# Initiative launches to foster entrepreneur booksellers from underrepresented communities

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2021/09/24/initiative-launches-to-foster-entrepreneur-booksellers-from-underrepresented-communities/
- Published: 2021-09-24T09:06:00+01:00
- Author: Melanie May

**Ethically conscious book-buying platform Bookshop.org and The Booksellers Association
have launched New Futures, a programme to select, reach and foster new bookshops
founded by entrepreneurs from underrepresented communities across the UK.**

The [New Futures](https://newfuturesbookselling.com/) initiative encourages applicants
from underrepresented communities, including individuals who identify as black and
other marginalised ethnicities, LGBTQIA+, working class, physically disabled, neurodiverse,
sufferers of mental health issues and those with learning disabilities amongst others,
who feel they have the potential to build viable bookselling businesses.

Winners will be chosen through a shortlisting, mentoring, and judging process, and
will then receive hands-on support from industry partners in retail, technology,
and the book trade – including The Booksellers Association, Gardners Books, The 
Bookseller and Midas PR – through a programme of education and support to help them
build their business plan for a multichannel bookshop.

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Successful [applicants](https://newfuturesbookselling.com/about-us) will be given
all the tools they need to launch a bookshop that creates new and sustainable routes
for diverse books to get into the hands of more readers and contribute to increased
vibrancy and resilience in British communities.

Judges will include novelist, screenwriter and contributing editor to the Observer
Nikesh Shukla; founder and CEO of Beautystack and The Stack World Sharmadean Reid;
founder of Dialogue Books and Bookshop.org board member Sharmaine Lovegrove; HarperCollins’s
Talent and Audience Development Manager Nancy Adimora; The Bookseller Editor Phillip
Jones; and indie bookseller at Independent Bookshop of the Year Sevenoaks Bookshop
Fleur Sinclair.

The deadline for entries is 12 November.

For UK Fundraising’s own bookshop on Bookshop.org, [click here](https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/ukfundraising).