In participating bookshops, readers will be able to buy any paperback under £10 and get a second one free to give to charity or as a gift.
We wanted to create the digital equivalent of a good bookshop for readers not fortunate enough to live near one, a place where they can find a more surprising range of books than is on offer on Amazon or in the chains".
I thought back to the World Book Night event at the South Bank in London, the queues at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the continued march of the Hay-on-Wye franchise – but despite their excellence in their own right, none of them have the same atmosphere, the same collision between authors, publishers, bookshops and readers.
LA Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop Lehmann's readers would write to her constantly: "Oh Miss Lehmann, this is my story!
Driving over lemons appeals to bookshops, and perhaps readers, in a way that driving over land mines apparently fails to do.
But the news immediately unsettled some in the industry, which has already seen thousands of bookshops close as readers increasingly turn to Amazon for printed and now electronic books.
Kate Tempest appears at Sydney writers' festival on 20 and 21 May; at the Avid Reader bookshop in Brisbane on 23 May; at the Byron Theatre on 24 May; and at the Wheeler Centre, Melbourne on 26 May.
They are in the libraries at the heart of people's communities, whose threatened closure excites fury and action, and in the festivals and in the bookshops to which readers flock.
"The absence of certain big names - Rose Tremain, Ian McEwan, and Zadie Smith in particular - may worry some retailers, but this is terrific opportunity for bookshops to show readers how much amazing fiction can be found off the beaten track," he said.
This month the most anticipated title, for young readers and bookshop owners alike, was The Midnight Gang, the former Little Britain star's latest.
