The Biggest Thank You Goes To All Of YOU

And so, tomorrow I will close the doors on my first venture into bookselling when my little pop-up shop leaves The Bloom Foundry, and what have I learnt?

Seven weeks ago, I knew nothing about selling books. Just a few weeks before that, I had not even had the seed of an idea of setting up my own indie bookstore, and so the first answer as to what I have learnt is …. one hell of a lot.

I have learnt how to open accounts with publishers. I have learnt how important it is to have good relationships with sales reps. I have learnt how vital the wholesaler is to your business. I have learnt which publishers get me my orders fastest, and which ones I would rather avoid due to all the holes in their systems – and I have learnt the hard way how to avoid them! I have learnt how to use POS systems – hell, I have learnt what POS stands for (point of sale). I have taught myself how to dress a window, and how to apply vinyl stickers to those windows (and where you even buy vinyl from), and how to operate the back-end of a website, and how to make it look pretty at the front end. I have learnt where best to buy custom-made cotton tote bags and how pink neon ink is not affordable on my budget (I shall endeavour to afford it!). I have learnt how to upload videos on YouTube and how to make a reel on Instagram! I have discovered dozens more books I needed to read thanks to the Writers Recommend section and all those brilliant authors who gave up their time to let me interview them and placed their trust in me to represent them to you. I have learnt that I need to sell at least one book to pay for my daily coffee habit!

…I mean, I could go on. But, mostly I have learnt that I love my customers, and I appreciate every single person who has supported this endeavour either online or instore. This project, this idea, this dream would have been absolutely nothing without those of you who have walked through the door, or ordered from my website. Your enthusiasm, and yes, your cash sales, have kept me going. It has only been seven weeks, and yet you know there have been so many highs and lows during that time, but there has been so much joy.

I was amazed on that first day that I opened on November 5th how many of you came down to visit – some of you over the last few weeks have travelled from far afield to show your support.

I found it incredible that you walked into a shop that was not perfect, that was still building its stock, and was displaying it on bits and pieces of shelving I had inherited and yet you saw past all of that to the books themselves, and more importantly you could see what I was trying to do, and you trusted me with your orders – that seemed such a generous act.

I set out to create a community bookshop, and it feels so silly to say this, but even after these few short weeks, it feels that I have achieved that with your help. It is not really books, after all, that make a community, but people:

People like Jacky, who came in this week to tell us it was her 76th birthday and ask if we’d help her celebrate with some cake – luckily, I am always obliging when it comes to cake! Jacky takes her clarinet to the park to play each day and has promised to play us some carols on Christmas Eve in the shop – I hope you might come along and enjoy them with us, I’ll bring the mince pies!

James who came into browse one afternoon and got roped into helping Jacky send off her own first chapter to a publisher because I am useless on computers and it must have looked farcical watching me trying – and failing – to help her myself.

Ivana who knows how cold I have been standing there in my four layers of thermals, coat and hat and brought me her best Czechoslovakian goulash to warm me up. She also loves to press my novel, The Imposter, into customers’ hands, but – she will tell you herself – only because she loved it so much and never saw the twist coming (I’ve yet to meet someone who has!)

There was another man whose name I didn’t catch but he came in one afternoon looking for flowers for his wife. He had tattoos all down his neck and the calloused hands of a man who has a trade and Lucie was away, so I couldn’t help him with a bouquet but I ended up selling him two books for his wife’s birthday. On the way out, he saw a book of poetry and became wistful when he remembered how he loved to write poems as a 15-year-old schoolboy but was never brave enough to share them with his class. He bought Rupi Kaur’s new exercise book Healing Through Words and his eyes filled with tears when I made him promise to keep it to himself and write in it his innermost thoughts.

I could not, in this newsletter, do justice to all the brilliant people who have walked through that shop door, and I’m reticent to write more names, not because I haven’t appreciated each and every one of you but because I’m terrified of missing anyone out. I have loved your visits, the fact you have come back again and again for a browse and a bit of bookish chat, because here’s the thing, books bring us together, they can be that glue that cements us, and God knows we need a common cause right now.

Yes, I know I need those financial transactions to afford to be there in the first place, but it isn’t just about money – transactions take place on so many other human levels. For example, an elderly lady who came into my shop a week or so ago and spent a good fifteen minutes browsing before she made a point of coming over to me and saying:

‘Thank you, I’ve had a really nice time.’

She didn’t buy a thing and, at the risk of sounding saccharine, her thank you and the smile on her face, was worth its weight in gold. Books make us feel good, just being around them makes us feel calm and so I am still convinced that Tunbridge Wells needs an indie bookstore, and I am determined to make that happen.

I will be continuing online at The Book Room until I can find another place to pop up, you can still order your books from me, so just send me a custom order, and don’t forget the website is filled with writing and reading resources. I will still be sending you out my digests of the weekend books reviews every Sunday night, as well as updates on my progress of finding another place to pop up and when I do, I hope to see you there.

But in the meantime, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy new year, and, if I may steal the words of that lady who visted my little pop up: THANK YOU, I’VE HAD A REALLY NICE TIME.