Category: In Petworth

A small, local bookseller in West Sussex typifies the sector’s successful fightback

Social distancing has been a particular challenge at The Petworth Bookshop in West Sussex, where more than 7,000 titles are crammed into 680 square feet. Staff and customers circle large tables heaving with paperbacks and navigate a warren of narrow walkways impeded by piles of books that have outgrown shelf space. For Steve Howe, the shop’s owner, a move to larger premises next door cannot come soon enough.

Fuelled by year-on-year sales growth, the expansion — last week’s scheduled opening was delayed by the second lockdown in England — is testimony to a bigger story for small businesses in a market defying the odds. Figures from the Booksellers Association reveal that the number of independent shops has increased for a third consecutive year, on the back of a 20-year decline, while data from Nielsen Books, an industry analyst, shows that sales from March to July this year totalled £144 million, a 5 per cent rise on last year.

“There was a time when the narrative around independent bookshops was very much ‘come and see the dinosaurs before they disappear’,” Mr Howe said, “but the sector has turned a corner and we’re not going anywhere. I think the pandemic has prompted retailers to make a choice. You’re either going to make it work or not, so I made an investment at a time when it would have been easy to settle for what we have.”

Next door at the new premises, the air is heavy with fresh paint as headphone-wearing sta sand down a central counter. Having had his eye on the site for more than a decade, Mr Howe is unfazed by another month’s delay and will use the time to fine-tune the interior. From in-house literary events to a more visible display of his favourite art books, he has big plans for the extra 50 per cent of space, as well as the stoicism of someone who has coped with numerous market threats and has made it through to the other side.

Kindles, for example, once heralded as a replacement for print books, are “a busted flush, left in people’s sock drawers and only used for holidays”, while he argues that the pandemic has accelerated the revival for tangible goods, with lockdown encouraging a slower pace of life, particularly the reading of physical books over digital oerings. “I’m selling books I haven’t sold in ages like Last of the Mohicans, a literary classic and long read that you can lose yourself in, which is pure escapism from worries over health and livelihood.”

His biggest challenge has been getting hold of certain titles because many of the books printed in China and Italy were delayed by shipping and printing issues, while a lot of publication dates were pushed back. March and April were “carnage”, he said. At the time, he and a small team set up a home delivery service making drop-os by bike and car within a

25-mile radius. It proved popular with those shielding and missing their literary fix. He plans to resume the service this month while continuing to resist the move to sell online, although he admits to wavering.

In the grip of the first lockdown, he considered an ecommerce site (“put on ice” when the shop reopened) and last week toyed with joining Bookshop.org, a new online marketplace for independent bookshops launched to give small players in Britain and their customers an ethical rival to the all- conquering Amazon. On the platform, members have a virtual store front and make a useful margin (30 per cent of the cover price) from each sale. Books worth £415,000 were sold via the platform in its opening week.

Yet Mr Howe’s heart is not in it. “It’s an excellent principle at work and the best of its kind the trade has seen to date, but it’s still an online platform selling — albeit only slightly discounted — books,” he said.

“Under normal, non-pandemic circumstances, you cannot beat the bustle of a busy shop, the opportunity for link selling and building customer relations that only a full bricks-and-mortar shop provides.”

He credits the personal touch with keeping him in business. He sees bookselling as an art form, a passion stirred when he took a part time job in the Worthing branch of Methvens. The role was intended as a stop gap before relocating to Italy, but he has never looked back. From the outset, his mission has been to create a more inclusive, relaxed antidote to some of the bookshops he remembered as a child, where he felt monitored by bad-tempered sta checking that he didn’t touch anything.

Much eort is put into getting more children and young people through the door, one of the sector’s greatest challenges. As such, the new premises will have an expanded children’s reading area with small armchairs, while the students he employs at weekends and during holidays are often given the task of sourcing young adult titles that the 55-year-old is less familiar with.

For the rest of the stock selection, material must fulfil an exacting brief: to excite, challenge, seduce and inform, with the results reflecting both his taste and that of his customers. Heavy with art, poetry, philosophy, the shop is notably free of the more celebrity-penned, populist titles that fill the supermarket shelves.

Nevertheless, he’s mindful of the elitism and snobbery that can exist in bookselling. “From the outside, you look at an auent town like this and the weekend car parks full of nice cars and there’s a sense of eortless auence, but there’s hidden poverty and people with very little and I want this to be a shop for everyone.

“Of course, there’s a perception of independent bookshop customers being female, educated and north of 50 and while that accounts for a section of my customer base, I would feel very depressed if they were the only people I sold to. This is a community shop for everyone.”

In the main, his eorts appear to be working. Regulars range from the local priest and landed gentry to the man who cleans the town’s toilets. Many will spend an afternoon browsing the shelves, although on occasion people can make themselves a little too comfortable. He recalls the time a walker came in for a pitstop via the South Downs, found himself a quiet spot, removed his boots and put his rucksack behind his head and read a book for half an hour. Mr Howe left him to it, but sometimes he intervenes. “Barely a day goes by when I won’t hear someone say, ‘I can get this [book] cheaper on Amazon’. You can choose to ignore it or engage with them and explain that by spending an extra £5 with us they’re investing in a local community, jobs, entrepreneurialism and the local economy and encouraging genuine diversity in small towns like this.

“Amazon is selling books directly at prices that the bookseller can’t actually buy them for and that’s not sustainable; it devalues the book and the creator. When you explain this to people, it’s amazing how often you can win them round and while we can win that argument, we have a future.”

Small is beautiful — from London to the Yorkshire Dales

The Petworth Bookshop is not the only independent bookseller to expand in the middle of the pandemic (Caroline Bullock writes).

After 25 years in London’s Mayfair, Shapero Rare Books, an antiquarian and rare book specialist, has moved to a site that is four times bigger in nearby New Bond Street.

For Bernard Shapero, its owner, a jump in online business and a robust supply chain have tempered the fall in face-to-face sales and loss of promotion from international trade shows that had to be cancelled.

“Our biggest market overseas is undoubtedly the United States, which accounts for a significant proportion of our annual sales, so still being able to send out books to customers around the world has meant international trade can continue,” Mr Shapero, 57, said.

“We’ve boosted our social media presence by increasing our spend on online advertising and, as a traditional collecting field, rare books continue to be resilient. Books on travel and exploration, natural history and literature remain highly sought after, as have key works by authors such as Charles Darwin, John Gould and Jane Austen.”

Obscure titles are also in demand at Westwood Books in the market town of Sedbergh, Cumbria, where a recent request for Prehistoric Rock Art of The West Riding was met. “I think we were the only shop in the UK to stock it, but we have 70,000 books here so people usually find what they need,” Heather Thomas said.

Mrs Thomas, keen to preserve a local institution, took over the business with her husband Paul after the previous owner retired. Initial plans to launch in April were delayed by the first lockdown, but since opening in June the shop’s performance has defied expectations.

Customers who expected more restrictions have bought in bulk, while a boom in British holidaymakers compensated for the fall in foreign tourists drawn to this part of the Yorkshire Dales.

“September and October have been particularly strong months and I think it’s because people’s attitude to small business has changed and we are now seeing a conscious choice to shop with independents,” she said. “People are also buying for Christmas much earlier than usual, which has meant a huge rise in gift sales for this time of year.”