Shop Locally - Bookshop

I have always wanted to be an owner of a Bookshop since my late teens and I like nothing else then rummaging through a bookshop. My choice today is the internet or the likes of Waterstones and WH Smiths but I want to shop local in an independent shop but we don’t have one locally, we did but its long gone now.

There is a Welsh bookshop locally but an English reader and they had a small English section. 

The books may cost a bit more but I pay extra for my food and am willing to paid the extra for a book. When we had the shop, I could go in at least twice a week and maybe buy a book or not every time but I could find something who knows. It was a lovely place, I remember the staff friendly and helpful, and if they didn’t have a book, they would order it.

When the shop closed re-opened as an amusement arcade.

I was sad to read a news story the other day about a small independent bookshop owner reach out on tweeter to locals to use her shop after taking just £12.34 in one day. The shop was doing fairly well until customers began dwindling away. Owner Georgia Duffy, who left her job as a radiographer to start up the Imagined Things shop in Harrogate,

“We only took £12.34 today,” she wrote. “Things have been tough recently – today the worst ever. A card, a book, anything makes a huge difference to a small business like ours.”

The request was then retweeted more than 4,000 times, with the public and author’s alike backing the shop. The response was overwhelming. Her message was read more than one million times and the next day the shop was inundated with orders from all over the country.

They are now attempting to create a website where people can buy books online after the enormous response it has received since going viral. But should the locals be rocking up to the shop because at the end of the day when the story stops becoming news it will be local customers who will keep the shop open.

With the high street suffering it just as bad in the smaller local shopping areas. Take my local shopping area of Canton it is mostly charity shops, takeaways and bookies but we have a few independent shops like Radiocraft an electrical shop we use to replace all our kitchen appliances. We could buy any item cheaper via the internet, saving money but I don’t see why. I want the shop to stay open.

The biggest killer of bookshops is Amazon and business rates but if I were to have the investment, I would still like to open a bookshop.