Westwood Books
Our August Bookshop of the Month is Westwood Books, found in the town of Sedbergh in Cumbria. One of three official Booktowns in England, we chatted to Ellie, a bookseller at Westwood Books about what that means, what inspiration they draw from when stocking the books on their shelves, and their favourite part of their normal, bookselling day. Read on to find out more.
1. Your bookshop is in one of three official booktowns in the UK – what’s it like running an independent bookshop in Sedbergh? What do you hope it brings to the local area?
It’s lovely to be part of the Official Booktown community. It’s nice to fall under a special banner which interests and excites book lovers across the world, and it’s always fun to meet people who have travelled especially to cross England’s Booktown off their bucket list. Sedbergh has a lovely local community which we are proud to serve, and we try our best to keep connecting with them by running author events or involving the local schools in literary activities to hopefully foster a love of reading. We hope the town will only grow and flourish in the coming years so more and more people will want to pay us a visit.
2. What’s your favourite, and least favourite part of a normal working day?
I really enjoy interacting with the customers who come through our door. Whether they need help locating a certain section, or seek a recommendation from the fiction shelves, talking to people from our local community – or visitors to the area from further afield – is often the highlight of the day. It’s particularly nice to catch up with regular customers, hear about what they’ve been reading recently, and swap book recommendations. Working in a public facing job teaches you that people have all sorts of knowledge, interests and stories which can surface after just a short conversation. And even if not, I love a good natter either way, so I’m not fussy.
The least favourite part of the day very much depends on the day itself. No day is the same in Westwood Books, and with every interesting new task comes an equally difficult challenge. The biggest challenge we have, however, is one which I would wager troubles every bookseller on the planet: a lack of space. Yes, even with a shop as big as ours, we still struggle to find room for the mountain of books we get through the door. We are literally bursting at the seams with books. Organising, tidying and reorganising our behind-the-scenes areas frequently feels like a Sisyphean task, with many of the jobs being impossible to start until a list of about ten other jobs get done first!
But we’d much rather have too many books than too few. Plus, it’s reassuring to hear from fellow booksellers that this is a problem shared by us all. We are at least not alone, drowning in a sea of pages and words.
3. How do you go about choosing the books that line your shelves?
Because our shop is a hybrid of new, second-hand and antique books, our stock flow can oftentimes be unpredictable. When it comes to newly published books, we do what we imagine most independent bookshops do; keep an eye on current trends and highly anticipated reads, take advice from our reps, and occasionally add in books which we would like to read and hope someone else would too. One of the great things about independent bookshops is that we can provide a personal touch to bookselling, meaning we can select and champion books that follow our interests and passions, as well as popular, mainstream bestsellers.
When it comes to our used and second-hand collection, things arguably get more interesting. We must be very selective with the books we acquire due to our constant battle against shelf space, and we are consistently offered more books than we could ever possibly house. The physical condition often dictates whether we take books or not, as well as what subjects we have gaps in at that time. We also gravitate towards books on topics we maybe don’t see covered as often, niches and particulars which would appeal to a customer already well-read in an area. Quality of the information, cultural importance of the text, and aesthetic beauty of the binding often also come into play. In short, there is no way to easily distil our process for selecting books – it is essentially a heady mix of opportunity, research, instinct and guesswork!
4. If you could recommend one book published in the last year, what would it be and why?
Queens of the Wild by Ronald Hutton. This wonderful book offers a concise yet informative history of all the goddess-like figures who have peppered our history and traditions, from the medieval period to the present day. Drawing on history, anthropology, and the arts, Hutton explores how hags and fairies, witches and queens, all came to be, and how they have changed over the centuries.
We would recommend this book as it combines so many things we personally love to read about: feminism, folklore, and reworked perspectives on history and literature. Across his book, Hutton looks closely at four main figures—Mother Earth, the Fairy Queen, the Mistress of the Night, and the Old Woman of Gaelic tradition— and challenges decades of debate around the female figures. It also has a beautifully designed cover, and that’s always a plus in our books! For anyone interested in British tradition, folklore and religious developments, we recommend you pick this up!
5. And finally, do you have any exciting plans for the shop in the coming months that you’d like to share with us?
Westwood Books is always in a state of change, constantly evolving as we adapt to stock changes or experiment with new, and hopefully, better ways to run our shop. One big project we hope to see into fruition soon is a considerable layout change: unifying our currently separate children’s sections and turning our space downstairs into a welcoming, comfortable and well-organized area to house literature for young people of all ages. We are also always striving to expand and hone our collection of antique, rare and collectable books, and hope in the coming months that our catalogue will continue to refine and grow.