Winners of Booker Prize Indie Bookshop Spotlight competition named.
Posted on in Business News
Six independent bookshops from around the UK have been named as the winners of the inaugural Booker Prize Indie Bookshop Spotlight, a competition in which independent bookshops and booksellers from across the UK and Ireland were invited to celebrate the 2023 Booker Prize shortlist.
The Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize, is a literary award conferred each year for the best novel written in the English language, published in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
To enter, bookshops were asked to assemble in-store displays of the titles nominated for this year’s prize, posting images of their activity on their social media channels. Six stores were chosen as winners and they were Winstone's Hunting Raven Books in Frome, Somerset; Westwood Books, in Sedbergh, Cumbria; Round Table Books in Brixton, South London; The Bookmark in Grantown-on-Spey in the Highlands of Scotland; The Bookshop, in Mold in Flintshire, Wales, and The Little Acorns Bookstore in Derry, Northern Ireland.
Hannah Davies, director of prize management and special projects at the Booker Prize Foundation, said:
"We have been overjoyed with the response we received to our inaugural Booker Prize Indie Spotlight competition.
"Seeing booksellers across the UK and Ireland do what they do best — sharing new books with their communities — was incredibly special, and choosing just six was a challenge. From playful windows to striking shelves to tables encouraging customer participation, the winning displays were creative, impactful and engaging — a testament to the power of indie bookselling.”
Tina, Manager of Winstone's Hunting Raven Books, told the Booker Prize website:
“Being independent means that we can be completely responsive to the needs of our customers, and we can have real autonomy in curating what we have to offer. We can madly, passionately hand-sell the books we really believe in, and people love leaving our bookshop clutching that special recommendation they didn’t even know they were looking for when they first came through the doors.”
The team at The Bookshop, in Mold said:
“We are always looking for new and diverse fiction to offer to our customers. The Booker Prize list always contains a few titles that we might not have previously considered stocking. The accompanying POS helps us to create attractive and engaging displays in our store and windows. Customers can be confident in the knowledge that the Booker Prize list includes titles that have been selected because they are thought-provoking, original and well-written.”
The titles shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 are:
Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein
If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery
This Other Eden by Paul Harding
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
Western Lane by Chetna Maroo
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
The winner will be announced on Sunday November 26th.