Independent Bookshop Week reveals 2019 plans

Hachette UK will sponsor Independent Bookshop Week (IBW) and authors Cressida Cowell, Patrick Gale, Katherine Rundell and screenwriter Ben Aaronovitch will tour bookshops across the country as part of the annual celebration of indies. 

Run by the Booksellers Association as the key summer element of the Books Are My Bag campaign, IBW, this year taking place from 15th to 22nd June, aims to raise awareness on the role of indie booksellers in their communities. 

This year’s IBW will celebrate holiday reading, bookshop tourism, and bookshop heroes. Emma Bradshaw, head of campaigns at the BA, said: “This year’s IBW is already looking bigger and better than ever. We’re hugely excited to have Hachette continuing as our lead publishing sponsor in 2019, and extremely grateful for the incredible support we’re receiving from across the publishing sector, from all our partner publishers. Publishers have been full of ideas for IBW 2019 and we look forward to revealing more about this year’s plans in the coming months!”

Hachette Children’s Books will be producing a special OiBW Limited Edition Bag exclusively for IBW, featuring illustration inspired by the much-loved and hugely successful series of Oi! picture books by Kes Gray and Jim Field. The bags will be distributed to all participating shops in the IBW POS kits.

HCB will be touring How to Train Your Dragon author Cowell with the paperback of The Wizards of Once: Twice Magic, which is published on 13th June. Headline will be arranging a series of special musical events with Sunday Times bestseller Gale, for the paperback of Take Nothing With You. Aaronovitch will tour bookshops across the country, which will also have the opportunity to order an exclusively signed  independent bookshop edition of The October Man.

Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and prize-winning author Rundell (Bloomsbury) will release a powerful short essay for adult readers on the importance of children’s literature exclusively for IBW. Why You Should Read Children's Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise explores how children’s books ignite, and can re-ignite, the imagination and create new perspectives on the world. During IBW, Katherine will be visiting independent bookshops around the UK, talking about her essay as well as her new adventure story for children The Good Thieves.

Aaronovitch added: “I love a good independent bookshop, nowhere else can get the same sense of cosy familiarity coupled with the excitement of never knowing what you're going to find on the next shelf. I think, like libraries, that they are cultural resource we will lose at our peril.”

To keep up to date on IBW 2019 follow the latest developments via social media: #IndieBookshopWeek @BooksAreMyBag.