Today is National Bookshop Day
Celebrate and support your local independent
One of the things I love most about where I live is all the independent shops, owned and staffed by experts in their particular specialities, from cheese (hello Penbuckles!) to cut-price genuine Birkenstoks (the brillian Shoe Shuffle).
I’ve got fish, baked goods, amazing meat and everything organic in easy walking distance, with wine, amazing sourdough, and top fruit and veg, just a little more of a hop. And not forgetting my beloved source of all dry goods, Wonderfill (read about it here).
On top of all that, right here in Hastings Old Town, we have our very own independent bookshop, Hare & Hawthorn, which is one of the great joys of my life.
Since he opened his first tiny shop five years ago, before moving into his larger space on George Street, owner Neal Neofitu has become a pal. I have also got to know his parents Elizabeth and John. They are lovely people.
It’s not a big shop, but it’s such a joy to have just a short stroll from home, a beautifully laid out book shop to go and browse in, with lovely cards and stationery also on offer.
Even if I don’t buy anything, it gives me succour just being in there, taking it all in planning my next purchases, chatting to Neal.
Because of the relatively small space Neal can’t offer everything – but I actually prefer smaller bookshops. I find huge ones like Waterstones in Piccadilly really overwhelming, because they remind me of all the books I won’t have time to read. I once had to run out of there, nearly having a panic attack about that.
But not having absolutely everything instantly available isn’t an issue, because anytime I want something more obscure , I just send Neal an email and he orders it for me.
He’s my personal Amazon, without any money going to Jeff Bezos.
I got the idea from my friend Jo Fairley, who does the same thing with her special relationship bookshop, Much Ado Books, in the lovely village of Alfriston about 40 minutes drive to the west (which is another adored favourite of mine).
It might not arrive the next day, but it’s so much nicer to walk down to a lovely shop, chat with the owner and trot home again clutching my treasure, than opening the door to some poor stressed delivery driver.
And I particularly appreciate Neal’s shop because there was a time, not so long ago, when it seriously looked as though independent bookshops were going to disappear altogether.
After Tony Blair insanely scrapped the Net Book Agreement in the UK in 1997 and books could be discounted for the first time since 1899, the supermarkets leapt into the game, slashing prices – and breaking publishers, authors and independent bookshops in the process.
Almost immediately the head buyer of books at Tesco (the biggest supermarket chain in the UK) became the most powerful person in publishing in the UK. This wasn’t helpful.
You couldn’t get on the Sunday Times Bestseller List anymore unless Tesco bought your book and the grocery behemoth used this power to hold publishers to ransom – and made it impossible for bookshops to compete.
The arrival of the Kindle ten years later then seemed to threaten the very existence of the physical book, which seemed like the final death knell of the neighbourhood bookshop.
But in that wonderful way that can happen, things evened out. Tesco got over its book frenzy, to the point they hardly seem to sell them at all now and consumers realised that while Kindles are handy for commuting and travel, they weren’t as satisfying to read as physical books.
An experience supported by studies which showed that books read on electronic devices don’t stay in the brain the same way they do when read with the physical turning page.
Not only do we absorb what we read from actual books better, people simply love them as objects. As Anthony Powell put it, ‘books do furnish a room’.
Publishers cottoned on to this and started producing lovely new collectable imprints of favourite titles, book sales increased and then – hurrah hurrooh – new independent bookshops started to open.
But it’s still a volatile business, with the need to tie up a lot of capital in stock so, on National Bookshop Day (in the UK, at least, but it’s a valid point everywhere), do go and celebrate and support your local independent.
After all, we nearly lost them.
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Have a wonderful weekend, Maggie xxx