A Booksellers' Market
Did you know that Saturday, 11 August, is National Bookshop Day? The day, first celebrated in 2011, is an initiative of the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA). Joel Becker, CEO of the ABA, said: 'Throughout Australia, hundreds of shops will be holding events and having activities, or simply saying thank you to the readers, writers, libraries and schools that support them'.
Fiona Stager, of the Avid Reader Bookshop in Brisbane, is keen to celebrate the role of bookshops in our lives. 'Bookshops are places you go to discover new ideas, to be stimulated and surprised. They are places for conversations and contemplation. Bookshops sit at the heart of our communities,' she said.
Despite the competition from online sellers, bookshops here are still shifting plenty of books. More than 60 million books were sold by Australian retailers last year. Children’s books made up a quarter of the sales, while fiction accounted for 27 per cent and non-fiction for 48 per cent.
Find out more about the day at the National Bookshop Day's Facebook page.