Best-selling children’s author and Williamstown resident Andy Griffiths is urging people to show a lot of love for their local bookshops.
Griffiths, who is an ambassador for Love Your Bookshop Day on August 12, said the initiative was a reminder to people of how valuable bookshops were to the community.
He is urging people to visit their local bookshop, citing Book and Paper in Williamstown and Sun Bookshop in Yarraville, as two of his favourites.
Griffiths said that a few years ago people had feared electronic books would take over, but these days they accounted for only about 20 to 30 per cent of total book sales.
“If anything, people have come back to print in a big way because they want a physical object they can hold in their hands,” he said.
“Many people, including kids, have been on a computer screen all day and they want to get away from that screen to a place that isn’t beeping and distracting their attention.”
Griffiths is launching his latest book in the Treehouse series, The 91-Storey Treehouse, on August 8. The series has sold almost three million copies in Australia alone.
Griffiths said his books were like old friends. He is currently reading
The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Burton.
“It’s an old book, but I’ve been meaning to read it for many years and I finally got a gap,” he said.
