Skip to main content

Bookplates for Christmas

The author Holly Bourne has come up with a neat way for authors to support indie bookshops this Christmas, in a year when those shops have been forced to shut for months on end and even more business than usual has been going to the online giants. Holly is encouraging authors and illustrators to supply free, signed bookplates to any customers who purchase one of their books from an independent bookshop. If you check the #SignForOurBookshops hashtag on Twitter you'll find a lot of big names have already pledged their support, so if you're planning to give books as presents, or just buy a big old stack of them for yourself, this is a nice way to personalise them.

Naturally Sarah McIntyre and I wanted to get involved, so Sarah has designed 100 exclusive Reeve&McIntyre bookplates. They feature Kevin, the roly-poly hero of The Legend of Kevin, Kevin's Great Escape and Kevin and the Biscuit Bandit, but all our characters share the same universe so they'll look just fine in any of our earlier books too. If you'd like one, and you're in the UK, all you have to do is send me a message in the comments below or as a Direct Message on Twitter - which might be best, as I'll need your postal address (I'll open my Twitter DMs for the duration so we won't need to follow each other). Send me proof that you've purchased one of our books from an independent bookshop (or a UK high street chain like Waterstone's, Blackwells, or Daunts -  anywhere but the big A, basically) and I'll send you a bookplate. It may take a while, as I only really go near a post box about once a week at the moment, and I'll be using second class stamps - so get in early if you want to be sure of bookplates by Christmas!


I also have 100 blank bookplates which I'll happily sign, dedicate, and scribble small doodles on for anyone who wants to stick them in a copy of Mortal Engines, Railhead, or another of my solo books: all the same rules apply.

If, like me, you live a fair way from your nearest bookshop, or it isn't able to supply books during the present emergency, there's a new way to support them online via bookshop.org  Most of my local bookshops have a page on there, and if you buy a book through their page a cut of the profits goes to them - it's probably not as good as shopping with them in person, but it's definitely better than nothing. (I've also set up my own page there, which is a useful thing to link to while I wait for my new website to be built, but you'll probably want to support your own favourite bookshop.)

So: 100 Reeve & McIntyre bookplates, 100 blanks, Twitter DM or leave a message below. First come, first served, and sadly I'll have to restrict it to the UK.

Labels:

Comments

Emma PH said…
What a fabulous idea. I’ve just bought a book from Blackwells but sadly not one of yours as I have them all! I might need to rebuy something as I’d really like a Railhead bookplate. Great series of books ❤️ I hope this really helps book shops. Kindest regards Emma Phillips Harrington
12 November 2020 at 10:05
philip reeve said…
Thanks, Emma... Sorry, I only just saw this reply (so Twitter DMs work better, if you're on there... Also, of course, you don't want to put your address on here). Drop me a line, I'm sure we can sort something out.
20 November 2020 at 09:54
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Merlin (1998)

I remember Merlin being shown on TV as a two-part mini-series over a bank holiday weekend. The version I found on YouTube is a single three hour movie, but I think it might work better in two chunks, as originally broadcast. It still works pretty well, though. Director Steve Barron is completely infatuated with video editing tricks and slightly primitive CGI effects that I’m sure were state-of-the-art when it was made, but he uses them quite inventively, and there are some very enjoyable performances. Since First Knight was such a washout, I guess this is the definitive ‘90s Arthurian film. Like Excalibur , the definitive ‘80s Arthurian film, it tries to tell the entirety of the Arthur story, but since it’s main focus is Merlin it covers a lot more too, and Arthur himself ends up being a bit of a side-character, with the rise and fall of Camelot packed into the second half. At first glance, Merlin seems to be aligning itself with what I’m coming to think of as the Low Arthurian tradi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lord of the Rings 7: Minas Tirith

'This is not a work which many adults will read through more than once,' claimed the historical novelist Alfred Duggan, reviewing The Lord of the Rings when it was published. But I've read it through LOADS of times and now I'm blogging my latest re-read, so what did he know? And so we come to Minas Tirith, Tower of Guard, citadel of Gondor, seven tiers of fancy white fortifications built against a buttress of Mount Mindolluin, with the Tower of Ecthelion rising a thousand feet above the plain. It seems to me the template on which a whole genre of knock-off fantasy cities has been based - I guess Robert E Howard and people wrote about such places before Tolkien, and perhaps there were cities of equal grandeur on Barsoom, but when concept art threads on Instagram throw up unlikely gold and marble castles built on mountaintops and over waterfalls they always look distinctly Minas Tirithy to me. I'm wondering now if London in Mortal Engines was subconsciously echoin...
5 comments
Read more

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

One of the reasons the Arthurian Legends appeal so much to writers and film makers is that there is no single original version. If there ever was, it was a tale told by some Romano-British storyteller, sitting by a fire in a damp hall, perhaps expounding on the great deeds of a local ruler or late Roman general, and spicing up the action with some motifs borrowed from old Celtic myths. In the centuries that followed, the story grew, and changed. Lots of legends about other heroes got tacked on to it. French and German poets got hold of it and added Camelot, the Grail, and Courtly Love: Malory borrowed from them all in his Morte D’Arthur . Later, everyone from Tennyson to TH White to Rick Wakeman to little me retold the stories, altering them to fit our own vision and reflect our own times. So you can do whatever you like with King Arthur: everyone else has. At least, that’s the theory. Now here's Guy Ritchie’s 2017 box office catastrophe King Arthur, Legend of the Sword to destru...
1 comment
Read more