Conversation with Mark Pearson of Libro.fm

Mark Pearson is the CEO and co-founder of Libro.fm, the digital audiobook platform for more than 2,600 independent bookshops around the world. Before that he was the publisher at Pear Press. You can learn more about Libro.fm at https://libro.fm/story and through our annual social purpose reports.

Conversation with Re-Imagining Bookstores

Join Praveen Madan, Peggy Holman, and Amanda Hall in discussing the Re-Imagining Bookstores movement, which advocates for bookstore support in the U.S. They envision new business models, community engagement, and sustainable practices to strengthen and reinvigorate bookstores, promoting literacy and civic engagement. Madan, Hall, and Holman bring extensive experience and innovative ideas to the cause.
The Bookseller Oral History Project

Lanora Jennings on The Bookseller Oral History Project

The Bookseller Oral History Project, initiated by Lanora Jennings in 2023, aims to preserve the voices and experiences of booksellers, highlighting their roles in supporting societal movements and balancing commercial and social profits. The project underscores the historical significance of bookstores as community hubs and platforms for resistance and progressive discourse.
Reviving the High Street: Booksellers Call to Action

Reviving the High Street report

Earlier this week, RISE Bookselling unveiled the campaign on 'Reviving the high street: Booksellers Call to Action', in response to the increasing challenges that booksellers and retailers working across European town centres and high streets are facing. 
The Afterlives of Bookshops. Powerpoint cover page.

SHARP 2023-BRN Panel: The Bookshop as Interface

Bookshops operate as more than just spaces where the commercial retail of books occurs.  They are places of ideas, which encourage us to venture beyond our own experiences and expand imaginative and intellectual horizons.  Indeed, as Martin Latham has claimed, bookshops do this even more successfully than universities: “it seems, indeed, such institutionalized thinking is less likely to be mould-breaking; whereas a bookshop, used open-mindedly enough, uniquely challenges the normative thinking which dulls our reason and clouds our souls (The Bookseller’s Tale, p. 305). This panel looks at some ways the interface of the bookshop has fostered, or is fostering, new ideas, whether in fictionalised accounts of bookshops or histories of actual ones. 
Industry Insights: Culture Vouchers (cover image)

RISE Industry Insights research paper Culture Vouchers

RISE Bookselling (Resilience, Innovation and Sustainability for the Enhancement of Bookselling) have now published the second volume of their Industry Insights series, which examines state-funded cultural voucher schemes currently in place in four different countries across Europe—France, Germany, Italy and Spain. The schemes are launched with the aim of introducing teenagers and young adults to their country’s unique and rich cultural scene, while also supporting cultural and creative industries in the process. You can download a free copy here: https://bit.ly/RISE2023-2.

BYOBooks-Bookshops

To celebrate the coming of winter and the holiday that comes with it, we met on Friday, the 16th of December to talk about books about bookshops. Eben Muse, the author of Fantasies of the Bookstore, started the conversation off by...

Geraldine Cox at Kirkdale Bookshop

As part of their series exploring what contributes to the enduring success of established booksellers, Kate Gunning, Acting Membership Manager for the BA, talks to Geraldine Cox, owner-manager of Kirkdale Bookshop in Sydenham, London. [This interview previously appeared in the December...