Indie Challenge discussion

Every month during 2020 Ninja Book Club books will be chosen from the themes on our bingo card. Below are the themes for each month & we need your recommendations to help fill the four slots we have in each months' poll!

January is already chosen. The only rule is that books must be published by an independent publisher but otherwise anything goes!


January : A debut - Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession
February: An Anthology
March: Kids or YA
April: An author from another country
May: An Underrated Book
June: An Award Winner
July: Book that defies genre
August: A Women's Press
September: Brilliant Backlist
October: A Poetry Collection
November: Non-Fiction
December: Favourite

February is anthologies and so far I'm going to be doing all the suggesting! Anyone have any great ideas?

How about the anthology of funny stories I saw in a bookshop - not sure it’s an Indie, though?

Thanks! I'll have a browse

I’ve googled it and I can’t find it but I saw it in a bookshop and the editor was a comedian I think

Ah! It’s called Funny Ha Ha and it’s edited by Paul Merton but the publisher is Head of Zeus. Sorry!

Sarah wrote: "Ah! It’s called Funny Ha Ha and it’s edited by Paul Merton but the publisher is Head of Zeus. Sorry!"

Thanks for the suggestion! Head of Zeus is indie :-)

Hello! Quick question about the backlist books category as there has been some debate on book twitter about what this means! How are you defining it? Is it books published before a certain date, a book that isn't an author's most recent or a book that is not currently being published by a publisher?

Sorry for the delay! A combination I think - either a book that's prior to an author's current release or one published before the start of 2018

Thank you! I’ll have to update my spreadsheet!