“Would I like to be a bookseller de métier?” said Orwell in his Bookshop Memories. “On the whole, in spite of my employer's kindness to me, and some happy days I spent in the shop, no.” A good writer doesn't always make a good seller.

So you might like to know that James Naughtie, Alan Titchmarsh, Bill Pertwee and Jilly Cooper are just some of the writers valiantly downing pens and switching off laptops this week to get behind their local bookshop till for some Strictly Come Bookselling.

“You have to meet readers halfway,” says Leslie Thomas (who is offering his services to Torbay Book shop in Paignton), “and this is one way of doing it.”

The writers are pitching up to spearhead the “love your local bookshop” campaign and to celebrate the inaugural Independent Booksellers' Week, running nationwide from July 1-8. They will be put to work stacking shelves alphabetically and helping you to find the book you're after.

The international bestseller Kate Mosse is one of the campaign's biggest advocates and is teaching writing to teenagers at her home town's bookshop on Hayling Island in Hampshire. “All writers are local writers somewhere. For me it began with that home town feeling and I think most of us feel that you should repay your dues.”

Independent bookshops have a fine record for going out on a limb for authors, from the big (Joyce's Ulysses, banned in England and America, finding shelter in Shakespeare and company in Paris) to the little (indie sellers supporting fledgeling authors before anyone else would).

The Booksellers' Association wants readers to discover or rediscover what an independent bookshop can offer. Talk to a local author or the bookshop owner whose family has been selling books for generations. They are likely to have a better idea of what you are looking for than your nearest Tesco. Books are cheaper on the internet and in the supermarket, but then everything is. “It is incredibly important that we support independent shops as much as we do the chains and libraries,” says Kate Mosse. “We've all got the same end goal in mind. Reading matters, whoever you are, wherever you live, whatever your age.”

A good local bookseller is the mutual friend of writer and reader. Find one and you won't need to venture far to find a book to lose yourself in. For details of 320 participating independent bookshops go to www.localbookshops.co.uk or www.loveyourlocalbookshop.co.uk

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