A Women's Prize Offer Especially For You

...and a catch up on the last week

How can it only be Wednesday? This week feels so long already, mostly because I have been caught up in the last few days in not one but two national news stories.

Firstly, The Guardian followed up on reports from The Bookseller last week about claims from shoppers that Waterstones are not stocking gender critical titles quoting me and giving The Book Room a nice bit of free publicity – look how far we’ve come!

In a fieldwork exercise this week, I popped into my local branch and luckily, if I were a Waterstones customer, I would now not have to make a 50 mile-round trip to purchase a copy of HAGS anymore because it has finally landed in their store – a week after I have sold 130-odd copies, but hey, better late than never, Waterstones! (Speaking of which, I still have some exclusive hag badges if anyone still needs to order a copy – hello Mother’s Day.)

But TIME TO THINK, a number eight Sunday Times Bestseller, is still nowhere to be seen in store. Waterstones blame stock issues, though I haven’t been having any supply issues myself and there are hundreds of copies available at the wholesaler, so who knows? But as I said before, it’s not the first time Waterstones has been accused of censoring feminist titles.

So that was last week and this week I found myself quoted in Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s Independent column about the witch-hunt that Fiona Bruce has found herself at the centre of this week. Most people on Twitter, as I wrote at the weekend, are not trained in defamation law and so don’t realise the technical bits of what was said and, most importantly, why on last week’s Question Time (and why should they?), but it’s a bit of an expert area of mine plus, I’m not a fan of witch-hunts. Even James O’Brien from LBC announced to the nation that he backed down having read my words, and if you ever listen to him you know he doesn’t often do that!

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Good to hear <a href="

anna wharton @whartonswords

Good to hear @mrjamesob back down on his criticism of Fiona Bruce having read words by me, @y_alibhai and Alison Phillips. It’s a sign of intelligence to admit you called it wrong - and he doesn’t often do it. But sounds like you still need some lessons on defamation law, James!

14, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

But anyway, getting round to the point of this newsletter which is something I’m hoping you’re going to like!

Regular readers among you may remember my newsletter last week. Let me share it again below in a fancy embed thingy:

Introducing You To The Women's Prize Longlist

Inside this newsletter, I gave you a walk-through of the titles that have been longlisted, and also spread the word that I had changed the website to make delivery free over £50.

I don’t know about you but I love the scramble to read the longlist before the shortlist is announced – I don’t always make it, but I like to try! But, it can get expensive, and so to help you read the Women’s Prize longlist I created a bit of a deal on The Book Room website.

If you spend over £30, you will get 10% off all Women’s Prize longlist reads. Plus, this is a code you can use again and again until the shortlist is announced on April 26th. So there’s no need to rush – order the first ones you want to read and then come back for the others as you get through them.

This is the coupon code you need to input at checkout: WPTENOFF

I’m a bit mad about money-off coupons this week because I only learnt how to do it at the back-end of the website the other day, and those who’ve been following my journey from the beginning will know technology is not my forte, so I’m pretty proud that I’ve managed to put this latest offer together for you all on my own.

Anyway, if you need a place to start, these are the longlisters I’ve read and loved:

This is what I’m reading now:

And these are on my TBR pile:

Oh I do love owning a bookshop! Also, did you notice TBR = To Be Read = The Book Room?

I’m clever, huh?

Actually, it’s entirely coincidental, I had no idea until I saw a folder on my computer one day named ‘TBR’ and I thought: What’s that? Oh The Book Room… hey, wait a minute!

I was planning on pretending I always intended it to be that way so, shhh… don’t tell.

Anyway, get shopping the Woman’s Prize longlist and don’t forget to use your coupon code!

• Thank you to all who have been ordering from my online bookshop in the last week. Remember you can still support THE BOOK ROOM while I am waiting to open my physical store again by shopping online, in fact now I would appreciate the support more than ever. I can order ANY BOOK for you and you will receive it within 48 hours. It has never been a more important time to support both writers and independents bookshops, and by buying from me, you are doing both and contributing to a vital ecosystem.