Episode 13 | Can a bookshop change the reading culture of an entire town?: Richard Drake and Melanie Greenwood, Drake The Bookshop (Stockton-on-Tees)

In early-1980s Belfast, a young couple opened a shop selling art books, Scandinavian design, bespoke furniture and cappuccinos. They called it Phlox. Decades later, their daughter brought the name back to life in East London. In this episode of Bookshop Stories, Tom Idle meets Aimée Madill, owner of Phlox Books on Francis Road in Leyton, to discover how she's created a new generation of the family business. Aimée talks about growing up in Belfast during the Troubles, losing her mother, working at the legendary Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris, and opening Phlox before her 30th birthday. We also explore her extraordinary work programming literary and cultural events at Wilderness and Latitude festivals, the art of recommending books, and what makes a great bookseller. It's a conversation about family, creativity, curiosity and how a good idea can find a completely new life decades after it first appeared.

Romance is booming, and a string of romance-only bookshops are opening across the UK. But is this the beginning of a lasting change in bookselling – or are we watching a bubble form? For Episode 12 of Bookshop Stories, Tom meets Cassie Simmons, founder of Main Character Books, the romance specialist in London’s Spitalfields Market. Cassie’s route into bookselling was far from conventional. A former patent lawyer who spent years building a successful legal career, she eventually walked away from it to create the kind of physical space she felt romance readers were missing. They talk about the lingering snobbery around romance, the influence of BookTok, why readers increasingly want physical communities as well as online ones, and what a specialist bookshop can offer that even the biggest general bookseller cannot. But with the number of romance bookshops growing rapidly, Cassie is also refreshingly candid about the risks. Does the huge value of the romance publishing market really translate into viable independent bookshops? How much specialisation is too much? And what happens when everybody else spots the same opportunity? Plus: book tourism, “trophy copies”, the realities of running a shop in central London, the strange requests Cassie receives from brands – and Smut Club, Main Character’s wildly popular open-mic night. It’s a conversation about romance, community and what happens when an online reading phenomenon becomes a bricks-and-mortar business. You’re gonna love it.

Shaun Bythell never particularly wanted a career. After graduating with a law degree, he deliberately avoided anything resembling one, spending his twenties working on gas pipelines, planting trees, building dry-stone walls and taking temporary jobs. Then, aged 30, he went home to Wigtown for Christmas and the owner of the local secondhand bookshop asked if he fancied buying it. Twenty-five years later, Shaun still owns The Bookshop, now Scotland’s largest secondhand bookshop, and that accidental career has taken another unexpected turn. His bestselling Diary of a Bookseller series has made him one of Britain’s best-known booksellers and brought readers from around the world to Wigtown – although Shaun remains reluctant to describe himself as a writer, preferring “a bookseller who’s written some books”. With his latest instalment, Return of The Bookseller Diarist, out 8 Oct RRP £25 (New Modern Arcade), published on 8 October, I talk to Shaun about the strange path that took him from determined career avoidance to bookselling and authorship, what he has learned from handling millions of books, and why, despite everything his diaries might suggest about customers, he still can’t imagine a job he would enjoy more. We also get into the peculiar economics and “dark arts” of secondhand bookselling, the customers who have inadvertently provided years of literary material, the changing fortunes of Wigtown, and the unexpected international success that means people now travel thousands of miles hoping to find Shaun behind the counter. Plus, Shaun tackles the Bookshop Stories quick-fire questions, revealing the best book he’s ever read, the most valuable book he’s ever handled and the strangest thing he’s discovered being used as a bookmark.

When Vicki Shenkin Kerr opened Bàrd Books on Roman Road in East London, she wanted to create more than somewhere to buy books. Drawing on 20 years working in hospitality, she imagined a neighbourhood space where people could browse, drink coffee, stay for a glass of wine, meet friends, hear poetry, play chess or simply spend some time. Two years later, Bàrd has become exactly that – and Vicki has discovered just how deeply a bookshop can become part of people’s social lives. In this episode of Bookshop Stories, Vicki talks about swapping hospitality for bookselling, funding the shop with a personal loan after the banks said no, building much of Bàrd with friends and family, and creating a team that has helped shape the shop in its own image. We also talk about the economics of making an independent bookshop work in London, why Bàrd stays open into the evening, the unexpected return of books and reading as something genuinely cool, and what happens when the community begins to feel that your bookshop belongs to them too. Plus, Vicki shares the books she loves, the title she has sold more copies of than any other, and the book she would give away with every purchase if she were a millionaire.

What happens when a bookshop owner admits that business is going badly? In 2018, Georgia Eckert closed out a particularly quiet day at Imagined Things, her independent bookshop in Harrogate, having taken just £12.34. Rather than quietly worrying about it, she did something business owners are often told not to do: she told everyone. Her tweet went viral. Authors shared it, journalists called, customers travelled from across the country and thousands of people contacted the shop wanting to help. Georgia believes it may have saved the business. But the story of Imagined Things is about much more than one extraordinary day on the internet. Georgia tells Tom about leaving a secure career as an NHS radiographer to open Harrogate’s first independent bookshop in almost 20 years; why the original Imagined Things was beautiful but almost impossible to find; the realities of building a business without any previous bookselling experience; and why she later asked her customers to help crowdfund the shop’s move to a bigger, more prominent home. They also talk about the art and science of choosing what deserves space on the shelves, the books that surprise her, becoming a mum while running a small business, and why buying from an independent bookshop can amount to something much bigger than simply buying a book.