I live on a river estuary in Cornwall and right from the start my debut novel, Zed and the Cormorants, was set here – in a particular wood, close to my home – so the Cornish landscape is a big part of the novel. Luckily for me, Cornish bookshops have also become a huge part of promoting my book and helping me to reach readers.

We are spoilt for choice in Cornwall, with several fantastic independent shops like The Falmouth Bookseller, The Bookshop, Liskeard and The Edge of the World Bookshop across the region, but the shop that is closest to my heart is Shrew Books, Fowey.

Shrew Books is the place where I signed my first book and where I first saw Zed and the Cormorants in a shop window. The manager, Kate, has been enormously supportive of me as a local author and it is especially pleasing to see Zed in a shop on the main street of Fowey, as lots of the action in the story takes place on that very street!

I’m really delighted to be holding an event with Shrew Books to celebrate Independent Bookshop Week on Saturday 26 June, at North Street Kitchen in Fowey. If you are local, or thinking of visiting Cornwall for the weekend, then please do come and join us. Details are available here: https://www.fowey.co.uk/whats-on/local-author-clare-owen-in-conversation-with-illustrator-sally-atkins-p2970993

Clare Owen

Independent Bookshop Week is part of the Books Are My Bag campaign and run by the Booksellers Association. It seeks to celebrate independent bookshops in the UK and Ireland. Your local bookshop will have their own way of celebrating this week, and we enthusiastically encourage you to visit, celebrate with them and buy a book! Look at #IndieBookshopWeek to keep up with the campaign and follow @ArachnePress to see all our content throughout the week.

In the light of Independent Bookshop Week I’ve been trying to remember the first one I visited. Unless it was Foyles, where my mum once worked, or Hatchards, possibly; it would probably have been in Blackheath, I would have been under reading age… and it isn’t there anymore.

My first full time job was in a bookshop, Christopher Foss, in Baker Street, London – also no longer with us. It was there I learnt of the existence of Gay’s the Word, when my colleague Amanda left to work there.

My first book was not launched at GTW, but very shortly after I was doing a reading there, shaking rather badly as I recall! I have read from both my subsequent books there, and the staff are, without exception, delightful (and always have been), the audiences friendly and engaging, and the stock eclectic and important.

I have many, many other favourite independent bookshops, all around the country – shops that have been welcoming to our authors, and open to our books; but my personal affection for Gay’s the Word goes deep.

And, thinking of Christopher Foss and that bookshop in Blackheath having gone, a message: USE your local bookshop, if you want it to still be there when you need it. Independent bookshops are where real thinking is nurtured, and a bookshop is for life not just Independent Bookshop Week!
Cherry Potts.

Independent Bookshop Week is part of the Books Are My Bag campaign and run by the Booksellers Association. It seeks to celebrate independent bookshops in the UK and Ireland. Your local bookshop will have their own way of celebrating this week, and we enthusiastically encourage you to visit, celebrate with them and buy a book! Look at #IndieBookshopWeek to keep up with the campaign and follow @ArachnePress to see all our content throughout the week.