Independent bookshops

A series of articles on independent bookshops by Adam Hewitt, June-August 2007.


“This is my passion, and I’m the magic. I reckon I can probably sell anything.”

Susan Caroline, manager and part-owner of Pengwern Books in Shrewsbury, has no doubts about her retail skills.

But why is her business struggling when her close friend and former colleague, Anna Dreda at Wenlock Books just 12 miles away, is sitting pretty with a major award under her belt and ever-growing profits?

Shrewsbury itself is a haven of independent shopping - around 65% of the shops in the town centre are privately owned.

Pengwern Books is one of these, but it faces a Waterstones across the street, and is close to a large WH Smiths and branch of the Works.

There are also three secondhand bookshops nearby, two other remaindered bookshops, and of course a Sainsbury’s, a Tesco, an Asda, a Morrisons, a Woolworths.

Then there are the countless charity shops and the thousands of booksellers lurking on the internet, unbound by mere geography.

Susan’s immensely cluttered office just goes to show how much of her time she spends downstairs with her customers, she says, which is the one absolute necessity in the face of such competition.

“It’s about the value added we offer. I’m good at presentation, interaction with customers, helping customers, meeting needs, offering a different service – but to do any of it I have to be here.

“There are loads of other things I’d love to do to help the business, but they all mean spending time out of the shop. My staff are brilliant, but this place is my baby, and people have to know who I am.”

The shop sells new books, and most of its business comes from ordering in titles for regular customers, usually by the next day, Susan says.

“Monday through Friday, 70% of what we do is ordering books in. We can’t hold everything, but people like the contact. A lady came in this morning to buy Harry Potter, and ended up ordering three more books after we had a little chat, and that’s completely standard. They know we can get stuff quickly.”

Back downstairs, Susan breaks off the interview to serve a worried-looking customer.

“I’m looking for a book – I don’t know what it’s called or the name of the author, but it’s for my book group.”

Susan seems unoptimistic – even the vaguest visitors usually give more hints than this.

“Ah, it’s by an African!” her customer remembers.

With a smile, Susan points her in the direction of ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Customers in other bookstores have some reservations about small independents, beyond just the generally higher prices.

They mention having to browse while being watched by the owner, sometimes feeling judged on what they buy, and an attitude variously described as“holier-than-thou”, “self-righteous”, and “snooty”.

But a browser in Pengwern Books told me those people are obviously visiting the wrong independents. John Semple, 62, said he liked the slightly manic feel to the shop, which he preferred to the mustiness of some secondhand shops and the overly precise and clinical feel of the larger chains.

“I go to Waterstones for non-fiction stuff like gardening and cookery, but I get a bit bored with all the bestsellers. It’s nicer here, to have a chat and pick up some different novels, and get recommendations that don’t come straight from the publisher.”

But the shop, open for exactly a year come the Bank Holiday weekend, does not have enough loyal customers like John.

Susan says: “With a financial hat on, yes, we’re struggling, we’re in trouble, but we’re doing better in this shop than the numbers suggest. I’m trying to save the business, and it’s quite hard at the moment.

“But we will, it’s a good business, far too good to let it go under. And it’s expensive, going bankrupt!” she laughs.

Some of their financial woes come from a misjudged decision to go into business with a silent partner, Susan says, coupled with hangover debts from a previous venture nearby. Pengwern is not her first shop, and she has experience throughout the retail sector, and she is confident things can be booted back on track.

But more than 300 independent bookshops have closed since 2001, according to the Booksellers Association, and the changes in the market are affecting everyone.

Although known better as a music store than a bookseller, Fopp’s demise in June was widely seen as portentous, and Borders’ UK operation is struggling.

Even Waterstones recently announced the closure of 30 stores, including a huge flagship shop on Oxford Street, London, as part of a cost-cutting programme after a huge fall in profits across its parent HMV Group.

Waterstones managing director, Gerry Johnson, announced an even tighter focus on bestsellers to compete with the supermarkets, and greater emphasis on the most profitable sectors, like cookery and children’s books.

It will also give more space to stationery and gift-wrap, which have much higher profit margins than the books.

Some independent booksellers welcome these developments as giving them more chance to differentiate themselves, and focus on smaller publishers and the humanities.

Nic Bottomley, owner of the award-winning Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights in Bath, wrote in the Guardian: “The narrower Waterstones makes its core stock, the easier it is for any decent independent bookshop to find niches where it can compete.

“Book-buyers are already jaded by the piles of celebrity biographies blocking their route to the history or literature sections.”

Susan agrees, but says she never criticises Waterstones staff, as all booksellers must do it out of some kind of love, and “even bad books are books and therefore sacred,” as the German novelist Gunther Grass once wrote.

“But they’re in the business of shifting a commodity, we’re not, and what they sell doesn’t seem to matter so much to them.

“I don’t want you to think we’re not in the business of trying to make lots of money - - oh, that would be wonderful!” she says, offering a mock prayer heavenward.

“But I believe in books. We are who we are because of the people we meet and the books that we’ve read.”

Anna Dreda thinks Susan was incredibly brave to open up a new bookshop. Wenlock Books has been going for 21 years, and Anna has worked there 16 years. She took over the shop four years ago when the previous owner retired.

Susan worked at Wenlock Books for a year, managing the finances while Anna focused on the bookselling.

Her already successful shop became a magnet for a whole new range of customers when it scooped the Independent Bookseller of the Year award in 2006.

Her success means Anna has plenty of time to spend having a coffee with her customers, without needing to worry about the internet or ceaseless self-promotion.

The serenity in the shop seems a long way from the maelstrom of activity and chatter at Pengwern.

Anna considers herself lucky to be indulging a childhood dream, while still making money.

She says: “I’ve always wanted to run a bookshop. When I was ten years old I read a book called ‘A City of Bells’ by Elizabeth Goudge, about a young man who comes back from a war and opens a bookshop.”

Passages in the book where the bookseller ambles around his shop at night-time set off a lifelong desire for Anna.

“It took me a long time to get to it, but this was always the direction I was heading. I’ve been working in bookselling now for over 20 years.”

Upstairs, the shop has a smaller secondhand section, to complement the new books downstairs. Anna acknowledges that much of her success is directly attributable to the location of the shop.

Much Wenlock is a small town near Shrewsbury, and is famous for hosting a series of sporting events in October 1850 that later inspired the modern Olympic Games. The Wenlock Olympian Society held its 120^th annual games in 2006.

The town also sits near Wenlock Edge, a huge limestone ridge and tourist landmark formed 400 million years ago that today offers spectacular views of the Shropshire countryside.

Anna says: “This town itself is part of my unique selling-point. I’m on a medieval high street - the building over the road had its façade built in 1674, and it’s even older behind.”

On top of its magnetic pull for tourists, its small size means Anna faces almost no competition, and yet rents are lower than in more commercialised and populated towns.

Jane Streeter, an advisory panel member for the Small Business Forum of the Booksellers Association, specialising in advice and support for independents, says she always tells new start-ups to look closely at nearby competition.

“Location is the most important thing. A small town can support a bookshop, but opening up near a chain or a supermarket can make life very difficult. Rent can be a huge problem in bigger cities too.”

Without these obstacles, Anna can afford to stock books far out of the mainstream that never trouble the bestseller lists. ‘The Ashley Book of Knots’ costs £50, contains nothing but descriptions and pictures of 4,000 types of knot, and the shop has sold just three copies of it in 15 years.

But Anna still replaces it whenever a copy is sold, because she loves it, as did the previous owner before her.

“I keep it on my shelves, because I don’t have anyone looking at a sales history, or telling me that it’s uneconomic for it to be there. I can do what I please. And it works.”

She also stocks the entire series of Persephone books, forgotten twentieth-century novels written mostly by women, as well as the Eland series of classic travel literature brought back into print.

But modern fiction is Anna’s great love, and also what depresses her most.

While she is glad of the greater efficiency in the book trade since she first came to it, she thinks the commercial pressures behind it are also deadening the quality of new fiction.

“I’ve just been on holiday in Ireland and I took four proof copies of books that are yet to come out, and I only read one of them all the way to the end. And I think that is gloomy, that I get depressed about.

“The downside of prizes and lists and ‘hundred best’ and ‘books that changed the century’ is that although they keep books high profile, they don’t necessarily bring about good quality fiction.

“Books on sale in supermarkets and hardware shops just means really good stuff and anything non-mainstream gets squeezed out of the market.”

For their part, the supermarkets insist they are a complement, not a threat, to traditional booksellers, and that more outlets selling books means more people reading, which improves the situation for everyone.

They have flourished since the 1997 abolition of the Net Book Agreement, which since January 1 1900 had let publishers set a minimum sale price on books they supplied.

It was declared illegal after a long court case, and since then heavy discounting on bestsellers has been the norm, as well as a huge boom in the number and types of shops selling books.

Consumer spending on books has increased every year since 1997, despite a dip in 1994-6. Supermarkets now sell around 12 per cent of all new books in the UK, compared to 35 per cent sold in chain bookstores, and around 15 per cent in independents.

The success of Wenlock Books – every month since Anna took over has been better than the same month the previous year, except June 2007 because of the floods –comes at a time when the number of shops selling books is rising much faster than the number of books sold, causing hard times everywhere.

But Jane Streeter says it can be easy to exaggerate this.

“It’s not all doom and gloom, certainly. Some of the shops that have been closing are actually more like stationers than booksellers, and many more are moving online or simply retiring. It’s tough, but we help each other, and try not to moan!”

Anna certainly has nothing to moan about – for a start, she has complete discretion over her stock, when not all independents are as fortunate.

Instead, to try to shoulder in on the discounts won by the bigger chains and supermarkets, some independents have come together in buyer’s groups to negotiate collectively with publishers for better deals.

Susan experimented with one buyer’s group at Pengwern, but it has not proved a success.

She said: “Most of the people signing up to it aren’t in my position. They’re not surrounded by every bit of competition known by humankind, so the list tends to be really mainstream, which I can’t sell.”

Many books on the list, like Stephen King’s latest, are sold cheaper across the road in Waterstones even with the discount she can offer. Susan says that only Andrew Marr’s new television series tie-in book has sold well.

“Yet you have to get a minimum of ten of each title, so if you’ve got 20 titles, that’s 200 books. I’d rather have 180 different books, a wide range - I think I’m going to knock it on the head, even though I could really do with the discounts.”

Anna, by contrast, has the luxury of discretion: “I am very individual in what I like in a book.

“Pretty well every book downstairs I’ve decided I want to sell. Susan’s experience is very different to mine, but that’s the beauty of running a well-established shop.”

Visitors to the shop clearly appreciate the beauty of it. Next to the fresh flowers on the table specially placed so Anna can share a drink with her customers lies a well-worn guestbook.

“I’ve never been into such a welcoming bookshop – such a marvellous and eclectic collection,” writes Julian Spencer from Abergavenny. Others thank Anna for her hospitality, especially the free tea and cakes, which seem to go down a treat with everyone.

“The best bookshop in Britain,”reads the most recent entry.

“I will be back.”

Tales from a Peak District Bookshop

It’s the coldest recorded place in the country, and nearly a third of the population of England lives within an hour’s drive.

Buxton, one of England’s most famous spa towns – where snow once famously interrupted a game of cricket at the height of summer – plays heavily on its reputation as a cultural centre.

It is only a small place, but hosts a regular opera season and a ‘fringe’ festival commonly seen as the warm-up for Edinburgh.

Mike Smith ran a bookshop in Buxton for three years, and wrote a book about his experiences there - ‘Tales from a Peak District Bookshop’, published and printed in Sheffield.

He called High Street Bookshop his “piece of Paradise”, and now says it was the best job he’s ever had, even though he’s had two other dream jobs as well – being headteacher at Silverdale School in Sheffield, and his current job as a features and travel writer.

His shop, described by a former pupil as ‘Dickensian’, was open during the mid-90s, but still relied heavily on paper and pen more than computer. Much of Mike’s work was done via catalogues, which he seemed to enjoy.

“I've been very lucky in life. Running the bookshop was great (if non-profit making) fun in its own right and gave me a way of breaking into writing by making contacts in the publishing world.”

Although Mike sold his shop to become the High Peak correspondent and later features editor for a lifestyle magazine, and wrote a further four books about the region, he still looks back on his time there fondly.

He talks lovingly about his more outlandish customers, and especially about the many American tourists who visited the shop in its three years, most on coach tours.

“They were usually polite, but tended to rush in, take photos, wave a cheery goodbye and be back on their bus before they had time to buy anything.”

Mike loved his “small literary club” of hardcore regulars, but was always more amused by the one-off buyers. One customer wanted a book a particular shade of green and of a specific size as a decoration for her table, but was indifferent about the book’s contents.

Another bought an expensive complete works of Shakespeare, just to help with crosswords.

But customers were never as regular a thing as he would have liked, and so owning a small bookshop can be a solitary existence, Mike says.

It is one that lends itself – obviously – to reading. One of the main reasons Mike wrote his book about the shop was as an outlet for some of the anecdotes and ephemera he picked up during these sessions, but had no-one to tell.

He delights in such quirky gossip – Enid Blyton’s supposed penchant for strip tennis, for example, and Jeanette Winterson’s professed dislike of men wearing shorts.

“Running the bookshop was a sheer indulgence, three years that nicely satisfied a lifelong ambition,” he says.

The ‘bookshop as retirement project’ idea is hardly Mike’s own, but he says it was the chance to take up writing more seriously, rather than just the shop’s meagre takings, which made him sell up.

But he says it must have always been a temporary business on some level, because of the care he took in negotiating year-by-year leases, ready to shut down at a moment’s notice.

He has always lived across the Peak from Buxton, in the small town of Chapel-en-le-Frith, where he is now involved in community and regeneration work. He still shops entirely in independent bookshops as a small effort at solidarity.

“How I miss being one of them,” he says.

Candle Lane Books, Shrewsbury, and Alan Hill, Sheffield

If your book has lost 95 per cent of its value because you’ve lost the dust jacket, you’ve entered the world of antiquarian book-dealing.

Far and away from the concerns of new book sellers and the mass-market secondhand shops, the antiquarian dealers form a little community of their own, and many remain more concerned with book fairs and catalogues than the internet.

John Thornhill, an antiquarian dealer with more than 30 years experience, owns Candle Lane Books in Shrewsbury.

The shop is a hive of dark rooms, all full of crumbly, dusty Victorian novels and centuries-old Bibles. Some have been there for most of the shop’s 33 years.

John is set in his ways and proud of it.

“We don’t sell anything on the internet, I don’t see the use of it. We haven’t changed the kind of stock we keep much over the years – some of the collectors coming here in the 70s are still coming today, and we’re getting by just fine.”

It’s an outlook from a different era that would shock most new bookshops, with their independent buyer’s groups and next-day delivery, as well as the secondhand market, busy cataloguing their stock on amazon.co.uk and abebooks and ebay.

Alan Hill is Sheffield’s biggest antiquarian dealer, described by one bookshop owner as “the Don” of rare books. Another called him “the master”.

All of Sheffield’s other secondhand shops regularly offload rare and expensive books onto Alan, sure that he can be trusted to pay fairly and knows the market inside out.

While he is now an internet trader, he still relies on book fairs and his little address book to shift rarer and more expensive books.

Alan says: “It’s a more traditional way of doing things, with high levels of professionalism and trust.

“But we are being undermined a bit by amateurs, especially on the internet. They don’t know the difference between ‘very good’ and ‘fair’ and just they guess, and whenever they get it wrong, it reflects badly on our trade.”

Brian Tee at the Porter bookshop in Sheffield agrees, and says amateurs are discrediting normal secondhand dealers as well as antiquarian ones.

He says: “There’s people just shoving stuff online, not having a clue what they’re doing. It’s a big problem. The decent sites will ban you if you try and mess people about, but there’s really no professionalism.”

Amateurs may be forgiven some of their mistakes, as much of the trade terminology is complex and subjective, and just as jargon-ridden as any other specialism.

Even the definition of an antiquarian book is contested.

Alan Hill reckons it is traditionally a book published before 1840, John Thornhill suggests anything over 100 years old, and the Antiquarian Bookseller’s Association (ABA) thinks it’s simply a book worth more now than when published.

A book worth less is just ‘secondhand’.

John Critchley, secretary of the ABA, is fairly optimistic about the future of rare book selling, whatever definitions are used. He thinks supermarkets and chain stores are having only a negligible effect on the antiquarian trade.

“They are not really a factor influencing our part of the trade, although a more serious one is the entry into the market of charity shops. Oxfam runs several shops that just sell secondhand books, for example.

“Booksellers complain that they compete on unfair terms -their stock comes free, most of their staff are volunteers, and they have a 50 per cent reduction in Council Tax as charities.”

But Darren Vogelsang, manager at the West Street Oxfam in Sheffield, thinks the failing shops are just the ones refusing to change with the times.

It’s clearly an allegation that irritates him, and one that he has heard before.

“You can’t really blame a charity shop for closing down other shops,” he says.

“Council tax rebates and these things they say we get, it’s rubbish. We have to pay taxes like anybody else.

“We can sometimes claim certain things back from the government, but all we’re trying to do is make money for charity. If other shops don’t want to change or can’t afford to, it’s not our fault.”

Charity shops were once easy pickings for knowledgeable dealers, who would find valuable books marked at bargain prices by inexperienced volunteers.

But Darren says charity bookshops are now just as modern and professional as their competition.

“We know now how collectable some older books are, and with the help of the internet and price comparison sites, we can make money on them.”

Although mass-market fiction and academic publications remain their staple, sales of higher value stock like antiquarian books have helped push Oxfam’s profits from £7m a year to £27m, largely thanks to the bookshops. They are now seeking to raise this to £40m by 2010.

Book fairs also seem to be benefiting from the changes in the book industry.

The many fairs around the country are regulated by the Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association (PBFA), founded in 1974 when book fairs were first taking off.

They guarantee their members are reputable professionals, as dealers need the sponsorship of two current PBFA members to join as well as two years experience.

The PBFA organise a book fair somewhere in the country every two days, including famous ones in London, York, Buxton and at the Edinburgh Festival, and they remain important centres for the antiquarian trade.

Peter Moore of the PBFA says book fairs are about more than just retail, though.

“They continue to be patronised by the ‘regulars’ not just to buy the books but to meet their friends and discuss their purchases over a drink -in other words the book fair has become for some a ‘social occasion’.”

Nevertheless, every book fair sees some serious deals. The right first edition in the right condition can go for hundreds or even thousands of pounds.

Alan Hill has seen three colleagues get seriously rich from such deals – one by pure chance, but two just knew more about books than the people they were dealing with.

“They all made a killing out of it. It’s good to know people who’ve had that lucky break and suddenly come across that book which is a real rarity and sold for £50,000 or more.

“It does happen in books occasionally, like art or anything else seriously collectible – with some skill and lots of luck, you can make real money out of it.”

But some of the rarer items on sale at book fairs may soon come under threat from another new technology, known as print-on-demand.

The technology involves digital printing at costs far below a traditional print run, meaning single copies of books can be produced, which is completely uneconomical using normal methods.

What book dealers fear is the coupling of this technology with the digitisation of old books, as is currently being done by Google using the libraries of Oxford University, Harvard and other institutions.

The project involves manually scanning books page by page and storing the content digitally. It is extremely time-consuming, but when it is eventually completed, it is done forever.

It could mean an end to the scarcity which currently makes old and out-of-print books valuable.

Alan Hill calls it the biggest threat to antiquarian bookselling.

He said: “It will virtually kill parts of the trade. At the moment, one of the things that keeps little people like me going is that occasionally I’ll buy a nice eighteenth or seventeenth-century pamphlet.

“If you’re the one man in the world who wants to buy it, previously I might have got £250. But I’m not going to get anything for it now, if he can go to the Bodleian or go online and print off the page he wants or the whole pamphlet for maybe £50.”

James Allan, head of Imaging Services at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, said they do not plan to offer such a service there: “The Publications Department occasionally publishes facsimiles of material from the library, and a photocopying and digital imaging service is also available to anyone who is interested.

“But to the best of my knowledge there are no plans to offer print-on-demand in the near future.”

However, there is nothing to stop Google or other online companies offering to print these books for a small fee once they are digitised and online, as most are no longer in copyright.

But serious collectors are likely to always obsess over originality and quality, whilst academics rarely shell out on originals if there are library copies available for research, so book dealers won’t be losing any trade from them.

Most booksellers seem to think that the trade has weathered every other new technology thrown at it for decades, and it will weather this one too.

The Sheffield book trade

Sheffield has seen many changes over the past decades, and remains a civic-minded city despite the regeneration projects and its trendier image.

But not all change over the past 20 years has been for the better. Many of the city’s bookshops have closed down or been forced to small, remote premises.

Waterstones alone graces the city centre, and even it is hidden away in the Orchard Square shopping complex. A WH Smiths offers a few bestsellers at the train station.

Two Blackwells stores peep out from the campuses of each Sheffield university, but seem to focus more and more on student reading lists.

The independent bookshops left dotted around the city trade more on their reputations than on passers-by, as few can afford the rent on the main shopping streets.

Alan Capes of Rare and Racy on Devonshire Street knows more about bookselling in Sheffield than almost anyone.

Everybody calls his shop an institution. It’s a huge nest of second-hand treasures, eclectic music and decorations from the depths of its 38-year history.

But despite surviving previous threats to its existence, it is closer than ever to going under, says Alan, from behind a haze of smoky incense.

“I’m sure a lot of people say they’re fond of the place, and they’re right, we are practically an institution. But they’re not relying on selling books at 50p to get by,” he says.

Last year local bands played fundraising benefit gigs for the shop, and it has scraped by on goodwill and the occasional big sale. But it owes at least £3,000, and could be forced to close as soon as next month if it cannot pay.

Alan says: “It’s just not the way to operate a business like this any more. It’s not the way people shop.

“It’s not just us. There were art shops in town that had been there since 1860 that closed down pretty recently. It’s everybody,” he says, raising his voice to be heard over the experimental jazz - its esoteric music is part of the shop’s appeal for many.

Alan blames the soaring rents in the Divison Street/West Street area of Sheffield, as well as changing customer behaviour.

“There’s a completely different culture of shopping. So many people shop online, there’s definitely not as many people out on the streets, they’re all rushing to get home.”

Rare and Racy has loyal regulars – “and enough characters to fill an Agatha Christie novel”, as a fellow bookdealer put it – but they are not enough.

“People might spend five hours, 10 hours, looking at lists on computers until their eyes are bulging, but they won’t come in and buy things.”

Alan’s knowledge of his stock seems encyclopaedic, so when people do stop by, he knows if he can help. A student looking for a biography of American poet Oliver Wendell Holmes is directed to the third shelf down in the back room on the first floor.

Another customer let Alan know his feelings on his way out of the shop: “It’s proper stuff this, none of that Covent Garden crap. I could spend all day in here.”

Alan had no idea what ‘Covent Garden crap’ could mean.

Rare and Racy has an online presence, but Alan says they have not updated it for almost a year. They once had an employee cataloguing stock online and trying to get an internet business going, but the extra money brought in barely covered his wages, and he was let go.

Alan himself and business partner Jo Mhlongo remain more interested in running the shop than venturing online.

Alan says: “It’s just that this is how we’ve made our living for the last thirty, forty years, so we’re loath to give it up.”

Others have had to.

Alan Hill, another long-established magnate of Sheffield bookselling, has moved almost entirely online. He keeps his shop in Heeley as a warehouse, and gets occasional visits from loyal customers, but no passing trade.

He stores almost 100,000 books in the shop and behind it, stacked high and stacked everywhere, teetering and tottering, pile after pile. Finding his little office is like negotiating a maze with expensive walls.

“I’ll never sell them all, I’ve got enough books to last me another lifetime,” he says.

“People come in with boxes of books – I tell them they’re not worth anything, and they offer to give me them me free. I say I don’t want them, that the last thing I need is more books I’ll never sell.”

While secondhand bookshops will survive in rural tourist towns where they can clump together, such as Hay-on-Wye and Buxton, Alan thinks independent bookshops will always have too much stock and too little turnover to survive in bigger towns and cities with rental prices as they are.

But books are an ideal online commodity, he says – thousands of independent bookshops, both new and secondhand, trade through huge websites like abebooks, amazon and ebay.

“Sheffield has had a declining book trade for the last 20-odd years, really. That’s generally true of all industrial towns. But the internet is the future. Inevitably, it’s the way bookselling will go.”

It is already a mature market, which has seen initial expectations – and profits – level off as booksellers worldwide flood into every niche.

Alan has sold both used and new books throughout Derbyshire and Sheffield during his career. He was once even accused of contempt of court for accidentally selling 100 copies of Spycatcher, the banned memoirs of an MI5 operative, on its day of release.

But he now spends his days trawling the internet and parcelling books for delivery.

“I do miss being a traditional bookseller. The internet has made it less interesting, because you barely make your own judgments any more. There are no bargains, it’s all just supply and demand that you check online in advance.”

But it’s the accumulated knowledge of booksellers that’s now worthless that depresses him most, says Alan. The internet has wiped out much of that wisdom, so much of it can be discovered for free at the click of a mouse.

“I’ve been in bookselling for 30 years, and I sometimes feel like I don’t know anything any more. Books I thought were rare turn out not to be, prices are based just on how many copies there are on Abe and the other websites.

“I certainly don’t make any money doing this.”

Brian Andrews, proprietor of Biff Books and Records in Crookesmoor, has also moved online and virtually abandoned his shop. It’s been going for 20 years, but it’s a minor part of his business now, he says.

“It’s used principally for storage of my cheaper stock. Most of my trade comes from my harder-to-find stock which is not stored in the shop,” he says.

The image of a bookshop as a dumping ground for cheaper books is hardly likely to appeal to the romantic, but for Brian it’s always been a business. And unlike many, he says he prefers selling on the net to being shop-bound.

“During the last five years I have seen a huge increase in the number of books available online. Good news for buyers as prices have been driven down for common items, not so good for sellers.

“However, with careful stock selection, the net has great possibilities. Online selling gives access to a worldwide marketplace - there is a huge potential for growth.”

Brian says he thinks small independent booksellers everywhere will find it increasingly difficult to survive on shop sales alone.

He says: “Walk-in trade is virtually non-existent. These days I am only in the shop for a short period each day so this is hardly surprising but sales had already declined dramatically.”

In this environment it is surprising anyone would choose to start a new independent bookshop, but two small secondhand bookshops have opened near Hunter’s Bar in recent years, one from scratch and the other a radical refurbishment of an existing shop.

Brian Tee, a part-time philosophy lecturer and former Oxfam books employee, took over the Porter bookshop on Sharrow Vale Road just over a year ago.

He says he loves the day-to-day life of being a bookshop owner, and that it’s given him an unexpected status.

Brian says: “The lifestyle is really cool. The only thing you can compare it with is being a rockstar. It’s got kudos, it’s got status.

“When people ask what I do for a living, I tell them about my little bookshop. ‘How cool is that!’ they say. It’s like being David Bowie or something.”

The opportunities for a chat over the counter remain alive and well in secondhand bookshops, just as they have died out in many other shops, says Brian.

He is one of many bookshop owners who mention interaction with customers as the best part of the job, along with having the freedom to think and read. Book lovers know their own.

The playwright Tom Stoppard once said: “It is good to live in a world where bookshop assistants like books, rather than one where they don’t care whether they are selling books or cornflakes.”

Such logic inspires many independent booksellers, who say that if they cannot compete on price with supermarkets and chain stores, they can instead compete on customer service and offer a personal touch.

The Porter bookshop always concentrated on selling humanities and fiction to students. Business had suffered with the declining health of the previous owner, but since Brian took over, Blackwells is the problem.

Around 35-40 per cent of all secondhand book sales in the country are university textbooks, and most analysts expect the UK to follow the American example, where the figure is now 80 per cent.

Brian’s shop sits near a big student hub, but Blackwells’ buy-back policy is cutting deeply into his profits. But he has another worry too.

“A big concern I have is places like Blackwells doing deals with universities, just to order in reading lists. Like the one on Mappin Street- a few years ago it was a really nice bookshop, it had nice sections and some good stuff.

“But now it’s streamlined, it’s just targeted at students. That’s bad for students, and bad for everyone. Students are going to end up reading nothing else.”

Gareth Parry, floor manager at the Mappin Street Blackwells for the last four years, denies that the shop is in bed with the university or is cutting choice.

He said: “We don’t really have any business arrangements with the university. We do supply certain departments with books, but there are no contracts.”

Gareth says that if lecturers send them reading lists, Blackwells gets the books in. But he insists that is all, and that their range is wide enough to attract all sorts of customers.

“Obviously we want to do everything we can to help students and lecturers, but we still think books are something special, they’re not just a commodity.

“We do get a mix of people coming in. I’m a big reader myself, which makes this an expensive job, because I buy so many books here.”

But Brian agrees with Gareth that ultimately the more bookshops there are, the better for business it is.

He says: “It’s not about competition. I talk to most of the other booksellers, and we know it’s a positive thing to have a lot of bookshops, because it means book lovers come specifically to that area to browse, and their money follows. It acts like a magnet, sucking people in.”

Just down the road, Carl Ewing at Books on the Park also agrees with Brian. He started his business from scratch in mid-2005, against gentle advice from Alan Hill and others about the state of the industry.

But Carl had some experience working at the Porter bookshop under the previous owner, and knew it was something he would enjoy.

After a long career in business, he does not rely on the shop for a living. He talks about the laidback, pleasant vibe of owning a bookshop, and the camaraderie that comes from being part of a such a small and gossipy community.

“There is a rueful understanding amongst us that there’s no easy pickings. But it’s a great thing to do, unless you’re being hounded for money, which seems to be Rare and Racy’s default position.

“If you can avoid that, it’s still a long way from Hugh Grant in Notting Hill, but it’s quite therapeutic, being surrounded by books all day.”

He keeps his shop bright and modern and airy, and sells artistic photographs by local artists, including his wife. Nicely-framed photos of the recent floods sell especially well, but others are much more abstract.

But despite the modish nature of all else in his shop, Carl has never bothered selling online. He doesn’t like computers.

“Theoretically I shouldn’t be such a lazy bugger. I should go out and get computerised. It’s one of the many reasons I expect I won’t be here if you come back to interview me in five years.”

Richard Welsh, at the nearby but longer-established children’s specialist Rhyme and Reason, says he faces different pressures, as he sells new books rather than secondhand.

Business has actually improved over the nine years he has run the shop since it opened, as they have carved a niche, and won a wide and loyal customer base, he says - although the shop stays empty throughout the interview.

“It’s a struggle for any independent to keep going, there is a lot of pressure in the industry, you have to weather the ups and downs a bit.

“We do a lot outside the shop, rather than waiting for customers to come to us all the time.”

They bring authors into schools, and run the bookstall at Sheffield’s Off the Shelf festival every October.

A particular problem for Richard has been a growing trend of schools buying direct from publishers or dedicated schools suppliers at discounted rates. This is an important part of his business, and something he is loath to lose.

“Teachers and schools like everyone else are often aware of price differentiation and might be on the lookout for special offers, which isn’t our strong point. What we offer is more depth of range and knowledge and advice for people who want it,” he says.

Depth of range is something clearly in evidence – the small shop is completely dominated by shelves up to the ceiling in both its rooms, each filled to capacity and beyond with brightly-coloured books, both fiction and educational.

Richard rarely carries more than a copy or two of most books, preferring to keep an eclectic and quality stock.

Even so, being a small shop, there are still many books he cannot stock, and so like all of the remaining independents selling new books, relies on getting orders and requests in by the next day. Few of the chain bookstores can manage this, he says.

The chains themselves aren’t immune to the changing nature of the industry and the pressure from the internet and the supermarkets.

The music and book seller Fopp folded in June, and it seems its Division Street premises is to stay shut despite a small-scale resurrection of the brand by HMV, which also owns Waterstones.

Gennaro Castaldo, Head of Press and PR for the HMV Group, said: “HMV has purchased Fopp sites in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, Nottingham and Cambridge.

“For the moment, our priority is to get these stores up and running again. There are therefore no current plans to re-open any more outlets, including in Sheffield, I'm afraid.”

Sheffield has also lost its branch of Peak books, a small group of bookshops based in Matlock, and YSF books on Sharrow Vale Road.

The owners of YSF left just a simple message on their website: “The last book went to a good home on 14 Feb ’04.

“The reason for this sorry state is a general and progressive decline in sales, due largely to a spreading regression in society. Why read the narrative when you can see the edited highlights on film and tv!”

It finishes: “If there is a secondhand bookshop in your area, try and buy a book once a month at least, or they will not survive. You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”

Keith

 

Somewhere inside this man is the soul of a rock-star.

He’s got the eyes for it, the unkempt hair, the guitar in the corner, the vague yearning for the spiritual.

But Keith How is just a businessman. A peculiarly lucky one who has grabbed opportunities and enjoys his day’s work, but all he does is run a shop.

Keith has worked at the Bakewell Bookshop since 1977, and has owned it with his wife for most of that time.

But like all independent booksellers, although Keith’s business is books, books are more than just his business. Talking to him is like talking to an old romantic, a librarian, an academic – not a person who thinks in overheads and profits and stock returns.

“I hate the very term three-for-two,” he says.

“It’s like three cans of beans for two, but a book is a precious item. I don’t want to be like the major booksellers - they really can treat books like cans of beans.”

But with all independents struggling, doesn’t he just have to do what he can to get by?

“Look, business is OK. It’s been OK since 1977. I came into it through an accident. I was looking for something to do, something that had some meaning in it. I seemed to be guided here.

“And, sure, I wouldn’t say we’ve avoided the general decline amongst independent bookshops.

“But we have established a long-term relationship with the local community and people who travel to Bakewell. We don’t want to do anything to take away the uniqueness of the shop.”

He laughs at the thought of needing the internet to survive, like his competitors in bigger town and cities.

“Goodness me, if I had to depend on it I’d go home, I think. It’s much nicer to actually meet people.

“If someone asks you to recommend a read, although you put your life in your hands, it’s much more fun to say ‘I think this is great’, or ‘I’m not so sure about that one’. Who wants to stare at a screen?”

The Bakewell Bookshop does have a small website, but it seems as much for the staff to discuss their favourite books as to actually shift stock.

The shop itself is just two connecting rooms, but they are crammed with colour, and even the shelves seem to tell their own stories.

There is writing everywhere; quotations from books up the walls, film posters plaster the ceiling, famous lines from songs line the shelves.

Most of it gives a clue to Keith’s character – lines from The Who and from the Wizard of Oz, Ginsberg poems and Kerouac quotes.

It’s hard to think who would ever buy a book called “A History of Spoons”, but a certain look about the customers suggests it will find a happy home soon enough.

Keith hints at the workings of fate when I ask him about possible expansion of his shop, which certainly seems successful enough. The till rings throughout our chat.

“You can’t be two places at once, and this is what I’m supposed to be doing. I’ll know when I’m meant to be doing something different.”

But he already is doing something a bit different. Besides being a part-time musician and having been published in The Sunday Times, he helps organise both music and book events for the annual Bakewell Arts Festival, as well as blues and folk gigs as part of the‘Unplugged’ season straight afterwards.

“The festivals bring a lot of people in when the weather’s nice, but it’s also just part of being in the community. We’ve been here 30-odd years now, and you have to keep abreast and keep moving.

“If you think something’s not working, change it, but I don’t see the point of changing if it’s working fine.”

As I head out of the shop with a pile of books under one arm, Keith tells me his son trained as a journalist - but now he’s a musician.

Keith runs a wonderful bookshop, but eyeing the guitar, I wonder if his talk about fate and destiny might not be covering for his knowledge that in some other world, he could have been a star himself.