This award will recognize the efforts of booksellers who make a difference to the reading community. Bookstores submitting their entries for this award should provide details of their efforts to attract readers to the bookstore and in encouraging them to spend more time there and buy books directly from the bookstore. They must highlight their unique methods and approaches to book selling and must outline their plans for the long ­term sustenance of the bookstore.

Who should enter?
Any bookstore can enter. The award is given to a location-specific bookstore. Bookstores with more than one branch may apply but a fresh application must be submitted for each location.

Branches of those multi-format retail stores, where books do not make up at least 75% of the store merchandise, cannot apply. Such applicants must furnish an undertaking that books constitute over 75% of the total merchandise sold in the store.

Criteria:

  • Customer Service: Steps taken to provide customers with the best possible service and attract more readers
  • Sustainability: Proof that the enterprise is “growing”. Steps that the bookstore has taken to market itself (or make itself known) to ensure that customers keep coming in.
  • Operational efficiency: Steps taken to make the store an exciting place to shop in.
  • Events and activities organized in-store: Activities planned for customers during the year so that the bookstore becomes known for activities related to literature
  • Promotion of the reading culture: This criteria concerns steps taken to promote literature of different types, steps, if any, taken to promote the local literature and language, and measures taken to understand readers’ tastes and fulfil them.

Please note that the emphasis during evaluation will be on results achieved and activities undertaken during the period Jan 2015- May 2016.

Submit your application here. This award is location-specific. Bookstores with more than one branch may apply, but not more than once for each location. Since there is no provision to “save” the application and resume later, the entire application must be completed before submitting.

Alternately you may download the application by clicking here. After completing the downloaded form, you may email it to us at contactus@publishing-next.com or post it to us at:

Publishing Next
S-2, II Floor,
Adolfo Mansion,
Near Menezes Maternity Home (Above Asian Paints Store),
Rua Bernardo da Costa,
Margao GOA 403601
Tel: 98503 98530

Postal entries must be received before the last date of submission. In case you are unable to download the form, email us at contactus@publishing-next.com. If you are sending the application by email, or by post, please ensure that the all the photographs you submit (on a CD, in case a postal submission is made) does not have a combined size of more than 1MB. Also, please note, that as the judges are unable to visit each store, evaluation will be made based on the strength of your application, alone. Your application must also contain a low-resolution image of your logo.

Previous Winners:

2015: Rachna Books, Gangtok
2014: Literati, Goa