Love your local bookshop?

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Book sales are in rude health, buoyed by reading groups. Yet the picture is not so rosy for independent bookshops. Tell us what makes your favourite special.

Small but perfectly formed. It may not be as spacious or as lavishly stocked with bestsellers. And books do not come with side orders of super-grande caramel lattes from the in-house coffee bar.

But your local bookshop may have other, less obvious charms. It may be the service - a staff member's recommendations may be spot-on. LOVE YOUR LOCAL BOOKSHOP? Tell us why and send a photoEmail: yourpics@bbc.co.uk, subject BOOKSHOPMMS from UK: 61124Int MMS: +44 7725 100100 <a class="" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/2780295.stm#yourpics">Terms and conditions</a><a class="" href="/1/hi/wales/north_west/7485504.stm">Bookshop's demise blamed on web</a>

Or it may be aesthetic - perhaps a pleasingly panelled jewel harking back to a bygone era. Or it may even be what is on the (possibly dusty) shelves.

Throughout the inaugural Independent Booksellers' Week - running 1-8 July - some 340 bookshops of the 1,500 independents in the UK will set out to woo the reading public away from the supermarkets and book mega-marts that now dominate sales.

The tactic of many is to play up their area of expertise. Hayling Island Bookshop in Hampshire, which specialises in books for teens, is holding a writing workshop for sixth-formers with author Kate Mosse. And Torbay Books in Paignton - which republishes out-of-print titles - is holding a book boffins' quiz.

Goldsboro Books, in London's West End, specialises in specially-bound signed books and in spotting new talent. So it is stocking the first UK print-run of Canadian writer Sean Dixon's novel, The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal, about the world's premier book club (with a twist - none of them read).

But this is no ordinary print-run.

There are just 250 copies. Small.

And the cover art is by the winner of a Saatchi Gallery competition. Perfectly formed. Cover detail of The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal

Why champion a writer who is anything but local in an event pitched as "love your local bookshop"?

Because Dixon is a passionate advocate for independents - and independence in retailing.

"Large bookstores divide into sections like Fiction, History, Mystery, Politics. They can't afford to get whimsical. If they did, their patrons would be stuck wandering around the labyrinth for hours, trying to decide whether they'll find James Frey's latest in Fiction, Non-fiction, Sincerity, Tall Tales, Truthiness.

"Or in the case of my local favourite, Type in Toronto, Guilty Pleasures, Plotless Fiction, Me Write Book (sagas and epics), Me Write Good (writing about writing), Good Eats, Eat More, Doctor Feelgood..."

That's what he loves about his local bookshop. What do you like about yours?

The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal by Sean Dixon is published by HarperCollins.