London’s independent bookshops have joined forces to publish a map of the city’s bookshops.The London Bookshop Map features 87 indies from across the city including ones selling new, antiquarian, specialist and second-hand titles. The map is free and is available in bookshops and galleries. It features a text work from the artist David Batchelor, who is best known for his 35 foot installation called “Big Rock Candy Fountain” at Archway tube stattion. The map will be updated every six months and rereleased with a new text artwork.

Among the bookshops which have donated money to fund its publication are Housman’s Bookshop in Kings Cross, Quinto in Charing Cross, Woolfson and Tay in Bermondsey and the Atlantis Bookshop in Bloomsbury.

The map’s editor, Louise O’Hare, said: “At their best independent bookshops can offer individual selection rather than market-driven choices of books to customers, sustaining and developing local interests and communities and offering alternative ways for audiences to participate in a range of cultural activities. Such bookshops are crucial platforms for independent publishing culture, and culture in general, and these are the ones I was keen to promote.”

A guide to independent bookshops in the UK was given away in last Saturday’s Guardian newspaper, with more than 350 indies included.The Independent Bookshops Directory is a 74-page guide, with bookshops picked by the Guardian and the Observer. The directory also features an introduction from author Sarah Hall.

Each regional section also has a foreword by an author. Among those contributing are Sarah Waters introducing London; Peter James writing the foreword for south east England; Patrick McGuinness penning the introduction for Wales; and Neil Rollinson writing for the north west England section.

The guide accompanies the launch of Love Your Indie, the Independent Alliance’s nationwide loyalty card scheme for indie bookshops, with more than half a million blank cards also being distributed with the Guardian . Both initiatives form part of the newspapers’ Books Season.

Related articles

• The battle to save West London’s most famous independent bookshop (guardian.co.uk)
• My favourite independent bookshop: Review, London (guardian.co.uk)
• Internet and supermarkets kill off 2,000 bookshops (telegraph.co.uk)
• City Guides: Yes, We Still Need Them (travelbetweenthepages.com)
• Hold It Sister launches into Blackwell Bookshops (via Woman’s World) (wales4u.wordpress.com)