Summer Books is the annual consumer catalogue produced by the Booksellers Association in partnership with Gardners, featuring the best books published in the first half of the year. The titles are chosen by independent bookshops and the catalogues are customised to include each bookshop’s logo and details. The catalogues come out in May, ready for the summer season. Orders for the overprinted Summer Books catalogue 2025 have now closed. If you would like to purchase any non-overprinted catalogues, these are available via the Member Shop now. Summer Books benefits: - Increased sales for both publishers and booksellers on more than 170 titles - Part of the Books Are My Bag campaign - Catalogues customised with bookshop details, logos and QR Codes - Colour overprinting available at an extra charge - Titles selected by indie booksellers for indie booksellers, and their customers - Beautifully designed cover and interior artwork - Introduction by a prominent author - Subsidies and support for distribution and local advertising - POS: dispenser, poster and bookmarks - Supported by an e-mag edition and social media assets A recent survey to bookshops who took part in the 2024 Summer Books promotion found:
Books Are My Bag is a year-round, consumer-facing campaign, run by the Booksellers Association of the UK and Ireland. It exists to make connections between bookshops and people who value them; to raise awareness of the work booksellers do within their communities; and to encourage people to do their book-shopping with their local bookshop. ‘I’m a huge fan of the Summer Books catalogue. It has a brilliant selection of books that work really well for indie bookshops. It’s got a good mix of sure-fire best-sellers and less obvious quirky titles that our customers love. We support the catalogue and titles energetically and it’s great using it to discover new titles that we might otherwise have missed. For the last two years we’ve done a big door-to-door drop of copies and we’ve been delighted with the results. We got terrific feedback from readers and saw a marked rise in both footfall and sales, which I attribute to the catalogue. It’s a really good marketing tool, a great fit with our brand and an essential part of our summer marketing plan’. - Hazel Broadfoot, Village Books (Dulwich) Find out more about Summer Books. Social media assets can be downloaded here. All lists of the Summer Books titles can be found on the Books Are My Bag bookshop.org page.
If you would like to know more about Summer Books please contact [email protected] or [email protected]