Supporting booksellers

The CWA strongly believe in bricks-and-mortar booksellers, both independents and chains, and work to support and encourage their work.

We do this in several ways.

By fostering communication and cooperation to mutual benefit between CWA author members and bookshops. In 2017 we appointed a Booksellers Champion to initiate and liaise wherever we can.

How does this work? On a practical level, if you’d like a local crime writer to talk at an event at your bookshop, we’ll do our best to find you one. If you’ve already arranged to hold an event with a CWA member participating and would like us to help promote it, let us know (with as much notice as possible) and, where appropriate, we will publicise it to our members and also to our thousands of Crime Readers’ Association subscribers.

We also work wherever we can to support bookshops and are open to hearing your views of how we can best do that.

National Crime Reading Month. The CWA’s initiative promotes events and reading projects that happen in early summer. Bookshops as well as libraries are often hosts for these events.

We have a dedicated page for NCRM where events are listed according to geographical region. If you’re a venue and looking for an author, suggestions on how to set up an event or publicity for an event you already have planned: contact us.

Literature that’s connected with the CWA that you and your customers might also find useful. We can supply free digital posters and flyers for you to use, helping to make your bookshop more indispensable than ever to the aspiring writer and the public at large. Visit our downloads page here.
Competitions that might interest those of your customers who write and bring them back wanting more. For example, the CWA Margery Allingham Short Story competition, and the Debut Dagger competition for the opening of a crime novel from an unpublished writer.

Bookseller of the Month

Every month we feature a bookshop which goes above and beyond to bring the latest crime fiction and non-fiction to its customers.

May 2022: Beccles Books

Every month, as part of the new CWA Booksellers Champion initiative, we want to celebrate a bookshop because we believe bookshops don’t just sell our books – they bring our streets alive.

If you’d like your bookshop to feature, contact secretary@thecwa.co.uk.

Booksellers Champion

Bestselling author Elly Griffiths is our Booksellers’ Champion, ably assisted by Vaseem Khan and William Shaw. She writes:

‘There are several things we can all do to support our local booksellers which, in turn, may encourage them to support us. For example, make a visit to your local bookshop. They will love to see you. Take a photo of yourself there and post it on social media with the caption #thecwalovesbookshops. Find out if your local bookshop stocks your books. If they do, offer to sign them. If they don’t, they may change their minds after seeing your lovely face. Also, when you post buying links, be sure to add bookshop.org as well as (or even instead of) Amazon. It all helps to support local bookshops.’

Downloadable posters

We produce literature that’s connected with the CWA that you and your customers might find useful. We can supply free digital posters and flyers for you to use, helping to make your bookshop more indispensable than ever to the aspiring writer and the public at large.

We run competitions that might interest those of your customers who write and bring them back wanting more. For example, the CWA Margery Allingham Short Mystery competition, and the Debut Dagger for the opening of a crime novel from an unpublished writer.

Keep in touch

Interested in receiving more information about the CWA, National Crime Writing Month and useful news for booksellers? We only send out very occasional bulletins so you won’t be inundated with emails. Sign up below – thank you.