Emma Bradshaw, Head of Campaigns
What Is The BA?
- Membership organisation for booksellers in the UK & Ireland
- Represent over 95% of booksellers – chains, independents, and specialist bookshops
- Exists to represent, promote and advocate for its members
- National Book Tokens, Batchline etc are a part of the BA
Membership Figures
- of independent bookshops in BA membership at end of 2022 was 1072
- Increase of 45 shops from 2021
- Lowest number of independents in membership was 867 in 2016
- 2022 marks highest number of independents in membership in 10 years
Books Are My Bag
- Collective campaign title for the BA’s consumer-facing activity
- Strong socials following
- #ChooseBookshops is their core campaign hashtag
- Messaging for Indie Book of the Month, Independent Bookshop Week, Bookshop Day and the Books Are My Bag Readers Awards all goes out via these channels
Indie Book of the Month
- Promotion begins on 1st month
- Midas issue trade release each month
- Media partnership with Scala Radio
- Children’s Book of the Month: 166 shops signed up
- Fiction Book of the Month (launched March 2020): 99 shops signed up
- Participating bookshops support in-store and on socials
- BA creates bespoke posters and social assets, and showcase the authors with Instagram takeover
- To find out more, please email benton@booksellers.org.uk – currently calling in submissions for October, November & December
BookTime Magazine
- Free bimonthly consumer magazine
- Produced by BA since 2020
- Goes to approx. 300 bookshops in quantities of 50
- Looking to increase print run, currently around 18,000 copies per issue
- Digital editions available
- To find out more please email hunter@booksellers.org.uk
Catalogues
- In partnership with Gardners
- Summer Books:
- Landed in shops last week
- 112 shops have ordered copies
- Full print run just over 100,000
- In the third year
- Christmas Books:
- Bigger print run
- Last year around 400,000
- Submissions for this being called in at the moment
- To find out more please email hunter@booksellers.org.uk
Independent Bookshop Week
- Coming in 3 weeks (17th – 24th June 2023)
- 700 independent bookshops registered to participate, more than ever before
- Longest running campaign
- National Book Tokens support with High Five for Bookshops Initiative
- Midas PR look after media outreach
- To find out more, email bradshaw@bookseller.org.uk
- Encourage book buyers to ‘Shop local. Shop independent’
- Work closely with Book Council of Wales to improve bilingual materials and resources
- Runs concurrently with Pride and Windrush Day, so will amplify any bookshop activity that overlaps with these two calendar moments
- 3 official media spokespeople: Maggie O’Farrell, Richard Coles & Paterson Jospeh
- UK wide BookTok tour to return for second year
- org will offer free shipping on any purchases made on the last weekend
- Signed stock always goes down well, Indie exclusive editions, early releases, added value items, author signings and events always go down well
- Anything that doesn’t ask too much extra work from booksellers always goes down well, e.g. ‘guess how many sweets’, discounts etc
- Author guest bookselling – sign stock, create social content, local media coverage, photo opps. Can also work with publishing teams going into bookshops and experiencing bookselling
- Bookshop crawls – books instead of pints, create social opps, do a bit of book shopping
- Indie Twinning – Indie publishers partner with Indie bookshops to create a week of bespoke activity, generates local media content
- REQUEST: Check in with Marketing teams (or whoever looks after socials), to make sure that authors, where possible, are including options when linking on socials – include links to buy from specific Independent or Bookshop.org and not just linking to Amazon etc
Indie Book Awards
- Call in submissions at beginning of the year, ask members to vote which titles they’d like to see on the shortlist
- Winners announced in summer
- Work closely with Scala who have exclusive, will announce winners on Penny’s show
- To find out more, please email benton@booksellers.org.uk
Bookshop Day
- Promote all bookshops on high street – Waterstones, Foyles & Blackwells alongside Indies. Approx. 1000 bookshops registered to participate
- Always falls on 2nd Saturday of October, this year is 14th October 2023
- Runs after super Thursday
- Midas look after media outreach
- Encourages shoppers to kick start their Christmas gift-buying, and to do it with their local bookshops
- City Spotlight – we’ll be focusing on one UK town or city to create local buzz
- Campaign video – creating third campaign video working with high profile authors, poets & illustrators
- Commissioning illustrator to create campaign artwork
- In terms of getting involved, become a campaign sponsor
- Organise in-store signings / stock signing (with authors, illustrators and poets working across all genres)
- Let us know about activity so we can include in media outreach
- Encourage colleagues, authors, illustrators and poets to write a positive review for their local bookshop, follow your locals on social media and engage with their posts etc.
Books Are My Bag Readers Awards
- No submission process here, down to booksellers to nominate titles and then a panel of booksellers will create the shortlist
Irish Book Week
- Celebrate Irish publishers, writing, bookshops etc
- Over 200 participating bookshops
- They have a PR team in Ireland
- Looking to increase Irish language media coverage
- Will call out for engagement for this soon
- For further info, contact bradshaw@booksellers.org.uk
Publisher Offers Bulletin
- Email bulletin that goes out fortnightly to approx. 700 members who’ve opted to receive
- Open to all publishers. Items must include some sort of offer to bookshop – e.g. extra discount, special edition, competitions to win something for a window
- Can’t just be information sharing
- Contact Sharon for further information
PPC Awards – Form & Process Changes for 2023
Joe Thomas, PPC Chair & Annabelle Wright, Annual Awards
- 4 quarterly awards that take place over the course of the year
- Q1 (December, January, February) – Friday 9th June
- Q2 (March, April, May) – Friday 7th July
- Q3 (June, July, August) – Friday 29th September
- Q4 (September, October, November) – Friday 8th December
- For each, there is 1 winner. No categories, everything is judged in the same pool. Judges are from Waterstones & The Bookseller
- Annual awards – will need to submit to this separately to quarterlies
- Annuals (December 22 – November 23) – Friday 5th January
- Annuals are divided into categories. Link to category descriptions included in PPC form.
- Once annuals have been submitted, the PPC committee will determine the shortlist. Please note, members of the committee will declare existing relationships with those submitting if relevant.
- Outside knowledge is never considered, we’ll only ever be looking at what is included on the form.
- Shortlisted selections are then sent to a panel of judges.
- Always looking at how this to make this panel as fair as it can be
- Winners are then announced at the awards dinner.
- Moving forwards, we’ll look to hold the dinner at the same place as where we held it this March
- Please note, if you are submitting to a quarterly, this is NOT automatically rolled over to annuals. You will need to submit to annuals separately.
- FORM & PROCESS:
- If there are multiple publicists on a campaign, please clearly state who has done what
- PR budget is compulsory in order for your form to be considered. If you do not include, your form will be disregarded. Also applies to Marketing budget.
- Campaign aims reduced to 150 words. Campaign aims do not have to be sales related. Focus your aims around what your campaign was about – for instance, were you raising awareness with a certain audience? Did you have a focus on corporate events? Were you attempting to establish your authors profile? Recommend bullet points here.
- Campaign statement: Reduced to 750 words based on feedback. Mention what you think is relevant in terms of your campaign aims. Please do not include images. Select graphs or charts are fine if relevant to point being made. This will be a STRICT word count. Please fill in word count counter.
- Streamlined media coverage list, ideally chronologically listed. Avoid screenshots in this section too.
- If PA Media has reviewed, please do not list X number of regional reviews. Just list PA Media Review etc. No need for online and in print versions.
- No longer need to submit PDF pack of coverage
- Information points moved to the back page
- Form and awards process is continually being reviewed and evaluated, please do feedback at any given point in the year to a member of the PPC committee
- For any queries on awards, contact emails are on the PPC forms
- Milly Reid will be taking over from Joe Thomas on the quarterly awards
Questions on PPC Awards Form & Process Changes
- Can the campaign statement be written in bullet points?
- No reason why it can’t be, we ask that you structure the statement however best you feel you can convey your argument. In the past, we’ve certainly seen forms containing a mix of bullet points and full sentences with a narrative structure.
- Should we include links for online coverage?
- Due to the number of forms submitted, it’s rare someone will be able to go through and view every link / piece of coverage. With this in mind, please do not worry about including coverage links.
- Please do not elaborate on coverage in the coverage list. If a particular piece of coverage is important to your argument, please add into your campaign statement.
- What constitutes less than 2 years’ experience when submitting for Newcomer?
- Less than 2 years actively working in publicity. Please get in touch with the PPC committee with any specific questions on this.
AOB
- Children’s Publicist Networking Drinks
- Monday 12th June
- Near Kings Cross
- Details to follow