Harris & Harris
Set in the picturesque town of Clare in Suffolk is our May Bookshop of the Month, Harris & Harris. We catch up with its owner Kate about how she spends her day, what is selling well at the moment, and what’s to come in the future.
1. When you set up Harris & Harris, what was your vision?
After a career managing restaurants, bars and hotels, I then swapped all of that 20something years ago to train as a bookseller, working at 3 different bookshop chains and another independent bookshop before moving to Suffolk in December 2010. I then opened the doors to Harris & Harris Books the following August bank holiday in 2011.
There hadn’t been a bookshop selling new books in the town before and the only second hand bookshop had been closed a long time before we moved to Suffolk. As we had only just moved to the area, we didn’t really know how it would go but it was certainly worth a try and it exceeded our expectations from day one. I started off with mostly second-hand books and a few new, but the new books really took off.
My bookshop is classified as a general bookshop with something of everything new or old for readers of all ages. I wanted my bookshop to be very much a part of the community, somewhere that everyone would feel comfortable and happy to visit and I’m delighted to say that I was made to feel very welcome from the very first day.
We used to host book events in the old shop, but it was tiny and everyone had to stand up clasping their glass while the author balanced half way up the stairs. It worked well enough and we hired other halls or the church when events got too big, but we soon outgrew that little bookshop.
2. What is it like running a shop in Clare, Suffolk’s smallest town?
Our town of Clare may be small, but it’s pretty mighty! Set close to the borders of Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire, it has a nice selection of independent shops, cafes, tea rooms and eateries, pubs, museums, gallery, a castle ruin (albeit there’s only a little of that left), a town auction, golf course, fishery, converted railway station and a strong local community. It is one of the historic local Wool Towns, so we have a disproportionately large church. It’s perfect for a day out or weekend away but also a great place to live and work.
With all that in mind, it’s wonderful to be able to get to know everyone in the town and surrounding villages and after 13 years I have got a good sense of what sort of books work in the bookshop, and what doesn’t.
Since Covid my bookshop business took a surprising boost, and this is in no small part due to social media which I leaned on heavily to keep the bookshop going. I am rather keen on Instagram especially and putting out my bookshop videos really helped grow the business which then allowed us to take the plunge and expand. We did this by buying a very old recently closed down shop 5 doors down. Unfortunately, it took over 2 years of planning and restoration before we could move in but we had such wonderful encouragement and support along the way. It was certainly worth it and I’m so pleased with the new and improved Harris & Harris Books.
3. What types of books have your customers been buying recently? Is there a trend?
There’s been a pretty even spread of book sales recently but I’d say that fiction and especially hardback fiction is doing a lot better since we moved but that could be also due to better display of our new & noteworthy section. Publishers are producing some pretty spectacular editions as well as some Indie Exclusives recently and these certainly help sales. Childrens books have also pepped up and non-fiction hardbacks have gained a good foothold too.
Apart from Christmas, Spring is historically a good time of year for us as it brings out many more smiley faces, day-trippers and budding gardeners but this year we have all noticed Spring’s reluctance to show her face so gardening books have remained on the shelves and more novels to snuggle up with in front of the fire have taken precedence.
Political books have gained much interest here and due to all the goings on around the world, I have had many more requests for feel-good fiction. Something to warm the cockles and soothe the anxious times.
I try and steer the bookshop stock towards interesting and unusual books, things that may not be spotted everywhere. There are of course many books that we ‘should’ stock, but it’s nice to experiment with other gloriocities. Yale really do help with this, especially recent books such as The Herbal Year, Horta And The Grammar Of Art Nouveau, Paris 1874, The Mack: Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow School Of Art. All beautiful books that are a delight to hand sell.
4. Tell us about your typical day – what’s your favourite part?
I park up and run errands about the town, then prep the bookshop for opening, swoosh off to the post office and perhaps come back via the local coffee shop with a strong cup of black and perhaps a baked goodiment. Because I am pretty active on social media, my first moments in the bookshop once opened up, are to run around and collect up any book orders from previous evening or overnight, setting them aside or parcelling up with a cheery note, cup of tea and a biscuit, ready for the post office the following morning.
Throughout the day I’ll be answering the telephone, greeting visitors, serving customers, petting dogs, chatting about books, recommending books, placing customer orders, selling tickets for our events as well as a box-office for other events in the town. I’ll be reading reviews, ordering books, dealing with the post, planning window and table changes, seeing book reps and ordering even more books.
Everything stops when Alan brings in the deliveries, which is most days around 11am, pretty much like clockwork and this means the kettle is called upon to do it’s thing for another cup of strong black coffee – hearty Bookseller fuel. It’s like Christmas every day when the deliveries arrive. I may well have ordered all the books in the shop, but I might have ordered them months ago so it’s a treat to see them. Customers are contacted when their treasures arrive and it’s then time to photograph new books to put on the socials and plan my next #WhatsInTheBoxMrsHarris video, then put the rest of the books out in the bookshop, moving things around to keep the displays looking fresh.
After lunch and before the schools let out the little poppets, it’s time to request book returns, box them up carefully and arrange the courier to collect. Rotas and rep calendars need to be checked and plan for visits. When time allows, I list more books online, quick photoshoot and off they go.
Then it’s time to work on the events and author pop-ins we have coming up. As I mentioned earlier, we moved premises so we could do bigger and better events and we have had a smashing line-up already, including Nicci French and CL Miller and many many more to come. It’s great for the bookshop and it certainly puts our little town of Clare on the map but it’s jolly hard work. Not that I mind, of course, I always say – If you want something done, ask a busy woman!
Last thing before closing up is to check the displays are straight, shelves tidy, plants watered, no empty bookstands anywhere, check the window displays, get the parcels ready for the post office in the morning and write a note for whomever is in the next day with, or instead of me.
Next up, and usually on a Friday after work, is to film the latest instalment of ‘What’s In The Box Mrs Harris’ – 15 minutes of footage that takes quite a lot of planning to get in lots of new bookish delights, news, events chatter and a small fruit-based snifter. Then I have to put all the books away, wash up, lights off, lock up and head home.
Night-night bookshop, see you tomorrow.
A short commute home and it’s straight to work to upload the film footage, sort out invoices (fortunately Mr Harris does the rest of the boring back of house gubbins) and answer messages and emails through the evening (unless I’m engrossed in my book, of course).
What’s that? My favourite part? Well, all of it of course. Best job in the world!
5. And finally, do you have any exciting plans for the shop in the coming months that you’d like to share with us?
Well our main focus for the previous two years was to restore the old shop premises 5 doors down from the original Harris & Harris Books. This took way longer than it should have (surprising how dilapidated an old hardware shop could be) however this is now done and we are finally in as of October last year! It’s rather lovely to just stop and draw breath for a bit, but we’ve been in for 6 months already and really, there’s no time to lose.
It will be hard to top that for exciting plans but as I mentioned, one of the many reasons we wanted to move was to be able to do seated events in the bookshop. Since we moved, we have already had a few with lots more planned from now until at least September, then it’s the Bury St Edmunds Literary Festival a few miles away where we will be the pop-up bookshop again…bigger and better.
Other than all that, we are working on the Harris & Harris brand, H&H merchandise and book boxes, and republishing a couple of out of print local books.