Talking Book(sale)s

Here in Booksales, as you can imagine, we receive a lot of books. A lot of books. The vast majority of those books are processed in our warehouse (which you'll read more about later, right here on this blog). As of this moment, the warehouse has processed 75,816 books, with plenty more to come. (They'll be into six figures by the end of the festival.) And you can purchase every one of those books - around 8,000 titles - in our independently-run on-site bookshops.

A few of the books we stock are delivered directly to the office, which means the corridor outside Booksales Central resembles a wee warehouse at this time of --


...er, hang on. No one at the Festival is planning on taking a vacation any time soon. So why do we have a suitcase...?


Ah. Because it contains books. Specifically, RNIB Talking Books.


The two main booktents have panels devoted to the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), which is the UK's leading charity offering information, support and advice to people with sight loss.

A DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) book is a digital talking book, structured in such a way to allow the reader to move around the book as someone would use a print book. For instance, the reader can skip to a new chapter, or bookmark a favourite passage. RNIB have a selection of DAISY books which can be purchased for around the same price as the printed paperback version, and we're pleased to be able to sell a selection.

If you're browsing in either the Adult Bookshop or RBS Children's Bookshop, please stop at the RNIB panel and check them out.

- Tracey S. Rosenberg, a/k/a the Booksales Officer

P.S. Joanne Harris, whose DAISY book is shown above, is appearing at this year's Festival, and tickets are still available.

P.P.S. Every purchase you make in our shops - in any format - supports the Book Festival. Thank you!