Drop City Books
Our March Bookshop of the Month is radical independent Drop City Books. A catastrophic flood forced them to close in November 2024 and they have recently reopened in new premises in Hanley’s Piccadilly. Ahead of the reopening, we caught up with owner Ruth for a chat and asked why she became a bookseller, what her current favourite read is and, of course, about the new shop. Read on to find out more!
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.