'Over 2,000' stores to mark National Bookshop Day

Over 2,000 bookshops are preparing to celebrate the UK’s inaugural Bookshop Day on Saturday 8th October with events and book clubs, according to The Booksellers Association (BA).

To mark the occasion, Bruno Vincent, author of the Five Go Famous Five for adults series (Quercus), has penned a free short story exclusively for brick and mortar bookshops on Bookshop Day, called Five Go Bookselling.

A spokesperson for Quercus said: "In Five Go Bookselling, the gang encounter many of the trials and tribulations of bookselling – from screaming kids hovering around the children’s section, to those dreaded customers who approach the till requesting a book with a nugget of information so small, that it literally becomes a case of finding a needle in a haystack."

The Famous Five spoof titles follow on the back of the success of the Ladybird Books for Grown Up books which were a big hit with customers last Christmas.

Other events to mark the national day, part of the fourth annual Books Are My Bag (BAMB) celebration to bookshops on the high street, include Margaret Atwood who will appear at an event in Toppings bookshop in Bath, Ann Cleeves, who is slated to attend a “Shetland Afternoon Tea” event in Far from the Madding Crowd bookshop in Linlithgow, Scotland, and Horrible Histories illustrator Martin Brown, who will be celebrating his new book Lesser Spotted Animals (David Fickling) in Westbourne Bookshop in Bournemouth.

Bookshops have also been encouraged to entice customers into stores by holding book clubs throughout October, with Southcart Books in Walsall and Lutyens and Rubenstein London among those slated to take part. The BA, which is co-ordinating activity around Bookshop Day, is inviting book club goers to share their “bookshop love” in October with the hashtag #BookshopDay on social media, with those who take part eligible to win a prize.

Alan Staton, head of marketing & communications at the BA, said: “The reaction from bookshops to the UK and Ireland’s first Bookshop Day has been fantastic. Bookshop Day will be an opportunity for bookshops to engage with new and existing customers and – above all – celebrate their shared love of books.”

Titles by Atwood, Michael Palin, Graham Norton, Ben Fogle, Jeremy Paxman, Miranda Hart, P.D. James and more will be hitting the shelves two days before National Bookshop Day on 6th October and Super Thursday, the day when most of the big-hitting Christmas titles for 2016 are being released, will take place two weeks later on 20th October.

Customers and booksellers are being invited to share their love of bookshops on Bookshop Day with the hashtags #OnlyOnTheHighStreet and #BookshopDay.

Those who want to order Five Go Bookselling with a specially commissioned cover, can do so through Jeska.Lyons@Quercusbooks.co.uk.