Waterstones and Fourth Estate to launch The Mirror & The Light gift card

Waterstones and Fourth Estate will team up this Christmas to create a gift card celebrating Hilary Mantel’s eagerly-awaited The Mirror & The Light, the first time the chain has created a gift card for a specific title.

The gift card will be available across all Waterstones branches in the UK and online, and will allow customers to pre-order the Waterstones exclusive edition of the final instalment of the Thomas Cromwell trilogy as a gift ahead of release next March. The card will launch at the end of November in time for the key festive trading period. 

The Bookseller understands this is the first time Waterstones has created a gift card for a specific book. It accompanies the exclusive edition produced by 4th Estate for the retailer.

Fourth Estate said: “With the beautifully designed gift card customers can give a pre-order of The Mirror & the Light as a physical gift this Christmas. The card is redeemable against a copy of the Waterstones exclusive edition of The Mirror & the Light in all Waterstones shops in the UK and on Waterstones.com. The gift card retails at the pre-order price of £18.” 

The Mirror & the Light will be published on 5th March 2020, it was revealed in May, the day after a teaser campaign appeared on a billboard in London’s Leicester Square. The cover was unveiled in September. It will be published simultaneously in Canada by HarperCollins and in the US by Henry Holt, bringing the trilogy, which began with Wolf Hall in 2009 and was followed by Bring Up the Bodies in 2012, to a "triumphant conclusion".

Fourth Estate’s marketing director Matt Clacher said of the Waterstones gift card: “We have had amazing support from across the trade and Waterstones have been fantastic partners in preparing for this monumental launch. From beautiful instore displays, to offering over 20,000 copies of The World of Wolf Hall [HarperCollins]to their customers, we have been working to get readers ready for The Mirror & the Light and to give this incredible book the launch it deserves. We really wanted to have a compelling offer instore this Christmas and Waterstones have absolutely delivered with this innovative industry-first that allows its customers to gift The Mirror & the Light ahead of its long-awaited publication.” 

Bea Carvalho, Waterstones fiction buyer said: “The release of The Mirror & the Light is set to be the publishing highlight of 2020, and we’re thrilled to be working closely with 4th Estate to make the launch as impactful as possible. We’re delighted to have something physical to offer our customers this Christmas as we gear up to the final push before publication. Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies are perennial favourites amongst our booksellers and customers so we wanted to create as many moments as possible to inspire discussion around this most eagerly anticipated release.”

She added: “We’ve been waiting for nearly eight years for the trilogy’s conclusion and it’s incredibly exciting for it to be in touching distance: we can’t wait to read it and to be able to share it with our customers.”

The Bookseller understands there is also wider activitity planned across the trade with other retailers, with more details to be released soon.