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More retailers than ever before are taking part in Independent Booksellers Week (starting tomorrow, 30th June), with the week set to feature a Bookshop Band tour and a “Strictly Come Bookselling” initiative, with authors working as booksellers.
The Booksellers Association’s indie membership has fallen to 1,094, but c.e.o. Tim Godfray said the BA-organised week had attracted “the highest number of bookshops supporting it ever,” with 313 registered.
Authors including Joanne Harris, Peter James, Gervase Phinn, Susan Hill and Ian Rankin will be working behind bookshop counters around the UK as part of IBW. Meanwhile, the Bookshop Band [pictured], which usually plays at Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights in Bath and writes music inspired by authors and books, has composed a song especially for the occasion, called “A Shop with Books In”. The band will tour bookshops throughout the week.
Publisher exclusives include an original essay from Julian Barnes, a deluxe limited edition of Chris Cleave’s Gold and a three-month exclusive deal to indie booksellers on the paperback edition of Apricot Jam and Other Stories by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
London’s Goldsboro Books will be holding a Crime in the Court crime writers festival on 3rd July, including Mark Billingham, Lindsey Davis and Sophie Hannah. Dulwich Books will be holding a Summer Book Festival; its head of events Dave Foulds said: “Anything that sends more people towards bookshops and away from Amazon is fantastic. This gives us an opportunity to show what we we can do. The special edition books are especially great.”
Love Charing Cross Road, a day-long festival organised by Foyles and Blackwell to draw customers to the London street, will also take place tomorrow.