The West Kirby Bookshop
Our June Bookshop of the Month is the West Kirby Bookshop in the Wirral. The shop opened in 2022 and has gone from strength to strength, moving to bigger premises last year. We caught up with Jordan, one of the owners, to talk about what made them open an independent bookshop, what their customers are buying, their three book clubs and finally, their future plans. Carry on reading to find out more!
1. Tell us more about the shop – how did it come into being, what was your vision?
Dan and I set up The West Kirby Bookshop in July 2022- hoping to bring together our respective experiences in bookselling & publishing and hospitality & service. Whilst I was relatively new to the area, Dan has spent most of his life here, so it felt like a perfect combination- marrying a wider knowledge of the book industry with localised knowledge of the people, places and communities that make up West Wirral. Increasingly frustrated with the decline of the traditional high street, we wanted to ensure that service, hospitality and rapport were at the heart of everything we do at the bookshop. There are definitely big shifts in typical high street, and city centre shopping- not all for the best- but what it has left room for is for retail offers in towns and suburbs to take up the mantle and flourish. Post-lockdown, more and more people are working from home, the traditional 9-5 isn’t quite the same and there’s a shift toward wanting to shop local and keep money within our local areas. 4 years in, the bookshop is absolutely thriving with over 150 members in our book clubs, weekly events, regular school visits, collaborations, socials and so much more. All this is to say that our vision was to celebrate reading as something recreational, fun and just as culturally enriching as films & music, with a passion for people at the core of everything.
2. What’s it like running an independent in West Kirby?
Hard, but incredibly rewarding work! The idea that we have time to sit behind the till reading or playing on our phones is an absolute myth! We moved to a much larger premises in August 2025, so the start of our day is usually mopping, brushing and breaking down cardboard, and our after hours are filled with really busy events and book clubs. We’re incredibly lucky to have a fantastic stream of visitors throughout the day, so we try to complete admin tasks—like paying invoices, responding to emails, pitching for events and online meetings—before we open and after we close, so we can focus on recommending books, chatting and getting out new stock that arrives every day.
I think we’re quite biased but West Kirby is a really special place, with an incredibly supportive community. We have a perfect balance of nature, with beaches, boardwalks, parks & gardens, and a retail offering full of independent businesses – quality coffee shops, a record store, a deli, homeware shops and a great selection of pubs, restaurants, & bars. It’s easy to forget how lucky we are to live and work in a town that offers so much on our doorsteps, yet remains only 30 minutes from larger city centres too. The support from other independent businesses has been crucial too. There’s a great ecosystem which makes West Kirby an attractive offering for an afternoon shopping!
3. What kind of books have your customers been buying recently? Have you noticed any trends?
It’s always a mixed bag. Literary fiction and non-fiction are our bread and butter, with a really busy children’s department on weekends & after school. I suppose our stand out sales at the moment have been for Caro Claire Burke’s incredibly compelling novel, Yesteryear, the latest novel from the Wirral-born writer Gwendoline Riley, The Palm House, the beautiful new offering from Robert Macfarlane & Jackie Morris, The Book of Birds and from the Yale UP list, it’s always great to see the ‘A Little History’ series doing well- the latest publication, A Little History of Mathematics by Snezana Lawrence has been incredibly popular on our front non-fiction table. Broadly speaking, we’ve certainly noticed a spike in sales from our politics & culture section, particularly on books explore the incredibly fractured times we’re living in. What If Reform Wins by Peter Chappell, Lost Boys: Undercover in the Manosphere by James Bloodworth, and Geoff Andrews’ Radicals: The Working Classes and the Making of Modern Britain are of particular note at the moment.
4. We see that you run a monthly book club – how do you choose the books that get discussed?
We run three literary fiction book clubs, one crime & thriller group, and one queer fiction group. Dan and I choose the books for each month and try to pay attention to two things: that what we’re choosing is very different from what we’ve discussed in the previous months, and that the book will generate a varied and divided discussion. Whilst we’re keen to avoid tokenism in our choices, we also ensure we read authors from diverse backgrounds, locations and experiences, to introduce the book clubs to a wide range of voices and perspectives. For June, our groups will be reading & discussing Fun & Games by John Patrick McHugh, Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes by Henry Van Dyke and Actually, I’m A Murderer by Terry Deary.
5. And finally, do you have any exciting plans for the shop in the coming months you’d like to share with us?
Yes! We’ve got a wonderful run of events throughout June and July. We’ll be celebrating Independent Bookshop Week in June with a special collaboration with one of our favourite publishers, Foundry Editions. The editor & founder Richard Village will join us to discuss the exciting worlds of translation, cover design and independent publishing on Friday 19th June at 7pm. At the end of July, the bookshop will be celebrating its 4th birthday with an exciting weekend of promotions, new merchandise and much more. Our website is currently being remade, but you can find out more- www.thewestkirbybookshop.com, or say hello on Instagram, @westkirbybooks.