Among the many educational sessions held during Winter Institute 2023 last week in Seattle, Wash., were ones that addressed used and remainder books, selling more books online, Batch, and mental, physical and emotional wellbeing. Here we offer highlights from those events:

Diversifying with Used and Remaindered Books
In a panel discussion about adding used and remaindered books to a store's inventory, Kevin Ryan of Green Apple Books in San Francisco, Calif., mentioned that the supply of used books is "not as robust as it used to be." 

Fewer used books are coming through the door, and for a store that is predominantly used, it can be a bit of an issue making the store look as full as it once did. To adjust to the thinning supply, Ryan and the Green Apple team have started shelving more books face out and treating them as art objects and even brodarting (applying plastic covers) them. At the same time, the prices that the store can charge for used books has also gone down--a book that Green Apple might have charged $9 for five or six years ago is "now $6."

During the panel's q&a portion, a bookseller with Half Price Books attested that the used book supply was "dwindling." While neither she nor Ryan could say exactly why fewer used books are available, Ryan did float the idea that the proliferation of e-books might partly be responsible.

On the subject of getting started with remaindered books, Gary Lovely of Prologue Bookshop and the Book Loft of German Village, both in Columbus, Ohio, said he typically buys from three of the larger remaindered book companies: Book Depot, Book Country and Texas Bookman (which is owned by Half Price Books).

Each retailer has its own strengths, with Lovely noting Texas Bookman's selection of art books, and Book Depot's generally robust metadata and "deep, deep sales," and many remainder companies also carry a variety of sidelines. Inventory turns over pretty rapidly on many of those sites, and according to Lovely around 8 p.m. in the evening is a good time to check. Lovely added that he's had a lot of success selling remaindered books as a vendor at festivals that aren't book related, and remaindered books are "great for kids."

And asked about remaindered book shows, Lovely and Ryan agreed they were worth visiting for booksellers interested in carrying remaindered titles.

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Most of the news about numbers of bookstores during the pandemic has been good. The American Booksellers Association noted that membership increased by 20% as of last June since 2020, when 35 stores opened and 57 closed. Still, in 2021, while some 41 stores closed, 215 opened, a trend that continued last year, when 50 stores closed and 203 opened.

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Bookshop.org founder Andy Hunter

Supercharge Your E-Commerce
In 2022, independent bookstores had online sales of $100 million compared to $15 million in 2019, a rise of more than sixfold, according to Bookshop.org founder and CEO Andy Hunter. The $100 million includes sales by indie bookstore e-commerce sites on IndieCommerce ($42 million), on Bookshop ($40 million) and by indie booksellers on other platforms. The $100 million represents about 2.5% of Amazon's estimated book sales of $4 billion.

Despite the quick growth, much of it attributable to the pandemic, Hunter emphasized that indie online sales are "a fraction of what they could be" and suggested that indie online sales should mirror indies' overall share of the market, which is about 12%, or about $500 million a year. He added, too, that indie online sales don't cannibalize in-store sales; most are sales that would have been made "at night" by customers on Amazon.

Hunter was warmly received by booksellers in the audience, a contrast to the reception three years earlier in Baltimore, when Bookshop was about to launch and many booksellers regarded it with suspicion. But when Covid arrived several months later, Bookshop became a lifesaver for many stores, a fact several in the audience mentioned.

Among other statistics Hunter offered:

• In 2021, 29% of bookstore revenue came from e-commerce, up from just 1% in 2019.
• Online customer traffic is up 182% in 2022 over 2019.
• Half of online orders get picked up in-store, meaning that stores should offer and promote in-store and curbside pickup.
• In 2019, for each book shipped to a customer by an indie bookstore, Amazon shipped 250. In 2022, the ratio changed to 50:1.

Among other tips and practical advice given during the session, the ABA's Phil Davies, Indiecommerce director, recommended that booksellers use Google Analytics to understand their e-commerce business better. Hunter suggested booksellers use original copy on their e-commerce sites and such things as dated lists ("Best YA 2023," for example) to make sure stores appear high up on Google users' bookstore searches.

Hunter urged any ABA member bookstore that has not signed up to be in the Bookshop profit pool to do so. (10% of the sales from Bookshop affiliate members goes to booksellers in the pool; for bookstores that link with Bookshop, 30% of sales go to the stores.)

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Batch
Nathan Halter of Batch gave an update on the digital clearinghouse for publisher payments that has been very popular in the U.K. and was launched in the U.S. in 2020. So far adoption levels in the U.S. have been slow. Currently three U.S. publishers are using Batch: Penguin Random House, HarperCollins and Macmillan, and Batch would like many more to join. Gardners U.S., the U.S. arm of the major U.K. wholesaler launched last year, is in the process of joining Batch.

At the same time, 150-160 U.S. booksellers are actively using Batch, with some 25 more currently coming on, and more hoped for. "We need more bookstores and more publishers on board," Halter said. "It's a challenge that we're navigating."

Already, in 2022, Batch has processed and remitted 222,000 individual invoices. Booksellers who use Batch are recommending it to other booksellers, which is leading to more and more adoptions. Batch is free for booksellers.

Two booksellers on the Batch session panel gave rave reviews for Batch. Nic Bottomley of Mr. B's Emporium of Reading Delights, Bath, England, and executive chair of the Booksellers Association of the U.K. and Ireland (owner of Batch), said he pays 96% of invoices through Batch, which is widely used in the U.K., and needs only an hour a month to reconcile everything. Batch allows for easy payment and organizing of invoices and credits, and does away with spreadsheets and other laborious ways of handling invoices.

Christine Onorati, owner of WORD bookstores in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Jersey City, N.J., and president of the ABA, whose stores have been using Batch, praised Batch and "how it works with QuickBooks." She called Batch a major money- and time-saver and said the learning curve "not an involved process."

Bookselling and Mental, Physical and Emotional Wellbeing
On the last day of Wi2023, Onorati, who is also a therapist, led a discussion with Dr. Corey Yeager, a marriage and family therapist and author of How Am I Doing? 40 Conversations to Have with Yourself, about managing one's mental, physical and emotional wellbeing.

In response to an audience question about resentment forming between a bookstore's full-time and part-time employees, Yeager described a work space as a broad system containing numerous subsystems within it, and said things become dangerous when coalitions begin to form, sometimes as small as "three or four people against those one or two."

Naturally, friction starts to build, and he suggested a good place to start addressing it is naming those coalitions and those struggles. Onorati agreed on the importance of "giving this stuff air," mentioning a situation at her stores when a divide formed between people allowed to work off the floor in the office and those who had to stay on the sales floor. Yeager also emphasized the need for everyone within the system to have clarity about their own role, and the individual assigning different roles should make them clear to the entire team.

When asked about how better to prioritize one's physical wellbeing, Yeager acknowledged that when people get busy and stressed, physical wellness is often one of the first things to fall by the wayside. People believe they're so busy they don't even have "time to think about those things," but eventually, "your body will stop you. Your body will say I can't take it." He advised intentionally building that time into one's day, noting that if exercise is viewed as something integral rather than something extra, it won't be so easily dropped.

Onorati said in some ways it "comes down to boundaries." Booksellers often get caught up in narratives about being too busy to eat, drink water or even use the bathroom during a shift. She encouraged booksellers to challenge those narratives and consider setting boundaries for themselves such as, "I can't be a good employee today until I've had a walk." --Alex Mutter and John Mutter

All Good Books hosted its grand opening celebration yesterday, March 2, at 734 Harden St. in the Five Points neighborhood of Columbia, S.C. The State reported that the team of owners behind the bookstore, which offers new titles along with coffee, beer and wine, "used crowd-funding, via a Kickstarter campaign, to help fund renovations for the space at 734 Harden. The effort was a roaring success: All Good Books had a goal of $60,000 for the Kickstarter, and it ended up receiving nearly $78,000 in donations to get the 3,000-square-foot shop up and running."

Clint Wallace, a tax law professor at the University of South Carolina and a co-owner of All Good Books, said the overwhelming initial support the store received via crowd-funding confirmed his desire for a large, independent bookstore downtown. 

"I think it was a great proof-of-concept that people are really excited about and want an independent bookstore in Columbia," Wallace observed. "We set a very ambitious goal with the Kickstarter, but it was a goal that would raise money for us to invest in the best version of an independent bookstore with a lot of shelves that we could fill with a lot of cool books." 

The store, "which features a clean, colorful aesthetic set off by gleaming hardwood floors, also has a large sitting space in the back, and a children's section and reading area in the middle of the store," the State wrote. There is a small cafe in the space.

"We are ready to go with all of that," Wallace said. "We have been practicing our barista skills. Really, it's a pretty narrow menu in terms of the coffee side. It's really the things we like to drink while we are reading." 

All Good Books co-owner Ben Adams has experience in the bookselling world. He opened Odd Bird Books in the Main Street Arcade Mall about three years ago, then closed that 300-square-foot shop earlier this year and joined forces with All Good Books. "We are scaling up in a big way," he said. "It's a different world. I got a lot of experience out of Odd Bird, but this is a completely different animal. This is so much different (than the smaller Odd Bird space) in so many ways." 

A House with Books, a general-interest bookstore with new titles for all ages, has opened in a limited capacity in Keller, Tex., Culture Map Fort Worth reported.

Owner Hayley Smith shares a space at 1101 Bear Creek Pkwy with Headquarters, a co-working space that is set to open in the spring. Smith's store spans about 500 square feet of the 1,600-square-foot total, and in addition to books carries gifts, stationery and some home decor items. Hot tea is also available on the house.

Smith called the space "a peaceful environment where our customers are welcome to browse the shelves for as long as they like. I love recommending books to people and I personally handpick our entire stock of books."

Currently the store is open on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Over the coming weeks Smith will expand hours and launch some events programming, including a book club and children's storytime.

Smith described herself as a lifelong reader, telling Culture Map it's "always been my most beloved hobby and passion. Bookstores are my favorite places, and I've wanted to open one since I was a little girl. I believe it's so important for a town to have a bookstore, and I've dreamed of serving Keller in this way for a few years now."

Bay Books, a new and used bookstore in Bay St. Louis, Miss., will close permanently on March 25, WLOX reported.

Owners Jeremy Burke and Kristen Tusa, who purchased the bookstore from its original owners in 2011, said the store's sales can no longer keep up with rising rent. Burke told WLOX that he could see "a lot of other retail businesses in this neighborhood" also getting priced out, with Tusa adding that the store is a "casualty" of the progress and development in Bay St. Louis, which businesses like Bay Books helped spur.

"Some of the shops that kind of brought you to the dance are kind of left on the sidelines after doing so much for the community," remarked Burke.

"I think there definitely needs to be a discussion about what local officials or the real estate businesses can do to help businesses such as ours," Tusa continued. "There does need to be some consideration as to how much should be charged."

Reflecting on their ownership of the store, Burke said he thought it was a "very, very good run." When they announced their decision to close on Facebook, customers and community members responded with a plethora of heartfelt comments. "It's very humbling to think that we made an impact on the community."

Noting that Bay St. Louis has changed dramatically and is "no longer a hidden gem," he added that he feels "very proud that we're able to hang on for this long. It's a testament to Bay St. Louis and all of our support that we've had over the years."

Tusa and Burke will run a closing sale until the final day of business on March 25.

Children's book author and illustrator Amy Schwartz, who had a hand in more than 50 books published by many publishing houses, died February 25. She was 68. Schwartz leaves behind a legacy of such books as What James Likes Best, winner of the Charlotte Zolotow Award; Polka Dots for Poppy, a Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year; Bea and Mr. Jones, a Reading Rainbow selection; 100 Things That Make Me Happy; 13 Stories About Harris; Annabelle Swift, Kindergartner; and A Teeny Tiny Baby.
 
Growing up in a house full of books, Schwartz fondly remembered trips to the local library and family read-alouds, and her first experience as an illustrator was creating cards for her family. After college, she eventually moved to New York to pursue a career in children's book illustration. Advised by some editors to both write and draw, her first two stories, Bea and Mr. Jones and Begin at the Beginning, were among her first published works and led to further opportunities. 
 
Schwartz settled in Brooklyn with her husband, children's book author and historian Leonard S. Marcus, and their son, Jacob. She took inspiration from her family life and the environment around her. "For all the time I knew her, she was caring and generous and funny and smart and such a canny observer of people, too," Marcus recalled. "She often noticed things in a situation that had completely passed me by, and she usually saw straight through to the heart of any matter. I was always a little bit in awe of her ability to do that. Her books are like that, too: comical and heartfelt but most of all true."
 
Meredith Mundy, editorial director at Abrams, observed: "Working with Amy over the past five years on her 100 Things series for Appleseed has been an absolute joy. I will miss our e-mails and phone calls--no detail was too small to warrant her thoughtful consideration.... She was a master of capturing subtle gestures and the triumphs--large and small--of childhood. She was a star in the picture book world as well as a delightful human being and will be greatly missed by her Abrams family."
 
Mary Cash, v-p and editor-in-chief at Holiday House, added: "I can't think of anyone whom I think understood and portrayed the day-to-day routines of families with young children with more intelligence and joy. Amy was an acute observer of all the tiny details that together make up a child's life. Her wonderful books celebrated, laughed at, and offered so much insight into that existence."
 
Cecily Kaiser, publisher at RISE x Penguin Workshop, said that Schwartz "had a profound sense of young children; she respected her subjects and her readers in a way that very few authors ever have. What a phenomenal gift to have known Amy--reserved, humble, even insecure at times, but with a genius that came through in her words, her art, and her ability to tickle and empower children in the same breath."
 
"Amy's impeccable eye and ear for the specific details of children's lives was unparalleled," noted Allyn Johnston, v-p and publisher at Beach Lane Books. "It gave her books a universal honesty that touched people of every age. I recently read her A Teeny Tiny Baby aloud to a class of 175 adult picture-book writers as an example of brilliant pacing, page turns, and emotion--and the room was riveted from start to finish. Thirty years later, the book is as fresh and funny and irresistible as the day it was published. That is the power of Amy Schwartz's work."
 
"During my time at Roaring Brook Press, I was privileged to work with Amy on five delectable books," said Neal Porter, v-p and publisher of Neal Porter Books. "It always amazed me that someone with such a quiet, thoughtful, even taciturn demeanor could produce such sparkling, irreverent work. I think she is one of the great unsung heroes of contemporary picture books."

Books are Magic Montague, Brooklyn, N.Y., hosted the launch event for Trang Thanh Tran's debut, the YA gothic horror novel She Is a Haunting (Bloomsbury). Tran (r.) was in conversation with Emily X.R. Pan. The two talked about haunted houses, identity and belonging, food, hot ghosts, writing, publishing and more. The event was livestreamed on the store's YouTube.

"All the months are months of love" at the Book & Cover, Chattanooga, Tenn., which posted a photo of the couple on Instagram, noting: "Thanks for choosing our little shop to ask this monumental question! And thank goodness she said yes!"

"What are you reading during Women's History Month?" asked BookPeople, Austin, Tex., in sharing photos of the bookstore's sales floor display. "Need some ideas? Check out our Herstory display on the second floor or browse the titles here."

Laura Lutz has joined Hachette Book Group as children's school & library marketing manager, overseeing the school & library efforts for Algonquin Young Readers, Running Press Kids/Black Dog & Leventhal, Storey Publishing, Workman Kids, and Worthy Kids. Most recently, Lutz was a school librarian in New York City.

Kantika: A Novel by Elizabeth Graver (Holt).

Today:
Science Friday: Mensun Bound, author of The Ship Beneath the Ice: The Discovery of Shackleton's Endurance (Mariner Books, $35, 9780063297401).

Jason June's children's book Never Forget Eleanor will be adapted for film by Unger Media. Deadline reported that the animated film "will expand on the story from the popular book which shines a light on dementia and Alzheimer's disease, told through the eyes of a child named Elijah."

"I instantly bonded with the Unger Media team over their passion for the connective power of stories. I know they are the perfect partner to bring my books to new audiences," said June, who is also in development with the company on a film adaptation of his novel Jay's Gay Agenda. 

"The moment we read Jay's Gay Agenda, we jumped at the chance to collaborate with Jason June," said Unger Media CEO & founder Jonathan Unger, will also serve as executive prodiucer on the new project. "Jason June's inclusive, yet positive style of storytelling aligns with our ethos of content with a purpose, and Never Forget Eleanor personifies that in this beautiful story. We know families across the globe will fall in love with Elijah and his loving grandma Eleanor, seeing themselves in this sweet story."

The shortlist has been released for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Each of the six shortlisted authors will receive $10,000, and the winner, who be announced on May 21, gets an additional $50,000. The shortlisted titles are:

The Highest Part of the Horizon by Fatima Abdulhamid (Saudi Arabia)
Drought by Al-Sadiq Haj Ahmed (Algeria)
The Exile of the Water Diviner by Zahran Alqasmi (Oman)
Concerto Qurina Eduardo by Najwa Binshatwan (Libya)
The Stone of Happiness by Azher Jirjees (Iraq)
Days of the Shining Sun by Miral al-Tahawy (Egypt)

Chair of judges Mohammed Achaari commented: "The scope of the 2023 shortlisted novels is vibrant and varied.... The judges feel that through this multiplicity of voices and idiom, with contrasting styles, structure and narrative forms, the broad sweep which these stories comprise offers a dynamic snapshot of the contemporary Arabic novel."

photo: Tim Coburn

Jill Santopolo started writing books when she was three, but wasn't published until her 20s, when she began writing the Alec Flint, Sparkle Spa, and Follow Your Heart books for children and teens. A decade later, her first novel for adults, The Light We Lost, was translated into 35 languages and was a Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick. Since then, she's written More Than Words; Everything After; and her fourth novel for adults, Stars in an Italian Sky (Putnam, February 28, 2023), which weaves a love story in post-World War II Italy with one happening generations later.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

A novel of family secrets, shocking betrayals, passionate romance and Italian wine, with two intertwined love stories that cross time, distance and generations.

On your nightstand now:

I just finished Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin and have been shouting about it from the rooftops (the character development in particular wowed me). Next on my pile are Loyalty by Lisa Scottoline, The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell, Georgie, All Along by Kate Clayborn, and Spare by Prince Harry (that last one is an audiobook, though, so not physically on my nightstand the way the other ones are).

Favorite book when you were a child:

My absolute favorite picture book as a child was Andrew Henry's Meadow by Doris Burn. I loved the idea that kids could live on their own in a created world of their choosing, but still come home to families who loved them.

Your top five authors:

This is always the hardest question because I admire so many authors. In recent years, I've been especially impressed by Taylor Jenkins Reid's world-building, Annabel Monaghan's romance, Carley Fortune's emotion, and Ann Mah and Adriana Trigiani's complex weaving of stories across time periods.

Book you've faked reading:

[Hangs head in shame] In college, I never finished To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. I keep telling myself I'll go back to it one day, but that day hasn't come yet.

Book you're an evangelist for:

I have been an evangelist for years for Steve Sheinkin's Bomb: The Race to Build--and Steal--the World's Most Dangerous Weapon. It's a book about the incredible situations surrounding the creation of the atom bomb and is one of the best examples of narrative nonfiction I've ever read.

Book you've bought for the cover:

I didn't buy this book solely for the cover, but was really taken by the photo on the cover of From Scratch by Tembi Locke. The happiness and intimacy in the photo made me want to find out more about Tembi and Saro's story.

Book you hid from your parents:

I never hid any books from my parents--they were pretty great about letting me read what I wanted to read--but I probably should have hidden Queen of the Summer Stars by Philippa Gregory. It was a (sexy) retelling of the King Arthur legend from Queen Guinevere's perspective that somehow came into my possession in middle school. If you held the book by the front cover, it would open up to the sexiest passages because I'd read them so many times.

Book that changed your life:

Primary Target by Marilyn Wallace. Marilyn is my mom's cousin, and it was the first book I'd read by someone I knew. It made me realize that real people, regular people, could write books, and that maybe that meant I could write them one day, too.

Favorite line from a book:

One quote I think about all the time is from John Green's The Fault in Our Stars: "I fell in love like you would fall asleep: slowly and then all at once." It strikes me as such the perfect way to describe both falling asleep and falling in love.

Five books you'll never part with:

The first four are books from my childhood that I've saved for years and can't imagine ever giving away. The first is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, which was a gift for my 10th or 11th birthday, and which I've probably read 12 or 13 times since then. The next three are my copies of Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh, Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson, and Lydia, Queen of Palestine by Uri Orlev, all of which I've read at least five or six times, maybe more. And last, I don't think I'll ever part with my signed copy of Turning Pages, Sonia Sotomayor's picture book biography.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

I wish I could read Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings again for the first time. I got so caught up in the characters and their world that I felt like I'd been transported. For days after I finished it, I wanted to go onto social media to check on the characters and see how they were doing (of course, they were fictional, so sadly, no social media accounts).

The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts is Soraya Palmer's first novel, a phantasmagoric interweaving of family and folktale. Readers first meet two sisters, Sasha and Zora, when they are young girls in Brooklyn's Flatbush, dealing with the household complexities of their father Nigel's violence and infidelity and their mother Beatrice's headaches and distance. Soon this timeline meanders to visit Nigel and Beatrice as children in Jamaica and Trinidad, respectively, and then as a young couple. These individual and family histories blend with folktales of Anansi (spider, god, man, woman, trickster storyteller), demons and exorcisms. The Rolling Calf haunts butchers, and Mama Dglo is the protector and mother of the ocean and "all things water," among other mythical tales. The narrator of these time-jumping tales, with the repeating refrain "Let me tell you a story," is mysterious, driven by motivations not always clear nor necessarily reliable--but always concerned with the power of storytelling itself: "You see I am what they call Your Faithful Narrator, found in places the West calls fairy tales, what men call gossip, what children call magic." Small actions can be revolutionary: "They realize there is nothing more dangerous than a story with an owner that no one can touch."

In the 1990s and 2000s, Sasha discovers chest binding as she navigates gender and sexuality. Zora studies her book of Anansi stories and hones her craft (that of her namesake) in her diary. As much as the sisters love each other, their respective self-explorations push them apart. In different ways, Nigel and Beatrice separate but remain intertwined. Caribbean and West African folktales continue to influence each of these threads until they come together again in Trinidad with a 106-year-old grandmother, several reunions, an ending and a new beginning. None of these characters is entirely innocent or faultless, but they are finely drawn with compassion and compelling, colorful pasts. Love and family contain both beauty and pain in this telling.

Palmer imbues her novel with both snappy pacing and deep feeling in a lovely prose voice with music and poetry behind it. The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter has big things to say about sisterhood and family; race, sexuality and class; life and death; and above all, the power of storytelling. "Why do we remember some stories more than others? And what happens to the ones that we forget? Let me tell you a story." The result is wide-ranging and thought-provoking--but also an immersive and sumptuous read. Palmer shines. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Shelf Talker: A fracturing family in Brooklyn with roots in Jamaica and Trinidad navigates love and loss in this debut novel influenced by Caribbean folktales and the power of stories.

It's a dreary, early March day here, with a snowstorm looming as a weekend treat, so it seems an opportune time to write about something fun, like reading for pleasure. Yesterday (March 2), the U.K. and Ireland celebrated World Book Day. Designated by UNESCO as a worldwide celebration of books and reading, WBD is marked on April 23 in more than 100 countries around the globe, but the U.K. and Ireland get a jump on it. And why not?
 
This year WBD "is urging teachers, carers and parents to encourage reading for pleasure as it continues on a sharp decline," the Bookseller reported. Reading is the only core subject that saw attainment levels improve in 2022, according to Department for Education Key Stage 2 statistics, but the National Literacy Trust Annual Literacy Survey showed the number of children who say they enjoy reading is in serious decline, with reading for pleasure at its lowest level for 18 years. In addition, fewer than one in two children 8-18 years old said they enjoyed reading in 2022, the lowest level since 2005. For children growing up in poverty, this number is even lower. 

NLT data also found that children and young people who take part in WBD activities enjoy reading more than their peers who don't, and 54.7% read more books as a result of the initiative. Last year, the charity distributed 50 million £1 book tokens through schools, nurseries, magazines and partnerships.

WBD CEO Cassie Chadderton told the Bookseller: "World Book Day exists to encourage more children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, to benefit from a life-long habit of reading for pleasure.... There are lots of affordable, inclusive and enjoyable ways to create joy and excitement around reading. Dressing up is a great way to encourage children to read, and we've shared ideas for other fun activities and resources to help schools, nurseries and families to work together to create a World Book Day where everyone feels included."

As might be expected, independent booksellers happily joined in the festivities yesterday. The Booksellers Association tweeted: "Happy World Book Day (UK & Ireland)! Booksellers are a big part of what makes #WorldBookDay so special and we're proud to support it every year with National Book Tokens." And BA managing director Meryl Halls added: "It's #WorldBookDay--massive congrats to the @WorldBookDayUK team who have put together another incredible year of activity and celebration of the joy in children reading and owning books--and to all the bookshops, authors, teachers, publishers and kids delivering that joy!"

Among the many indies sharing their #WorldBookDay experiences on social media were: 

White Rose Books & Coffee Bar, Thirsk: "Feeling a bit bored after School today? Then cast a spell over your Mum, or Dad and get them to bring you along to the bookshop and meet our very own Bibliophile Witch! We'll wave a magic want & give you a free book when you present your World Book Day Book Tokens here!"

At Edinburgh Bookshop

Edinburgh Bookshop, Edinburgh, Scotland: "We can't take pics of our visiting primary school kids today (some fab costumes!), but here's Marie dressed up for #WorldBookDay2023!!"

Simply Books, Bramhall: "Hope you're all having a fabulous World Book Day! Tag us in your photos and don't forget to pop in to redeem your voucher. Happy reading!"

Kennys Bookshop, Galway, Ireland: "Happy World Book Day from Kennys Bookshop! Lá Domhanda na Leabhar shona dhaoibh go léir!"

Ivybridge Bookshop, Ivybridge: "Happy World Book Day! We have been having fun this week visiting schools to bring the World Book Day books to children."

Harris & Harris Books, Clare: "HAPPY WORLD BOOK DAY TO YOU ALL. May your day be filled with books and joy today (and every day).... Please tell everyone you know that we have these books and special offer. Right then, back to your book and we'll see you lovely lot soon."

At The Book Nook

The Book Nook, Hove: "We've been celebrating #WorldBookDay2023 with poetry and music this morning, and still to come we have... Story time and crafts @ 3pm! Hosted by the lovely 'Fern' from #CharlottesWeb!!"

Antonia's Bookstore, Trim, Ireland: "Happy World Book Day! We've had a lovely morning of class visits to our shop where we talked about books and reading."

Liber, Sligo, Ireland: "Happy World Book Day from Liber!! Don't forget, we have €5 vouchers to give away to the first 20 kids here in their World Book Day costumes between 2pm-6pm!"

Bridge Bookshop, Port Erin, Isle of Man: "Happy World Book Day one and all. We are ready in store to welcome your children with their World Book Tokens. This gives all children regardless of financial background the opportunity to go to a bookshop and choose a book. Which book will they choose?"

Madding Crowd, Linlithgow, Scotland: "Happy World Book Day everyone: we are ready to help you find your perfect book! We'd love to see your costumes for today & we've got all the titles ready for you to choose! Remember: You Are A Reader!" 

Gloucester Road Books, Bishopston: "The shop glowing in the early evening darkness after a long and gloriously busy World Book Day. Many tokens exchanged and books chosen. Much excitement all round."

In a piece on WBD for the Guardian, Frank Cottrell-Boyce wrote: "The truth is, none of us saves ourselves. We save each other. Or not. World Book Day is a chance to celebrate the power and pleasure of reading, to help our children build the apparatus of happiness within themselves. It should also be a day to ask ourselves whether we are doing right by our children, by our future."