Hello, are we open?? *spoiler alert* YES.

At about 11am today one of our main suppliers (Gardners) announced that they were closing, due to the Coronavirus pandemic. 

Gardners are excellent and have been keeping us indie bookshops updated on how they were doing throughout all this. They'd preempted some of the issues that other business had been facing and were still supplying shops and arranging for books to be posted to customers in a timely and efficient way. 

They've been a bit of a lifesaver. 

But, quite rightly, they made this decision. 

Now that they are temporarily closed, stock availability is not going to be as great. 

I'm still able to get books, but certainly not the range I could before this happened. 

BUT I CAN STILL GET BOOKS. 

If Amazon can still sell 'em, I can't see why I can't (Jeff must be quaking in his slippers). 

So, here is stuff I'd like to tell you. 

All orders placed before March 30th will be delivered (according to Gardners). I'm checking this now, and the orders are still being processed, so fear not. 

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I'm still sending out books each month for The Big Green Book Club, our monthly subscription service, where I post out a book a month, based on the kind of books you enjoy reading. 

I might not be able to wrap them (as I'm running low on wrapping paper. And priorities!), but they're still going out. 

So, if you want to join, you can

  HERE!

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I'm still going to be supplying a Library for Shelter. 

So far, with your help, we've raised an extra £200 (at least), so once they can accommodate the books, i'll be getting them posted off. 

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In these slightly awkward times, I would appreciate you joining my PATREON more than ever!

I will try and make it worth your while, I promise. 

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I will still be doing #buyastrangerabook. 

Due to the more limited stock availability, this might be a bit more challenging, but we shall try!

It seems like my blogpost is running out of ink, so i'd better stop. 

Thanks for reading and supporting indie booksellers. 

IT MEANS EVERYTHING!

Building A Library for Shelter

For the last couple of years Big Green Books has done this thing called #BuyShelterABook.

It’s something we do before Christmas and the idea is to try and raise money so that we can send books to Shelter, to help the people they support have a better time.

Thanks to your generosity, we’ve been able to send over £5,000 worth of books to them.

I am in awe of the work that Shelter does and wanted to do something a little longer term, so I had an idea. Why don’t I start and sponsor a Shelter library?

So, I had a meeting with Hannah and Amy from Shelter, and it’s going to happen!

The first Shelter library (I hope there will be more in future) will be set up in their London hub.

This is how it’s going to work.

Each month, I’ll send a selection a books to Shelter for the library. This selection will be chosen each month based on the requests of the Shelter team.

Unlike most libraries, there’s no need for the books to be returned, as there’ll be times when it’s simply not possible. This is why I want to keep supplying books on a monthly basis, to keep the library well stocked.

Big Green Books has a Patreon. The money I get from this helps me do stuff like #buyastrangerabook and send books to schools who may need them.

As well as continuing to do these things, I've agreed to use a third of the money I make from the Patreon to buy books for the Shelter Library.

I’ve also set up an option on the website, so that, if you’d like to help, but would rather not join the Patreon, you can do so.

HERE IS THE LINK

If it proves successful, it may be that we try and roll this out to other Shelter hubs around the country.

I’m really excited about this project, and hopefully in the near future, there’ll be ways that people can donate books directly too. But this is a start and if you can help, I’d be really grateful.

The original idea was to send the first lot of books at the end of April, but with things as they are right now, this may change
. However, I want to get this project off the ground now, and as Hannah from Shelter said to me, "while there's a lot going on at the moment, it’s great that we’ve got exciting things like this to look forward to for our hub and our clients."