Independent Bookshop Alliance

Last January, I put a thing up on our Blog, with an idea of Independent Bookshops working together to compete with chain stores and massive online tax dodgers websites. It's HERE, if you'd like to read it.

Any it proved surprisingly popular and within a couple of days I had about 80 bookshops contact me to express an interest. 

Then, The Guardian did a piece about it, which raised its profile even more, meaning that more bookshops wanted to get involved. 

 Following this, Lord Bird, founder of The Big Issue and all round good guy, got in touch to offer his support. In March, The Independent Bookshop Alliance was officially launched at The House of Lords. 

This was all very exciting, and by now there were about 150 bookshops involved. Publishers proclaimed that they would support our initiatives (hurray!), and we set about trying to put together a few titles that we really wanted to get behind. More about that can be read HERE

This was bloody hard work, but it was satisfying bloody hard work and I really thought that something exciting was happening. 

Then we hit a few stumbling blocks. The publishers we approached, whilst keen to support us, weren't quite on the same wavelength as us. And despite a number of meetings, phone calls and emails, we weren't able to get anything concrete sorted. 

This was frustrating. 

I was looking after the bookshop (trying to sell books and keep the shop going) at the same time as trying to coordinate this huge project. Eventually, I had to put the Independent bookshop Alliance on the back burner and concentrate on the Bookshop. 

So, fast forward to now. 

The Big Green Bookshop is closing its doors on January 31st, and I will be taking it online. And in a bizarre way, not having a bricks and mortar Independent Bookshop, will allow me time to devote The Independent Bookshop Alliance! 

So, today I sent and email to all the bookshops who'd been involved last year to tell them that The Independent Bookshop Alliance is back!

My fear is that the email has gone straight into everybody's junk mail, as I haven't sent anything for a while, but hopefully there's still some interest. 

If you are an indie bookshop and are interested in hearing more about this, simply send an email to indiebookshops@gmail.com, with the word "YES" and i'll add you to the mailing list. 

Please share this far and wide.