In 2009, two bookshops a week were closing in the UK and the days of physical books seemed numbered. Now, indie stores are booming. What explains the turnaround – and can it be sustained?When Sarah Mullen was asked to set up a children’s book festival in a leafy suburb of Birmingham in 2012, she couldn’t find an independent bookseller to run the bookstall. “So we all rolled up our sleeves and did it ourselves,” she says. Pregnant with her third child, she had recently given up her job as a solicitor to work for the Bournville Village Trust. Mullen’s task was to set up the Bournville BookFest, which ran for 10 years before being brought to a halt by the Covid pandemic. But far from accepting defeat, she rolled up her sleeves once again and “pivoted the whole thing into a bookshop”. Two years on, the Bookshop on the Green is thriving – a living rebuttal to the once widely held idea that the digital era meant certain death for the neighbourhood bookstore.When I visit early on a Friday morning, a turquoise vintage Smith Corona typewriter holds centre stage in the Bookshop on the Green. Beside it stands Bradley Taylor, a poet whose job is to write poems on demand for anyone who asks. He has composed a lot of Batman and football poems for the children who pile in on Saturdays, he says, before sitting down to tap one out for me about the joy of bookshops. In the multitasking tradition of small retailers, Taylor also works in the shop. He made his cosplay debut last month as the... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2023-07-27 09:00:32 UTC ]
Yesterday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an update to their coronavirus masking guidance. Fully vaccinated people can now go maskless outdoors, apart from in crowds, and even people who aren’t fully vaccinated can exercise maskless outdoors alone or with their household.... Continue reading at Columbia Journalism Review
[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2021-04-28 12:29:35 UTC ]
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New figures from the Publishers Association show fiction and audiobooks did particularly well, with value of consumer sales up 7% on 2019 despite bookshop closuresFiction sales in 2020 soared by more than £100m for UK publishers, as readers locked down at home made their escape into books, with... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-04-26 23:01:49 UTC ]
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A children’s book illustrator and author describes her path through classics like “Blueberries for Sal” and “Where the Wild Things Are.” Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-04-16 17:02:03 UTC ]
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An indie bookshop in Brigg, north Lincolnshire, was forced to close on Tuesday (13th April) after only a day's post-lockdown trading, following a break-in that left the shop unsafe for customers. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-04-13 17:09:48 UTC ]
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Today, April 9th, marks the fifty-eight publication anniversary of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. Perhaps the most beloved children’s book of the latter half of the 20th century, Sendak’s gorgeously-illustrated tale of a young boy in a wolf suit who, upon being sent to bed with no... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-04-09 16:58:23 UTC ]
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The Bologna International Children's Book Fair announces a digital-only edition for 2021, cancelling its physical fair over the COVID-19 pandemic. The post Bologna Children’s Book Fair Cancels Its Physical 2021 Fair appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2021-04-09 05:12:11 UTC ]
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The Bologna Children's Book Fair issues announcements to the news media about what organizers hope can be a physical event on June 14 to 17. The post Bologna Children’s Book Fair: Early Announcements of 2021 Features appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2021-03-29 15:58:30 UTC ]
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Her funny stories about Henry Huggins and his dog Ribsy, the sisters Ramona and Beezus Quimby, and a motorcycling mouse named Ralph never talked down to readers. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-03-27 22:33:26 UTC ]
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"I had a physical reaction. It literally made the hairs on my arm stand up.” Phil Earle is talking about the moment he heard the true story which inspired his new children’s book When the Sky Falls. The story was “gifted” to him by a family member, whose father was part of the Manchester home... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-03-19 20:44:59 UTC ]
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One evening in early March of last year, Alexis C. Madrigal and Robinson Meyer, colleagues at The Atlantic, set out to answer a simple question: how many people had been tested for the coronavirus in the US so far? The answer, it turned out, was actually quite complicated: in the absence of data... Continue reading at Columbia Journalism Review
[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2021-03-17 12:29:53 UTC ]
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The UK arm of Bookshop.org, the online retailer that partners with indie bookstores, has a new initiative on the way: it’s launching a series of online events for its customers as well as customers of unaffiliated indies. For the first event on March 23rd, Bookshop is partnering with Faber to... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-03-11 19:42:27 UTC ]
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The familiar Amazonian preview called 'Look Inside' gets a storefront cousin in Jellybooks' new 'Discovery,' using QR codes to offer samples. The post UK: Jellybooks Pilots Bookshop ‘Peek Inside’ Capacity at Blackwell’s appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2021-03-11 16:45:04 UTC ]
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Back in 2018, an advert for what seemed like the perfect job for book lovers went viral after Sonu Shivdasani, founder of Soneva luxury holiday resorts, and Philip Blackwell, c.e.o. of Ultimate Library—a company that creates bespoke book collections for hotels and private clients—came up with... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-02-25 23:24:10 UTC ]
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Onto March, and with any luck, you'll soon be able to find some of the covers in our monthly round-up on the shelves of your local bookshop before too long. A fine treat it will be too, as there are plenty of lively illustrated children's jackets here, as well as a handful of lovely treatments... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-02-25 12:50:29 UTC ]
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Poet and countercultural pioneer put on trial for publishing Allen Ginsberg’s Howl went on to become a beloved icon of San FranciscoLawrence Ferlinghetti, the poet, publisher, painter and political activist who co-founded the famous City Lights bookshop in San Francisco and became an icon of the... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-02-23 19:42:46 UTC ]
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Housmans Bookshop is to release a free playback of two online events featuring actors Christopher Eccleston and Maxine Peake reading stories published by Comma Press. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-02-23 18:18:14 UTC ]
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Current Events On a visit to an Oklahoma City bookstore, Alex Crayon finds more than books. When I pulled into the snow-covered parking lot of Nappy Roots Books in northeast Oklahoma City, the first thing I noticed were the posters. Handwritten signs... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2021-02-22 21:59:22 UTC ]
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I don’t know what’s wrong with me or what year I think it is, but it’s just now come to my attention that Ryan Gosling has a big ol’ tattoo on his arm commemorating the most disturbing and perverse children’s book of all time. That’s right, I am talking about The Giving Tree. (Okay, Love […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-02-22 17:49:35 UTC ]
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In the early 1930s, a bookshop window would have displayed the pretty, pictorial dust jackets of the latest bestsellers, say Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth. A compact wooden bookshelf stuffed with colorful paperbacks might also have commanded space and... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-02-22 09:49:47 UTC ]
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Some welcome news for those of you with little ones running and/or crawling around your ankles right now: Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o’s bestselling 2019 children’s book Sulwe is getting a small screen musical adaptation. Netflix announced earlier today that Sulwe will join a roster of upcoming... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-02-18 18:28:11 UTC ]
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