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Love Your Bookshop Day to celebrate ‘Giving the Gift of Imagination’

Friday, 6 October 2023   Books+Publishing
@booksandpublishing

This year’s Love Your Bookshop Day (LYBD) is taking place this Saturday, 7 October, under the theme ‘Giving the Gift of Imagination’.

BookPeople is encouraging Australian communities to support and celebrate their local bookshops, as part of the ‘annual celebration of the unique role local bookshops play in their communities’.

‘Bookshops offer people much more than a book,’ said BookPeople. ‘They present limitless portals to different worlds through imagination. Visiting a bookshop provides people with an opportunity to be transported to wherever they want to go, maybe it’s climbing a multi-storey treehouse to find the marshmallow machine, a trip to the outer edges of the universe exploring Arrakis, or even back in time to watch the first pages of the Oxford dictionary come together.’

LYBD ambassador Maxine Beneba Clarke said ‘walking through the door of a bookshop is like walking into another world’. ‘Time slows down,’ Clarke said. ‘I always feel like when I walk in the door, I’m saying: “Okay world, what have you got? Wow me. Intrigue me. Move me. Infuriate me. Excite me.” To be part of that equation as a writer, and know that a reader might stumble upon one of the worlds I’ve created especially for them and take it home to treasure and enjoy makes the experience even more magical.’

Citing research commissioned by BookPeople earlier this year, CEO Robbie Egan said ‘the role the local bookshop plays in supporting our imagination is vital’. ‘They adopt the role of our travel guides, navigating us past these unique worlds until we find the one we’re after,’ Egan said. ‘Our relationship with our local bookshop and the people that work there is extremely special and one-of-a-kind and so it deserves to be celebrated.’

Various bookshops around Australia have announced plans for the day, including:

  • The recently established Good Earth Bookshop in Wentworth Falls, New South Wales, has already begun LYBD celebrations by taking part in the Blue Mountains Bookshop Trail, running throughout the whole month of October. Customers can follow the trail to 12 bookshops and collect a stamp from each to win $120 worth of bookshop gift vouchers.
  • The Little Blue Bookshop in Kerang, Victoria is celebrating its third birthday and offering customers the chance to win one of four Trent Dalton tote bags filled with HarperCollins books if they spend over $40 on books on LYBD.
  • The Book Bird in Geelong West, Victoria is celebrating LYBD with a ‘Win the Window’ competition, where customers who spend $50 go in the draw to win everything on the street-side of the window display, featuring ‘some of the biggest releases for the year’.
  • Hachette and Kinokuniya Sydney launched a book haul competition to give one winning customer a 60-second shopping spree to fill their trolley with free books, as a way to kick-off its LYBD celebrations.
  • Fullers in Hobart, Tasmania is asking customers for their best stories in 25 words or less beginning with ‘In the bookshop…’ to win a $50 Fullers voucher, plus a signed hardback of Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens (Shankari Chandran, Ultimo). The shop also has a kids drawing competition also using the ‘In the bookshop…’ theme, with a voucher as the prize.
  • Another recently established bookshop, Bookish in Bendigo, Victoria, will host a number of authors on LYBD including Katrina Nannestad, Amy Doak, Lorraine Marwood, Lorena Carrington, Lauren Mitchell and Chris Kennett.
  • The Kids Bookshop in Mitcham, Victoria will celebrate its first LYBD with author Jane Godwin and illustrator Anna Walker, who will present a storytime with their new book A Life Song (Puffin).
  • Andy Griffiths will be signing copies of his book The 169-Storey Treehouse (with Terry Denton, Pan) at Books and Paper in Williamstown, Victoria.
  • Petrarch’s Bookshop in Launceston, Tasmania will host afternoon tea with author Pip Williams, who will be chatting about books and the joy of reading, and giving insight into how she created The Bookbinder of Jericho (Affirm).
  • BookStones in Stones Corner, Queensland, will host children’s author Dimity Powell for a ‘fun day of crafting, story sharing, and best of all, being around books’.
  • Children’s author Narelle Wynter will hold a storytime with her picture book, I’d Rather Eat Chocolate (illus by Rebecca Cool, Little Steps), at Beaufort Street Books in Mount Lawley, Western Australia.
  • Queensland booksellers Mary Who? Bookshop and Riverbend Books are promoting audiobook sales on the Libro.fm platform. The audiobook company is partnering with bookshops and providing a commission on audiobook purchases.

BookPeople is encouraging individuals and organisations to also show support for LYBD by sharing and tagging their local bookshops using #LYBD2023 across social media. More information on the event is available on the LYBD website.

 

Category: Local news