A Newsletter

Each week I write a newsletter to send out to all the customers on our mailing list. I think there are about 3,000 recipients. This is a very useful thing and even if only 10% read it, that's a lot of people who know what's happening at the shop.
Here is this week's Newsletter. I'd be interested if you could let me know what you think? I know it's too long....

Hello,
our comedy night last week was our most popular yet. All tickets were sold out before the event and the shop was filled for a fantastic night of laughter and enjoyment. Thanks to everyone who came along. We put the tickets for next months Comedy Night, which happens on Friday April 13th, on sale on our website here. Alternatively, if you like, you can contact us directly.

This Thursday, March 22nd, it's our Monthly Quiz. Starting at 7pm, there will be six rounds of questions, ranging from books, music, films and art as well as more quirky rounds like celebrity deaths and the dreaded anagrams round. The question master is the brilliant Greg Stekelman (@themanwhofell on Twitter) and it's always a lot of fun.
Here are the rules;
£2 per team member
Maximum of 4 per team
Get there on time.
The winning team will get £25!
Please bring your own refreshments.

The following week is going to be one of our busiest ever. There is something going on every day (sometimes more than one thing).

On Sunday March 25th, it's our regular Boardgames day at the Bookshop. Running from 1pm to 5pm, just come along and join in with one of the great games that are available to play. Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan seem to be current favourites, but if you have a game you'd like to bring along and share with the group, that'd be great. You don't have to stay for the whole afternoon and there's free coffee, tea and biscuits available for everyone. 
On Monday March 26th at 7pm, Jeremy Cassidy is here to help you experience the Alexander Technique. The theme of the evening is 'Reading with Ease', and there will be 3 other Alexander Technique teachers who will be here to give you a short lesson after Jeremy's talk. This is a FREE event.

Our Photography Club meets on Tuesday March 27th at 7pm. It's open to anyone who wants to learn more about photography or who simply wants to take better photos. Each month a subject is chosen by the group to take a photo/photos of to bring to the following meeting. This mont's subject is BLUE.
There is a Flickr Group set up called The Big Green Bookshop Photo Club, which people can download their photos onto as well.
It's £3 a month and refreshments are provided.
Come along if you get the chance.

On Wednesday March 28th at 7pm, we are delighted to be hosting an evening with Merle Hoffman, a pioneer in women's health care since 1971, a staunch defender of abortion rights, an untiring activist and writer around feminist and progressive issues. Merle is over from the states for three days to coincide with the publication of her memoir Intimate Wars. She has countless interviews and radio appearances booked and we are so pleased that The Big Green Bookshop was chosen to be the venue of her only Bookshop talk. She will be talking about and reading from her book and there will be a chance to ask questions too.
This is a FREE event and refreshments wil be available.

Merle's appearance means that for one week only the Writer's Group will be meeting in another venue (to be announced). Keep an eye out on our website for more news about this.

On Thursday March 29th at 7pm, we welcome Stephanie Butland to the shop. In her book 'How I said Bah! to Cancer', Stephanie tells us how she rallied against cancer through thinking strategies, a proactive approach to treatment, and a determination to keep the rest of her life going and retain a sense of humour. Truthful, personal, funny, and above all helpful, you could find 'How I Said Bah! to Cancer' to be the ideal straight-talking best friend to help you along your cancer journey - or support a loved one on theirs.
Stephanie will be reading from her book and will also answer any questions you may have.
This is a FREE event and refreshments will be available.

Friday March 30th at 7pm sees the launch party of Keith Lowe's incredible book Savage Continent; Europe in the Aftermath of World War 2 at the bookshop. In this epic book, Keith describes a continent still racked by violence, where large sections of the population had yet to accept that the war was over. He outlines the warped morality and the insatiable urge for vengeance that were the legacy of the conflict. He describes the ethnic cleansing and civil wars that tore apart the lives of ordinary people from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean, and the establishment of a new world order that finally brought stability to a shattered generation.
Please feel free to join him and his friends as he celebrates publication of this important new title. Refreshments will be served and it is FREE entry.

There's more??
Yes...

Overnight from 6.30pm on Saturday March 31st until 6.30am on Sunday 1st April, there will be a Writer All-Nighter at the Bookshop. The aim of this is to provide you some quiet time to get some writing done and also to meet other writers. We hosted a similar event last November and it was a huge success.
There'll be periods of time dedicated purely to writing and these'll be broken up by some fun activities, to allow you a chance to refresh and take a break from what you're doing.
Things to consider bringing;
Cushions or a blanket. We have a limited supply at the bookshop.
A sleeping bag, if you think you'll want a nap.
Multiplug. We do have some, but it might be worth bringing one along too.
Refreshments. We will be providing some, but bring some along too if you like.
Tickets are £4, which will cover the use of the bookshop and also refreshments. These can be purchased online here or you can get them direct from the bookshop.
You don't have to stay the whole night, nor do you have to turn up when it starts, but we'd appreciate it if you could tell us when you think you'll be getting there. 

We will also be selling books at the North London Literary Festival in Hendon from Tuesday 27th March until Thursday 29th March. Details can be found here, http://www.mdx.ac.uk/aboutus/news-events/literary-festival.aspx and authors appearing include Mark Billingham, Jan Pienkowski (Meg and Mog), Laura Dockrill and Alex Wheatle. If you can't make it but would like signed copies any of the authors' books, please let us know.

So, we'll be quite busy then. But not too busy to say hello if you come to the shop. Which we hope you will.
Have a great week,
Simon, Tim and Katie

London Tales (postcard offer)

We've almost sold out of the brilliant, gorgeous, and extremely tactile London Tales by Greg Stekelman, the book that I published last year. As it's our 4th birthday tomorrow, I persuaded Greg to draw some exclusive postcards to give away with copies of the book. The next five people who buy the book will each get one of these.
They're signed by Greg and are each totally unique.

 Here's an example or two.

This is an example

This is another example.

You can buy the book here or alternatively, from our website.

For those of you who are interested, i'm in negotiation with an author now about my next publishing project, which i'm really excited about. More about that later though.

One Year Ago

On Febraury 24th 2011, I wrote this post. We were struggling pretty badly to pay the bills at the time and things were not very jolly at the shop. I also put our plea on Twitter and on Facebook.
The result was absolutely phenomenal. Over the next few weeks the outpouring of generosity towards the shop was quite simply incredible. As the story of our plight went global, amazing things started happening. We had donations from all over the world from people who hadn't even visited the shop but empathised with our position, we suddenly had hundreds of new customers coming through the door, our online sales were staggering, and events were organised by other people to help raise money for us.
It was blinking bonkers brilliant.
But something else happened too. Something rather special. We realised that there were lots and lots of people; our customers and now our friends, who had always come in to the shop and bought their books from us rather than anywhere else, who totally believed in us. Who cared so much about the shop that they would go out of their way to make sure that we survived.
We heard stories of a woman standing outside Boots, further up the road from us, shouting about our shop and telling people how important it was that people bought a book from us. Local Residents Associations shared our tale of woe to their members. We had visits from people every day who said that "lovely loyal customer' insisted that I come in and buy a book from you".

What happened was that we got our belief back. More accurately, we were given our belief back. The 9 months before our appeal had been hard. Very hard. We worked our socks off to keep things going but it didn't seem to be working. We began to think that maybe, what we were doing wasn't what Wood Green wanted. That maybe the Big Green Bookshop wasn't what people wanted.
But it seems that you wanted us to stick around.

Before we opened we took out a £60,000 bank loan. Last week we paid the final instalment of that loan off.

Thank you. Thank you so so much.

I know that without a doubt we have the greatest customers in the world.

We will be 4 years old in a couple of weeks and we thought that we should really throw a massive all day party in the shop to celebrate getting to this milestone. So keep your diary free on Saturday March 10th cos we're gonna whoop it up. x

World Book Day

World Book Day this year is on Thursday March 1st. We like World Book Day, although it has crept up on us a bit quickly this year. We like it because it achieves what it sets out to do. It's a celebration of books and reading and it encourages and gives kids the opportunity to read. What a brilliant thing that is.


Shiny £1 books

Here's another thing. Every child under 18 is entitled to a £1 World Book Day voucher. This voucher is distributed by schools and nurseries around the country. These are like £1 Book Tokens which kids can spend in pretty much any bookshop. Most of these vouchers are exchanged for the special £1 books that are produced for the day. This year the list of books is better than ever.

During the week that World Book Day falls, lots of schools really get behind it and put on a week of activities to show kids how brilliant books are and how ace reading is. We've arranged 13 author visits during that week, and we have some amazingly brilliant authors who'll be going into schools and sharing their passion for books. Author visits can be totally brilliant and have the capacity to change a reluctant reader into the most passionate booklover. I've seen this happen on many occasions and it's truly wonderful.

So as well as authors including Tamsyn Murray, Ivan Brett, Miriam Halahmy, Graham Marks, Fiona Dunbar, Guy Bass, Ciaran Murtagh and Keren David visiting schools we will also be having story telling in the shop on the day courtesy of Good Little Wolf author Nadia Shireen.

"But there are only 3 of you. How will you be able to do this?"

Because we have the best customers in the world and some have volunteered to look after the authors on their trips to the schools.

Good old World Book Day. Please get behind it if you can.

Our Facebook Group

Are you on Facebook?

Oh, OK. But if you are, please join our Facebook Group.

But I already have.

Well, possibly, but when I checked Facebook this morning there were only 5 members in the Group. That's 803 less than there was yesterday.

NO !

So, if you want to join the group again, or if you want to join it for the first time and experience all the joy it entails, please click on this link and request to join. Oh, that's right. The other thing that's happened is that despite me making it an 'OPEN' Group, Facebook still requires me to accept you as a Group member.

Tsk, I don't know..social media websites today.....

BIG GREEN BOOKSHOP FACEBOOK GROUP

2012. The Year of 100 Events (well 402 actually)

Oi. Hello.
That thing we posted last Friday about the ...ometer. Yes, that picture (it was a shoddy picture, I know) of a thermometer type thing.
Well, here's what the ....ometer is going to count..
We are going to try to put on 100 events this year.. 100. ONE HUNDRED.
Now look, this does not include our regular meet ups.
So it doesn't include;

Our stories and song for the under 5's every Monday, Wednesday and Friday (156 times a year)
Our Writers Group who meet every fortnight (26 times)
The Local Market which we hold on the third Sunday of each month (12 times).
Our knitting club that meets on the first Sunday of each month (12 times)
Our boardgames club that meet on the last Sunday of each month (12 times a year).
Our Book Group that meets on the second Tuesday of each month (12 times)
Our Kids book group that meets on the third Saturday of each month (12 times a year).
Our new Photography club that is meeting once a month too (12 times a year).
The Working Title Comedy Club, our monthly comedy night, 3rd Friday of each month (12 times)
Our once monthly Poetry Night. (12 times a month).
Our Monthly Quiz (12 times a year).
The Graphic Novel Book Group, first Thursday of month (12 times a year).

No, not those. Not those 302 events.

What we're talking about is the author events, the outside the shop stuff, the launches, the school studge. All that stuff.
The reason we're doing this is because we'd like to keep a record of what we've done. We love doing events and reckon this is a great way to keep track of what's been going on this year. The blog is good for this, as is Facebook, but it'd great for us (and you guys, I hope) to have some idea of what kind of events we do throughout the year.
We've done 5 so far (I think) which we'll fill in shortly.

We're hanging it up in the shop next week, and will keep updating it throughout the year.
This DOES NOT mean that the quality of our events programme will be in any way affected. We will continue to put on a varied and hopefully interesting selection of events which we hope will appeal to you (our customers). We'll just do more of them.
As always, we really do appreciate your feedback, so if you have any ideas or suggestions for things we could put on in the bookshop (or anywhere else for that matter), please please let us know.

Guess What This Is.

This is a photograph of a thing we have made in the shop. It is about 4 foot tall and is at the moment, blank. 

but what the hecking flip is it?

Yes, it's an 'ometer of some sort, but what sort? There will be a rather lovely book related prize for the best  (not necessarily the correct) guess. We'll finish it over the weekend and announce what it is on Monday or Tuesday next week.  

That's all.

London Tales. An update & some thoughts

Two months ago, I published a book. It was called London Tales and the author/illustrator of the book was Greg Stekelman. Here is a link to a blog post I wrote about it.

And this is the book itself. Mmm, isn't it gorgeous?

Being in the book trade since 1984, you would have thought that the world of publishing would be something that I knew all about. However, much like the journey from bookseller to bookshop owner, it was a magical mystery tour. From sorting out contracts with authors/printers to the more technical side of things. I now know what Wibalin fine linen 570 is, I never thought I'd ever say that. Greg was incredibly supportive too and took up pretty much all of the workload when it came to formatting the book itself. The book was checked over 2 or 3 times by the most diligent of editors (who volunteered their time to do this). I also had some amazing help from Ali at Gallic Books (an excellent publishers if I may say so), whose advice throughout the whole process was vital. The finished product is truly a thing of beauty and I am very grateful for all the help I had and also very very proud of the book.

It's sold really well and of the Limited Edition of 250 that we printed, there are now less than 50 left. If you want one (of course you want one), here is a link.

This has also led to some other interesting opportunities. I was interviewed last week by a researcher at the Independent, who was running a story of bookshops who also publish books. I'm keeping an eye out for that in the near future I hope.

I've also been asked to talk at the London Book Fair this year about my experiences with this project.

So, as the new year slowly trudges it's way into view, I am beginning to tease with the idea of the next book to publish. I've sent out one or two feelers to people who I'd love to work with. The limited edition format that London Tales is published in seems to be the most effective and manageable way for me to work and I think this is the way I'd like to continue.

If you have any advice, suggestions, thoughts or money, please feel free to share them.



Kids Book Group

One Saturday a month, we hold a Childrens Book Group. It's open to anyone who loves books and also loves talking about books. It's quite a new group, and so far books we've read have included Artemis Fowl, The Knife of Never Letting Go & Katherine Langrish's Troll Trilogy.
This month we are discussing is A Boy Called Mouse by Penny Dolan.
Here are the thoughts;

• we liked the short chapters
• it started slowly but really built into a great story.
• we like the different points of view (each chapter is told by a different person)
• we like the chocolate flapjacks.

Look, here they are.

Yes, there are snacks too. The next meeting will be on Saturday February 25th at 10.30am and we will be discussing Skellig by David Almond. Please feel free to come along and join the discussion. It is ace.

Bookshop in a Bookshop

Tonight we are selling books at the launch party of Jubilee, a new novel by Shelley Harris. We do lots of launch parties, but you may be interested to learn that this one is being held at the Champagne Bar at Waterstone'''s in Piccadilly.

 Look, here is Tim (he has a very impressive beard, doesn't he?), with Shelley (on the right) and Kirsty Dunseath, the editor of Shelley's book. 

It's all a bit odd, selling books in another bookshop, but a combination of factors, the most important one being Shelley wanting us to do it, means that here we are. We really appreciate this kind of support and we will hopefully sell loads of copies of her book and help to make it a memorable night for her. Because that's what launch parties are all about. The author. In many cases, it is years and years of hard work, finally acknowledged by an agent and then a publisher, who backs up your talent by publishing your book. A book launch is like a christening, where the parent (author) invites all their friends to celebrate the birth of their book.

Thankfully, we didn't need to build a trojan horse to penetrate the walls of Waterstone'''s in Piccadilly and they have been most accommodating.

We've done lots of launches and events away from glorious Wood Green. On a boat, in a synagogue, in a park, in a theatre. Have books, will travel. So if you're looking for a roving bookshop to help you make your book dreams come true, you know where to come.