If you have children at nursery or primary school, you’ll be familiar with this weekend scenario:
- Check the diary – it’s little Amelia / Josh’s birthday party! Oops!
- Rummage around house for a present – hmm, probably not the bath salts
- Go to supermarket and buy branded toy (arrgh, too expensive but never mind…)
- Drive child to party clutching gift-wrapped horrible plastic horse / weird fighting man
- Hooray, ticked another thing off the to-do list but vague feeling of dissatisfaction lurks
Having undergone the above on one-too-many occasions, I started buying 5 or 6 books at a time from Amazon for birthday parties, partly because I love books, partly to make my life easier and partly for financial reasons.
Now, I knew that buying online had an impact on our high streets but I wasn’t really thinking about what supporting independent booksellers (and indeed high street shops such as Waterstones and Blackwells) really means. When I started reading Nicola Morgan’s blog, I started to understand some of the issues involved, and I decided that I actually needed to do something rather than just, um, think about doing something.
Going cold turkey on my Amazon habit isn’t an option (online shopping, what a blessing to the shop-starved mother!) but I’ve come to a compromise. I’m going to ‘adopt’ a local bookshop for buying birthday party presents.
As I was thinking all this through, I started wondering what would happen if other mothers liked the idea and started doing the same…
So this idea has blossomed into an idea for a campaign called ‘Books for Birthdays’ which is really about harnessing the spending power of mothers in the specific area of birthday presents, encouraging them to:
- buy books for presents
- support independent bookshops and / or high street chains by purchasing from them
I’ve had all sorts of wonderful ideas, involving a shiny new website to design; getting in touch with some industry bods and even one involving a launch party with dresses and cakes. Mr Enemy of Art very sensibly suggested that before I got too carried away, I should ask for a little feedback…
And this, dear reader, is where you come in:
- Is there anything out there all ready like this?
- What do you think of this idea? Is it something you’d do?
- Who might be interested? Individuals? Organisations? (I thought of Edinburgh City of Literature, Scottish Government, Scottish Book Trust, independent booksellers organisation –is there one?! – Royal Society of Authors, those nice writer people at An Awfully Big Blog Adventure…)
- What else should I think about?
- Tea dresses and cakes or evening dresses and cocktails?!
I do have a briefing document (I know, very fancy pants!) so drop me a line if you would like to hear about the idea in more detail.
I like the title – adopt a bookshop – and the reasoning…. Heres my grey areas….how is this different from buying a book token? how would I do this without having to go to my not so local bookshop? would it be like a wedding list where you put money into ‘wee jimmies’ birthday tab? and if so would it be good to include some local created toys/clothes/activites? I think it has great potential – especially if I dont have to go anywhere!
I think this is a great idea – in fact I already do it to an extent, but my local bookshops consist of Blackwells, and the Oxfam and Barnado’s bookshops (maybe not ideal for a glossy new birthday book). Or maybe there really are some small independent shops near me, if only I knew it. Some sort of directory of such shops would be very handy. The closer the better (in fact preferably on my direct route to school/work/nursery).
Independent bookshops rock and we now buy nearly all our books from Woolfson and Tay in Bermondsey Square. Sadly I think the pressure for ebooks is ever greater and maybe the best we can ever do is delay the inevitable… but surely that is better than nothing? I think your idea is great too. A couple of thoughts
1. Love the idea of focussing on one particular role of the bookshop (i.e presents for friends’ children). Gifts should be tangible and not virtual!
2. Would supporting children’s books alone be enough to make the difference? I notice at Woolfson and Tay that only 1/8 of the shelf space is given over to childrens books. Harnessing the purchasing power of mothers sounds like a brilliant plan though!
3. If you want to make sure people stick to their guns, it has to make sense. (I always remember doing something similar with my sister’s local bookshop but gave up when they wouldn’t take credit cards and it became a hassle). If it becomes difficult to do, or the gift isn’t as good as it would be using amazon or other, then gradually people will weaken and go back to former habits. What could a local independent bookshop add that the amazons of this world don’t have… I had a few thoughts walking home this evening
The most important selling points for me would be
a) information that amazon doesn’t have about local tastes/ideas/preferences
b) availability of books (superior supply)
c) uniqueness of local bookshop
a) if there was an association of independent booksellers, friends could all sign up with their local bookshop, and register their interests solely with this group.. Imagine if each shop had a weekly book blog and shared the ideas with the other shops in the association? As a group of friends you could all feed in favorite books with comments… if the association kept a record of all the books your household had purchased for itself along with books you had received as gifts, just imagine how great that would be! Only as good as the information you are prepared to share but it is just a thought.. It could start out as a small group of friends who use the same bookshop and then build from there (bookshop would agree not to share the information beyond your “friends”)
b) As an author giving local bookshops a headstart by allowing them to sell your books a day ahead of the amazons of this world? Imagine if you convince JK Rowling to do something like that?
c) Book clubs with talks? I think bookshops are going to need to reinvent themselves .. crossing boundary between physical location into virtual forums.. so you can have a virtual discussion which is supported by an afternoon tea and chat (love that idea)..
Now I am rambling and think I am heading off the point!
Love this idea. I like to buy books for children’s birthday presents, and with 3 children we do stock up on these gift items quite a lot. One of my local independent bookshops has cottoned on to this as a gift idea and has a sign up in the childrens’ section offering discounts on book tokens if you buy a certain amount which I think is a brilliant idea.
It would be great to have a place for like-minded people to meet up on the internet so I’d love to see your document. Will drop you a line.
I like this idea too. We are luck enough to have a great children’s bookshop within walking distance so I do tend to do this anyway. It does take credit cards and I’d agree with Kim’s point that anything that makes it more difficult (like them not taking cards) will lead people to buy elsewhere.
Linked with Kim’s idea, I agree that a forum for sharing information about good books and even general book points (e.g. board books are great for smaller babies as it’s much easier for them to try to turn the pages themselves which they love and simple ‘lift the flap’ books similarly are a also a hit with this age group (more so than more complicated pop up books which tend to get trashed in my experience!) would be good and something that Amazon doesn’t really offer. Lucy Mangan did a really good column in the guardian about her favourite children’s books http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/may/12/best-childrens-books-ever
which could maybe be encorporated in some way. She would be a good ‘mini celeb’ to get involved maybe as she is pretty passionate about this stuff. Hope that helps.