound.org.uk – use ‘community’ as your password) in window and in-store displays can enter our competition and win A YEAR’S SUPPLY OF your very own design poster – six posters over the course of 12 months, designed especially for the winning bookshop by Jo Spencer, our IndieBound designer.  Just take two or three photos of your displays and email to me by the end of August to stand a chance to win.

Walker Books have prepared a whole raft of resources for booksellers to use in the IBW 25th Anniversary Find Wally campaign.  You can download them below:

Instructions and Checklist for FIND WALLY Host Bookshops

FIND WALLY Welcome Letter

FIND WALLY Search List

FIND WALLY Poster

FIND WALLY Flyer

Find Wally 25th ACTIVITY Pack

Find Wally – Instructions for participating businesses

Find Wally – Sample Pitch Letter

I Found Wally CardsFind Wally – SAMPLE SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS

We are really pleased today to bring you some Puffin authors who are available for IBW this year:

Marcus Alexander – Keeper of the Realms

available for Tuesday, Thursday or weekend during IBW.

Sufiya Ahmed – Secrets of the Henna Girl

Available all week. Based in Leytonstone

Curtis Jobling – Wereworld

Provisionally available any days except (Sat 30^th June and Thurs 5^th July). Based in Warrington.

To find out more and book availability, contact Jayde Lynch, Press Officer, Puffin, 020 7010 3072  jayde.lynch@uk.penguingroup.com

Don’t forget too:

Send out your IBW Consumer Survey in your customer newsletters- http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/IBW2012

• Let us know your IBW plans
• Once we are underway, send in pictures of all your activities
• Check out the media lists and bookseller resources, including our IBW Big Book Quiz on http://independentbooksellersweek.org.uk/bookseller-resources/

We are really thrilled to bring you news of an EXCLUSIVE Find Wally Competition which Walker Books are announcing in conjunction with IBW.  To celebrate Wally’s 25th Anniversary, IBW will be the focus for a FIND WALLY campaign which will allow the FIRST 100 BOOKSELLERS to sign up to receive a FIND WALLY pack to use in your town.

FIND WALLY is a month-long hunt, starting on 30^th June and will allow you to liven up your town with a community-wide activity to which everyone is invited.

Sign up by 1^st June by emailing jo.humphreys-davies@walker.co.uk (tel 020 7396 2466) and you will be sent a free kit containing everything you need.

The first 100 bookshops to respond will receive:

• A sturdy 40-inch Wally standee
• 10 mini Wally standees
• 10 Find Wally window stickers
• 110 I Found Wally cards
• Photocopiable sheets
• Sample pitch letter and PR
• Free prizes for participants, including posters, stickers
• Social media assets

Full details can be found on the Find Wally IBW Brochure

Good luck in being one of the first 100 booksellers to get the packs!

And please do take photos of your Find Wally activity – it promises to be great fun!

We have some more great news about National Reading Group Day, held this year on 30^th June, as the first day of Independent Booksellers Week (30^th June to 7^th July), and this time we have teamed up with Headline and The Reading Agency.

Victoria Hislop, author of The Island, The Return and forthcoming novel The Thread is putting herself forward as the prize for a Reading Group.  Victoria will visit the winning Reading Group for tea and cakes (or wine and nibbles!)  and any bookshop reading group will be eligible to enter the competition.  Victoria Hislop joins Chris Cleave as the second author participating in NRGD in this way.

The competition will launch to consumers around National Reading Group Day, and we will provide booksellers with a downloadable poster to promote the competition in-store, in addition to the generic NRGD point of sale as part of the IBW POS Kit.   You can see information on the competitions and the NRGD downloadable posters by visiting http://independentbooksellersweek.org.uk/your-local-independent-bookseller/national-reading-group-day/

IBW is working with the Reading Agency again on the promotion of NRGD, and the competition entries will be via the Reading Groups for Everyone website www.readingroups.org

We are also encouraging booksellers to make contact with their local libraries about National Reading Group Day – to see if there is scope for joint events, joint promotion of authors or ways of creating enhanced reading group experiences for members of library or bookshop reading groups.  Shortly, we will have a list of participating library services which are keen to work with bookshops, and we would love to see some creative partnerships between bookshops and libraries for NRGD, and into the future.

Do let us know if you have plans with your local library, or for National Reading Group Day.

We are delighted to bring you news of the Scattered Authors Society, a group of children’s authors who are very keen to support IBW.

You can see more about them at http://scatteredauthors.org/ and http://awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.co.uk/

SAS authors are planning to be available for IBW events but in the meantime, Michelle Lovric is curating a series of guest blogs for Awfully Big Blog Adventure, is looking for booksellers who might like to talk about their work. She plans to run a Month of Booksellers Sundays in June, and possibly beyond, and is inviting booksellers who would like to write a guest blog to contact her to let her know – email Michelle at Michelle@lovric.demon.co.uk

Here is a guideline for the sort of things you might like to cover or discuss, though please feel free to put forward any idea of your own. (The word count can be 400-1000 words):

how you came into bookselling, whether there were roots of the profession in your childhood etc, the books you loved as a child

1. what kind of shop you run, its location, its atmosphere, its kind of customers
2. what particular things you do for children’s books – events, schools, after-school bookclubs etc
3. any particularly fun or clever techniques you have for hand-selling books, or stories about that
4. how you see the children’s book industry at the moment – are you optimistic or fearful?
5. any funny anecdotes of particular author events
6. your own favourite authors and what you love about their writing/ or which genres you see as being particularly dynamic at the moment, ie hist fant fic or dystopias or chapter books.

Michelle will copyedit what you write, and post it. All you need to do is send her an ordinary word file and a photo (in jpeg format) plus the full details of your shop.

Look forward to hearing about your adventures with the SAS!

IBW is conducting research into Britain’s bookshop customers to find out what bookshop customer think of Britain’s independent bookshops.  Using the network of over 300 independent booksellers taking part in IBW this year, we are aiming to survey the heartland of the UK’s bookshop customers.

All IBW bookshops have been sent text and a survey link to use in email newsletters and in other online marketing tools, so that we reach as many consumers as possible.  Bookshops who would like a copy of the text and link should email meryl.halls@booksellers.org.uk

The survey closes on 15th June and we will reveal what consumers think of Britain’s Independent Bookshops in the run up to IBW (30th June to 7th July).

INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLERS’ WEEK BOOK AWARD 2012 SHORTLIST ANNOUNCED

A good independent bookshop is a browser’s paradise – a bookshop that has its own unique flavour, with a selection that’s interesting, different and surprising, and might introduce me to something new

Kate Saunders, author of The Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop

We are delighted to announce the shortlist for the Independent Booksellers’ Week Book Award 2012 (IBW Book Award).

The shortlist of ten adult and twelve children’s titles were voted on by IBW booksellers, from nominations put forward by publishers.  The winning authors are voted for by your bookshop customers who pick up the IBW Book Award voting leaflets in-store.  The leaflets form part of the IBW POS Kit, which will reach bookshops in early June.  Voting continues until the end of August.

Bertrams and Gardners are aware of the shortlisted titles, and we encourage you to stock the IBW Book Award titles as a key part of your IBW in-store activity.

The shortlisted titles for 2012 are:

IBW Book Award 2012 – Adults’ Shortlist

Title	Author	Publisher
Why Be Happy When you Could be Normal?	Jeanette Winterson	Vintage
Pure	Andrew Miller	Sceptre
Now All Roads Lead to France	Matthew Hollis	Faber
The Sense of an Ending	Julian Barnes	Vintage
Smut	Alan Bennett	Faber & Profile Books
On Canaan’s Side	Sebastian Barry	Faber
Sarah Thornhill	Kate Grenville	Canongate
All Hell Let Loose	Max Hastings	HarperCollins
Before I go to Sleep	SJ Watson	Black Swan
My Dear I Wanted to Tell You	Louisa Young	HarperCollins

IBW Book Award 2012 – Children’s Shortlist

Title	Author	Publisher
One Dog and His Boy	Eva Ibbotson	Marion Lloyd Books
Tom Gates: Everything’s Amazing (sort of)	Liz Pichon	Scholastic
Ella	Alex T Smith	Scholastic
The Fear	Charlie Higson	Puffin Books
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth	Jeff Kinney	Puffin Books
All Fall Down	Sally Nicholls	Marion Lloyd Books
There is No Dog	Meg Roscoff	Puffin Books
Never Say No to a Princess!	Tracey Corderoy	Alison Green Books
The Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop	Kate Saunders	Marion Lloyd Books
TimeRiders: Gates of Rome	Alex Scarrow	Puffin Books
Young Samurai: The Ring of Wind	Chris Bradford	Puffin Books
Blood Red Road	Moira Young	Marion Lloyd Books

All booksellers participating in IBW will receive IBW Book Award shortlist posters which will feature all 22 shortlisted titles and will include author and publisher name, plus voting details for consumers.

The 22 shortlisted titles will also feature in an A5 full colour IBW Book Award Booklet, which includes jacket illustrations and editorial copy provided by publishers.

Voting opens on the first day of IBW, the 30th June, and closes on 31^st August. The overall winners of the IBW Book Award 2012 will be announced in early September 2012 after the public vote has closed.

As you’ll remember, last year, Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal won the adult category and the children’s prize was awarded to Eoin Colfer for Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex.

?We’ve got an offer today from Michael O’Mara Books for Where’s the Meerkat? Activity packs for IBW, ideal for entertaining children during IBW in-store while parents browse.

Each pack includes:

• Spreads from the Number One bestseller Where’s the Meerkat??and new title Where’s the Meerkat on Holiday? where children can search for little meerkats in each beautiful scene

• Spreads from Meerkat Mischief with dot-to-dots and colouring pages

• ‘I Found The Meerkat!’ stickers

• Learn how to draw a meerkat with our easy guide

• Child-safe coloured crayons (while stocks last)

• Showcards / display material while stocks last

To order a pack please contact:

Jess Barratt 020 7819 5917 / jessica.barratt@mombooks.com or

Ana McLaughlin 020 7819 5911 ana.mclaughlin@mombooks.com

For Sales enquiries please contact Sally Wilks on 020 7819 5916 / sally.wilks@mombooks.com

Here is the IBW Big Book Quiz ready for download – ideal if you want to run an authorless event during the Week!

IBW Big Book Quiz Questions

Booksellers who would like the answer sheets, please email meryl.halls@booksellers.org.uk