Here’s the thing. We love WBD and what it stands for, we really do. At its heart, the day is about getting a book into the hands of as many as children as possible. It raises awareness of the importance of books. Wonderful.
However, it comes at a price. Not to you, the consumer, but to us, the booksellers. And that’s fine too, to a degree. We choose to buy in to the scheme. The bugbear is that every year, many people come in with several tokens per child, asking us to redeem them. We do not get that £1 back. So, if it’s exchanged for a WBD title, all well and good. But, if it’s used to offset the price of another book, not so great. To put it into perspective for you, the average £6.99 paperback costs us £4.05 to buy in. The mark up is poor! Once you factor in rent, rates, blah, blah, blah…you can start to understand why there aren’t many millionaire bookshop owners!
To that end, we simply can not sustain the £1 off model. Especially when the tokens are now available via MacDonald’s, various children’s magazines and schools too.
So, I hope that you understand why we’re being tough this year. Please do come and exchange your token with us – we love seeing you. Even it’s just on the doorstep! But, we will no longer be discounting books with the WBD token.
Chicken and Frog Bookshop 
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