The Bookseller and BA launch Springboard March conference

The Bookseller and the Booksellers Association are to run a series of joint events in the first week of March in order to help booksellers kick-start their businesses in the spring.

The online conference Springboard will run from Monday 1st March, and will feature independent booksellers in conversation with The Bookseller's four previewers across fiction, non-fiction, children's books and paperbacks, with the aim of highlighting the key titles of the forthcoming season. Registration for the event is free.

A separate Springboard supplement will be published on 5th March by The Bookseller, featuring a hand-picked selection of author interviews, along with key market information, including the latest rights deals.

The supplement will be sent free to subscribers, and to anyone registering for the event, as well as being made available online for free. The event is aimed at filling gaps in the calendar that have arisen through the postponement of the London Book Fair and Bologna Children's Book Fair, where booksellers can receive new title information from publishers direct or through organised pitch events.

Emma Lowe, director of publisher relations at The Bookseller, said: "We want to make sure that booksellers thinking of opening their doors post-lockdown have all the information they need about the key titles publishing in the spring. This combined event and supplement, thanks to the Booksellers Association and our expert previewers, will enable bookshops to make the right calls at the right time, as well as give publishers a platform to push their own titles. We are delighted to be working with the BA on this, and we thank them for their time and input."

Meryl Hall, m.d. of the Booksellers Association, said: “We are really keen to keep booksellers up to date and informed about new titles, and get shops ready for reopening, when they can enjoy providing for the pent-up demand in book-lovers again. Buying and selling the books is the joy of being a bookseller, and we are delighted to be partnering with the team at The Bookseller to help return the joy to bookselling in the form of chat, curation, recommendation and discovery of the great books being published. We’re sure booksellers will enjoy this new format and we’ll see some great breakout books as a result.”

Publishers wishing to advertise in the supplement may contact Emma.Lowe@thebookseller.com. Editorial queries and rights deals can be sent to The Bookseller's managing editor Tom Tivnan, at Tom.Tivnan@thebookseller.com.