For the second year running,  National Reading Group Day will take place as part of IBW – this year on 30th June. We will again be working with The Reading Agency, and bringing libraries and bookshops together to work on author and other reading group activity.

More information will follow shortly – in the meantime, you can see last year’s materials below:

NRGD Poster 2011 final

National Reading Group Day was one of BA President Jane Streeter’s key objectives for 2011 and we are building on the success of the 2011 campaign this year.  It’s not necessarily about booksellers starting reading groups, or even running groups in the shop, but 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.

You can now download a National Reading Group Day – A Guide, as well as a template leaflet NRGD – Reading Groups Flyer for promoting your shop to Reading Groups locally, and we are pulling together information from publishers on their own reading group resources.

We are also really delighted to be working with The Reading Agency (TRA) and on our Reading Group activity and they are also working on a great initiative, Reading Groups for Everyone, and they are promoting National Reading Group Day on their site to all their users.  Libraries are the main users of TRA, and the main focus for Reading Groups for Everyone.  However, we are certain there could be a lot of crossover between independent booksellers and libraries.  Often, you’ll be connected anyway, but National Reading Group Day could provide you with a good opportunity to forge a new and very valuable relationship with that library.  Often, bookshop customers and library users are the same people, and both you and the local library are well placed to create and host reading group activity, or any book-related event.  We know of many bookshop/library partnerships, and we would love to hear of more.

So, here’s a list of thoughts; if you like them, go for it!

Visit www.readinggroups.org – you will see their promotion of National Reading Group Day, and also a wealth of information about reading groups, books, and the reading group community.  It’s a fantastic resource, and we’d encourage you to use it.

1. Register your own shop reading groups on the site.
2. Encourage your customers to register their reading groups on the site.
3. Make contact with your local library and see if they run reading groups – think about how you might cross-promote your activity and how you might get a library reading group into your shop.
4. Use National Reading Group Day as a launchpad for a joint bookshop/library event, inviting all library and bookshop reading group members to a big joint event.
5. Let us know of any existing – or planned – joint bookshop/library activity in your community.  We would love to build up a bank of Reading Group Case Studies that we can use in future years.
6. Create a local competition to find the most popular Reading Group title of the year.
7. Think about using the IBW Book Award Titles as Reading Group choices

If you’d like to participate, or if you have ideas to share about Reading Groups and your own activity, please do emailmeryl.halls@booksellers.org.uk, or sharon.down@booksellers.org.uk

More than anything, use the Day as a reason to engage with your local Reading Groups, and see where it takes you!