1. What’s it like running an independent bookshop in Petworth?
Although I have been bookselling in Petworth for 24 years, I still feel excited when I turn the key in the lock each morning. So much has changed since 2002 both in bookselling and in wider society and this has seen the importance of what we do increase enormously. Many of our loyal customers have been with us from the start and are certainly the converted, but as a tourist destination town within South Downs National Park we are continually being ‘discovered’ and so are able to demonstrate what the high street still has to offer My most recent bookseller, an English graduate from Bath, has told me that she thinks she is starring in a rom-com with the shop and location. She awaits her Hugh Grant.
It has been a rare privilege to see life in the town over this time. I suppose I am part of the landscape now. Many children who were regulars with their parents are now adults and simply love revisiting the shop. I am proud that many customers want to say that this is ‘their’ bookshop and I am always thrilled to see this in operation when they bring their friends and families to browse and buy.
2. Tell us about your typical bookselling day – what’s your favourite part?
Good coffee is the starting point of the day. The croissants are long gone, the Greek yoghurt and fruit is in. Opening duties are general retail. I do love being a shopkeeper as well and I do have some history in my family of the same. We opened a card and gift shop next door 12 years ago such was our success with that side of the business – Red Card Petworth, has gone on under the direction of Sally Matson, my business partner, to win awards. So, there are two shops, 3 or 4 staff all starting their day and the social element is one we all enjoy. The courtyard outside is swept, the windows are polished, emails, orders due and to be placed and then meetings with reps, returns, training, social media; it all comes into play but only after the first two coffees…
3. How do you pick the books that line your shelves?
The stock chosen is intended to make it as difficult as possible to leave without a book in your hand… During the week the shop is a traditional market town indie, but at the weekend we enjoy a younger, more contemporary vibe so we can think very laterally with our choices. I indulge myself to a degree with art and design books and encourage all my staff to have an input. It is a big shop and so the more voices it contains the wider our appeal to the browser. I will always stock books that are important, germane to current politics, conflicts and thinking – in general not always of great commercial value but I am adamant that we have a responsibility to reflect what is happening in the world, and where possible present alternative viewpoints. Satisfyingly I do have a good number of very serious readers amongst my customers, and this intellectual curiosity gives me a freer hand with stock choices than I see made elsewhere. Always we want to surprise our customers and ensure they are rewarded for investing their time with us.
4. If you had to choose a book to recommend over the last 12 months, which would it be?
Incredibly difficult to pick only one book to recommend. On the basis of sheer reading pleasure, it would be Francesca Kay’s The Book of Days. A wonderful evocation of the post reformation world set in an English Manor in 1546, with the traditions and the superstitions of the older order still present and grinding against the new Protestantism. Wonderful writing, spare and meditative, the novel explores the precarious lives of women and the affirmations and succour of nature’s changing seasons. I felt a great loss when I had finished it. Writing about it now brings back what a fantastic novel it was.
5. And finally, do you have any exciting plans in the coming months that you would like to share with us?
The year ahead involves such things as a new event partnership with Brooklands Members at the iconic racetrack and museum. We may also be book selling at the Goodwood Revival again. This summer we are working on a mass literacy project in senior schools with the force of nature that is YA author Nicola Garrard. Overall, we will continue to provide excellence to our community and beyond and keep front and centre the joy, value and essential humanity of books and reading amidst an age of great uncertainty and reduced attention spans!
1. Why did you decide to become a bookseller?
After a few career changes and some big life upheavals, I decided to ask myself what I really wanted out of life, and then actually listen to the answer. I realised it was the same thing I’d wanted since I was 5 years old: to be surrounded by books, to meet lots of people and to get the chance to be creative and imaginative every day.
It’s the most varied, exciting job I can imagine. You get to be a designer, a curator, a presenter, an events planner, a buyer, a writer, a reviewer, a shopkeeper – sometimes all in the space of a couple of hours. The variety can be dizzying, but it’s also incredibly satisfying.
2. What’s it like running a radical bookshop in Stoke-on-Trent?
For me being a radical bookshop is something I am constantly aspiring to, rather than a destination I’ll arrive at. It starts with the books we stock, I want our shop to be a place full of ideas that are expansive and exciting and that help us understand the world we’re in and most importantly imagine better futures. But it definitely doesn’t end with the stock, selling left wing books to leftists is a job half done.
Being a radical bookshop is about how we show up and serve our local community and the causes we care about in everything we do, it’s about making deliberate decisions. Whether that’s about suppliers we won’t use, books we don’t stock, our relationship with technology, or the way we price books in the shop, the collaboration opportunities we accept or decline or the kind of events we host.
The reception in our community has been incredible. Drop City Books has become a place for artists and lefties and radicals and weirdos to get inspired and I could not be prouder of that.
3. What are your customers buying – can you see any trends?
I’ve been crunching numbers a lot lately, as we’ve just ordered all of our stock for the new location, and it was amazing to look at what our bestsellers are. The thing I love about Stokie readers is their open mindedness, and almost all of our best sellers are books we’ve read and recommend to people. And that means that left wing politics and contemporary horror fiction do the best.
4. Have you got a current favourite read, and if so, what is it?
I’ve just finished reading The Others by Shenna Kaylil; it’s a story set at the fall of the Berlin wall, it’s about 3 young people navigating life in East Berlin, falling in love and finding themselves, whether that’s as a parent, a professional or as an artist. The book really highlights the way that when we talk about concepts like immigration and prejudice and borders and surveillance, we are always talking about human lives and relationships. Learning more about this period of history has really helped me to think differently about what’s happening in the world today.
5. And last but certainly not least, we see that you’ve had a grand re-opening of the shop in February – tell us more!
We were forced to close in November 2024, after a catastrophic flood that led to us losing all of our stock and most of our belongings, and a lot of our hope. It was caused by the wilful neglect of our previous landlords. We actually never traded for more than 10 consecutive weeks without some kind of flood from the plumbing in the flats above us. It was an exhausting distressing way to try and run a small business and we made the only decision we could which was to leave that building. We had a year of uncertainty, we ran pop ups everywhere and anywhere, we popped up in pubs, boats, vans, ballrooms. It took a long time to find the perfect new home, but we made it! We’ve taken over a huge ex electronics showroom and we’ve spent four months turning it into a bookshop, we opened our doors back up on February 28th and we can not wait to see our customers again and show them the new place.
1. We see that the Stoke Newington Bookshop was opened in 1987. There must have been a lot of changes from then to now: what do you think have been the main differences in terms of bookselling, and in the book industry generally?
I am but a sprightly 34 years old, and have worked here for going on seven of those years, so I can tell you about all the changes I’ve witnessed in that period — the changes in shopping habits during and post-lockdown, the rise of romantasy, the increased conglomeration of the big publishers — and before that?
I’m always impressed the shop has weathered Amazon, the Kindle (I remember Waterstones caving and selling them in their shops for a bit, and then physical book sales picked up enough to ditch them again), various and ongoing recessions, a global pandemic…
With all that said, I would say the biggest change is that in 1987 there were no Bunny vs Monkey books and now there are, I think, ninety?
2. Have you always been at the same premises, and has much changed in the shop and surrounding area?
The bookshop began three doors down at 153 Stoke Newington High Street, which then became a bargain bookshop, and is now our sister Toyshop. We moved here in 1992 with Jo, the founder and owner, resolute in being part of the high street rather than the bougier Church Street round the corner.
We serve all members of the local community — the demographics of which have probably been the biggest change to the surrounding area, as Stokey has gone through a commensurate level of gentrification to the rest of Hackney/East London (not all bad)!
3. What’s your favourite part of the working day?
After my first, second, and third coffee, and the moment when someone asks if they should go across the street to buy fancy biscuits, it’s honestly whenever you get to recommend a book to a customer. It’s properly gratifying to know your stuff, to be able to discern what somebody is looking for, and fulfil their remit, no matter how vague. You get to pass on a book you like, often highlighting an author from a smaller press (like the ones represented by Yale!) and help a member of the local community out.
4. How do you choose the books that line your shelves – do you have a criteria to help you pick them?
It’s a rigorous and time-tested rubric of “do we like it.” There’s naturally a degree of recognising what’s right for our customers, diverse a group as they are, but one of the draws to an independent bookshop like ours is personal curation you don’t get from bigger chains/supermarkets/online/Steve Bartlett podcast interviews. Stuff we’re excited about, that our sales reps are excited about, or have Bunny vs Monkey in the title.
5. And finally, do you have any exciting plans for the shop in the coming months that you would like to share with us?
Events! We have a lot of cool things lined up, including writing workshops, stand up comedy, authors in conversation, book clubs, and a history of Nintendo in collaboration with a video game bar down the road from us. There’s more info on our Eventbrite and updates on our Instagram.
1. Tell us about your vision in opening the shop in 2023 – what made you become a bookseller?
Opening a bookshop really was a lifelong ambition, held since my mid-teens! I’ve always had a love of bookshops and hoped that one day I’d have my own. To my continued surprise, I now do! I’m incredibly fortunate to have been able to act upon the dream…
2. What’s your favourite part of the bookselling day, and the least …?
I honestly like all aspects of what we do here but especially like hearing back from customers who have enjoyed a book I’d recommended to them, that’s always very satisfying especially when the choice is a bit different to their normal type of reading options! It’s also always rather lovely to see people meeting friends and family in the bookshop. It often feels a bit like a virtual village green in the bookshop, connecting us with the local community. When visitors are surprised by the range and variety of books we stock in such a small rural location, it also brings a smile to my face!
3. How do you go about choosing the books that line your shelves?
We choose books based on personal recommendations, new title lists and also from memory. I enjoy stocking books that may be a little bit overlooked or forgotten, as well as the latest bestsellers of course! For example, I’m waging a one-man campaign to get everyone reading the Mrs Bradley Mysteries of Gladys Mitchell, who is shamefully overlooked! We aim to provide a well-stocked bookshop, especially when it comes to the Borders and Scottish history, so I’m always on the look-out for new volumes which look at Scottish culture and historical subjects. I like surprising customers by the breadth and diversity of the types of books we stock.
4. What kind of books do well in your bookshops, have you noticed any trends?
Literary fiction and classics do well, as does crime fiction and, in particular, classic crime from the 30s, 40s and 50s. Our Nature and the Environment ranges do well and our Folklore and Belief section has been particularly popular, too, to the extent that we now run a popular Folklore Club, which has been great fun to attend! I would not have thought that folklore, mythology and books on witchcraft would have proved to be such big sellers here and they’ve helped shape our bookshop’s unique identity in the Scottish Borders.
5. And finally, do you have any exciting plans in the coming months that you would like to share with us?
Well, we have just taken ownership of a second bookshop in the Borders, The Reading Room, Melrose, so watch this space!
1. What made you go into bookselling, and what is your favourite part?
I first started bookselling part-time as a student over 30 years ago with Dillons and since then have worked for various booksellers and publishers. I think this is such a wonderful profession to be part of, everyone you meet is so friendly and passionate about books.
The best part of the job is meeting customers, chatting with them about what they like to read and lots more. People do seem to open up to a bookseller and put the world to rights! I love the fact that we are creating a community of readers who are incredibly supportive of the shop.
We run two book groups each month; a History non-fiction group and a fiction group, both are very popular and all members have become great friends of the shop. I run the fiction group. It is so rewarding to offer the group a book they perhaps would have never picked up, but they discover they have really enjoyed. Hopefully it encourages our readers to step out of their comfort zone and try something different.
As we are a relatively new bookshop we have been blown away by the support from the local community. Many are so pleased to see an independent bookshop in their town, willing to support us with their book buying and attendance at events. It is just so wonderful to know that there is still a lot of love for a bookshop.
2. Your shop carries a wide range of different genres, from fiction to Children’s – how do you choose the books that line your shelves?
I tend to do the majority of the buying, as there is just myself and my sister Sarah, who has a background in education, running the shop. Mainly it is about choosing books that are perhaps a bit different or have caught our attention which we love, we then recommend these to our customers; they seem to trust our choices! After a year I now have a good understanding what our customers seem to like. Some of our customers will also recommend books that they have discovered and loved. We do sell some of the more big bestsellers but mainly it is about books that are just a very good read or a beautiful thing.
We are also passionate about getting children reading and learning to love a book. We have a dedicated Children’s area and we spend a lot of time with parents, grandparents and children recommending and finding the right book for them or whoever they are buying for. These may be cherished books from our childhood or just great new stories, there are so many brilliant books for children.
3. What kinds of books are your customers buying – is there a particular trend?
We tend to sell books from all genres, though history and fiction are popular. So is romantasy but I have to admit this is an area where my knowledge is weak! I need to read more in this genre and brush up on my knowledge of it.
Nature books are very popular too from the beautiful Clare Leighton’s Rural Life, anything by Robert Macfarlane, and of course Raising Hare to another beautiful book, 50 Plants That Changed the World by Stephen A Harris, which I think will be a good seller for us this Christmas.
Local interest is also a strong seller for us, the British Library’s Eerie East Anglia does well as does Imperial Mud by James Boyce which is an excellent introduction to the Fens and how the landscape we see today was created. Our bestselling book is Norfolk Dog Friendly Pub Walks, which encapsulates the essence of Norfolk life – walking, dogs and drinking!
Any fiction about Norfolk is always popular too, so we sell a lot of Elly Griffiths, JM Dalgliesh and Joy Ellis.
4. If you had to recommend one book published in the last year, which would it be?
That’s a hard one! I think it would have to be The Lancaster Story by Dr Sarah-Louise Miller which is the true story of the brave people, men and women who worked at the (many local) airfields and flew these magnificent planes. It is written by a local author from Downham who is a historian of war and conflict, specialising in air and sea power, military intelligence and defence and security. She is a lecturer at the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London, and teaches military education courses at the Defence Academy of the UK.
We held an event with her over the VE weekend, the shop was packed and it was the most moving talk. We must never forget these brave people who risked their lives for us. It is a wonderful book and another bestseller for us.
5. And finally, do you have any exciting plans for the shop in the coming months that you would like to share with us?
There are no big plans as such, as we move forward into our second year it is about establishing ourselves, running more events which have been extremely popular and building on the wonderful start we have been lucky enough to enjoy. Long may it continue!
Shop front photo by Will Osborne Photography
1. Your bookshop is themed as a shop that brings great reading written by women – tell us your vision behind establishing Collected.
When I decided that I wanted to set up an independent bookshop, the decision to specialise in writing by women came pretty immediately and naturally. This decision was partly informed by my own reading, which hasn’t included much writing by men over the last decade or more, and therefore by the books that I felt comfortable selecting for stock and recommending to customers. But this decision was also informed by what most excites and inspires me about books – the sheer diversity of stories and experiences, histories and creative expressions they contain and can open up to readers. Yet much of what is in the mainstream is homogeneous: research still shows a marked gender bias in publishing and literature (especially in literary prizes, reviewing, and texts that are studied in schools), and in reading habits, with men tending to read only books written by men where women will read those by men and women equally. So, my starting point was that I loved books and reading – and talking about and sharing books and reading – and I was pretty confident loads of other people did, too. But what if most of us were just paddling in the shallows when there were greater depths into which we might be diving? I wanted to jump in, and I wanted others to leap with me!
2. What’s it like running an independent bookshop and café in Durham? What do you hope your shop brings to the local area?
Probably most people think that the place where they live is unique, but I honestly think Durham is one of a kind – and also kind of weird! Although Durham is a city with a big, excellent university and the most beautiful, historic cathedral, it is also really no greater in size than a small town. But this is the joy of it. On any given day, we’ll welcome customers who range from university freshers, postgraduates, lecturers, tourists and people killing a few hours while they wait for their new passport, to local residents who might be finding us for the first time or who we see most days for their favourite coffee and a bit of book browsing and conversation. What I hope we bring to all these people equally is a warm welcome, a comfortable and comforting space, and a selection of books that balances the familiar with the new, giving them the opportunity both to find what they were looking for and discover what they didn’t know they wanted.
3. You stock a wide range of titles across all genres – how do you choose the books that go on your shelves?
With our specialism, you would think choosing stock was an easy job, but the honest answer is, quite often, with difficulty! Earlier in 2025 we doubled our shop floor by expanding downstairs and yet the shelves and tables are still groaning… We’re fortunate to have some really fantastic reps who know the shop well, and I’ve an amazing team of opinionated bookworm booksellers to help me out. But the guiding principle is to stock enough bestsellers, classics, and well-known names for customers to feel at ease, but then to pack in books from smaller, independent, and academic presses, books in translation, books by writers of colour, debuts, niche subjects, and those books that you hope might find their one, perfect reader, so that there is also loads to explore, to discover, and to surprise.
4. Do you have a favourite book that you’re recommending to everyone at the moment – if so, what it is?
We always have a book of the month – both fiction and non-fiction – and share the choosing of these around the team. But our September 2025 fiction pick has been mine, and is Helm by Sarah Hall. I love Sarah Hall’s writing, her unabashed northern-ness, and her astonishing creativity – and here she has reached new heights.
5. And last, but not least, do you have any exciting plans for the shop in the coming months that you would like to share with us?
With our expansion into a second floor earlier in the year, we’ve already had quite a bit of excitement recently. But the other thing we are really excited about is further developing our events programme to include more social events and partnerships with other independent businesses in Durham. Just the other week we had a wine tasting book club, hosted at a lovely independent wine bar round the corner from our bookshop, discussing Lush by Rochelle Dowden-Lord; in November we’re working with an Italian restaurant and bar on a dinner book club inspired by Danielle Valentine’s The Dead Husband Cookbook. So, customers should keep their eyes out for more of that kind of bookish fun in the months to come…
1. What made you want to go into bookselling, and what is your favourite part?
We had been friends since meeting at a baby group back in 2017, but we began to dream up Juno Books during lockdown, when we knew that we wanted life post pandemic to look a bit different for us, and when isolation made us really appreciate the value of community and simple acts like shopping in person. We wanted to create a bookshop and community which highlighted books written by women, queer people, people of colour and minoritised backgrounds, showing the breadth and importance of work being done. We are lucky to have wonderful customers and we love connecting people with their new favourite writers and helping them choose something they will really enjoy and reflects their life experiences or indeed transports them somewhere totally new! We also curate a wide-ranging events schedule and a lot of book groups which run through most of the year, and it’s such a joy bringing new writers to an enthusiastic audience here in Sheffield. It’s also a complete treat to work with each other – we take our work really seriously but there’s always room for a giggle and a lot of tea.
2. Tell us more about your book boxes e.g. who are they for, how do you choose the titles that get included?
Our book boxes are really for anyone – we’ve deliberately designed them to appeal to both avid readers and those who are just discovering the love of reading. Our boxes are both fiction and non-fiction and they cover a wide range of topics and genres. We have collaborated with Feminist Book Society to bring together their favourite feminist books across fiction and non-fiction, which has been great. We also offer a bespoke box service where customers can either request books to be included, or ask us to curate a selection according to their needs, which is really fun!
3. Have you noticed any trends in the books your customers are buying lately?
We’re definitely seeing a lot of love for books in translation, particularly from South East Asia, but also books from European countries as well. There’s also a real appetite for folk horror and femgore, which we are both too scared to read…On the other hand increasingly people are coming in asking for something joyful: when life and the world around us feel hard, it can be very restorative to escape into a good book that inspires hope.
4. If you had to pick one book to recommend that was published in the last year, which would it be?
This is such a hard question! We get it asked a lot and honestly it’s impossible. Sarah’s current favourite has to be The Tower by Thea Lenarduzzi, blending memoir, folklore and fiction in a surprising and moving way set around a tower in which a young woman was imprisoned, and Rosie’s is probably Palm Meridian by Grace Flahive, set in a lesbian retirement home in 2067 featuring a cast of unruly elders, it really meets all the requirements for joy, but will also make you cry.
5. And last, but not least, do you have any exciting plans for the shop in the coming months that you would like to share with us?
We’ve got some great author events coming up at the shop over the Autumn season, which we are really excited about. We are very excited to be reading Long Live the Post Horn (Verso) for our book club! We’re also planning an as yet to be announced BIG collaborative project with other Sheffield indie bookshops so watch this space…
1. We see that bookhaus opened in 2021 and you have managed the shop since then. Tell us what your vision was for the store at the time, has it been realised?
I moved to Bristol from London in 2016. Having worked in the book trade for several years, it struck me that there was a dearth of independent bookshops here. Bristol has a well-earned reputation for being a city in which people are engaged with art and culture, they are passionate about politics and activism, and they like to support local independent businesses. There are also two big universities, and students and graduates make up a large proportion of the population. Bristol was home to a massive environmental movement, it held massive Black Lives Matter protests and thousands of people belonged to organisations like Extinction Rebellion, ACORN, Momemtum and political parties and trade unions. It felt like there was a clear gap in the market for a bookshop that could appeal to this cross section of people. Part of our vision for the shop was to sell lots of books in translation, lots of books from indie presses, lots of black and queer authors and lots of books from a radical perspective. We also wanted to host lots of book launches, debates, poetry readings and literary events, and today we host an average of more than one per week. I would say that my vision is being realised.
2. What is it like running a radical bookshop in Bristol city-centre?
I love it. I worked in the book industry across several roles over the years. I worked on the shop floor at Ottakers and Books Etc, in Borders Head Office in a buying role, as a buyer and account manager for Lasgo Chrysalis, and as the Book and Print Buyer at the Royal Academy of Arts. I left the book industry for a number of years and worked in Craft Beer in pubs and breweries, and then got heavily involved in politics and activism. I feel that this broad and entirely unplanned range of experience has all contributed towards my ability to run bookhaus as I do. I have worked in roles across all sorts of genres of book, I have worked in events, I have experience of running and speaking at political meetings, and I have commercial experience. I only became interested in radical politics after many years of not being interested in politics at all (being far more interested in culture and the arts), which I like to think means that I can easily communicate with and get along with normal people who might not necessarily share my politics. Sometimes it can feel intimidating to walk into a radical bookshop and be unsure if you share their point of view or feel that you are ignorant of the subject matter of the books on display. People have no reason to feel that kind of insecurity here.
3. Tell us more about your different reading groups – how they were set up, how books get chosen for discussion.
I started with a reading group that covered contemporary fiction. Then after running that for a few months, I invited one of our booksellers to take over from me, and I set up a ‘Weird Fiction’ reading group, covering genres like science fiction, horror, fantasy, graphic novels or just odd or unusual books. We then set up a group that reads books on political matters, which then became the Revolutionary Texts reading group. I have read a lot of books on revolutionary history and theory, and I was listening to the Revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan, which goes through the history of revolutions in chronological order from the English Revolution through to the Russian Revolution. I thought it would be interesting to have a reading group that covered a key text from each revolution, like Common Sense by Tom Paine for the American, The Social Contract by Rousseau for the French etc… One of our booksellers is familiar with a lot of this revolutionary history and theory so she leads that group. Finally, another of our booksellers said that she would be very keen to run a reading group on feminism so that became our fourth reading group. They alternate between works of fiction and non-fiction. The contemporary fiction reading group changed at the beginning of the year, and now they exclusively read books from independent publishers. This means that people have more of an opportunity to encounter a book that is outside of the mainstream and is perhaps a bit more experimental.
4. What kind of books are your customers currently buying – is there a particular trend?
I’m not sure I would say there is a trend. Outside of our event and reading group books, which are always among our top sellers, we have been selling lots of How to Fall in Love with the Future by Rob Hopkins, Is a River Alive by Robert McFarlane, and a Guide to Wild Swimming Walks near Bristol and Bath, which all related to nature. We have also been selling lots of books like Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, Eurotrash by Christian Kracht, My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, Small Boat by Vincent Delacroix and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, which are all translated. We also sell lots of outliers like the Dictionary of Colour Combinations by Wada Sanzō.
5. We see that the current owners are retiring, and you are currently crowdfunding to buy the shop – is there anything you’d like to share with us regarding plans for this in the coming months?
That’s right. The current owners are planning to retire and would like to sell the bookshop to me. I have run it since the beginning, and I would like to maintain the bookshop’s existence and identity as we have built it over the past four years. My vision was to build bookhaus into a bookshop of global significance that will be here for decades to come. I have until the end of August to raise the funds for the takeover.
If anyone would like to learn more about the Crowdfunder you can find it here https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/bookhaus—bristols-radical-home
1. Tell us more about the bookshop – how did it come into being and has much changed in that time? How does knitting/yarns fit in?
Store 104 started in the heyday of the pandemic, in the summer of 2020. Our family has had a selection of shops on the High Street for over 60 years, run first by my grandmother and then her three daughters. We were offered the amazing opportunity to be the third generation of the family to run the business, doing whatever we like with it. We sat down and asked ourselves what was missing from the High Street and also what we would love to do, and so the bookshop was born. I’m also an avid knitter and we have had a yarn shop as a family for many years. My grandmother was an incredible knitter and my mother and her sisters are equally fantastic, so the yarn shop feels like a continuation of their legacy. All in all it’s a very selfish venture, I just sell exactly what I like!
We’ve added various strands to the shop, from artist’s studios on the upper floors, to a speciality café/deli at the back of the shop. We’ve also moved into cards and giftware and locally produced artisan goods, which all fit really well with us. We run events and courses too, our book club is really popular now and it all feels like we have a sense of community in the shop. It feels nice to have regular customers, five years down the line, Store 104 feels really concrete and here to stay.
2. What’s it like being an independent bookseller on Rochester’s High Street?
It’s really enjoyable, I’ve worked in other retail areas and never before have I met such a welcoming community of both other booksellers and customers. It feels like everyone really wants books to work, and so being a part of that is so refreshing, in what can otherwise feel like a very tough industry.
Rochester High Street has always been very independent, we hardly have any chain shops and so when things like the pandemic happen, instead of big box retailers abandoning their small shops, independent businesses hunker down and make things work.
Being an independent bookshop is great as well for giving our customers a curated selection of books. Whilst we can and sometimes do go for the big hitters, it’s much more enjoyable finding and presenting titles that people can’t find in other places.
One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that everything we sell is very personal and tactile, from books to yarn to the café. I can watch customers get completely absorbed in the shop and know that they’re going to find something exactly right for them, that no one else would be able to guess, there’s something really nice about that.
3. How do you pick the books that go on the shelves – is there a criteria?
Really it’s all down to personal taste, our reps have really tuned into what they think I’ll like and so when they present them to me more often than not it’s just sifting through and saying yes. I do have to be careful to make sure the bookshelves aren’t just translated fiction and short story collections…
4. If there was one book you had to recommend so far this year, which would it be?
I really enjoy Izumi Suzuki’s short story collections – Terminal Boredom and Hit Parade of Tears (Verso). I’ve been dipping into them this year and they’re so electric. Brilliantly written and I’m so glad they’ve been rediscovered and translated. I’d absolutely recommend them for people wanting something new and more than a bit off kilter.
5. And last, but not least, do you have any exciting plans for the shop in the coming months that you would like to share with us?
The shop keeps going and evolving. We’ve got book launch events in the late summer and autumn, and we’re planning on a few more things working with the local community. We’re not great at forward planning to be honest, so we like to absorb and work as we go. It’s a nice way to keep things fresh, promise!
1. What made you want to go into bookselling, and what is your favourite part about it?
The simple answer is of course a love of books – of reading, of re-reading, of talking about books, of discovering new authors or once-lost gems. The best moments in the job are when you are chatting to someone and you connect over a book, perhaps one you haven’t thought of for a while, and then you each begin recommending other things to each other, some of which you’ve read and some of which you have never even heard of. Those conversations happen several times a day and always leave me with a spring in my step (and yet another pile of books to read)…
2. What types of books have your customers been buying recently? Have you noticed any trends?
As a small independent, one of the lovely aspects of our shop is the breadth of what people are reading. We sell a wide range of books and often a bestseller for us is shaped by what we – my colleague Harry and I – happen to be really excited about that day. Recently we have been a bit obsessed with On the Calculation of Volume and lots of other translated fiction. With the centenary of Mrs Dalloway, and as a huge Virginia Woolf fan, I have been enjoying chatting to people about Woolf and recommending Harriet Baker’s Rural Hours and Mark Hussey’s Biography of a Novel.
3. You run several book clubs that cater to all tastes – how do you choose the books that get discussed?
We have five book clubs, endless spreadsheets, loads of lists, always make notes of things we have read that we think will be good choices in the future… Then we totally ignore all of that and choose a book that gives us ‘the feeling.’ You know. The Feeling.
Having said that, we do tend to offer the groups a choice of two each month but lots of them say they like having the choice taken out of their hands. And we are careful about making sure we read a range of races, genders, contemporary and older books etc…
4. What’s it like running a bookshop in Bristol?
Wonderful! Bristol has had a brilliant increase in independent bookshops in the last few years and we’ve joined a brilliant, kind and fun gang of book obsessives. I feel like Bristol is made up of lots of small villages so the bookshops in each area very much have their own identity. And it’s a city where I would say a lot of people care about shopping locally and supporting small businesses, so we have been able to build a business that is part of and fosters community which is exactly what I hoped for.
5. And last, but not least, do you have any exciting plans for the shop in the coming months that you would like to share with us?
Well, we have only just moved to larger premises so that’s been pretty huge! I started the shop in a tiny space in the Clifton Arcade, which was wonderful, but the ability to have a store room and space for a kettle has been rather life-changing. We have lots of events coming up – already planned into January 2026 so there is something to look forward to every week. In June, we partner with Foundry Editions for Independent Bookshop Week which will be a great fun celebration of all that they are doing to support Mediterranean translated fiction in extremely classy covers…