Show Notes
For this week’s Book Club, Sam Leith, the Spectator’s literary editor, is joined by Shaun Bythell, proprietor of The Book Shop in Wigtown, Scotland, and author of The Diary of a Bookseller series, to discuss the fourth instalment, The Return of the Bookseller’s Diary. They discuss the strange characters who wander into second-hand bookshops, the customers who haggle over £2 books, and how Bythell’s shop helped turn Wigtown into Scotland’s unlikely book town. They also explore the changing world of bookselling, from the rise of online marketplaces to the 18th-century bookseller James Lackington, whose ‘buy cheap, sell cheap’ philosophy has more than a little in common with Amazon. Plus, Bythell reveals how keeping a diary has changed the way he sees his customers, the unexpected consequences of becoming a published author, and why the Covid-19 pandemic proved surprisingly good for business. Produced by Abigail Brierley.
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