Love Your Indie – a new loyalty scheme for independent booksellers

Posted on 2011/09/23 , tagged as

Share this

The Independent Alliance, of which Icon Books is a member, announces today a loyalty card scheme for independent booksellers called Love Your Indie.

The scheme, which is run in association with the Guardian and Observer, will launch in the paper on Saturday 1st October. More than half a million blank cards, which also give their bearers 20% in all participating bookshops until mid-November, will be attached to the Guardian that day.

Readers get a stamp for every £10 they spend in participating shops, of which there are currently 114 around the country. With ten stamps, cardholders earn a free book from a selection from Independent Alliance publishers including major new books from Sebastian Barry, Michel Faber, Stef Penny and more.

The loyalty card, the first of its kind in the UK, has been put together for the Independent Alliance by Joanna Ellis, Marketing Director at Faber and Andrew Furlow, Sales and Marketing Director at Icon Books, working with Simon Appleby, Operations Director of Bookswarm, the digital agency that specialises in delivering projects for publishers and authors.

Publishing trade magazine The Bookseller carries a piece about it here and the holding page for the site is now up at www.loveyourindie.co.uk. The Facebook page can be ‘liked’ here.