Trade news

BBC 500 Words: foster creativity for local children with the UK's biggest writing competition

We’re proud to be one of the official partners of the BBC’s 500 Words – the UK’s largest writing competition for children aged 5-11. This year's competition opens for entries on 24th September, with National Book Tokens prizes for all the winners, and additional prizes for children from hundreds of schools in the most deprived areas. 

Here's how we're helping you to inspire creativity in children locally, and encourage any lucky winners to return to spend their prizes with you:

• We’re sending a printed poster to UK booksellers – keep an eye out for this and your merchandising catalogue, coming soon!
• You can download the poster and shareable assets for your sites and socials from our booksellers Dropbox folder.
• To inspire young writers and story lovers, we asked our favourite authors – from Maz Evans to Sam Sedgman – to share their writing tips and advice. Read their brilliant tips and share the article with your social followers! You'll find a shareable banner in our booksellers Dropbox folder.

Looking for other ways to engage your customers and local community? Here are some ideas:

• Put together a display of children's writing books and guides
• Curate a display of brilliant fiction to spark their imagination
• Put on storytelling sessions for children 
• Share the books that most inspired you and your team when you were children
• Share news of the competition on social channels and let people know that winning children will be able to spend their National Book Tokens in your bookshop!

High Five for independent bookshops!

Didn't receive your High Five vouchers? Please get in touch to let us know. 

Our popular promotion returned in June, with independent bookshops across the UK and Ireland rewarding their loyal customers with free £5/€5 National Book Tokens.

High Five for Bookshops is a national e-gift card giveaway that launched during Independent Bookshop Week in 2019, and aims to give indie bookshops a very tangible way of rewarding loyal bookshop customers, as well as driving footfall and repeat custom. 

If you're an independent bookshop and you're selling and redeeming National Book Tokens, you should have received a book of 100 vouchers in June. Each voucher includes a unique code which lets the recipient claim a free £5/€5 e-Gift card – which they can then bring back to spend on more books! The kit also includes a poster and some fun ‘I love my local bookshop’ stickers to give to younger booklovers over the summer.

The £5/€5 e-Gift card is intended as a free gift for your customers. It’s entirely up to you how you decide to give them away, but here are a few ideas to get you started. You could give flyers to…

… your most loyal customers

… attendees of your events

… members of your book group

… customers signed up to your loyalty scheme

… a hand-selected group of your favourite customers as and when you see them

… customers at random by hiding vouchers inside books

… winners of prizes 

… anyone who has supported you in the last year

The promotion celebrates independent bookshops and the booklovers who shop in them, driving footfall and incremental sales over the summer and beyond.

For more information, view our Frequently Asked Questions. Plus, download shareable social assets and printable posters to tell your customers about your plans.

If you have any questions, or your vouchers didn't arrive, get in touch with the National Book Tokens team at marketing@booktokens.co.uk.

The Jhalak Prize 2024 winners: "urgent and timeless"

The winners of the 2024 Jhalak Prize and Jhalak Children's & Young Adult Prize were announced this evening at a ceremony at the British Library.

Yepoka Yeebo has won the Jhalak Prize for her astounding non-fiction debut, Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Swindled the World (Bloomsbury, 9781526668578), praised by the judges as a ‘A story like no other… which vividly illuminates Ghana’s complex history’.

Hiba Noor Khan has won the Jhalak Children’s and Young Adult Prize for her poignant historical novel, Safiyyah’s War (Andersen Press, 9781839133138), which the judges described as ‘an exquisitely written, hopeful, and necessary book for these impossibly difficult times.’

The Jhalak Prize and Jhalak Children's & YA Prize seek to support and celebrate books by writers of colour. As part of our partnership, we distribute point of sale kits and social media assets to bookshops across the UK and Ireland so they can create instore displays and shout about the titles from their online channels, with  many hundreds more receiving digital assets to share online.

If you were one of the 180+ bookshops who signed up to receive printed point-of-sale materials, thank you for celebrating and supporting books by writers of colour! If not, and you'd like to sign up to promote the Jhalak Prize 2025 in your bookshop, just drop us an email to let us know.

Promote the winners to your customers

You can now download digital banners for both winners so you can celebrate and promote them to your followers and customers. Don't forget to tag @jhalakprize and @book_tokens, and use #JhalakPrize24, so we can share your posts!

Introducing our Presentation Card: offering new options and flexibility for local schools

We have introduced a new Presentation Card in response to schools and their requirements for prizegiving at the end of term, and throughout the year.

This new product incorporates a personalised or standard design National Book Tokens e-Gift card into an A5 presentation card which can also include certificate-style information about the reward or award being presented. It offers greater flexibility and additional options to school customers looking to encourage reading for pleasure and give the gift of reading, in what is a very competitive market. What's more, there's no additional cost to personalise the Presentation Card.

As a bookseller, you can offer this new product to local schools. As with personalised gift cards, we will manage the production process for you, and the transaction will go through your bookshop account. Just let us know how many Presentation Cards the customer would like, and the values to load, and we will do the rest on your behalf.

The Presentation Card includes all the usual details that you would expect to see on an e-Gift card, and is processed the same way at the till. To find out more, email Uzo Onuora or call 020 7421 4654.