Today my bookshop is twelve years old. It’s also my twelfth anniversary of being self-employed, and my career within the book industry as a whole, because before I opened a bookshop with my mum, I’d never worked in books… or shops.
We’ve learned a lot over the years and when I say we, I mean my mum knows something about running a small business and I know something about books. Together, we manage, and luckily, we don’t have any other staff, who might look at the way we run things and say “why was this stock never returned?” or “when did you last update this website?” or “how is this imposter bookshop even a viable operation?”. Hey, it’s our business and we run it the way we want to (quietly and ineffectively).
The one thing that’s really changed for me over the 12 years is my ambition. When we first opened, I was so hungry for this business. I used to wake up at 4am with my brain buzzing about all the way I could make our business better.
The funny thing was, when we opened the bookshop, it was meant to be a side-line to my *real* ambition; to be a published writer!
ANYWAY
I spent many years being an extremely enthusiastic bookseller; I was a Bookseller Rising Star! I won the Young Bookseller Nibbie! Our bookshop was the Vintage Bookshop of the Year! I joined the BA committee! The World Book Day committee! I reviewed books on the radio! I ran about seven book clubs! We published our own children’s calendar of illustration! We ran our own interactive children’s festival! We sold programmes of worksheets and calendars to other businesses! We had themed Saturdays in our bookshop EVERY MONTH. We were RELENTLESS and it was COMPLICATED and I’ve FORGOTTEN WHERE I WAS GOING WITH THIS…
That was all fun and great while we had the energy and time to work seven days a week but as the years have gone on, we’ve pulled back and started letting ourselves have lives beyond the bookshop. Now the balance is almost the other way; I’m spending more of my time writing, and we both take days off and we’ve really simplified our message as a business. We’re ‘just a bookshop’ now.
Our town has struggled on through a major decline in footfall; our central department store closed leaving our high street a sad frenzy of empty premises, charity shop and vape huts, but we’re still here, selling the books and we’ll do it for as long as it makes sense to.
Our business isn’t our entire personalities anymore, and we’re ok with that.
Being ‘just a bookshop’ is still being a wonderful thing.
To celebrate my 12 years of bookselling, here are 12 small, ineffective, thoughts.
1. Books make the best gifts. They last longer than chocolates or flowers (and cost about the same), they’re easy to wrap, and they might just casually illuminate someone’s entire life.
2. Bookshops smell of books. Unfortunately for booksellers it’s like smelling your own perfume; impossible to detect on yourself and when people comment on it you wonder if they mean it in a bad way.
3. There are A LOT of books published. Like, every single week. Mostly on Thursdays but also sometimes on a Tuesday. It never stops and loads of them look so great, you’d love to stock, and also read, them all, but there aren’t any more hours in the day, or shelves in your home, and I’m sorry I keep bringing them home, I know there are already more than I can ever read and I’ll try and give some away, I really will, but what if I need one of them one day for important research, or even just as a visual representation of my memories which have been eroded by all the social media I consume when I could be reading books…
4. Sometimes, the public don’t know about the biggest books. A customer said to me a couple of weeks ago ‘Is it true that Richard Osman has written a book?’. Like, it was a new piece of information that The Thursday Murder Club even existed. I know this can be quite demoralising for all the people who’ve spent a lot of money on making sure books are publicised, but as a bookseller I sometimes think it’s quite refreshing. A person can walk into my bookshop and find a level playing field. We generally only keep single copies of anything, so a customer who doesn’t know about Osman’s has as much chance to stumble across that as they have something else that I’ve selected for stock, and I’ve got some really good recommendations…
5. which leads me to my next thought.
5a. Adult aren’t very good at asking for recommendations for themselves. They want help with picking presents, and they often want help finding a book that’s “for a five-year-old who has a reading age of a 37-year-old”, but not for themselves? Sometimes when we’re helping pick a present for the friend the customer will comment ‘I’d never have looked at these but I want to read all of these myself!’ Great! Why don’t you ask me the next time you want to read something new, and I’ll tell you about all the great books I have in my shop that might tempt you?
I think people are shy; they don’t want to seem like they don’t know what they like. Or they worried they might offend me if they don’t fancy something I suggest (that’s ok, I’ve got 42 more suggestions).
5b. Children don’t have this problem; which is why, a lot of the time, they don’t need my help to find a new book. They know what they want to read. They knew the minute they walked in the shop, or they glanced at a cover that made their eyes turn into little pink hearts.
Conclusion of point 5.
There should be a reversal of goals when book-shopping as a family; if anyone needs to be stretched or challenged by their reading, it’s adults who are stuck in a reading rut - children should be looking to their books for laughter, escape, inspiration and comfort.
6. Picture Books are for everyone! Don’t overthink the word count. All books are bigger on the inside than they are on the outside. Picture books contain multitudes. Do you know which books you’ll remember when you’re ancient? The books you loved when you were young. Buy picture books. Treasure picture books. Value picture books. Picture books are for everyone.
7. Poetry is for everyone! Don’t overthink the word count. All books are bigger on the inside than they are on the outside. Poems contain multitudes. Do you know which poems you’ll remember when you’re ancient? Probably that one about the trenches that got drilled into your head at school and made you think you hate poetry. Give some other poems a chance. Buy poetry. Treasure poetry. Value poetry. Poetry is for everyone.
8. Lots of people want to be published writers. Believe me, I get it. Speaking to aspiring authors, or people who have taken the plunge and self-published, feels like it takes up a lot of our time these days and we try to be informative and supportive and/or sympathetic. It’s a whole newsletter by itself, and one I’d never write because I’d get so much grief, but what I can say is that wanting to publish a book is not a unique desire and simply having it doesn’t entitle you (or me!) to anything, so it pays to be *respectful* of the industry that you (and I!) want to be part of.
9. Twitter is a vital part of my business. When you work in a small shop in a small seaside town and your business partner is your small mum, you could easily feel quite cut off from the industry; out of the loop of publishing London. But you have Twitter. Where you can connect with authors, readers, publishers, publicists, reps, libraries and other booksellers. And you do. All day, every day. It’s what makes you feel part of the bigger picture. It’s where you celebrate with your 'colleagues, most of whom you’ve never met, but who delight all the same in the little wins you share; ‘I got a big order!’ ‘I sold a poetry book!’ ‘I’ve booked an author event’ and send sympathy and supportive gifs when you just want to show someone the massive pile of packing paper that you’re going to spend all afternoon flattening and folding while you eat seven custard creams. I sell books on Twitter, via DM, to people who will never be able to visit my shop in person, and I’ve made friends that I hope will outlast any lease. Twitter can be the best of bookselling.
10. Author events are magical. God, I love to chat to authors. I love to hear them read their own words and talk about how they made them. I don’t have anything more to say on this topic; the highest highs of my bookselling career have been author events.
11. Books get better when you talk about them. Are you in a book club? You should join one. Ideally one that works like mine, where the person who picks the book is not just your friend who likes the same thing as you. I pick all the books for my book club and my rules for selection are simple; we don’t repeat authors and each book has to be distinctly different from the last. That’s it. Our reading list is beautifully varied and our discussions are informal and lively. It’s a day I look forward to every month. I gather new appreciation for every book in post-mortem and find myself making more sense of my own thoughts. My response is clearer in conversation than it ever was just bumping around in my brain, and I’m much more likely to remember a book if I’ve discussed it with someone else.
12. Gosh this really was a mess of a list, wasn’t it? Sorry. Did I do the one about the picture books? Did I come across as wise and friendly, or weary and grumpy? I don’t know that I have a twelfth thought about bookselling without sounding like I’m resigning or dying, but I suppose I want to say that opening a bookshop with my mum was one of the best decisions I ever made. I’ve been a bookseller for a third of my life now and that feels like a good portion in the pie chart of my personality. I read books, I write books and I sell books. Hold on for a recommendation…
The Glass Pearls by Emeric Pressburger (Faber)
I’m going to keep this short because this newsletter is already too long but this pacy noir from film-maker Emeric Pressburger (of Pressburger & Powell) is my recommendation for you this week. This 1966 gem has re-issued by the class acts over at Faber Editions, with super stylish cover art, luxurious flaps and an eye-opening introduction from writer Anthony Quinn (don’t read the foreword before the novel – it always assumes you’ve already read the book and contains spoilers).
I’m not going to go into the details of this dark plot because it’s shocking and brilliant and I want it to unfold for you in real time. This is a study of paranoia and deception, with a nail-biting climax that I am trying so hard not to tell everyone about. Not only is this novel’s angle inventive and (still) controversial, but the experience of reading it self-identifies as problematic.
The point is to be lured, the point is to be horrified, the point is to learn, the point is to admit that we can be deceived.
The cast of supporting characters are so lively and memorable, and 60’s London swings in the background while this quiet character with his extraordinary secret sets up shop in your mind. Pressburger not only encourages you to sympathise with a man who cannot be trusted, he skilfully coerces his reader to assume the identity of this inconsistent man; when the chase is on, it is the reader who feels pursued, when a prize is dangled, it is the reader who reaches for it… but wait, not you, no, you’d never have anything to do with a man like that…
Katie Clapham is a writer and bookseller from St. Annes on Sea, Lancashire.
She runs the independent bookshop Storytellers, Inc., and writes for all ages.
She still lives on Twitter: @storytellersinc
come to think of it, they ARE easy to wrap...perfect
Congrats on your 12 years Katie and co. 🥳🥂 Thank you for all that you do, booksellers like you make the world a much better place 🥰