When Katie and I visited the Persephone Bookshop back in February of this year we had a conversation about how we feel like we should have been to more of London's bookshops than various Waterstone's and Foyles, lovely as both of these things are. Also you may have seen a brief murmur (and the series that is Make Mine an Indie) about me buying only from independent bookshops or publishers during 2016. All of these things have amalgamated in my brain to the idea of having a Bookshop Crawl in London to which I have been and will continue to be inviting bloggers, booktubers and booklovers of all varieties via the magic of this blog and social media.
Because I work in retail and know how incredibly depressing the first couple of months of the year can be sales wise I thought it would be cool if we wrapped up warm and incorporated several stops for hot drinks and cake into the itinerary and hit the bookshops of London hard one Saturday in January or February. Let's cheer up some booksellers and make some new bookloving friends!
I've already had a lot of great response to the idea on twitter but I wanted to blog about it just to have a place to put my thoughts in a vaguely cohesive manner. Obviously this is still months away and subject to change but I would love your input! Depending on how many people eventually come we may make it more of a fixed itinerary or just 'meet up, bookshops in x area, lunch, bookshops in y area, dinner, optional evening drinking' during which you would be free to drop in and out/ join us or leave as you pleased. Let me know which you'd prefer! Either way the list maker in me will be inclined to send you an itinerary - ish list/map type document with suggestions I suspect. There are also vague plans afoot for potential scavenger hunt type things to pick up in bookshops but we'll see if that goes anywhere. I tend to get carried away in the first flush of an idea!
As a lot of the people I've spoken to so far I only vaguely know from twitter or a little through Ninja Book Swap, I think it would be to start with a meet up in the cafe of either Foyles or Waterstone's Piccadilly, as they seem to both be places people want to visit. I'd probably say kick off the day earlyish with tea/coffee and a little getting to know each other and then one of these shops and end the day (before dinner for those that wanted/were able anyway) with the other, but again it depends on where we end up going!
Suggestions for bookshops to visit so far (please feel free to shout yours in the comments!):
* Waterstone's Piccadilly
* Foyles
* The Folio Society Bookshop
*Marchpane (and other Cecil Court bookshops)
Obviously we won't have time for all of these. Honestly I know I'll have problems getting people out of Waterstone's and Foyles, but it's a low key thing and we can always go back to the ones we don't get to this time next year! Closer to the time and once I have a list of suggestions I'll make a poll and we can visit the places with the most votes. This may entail me voting for Lutyens and Rubinstein and Orbital Comics seventeen times each myself (obviously I won't actually do this as it would be unfair) because I wanna goooooo, but no, democracy is the way forward!
Please let me know in the comments (avoiding Valentines weekend!) which weekends in January or February are best for you. That way people who need to book time off work/organise transport early to get cheaper rates/ sort out babysitting can do so waaay ahead of time if they want. If you're not a Londoner but can get to the capital for the day or weekend I'd love to meet you!
I'm really excited about this and about putting our book buying power behind some great bookshops as well as hopefully putting some faces to names, and I hope lots of you will be able to join me and make the #londonbookshopcrawl an epic and memorable day.
If you'd like me to email you with more information once I have it please sign up via this form. I will be starting to collate people's thoughts and get more opinions on a vague plan sometime during October.
If you'd like me to email you with more information once I have it please sign up via this form. I will be starting to collate people's thoughts and get more opinions on a vague plan sometime during October.
I'm so excited for this book crawl! I've just moved to London so definitely on the look out for all the lovely indie stores :) I love the idea of a scavenger hunt too! You could give a list of items/places/people to take a picture of and give a small prize for the most items ticked off the list and/or the best pics.
ReplyDeleteLet me know if you want a hand planning anything, always happy to help!
Thanks! Glad to hear you like the scavenger hunt idea, I wasn't sure if anyone else would be up for it :-) If we do go ahead with it I might need your help checking stuff out to find as I'm in Kent the majority of the time!
DeleteAww this sounds like fun! The first and only time I went to London I was amazed at the sheer number of bookshops. I kept going "right, I need to get back to the hostel now... oh look another one!" Maybe it's too dangerous to start talking about second-hand shops, but Skoob is an excellent wee one :)
ReplyDeleteI'd actually put Skoob on my list Gemma, but I didn't add most of those to this list yet cos I didn't want to scare people :-p I'm hoping if it works well we can do it again in years to come and thus be able to visit alllll the bookshops in London :-D No chance you'll be able to join us then? :-p
DeleteFORBIDDEN PLANET IS TOTALLY A BOOKSHOP LETS GO THERE (it's really near foyles) (I don't care what you say, I'm going!)
ReplyDeleteI was only not going there because I'm trying to limit the amount of chain bookshops cos of whole previously mentioned indie buying thing AND Orbital comics does a similar job! You can go there if you want, I won't stop you!
DeleteBut Orbital's really good, I promise
DeleteI have been to Orbital comics, I believe, it's near Leicester Square? It's oKAY, but FP is better! (It's fine I will sneak off alone haha- or take a rogue group with me! Oh this will be such fun...)
DeleteSee personally I love Forbidden Planet (as you know) but I prefer Orbital because it's less loud and more accessibly organised. Plus it's less full of large men who scowl at me...
DeleteAlso, give your money to the big corporation or the little independent Laura???
Haha you can totally take a rogue group with you, I'll meet you for lunch :-p
May I suggest weekend at end of Jan or beginning of Feb then we'll have been paid :-) January is a very long month!!
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to meeting you all
That is a very good suggestion! So 30th January or 6th Feb might be good options... I'll put it in my plans and we can see which is best for everyone. Thanks for bringing that up!
DeleteMay I suggest weekend at end of Jan or beginning of Feb then we'll have been paid :-) January is a very long month!!
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to meeting you all
Would definitely be interested if it's end of January/beginning of February :)
ReplyDeleteEmail address is bookishoutsider at gmail dot com
DeleteI'd love to join in! I'm only a newbie book blogger, but I'd love to meet lots of likeminded people. The 6th February would be great for me. 😊
ReplyDeleteCan I request it be end of Jan, preferably February? Just because if we happen to have a bad winter, snow is probably most likely in January and, chances are anyone coming in from out of town, will struggle if it's snowing. Aside from that I'm totally free for whenever!
ReplyDeleteExcite!
I can do any weekend apart from Valentine's Day... NOT because I have lovey dovey plans, but because I have Scout Leader training (which has made me very popular at home, I can tell you).
ReplyDeleteOn second thought, I'd prefer to avoid the weekend before or after that too, or I think I may have issues at home :p