Hi there, pledgers, readers and all round good people,
Haven't updated you on here for a while. Truth is, I've been busy promoting Note to Boy. Last week I took part in a Zoomed book club event. Very enjoyable, once we'd negotiated the usual technical shenanigans. It's great to 'meet' readers and hear what they took from Note to Boy. I'm glad to say, this delightful group all enjoyed it, or were polite enough to say they did.
I'm also taking part in the #SignForOurBookshops campaign, mostly to give a helping hand to local bookshops so hard hit by Lockdown 2.0, but a little bit because it means my name sits alongside greats like David Nicholls, Marian Keyes, Matt Haig, Malorie Blackman and Adam Kay. More than three hundred generous authors are taking part.
Indie bookshops, like all bricks-and-mortar retailers, are having a hard time of it during Lockdown 2.0. The brilliant idea of the #SignForOurBookshops campaign, thought up by best-selling novelist Holly Bourne, is that readers who buy books from indie bookshops are rewarded with a signed bookplate from the author. Neat, eh?
Readers just have to provide proof of purchase and an address, and a bookplate will be on its way to them. Or they can contact a participating bookshop that has a supply of signed bookplates. And they are beauts, by the way, (SEE ABOVE) designed by the former children’s laureate, Chris Riddell. The offer is UK only and will run until the end of lockdown (fingers crossed) on 2 December.
I certainly don’t expect to be sending out as many as the big name authors, who I imagine will be inundated, but at least I can do my modest bit to keep local bookshops open and say ‘thank you’ to them for being so supportive of Note to Boy.
As Holly Bourne says, ‘SignForOurBookshops aims to entice locked-down customers away from the lure of a certain online retailer, by providing them with exclusive access to signed books, sold only through bookshops. It also hopes to be a thunderclap of support for bookshops, reminding people to support their local stores throughout lockdown.’
Hear, hear!