DRAKE THE BOOKSHOP, PART 2JR: When you’re busy, and when you’re always looking ahead, it’s hard, I’m sure, to look back at your highlights. But that's got to be up there as one of the big ones. That’s pretty special.
RD: Yeah, there are some amazing things. There are some hilarious moments within there. Me calling Sir Philip Pullman David Almond's probably not a highlight. And most hilariously in that, I was introducing Mel to Sir Phillip when I called him David. That was something that came about at the BA conference, I just managed to line those two people up as the same person or the wrong person. We commandeered a boat and took it down the river - we renamed it, which apparently is bad luck. You shouldn't do that, so that was a bit awkward in hindsight. But again, there's a video that one of our customers asked if - so, he's a professional filmmaker - he asked if we'd like him to film it so that was, is, should be, on the Penguin website still. He clearly didn't have to pay for his ticket to come on the boat that night, but there are some absolute treats. |
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The Nicola Davies one, the Philip Pullman one, because it was just bonkers. It was nuts. And Chris Kamara has to go up there.
JR: I was going to say, obviously with all of the events you've got coming up as well as the ones that you've done. Chris Kamara was definitely a highlight from last year, wasn't it?
RD: Brilliant. I loved it. He's an absolute legend anyway. He is a local legend and I was talking on Radio Tees about it and the lady interviewing me said at one point, she said, ‘Is anyone else going to get to meet him?’ Because there's a connection along the way in there. So he was at Portsmouth, and I went to Portsmouth Uni. My season ticket while I was with Bradford lasted the entirety of his management career there. And so, there was kind of quite a lot of connections around there. I found while I was looking for something else in the run-up to it, my old season ticket, someone I used to work with gave me a Bradford City scarf, which I've still got. There were all sorts of bits and pieces. My second game watching Bradford, I think, was at Wembley, which he managed. So it was all of those things. And then, as I say, the legend of Kamara that is and has been on Sky Sports over the years.
But beyond that, the people came in through the kid's shop and then into the main shop and started queuing. We hadn't asked for any form of queue, but there was an orderly bookshop people queue. Of course, there were. And almost everybody had a connection. There were a couple of Bradford City season ticket holders, myself included in there. There were various ‘Borough season ticket holders, there was the family who originally did the Fly Me To The Moon podcast, sorry, newsletter, which has since been taken over by somebody whose very good friend was in the queue. There was a customer who was teacher training in one of his primary school classes. There was the son of a very good friend of his, and there was the daughter of someone who went to school with him, so in the school picture, they could find who it was. She tried to ring him. The reception in the shop is not great, unfortunately, so she couldn't get through to FaceTime, and so Chris did a video to him which was just that next level.
And then there's a guy sitting where I'm sitting now and we just assumed that he was with the photographer or with someone through there, and at the end he went through and it was Chris' best man. So they sat at the end of it all. Mel had to disappear and go back and check that the dog hadn't wrecked the house and so we were sort of just pottering about and they were like, ‘Do you want a drink?’
I said, ‘Is that alright? Is that okay? Can we just sit and have a chat for a bit?’ And I'm like, I am absolutely not gonna turn around and go, ‘No you can't’ because I'm gonna dine out for - as I am now - years on, ‘Oh! Chris Kamara wouldn't let me go home that night because he was talking to his best man!’
And again, it goes back to that thing… I know Chris isn't an author per se but he just properly channelled that whole author thing. Authors are incredible people. They’re really selfless and interested in their audience and they're, you know. You see some scenarios where that doesn't quite work.
I spent a lot of time watching cricket as a kid in Scarborough and Geoffrey Boycott, who is widely perceived as the most curmudgeonly man on the planet, would sign all of the autographs and wouldn't leave until they were all signed. And that's my standard point. So, therefore, if you aren't doing that, if Boycott can do it then you can do it! But authors without fail do.
JR: It's like a weird sort of cross-pollination of interests I think, when you've got a book like that.
RD: Yeah.
JR: It’s getting a different audience into the bookshop. It'd be interesting to see if that audience continues to come back and support you with other things as well. Or was that too special a moment?
RD: I think, yeah. I mean, there were a lot of customers that knew the shop already who were there that night and there were a lot of people who came specifically, I'm quite sure. Have we seen all of them since? No, but also, that's alright. They know about it. We have regular customers who we only ever see for birthdays and for Christmas. Regular doesn't have to be every day, every week, every month.
JR: But it's nine years this year.
RD: Yeah!
JR: And you still know your first customer. Nine years is a long time. And building up regulars on a regular basis.
RD: Yeah, absolutely. Those connections and relationships do blossom further. I have a meeting based on seeing one customer at Christmas who I hadn't seen for quite some time, but we've got a conversation around The Great North Author Tour coming out of that.
So it's all of those kinds of things, and it is all those that come about from us being in that position where we could actively chat in the first instance. I'm not saying that other bookshops don't, because of course you do, once you've met two or three times and so you know. Of course, you spend time chatting. We've got people who come in, as with countless bookshops, because it's a safe space and they know they can come in.
JR: I'm glad you mentioned The Great North Author Tour because I want to mention it again. It started with three authors in the back of the car and you...
RD: Four authors. Five in a car. 320 miles that day, because I rocked up to Corbridge twice. Once to pick up, once to drop off. It's all Vashti Hardy's fault! I'm not completely sure Vashti appreciates that it's her fault. She was doing a bookshop tour in London, and I'm like, that's easy, right? How difficult can it be to do a bookshop tour in London?!
So I just tweeted Dan Smith and Chris Callaghan, and I was like, ‘We can do that, right?’ We've already got the connections. We knew you were up in Corbridge, we knew Jenny over in Saltburn, we know the folks over at Guisborough, my first BA social was when we were a few weeks old at White Rose in Thirsk, and we knew… I did a whole day's work experience in the Little Ripon Bookshop as a way of working out, finding out, how you run a bookshop. And so it was like, ‘Well, this could be a thing, right?’ And it's just grown... We do a minibus with 12 authors. ‘What could possibly go wrong?’
Well, actually no, nothing. It has been brilliant. We do events in Stockton on Friday, multi-school events with half the authors in the morning, and half of the authors in the afternoon, and then they do workshops as well. And then Saturday is still the tour.
JR: The big tour. Which is, what, 300 miles?
RD: It's not quite as many because I don't have to go from Stockton to Corbridge and Corridge back again. So it's fewer miles than it used to be, but it is still a fairly hefty day. I think it is pretty much a 12-hour day, maybe not quiet. We've recently added the Wonky Tree Bookshop in Leyburn, and everyone kind of rolls their eyes when I talk about it, in as nice as possible way and goes, ‘It's a stupid idea but yes, of course we're in!’ And I think that, again, talks to and engages with the book world.
JR: And it’s about managing expectations as well, you know. Because it doesn't have to be a room full of kids to make it a worthy stop on the tour.
RD: Exactly, yeah. It's interesting, I get here and I sort of breathe a little bit of a sigh of relief. For a while I can be off duty, which is clearly not right. Because again, everyone else is like, ‘You're always off duty Richard!’ But I sort of relax a bit when I'm here. So, Mel was saying, ‘So, what does everyone else do?’, and I was like, ‘Well, so the Wonky Tree interviewed everyone, they did a kind of 60-30 second soundbite of their latest book and that went out on social media. And Jill does a sort of speed-date thing where she has the bell and allows them to talk for a minute about their books’. And so,, everyone does something slightly different. I was like, ‘Yeah, we just go relax!’
JR: Maybe, but you need a bit of a pitstop!
RD: Yeah, absolutely. But it is brilliant because I saw the other five shops and it was full there and and that was packed there and we blocked someone in. We are standing taking a photo opportunity and there's a lady who just went, ‘Excuse me, could I get passed?’ She photo-bombed the fourth or fifth photo. And it was like, ‘Oh God, I hope people come. Are people gonna come? Loads of them have seen them yesterday, so are they gonna need to come?’
But then they do or they've come back, or, I mean, Andy Ruffle brought his fan base last year. He had his cheerleaders with him and so it is, yeah, it's fabulous.
And the side effect of that one is we spoke earlier, again, about how I just rock up on stage and off I go. Author School doesn't include how to do events or how to cope with, etc., but we get five or six authors in the same room at the same time doing a 10-minute slot and it allows those other five authors to see five different people doing something. And I know for a fact Alex Fowlkes has gone, ‘Yep, stealing that, absolutely. Stealing that idea!’, or it gives them an idea and so that kind of considered professional development - for want of a better phrase - is interesting.
The nattering, the chattering in the back of the minibus, the discussions about the machinations of the world of publishing, the world of writing, and everything else in between is a valuable thing.
JR: I was going to say, obviously with all of the events you've got coming up as well as the ones that you've done. Chris Kamara was definitely a highlight from last year, wasn't it?
RD: Brilliant. I loved it. He's an absolute legend anyway. He is a local legend and I was talking on Radio Tees about it and the lady interviewing me said at one point, she said, ‘Is anyone else going to get to meet him?’ Because there's a connection along the way in there. So he was at Portsmouth, and I went to Portsmouth Uni. My season ticket while I was with Bradford lasted the entirety of his management career there. And so, there was kind of quite a lot of connections around there. I found while I was looking for something else in the run-up to it, my old season ticket, someone I used to work with gave me a Bradford City scarf, which I've still got. There were all sorts of bits and pieces. My second game watching Bradford, I think, was at Wembley, which he managed. So it was all of those things. And then, as I say, the legend of Kamara that is and has been on Sky Sports over the years.
But beyond that, the people came in through the kid's shop and then into the main shop and started queuing. We hadn't asked for any form of queue, but there was an orderly bookshop people queue. Of course, there were. And almost everybody had a connection. There were a couple of Bradford City season ticket holders, myself included in there. There were various ‘Borough season ticket holders, there was the family who originally did the Fly Me To The Moon podcast, sorry, newsletter, which has since been taken over by somebody whose very good friend was in the queue. There was a customer who was teacher training in one of his primary school classes. There was the son of a very good friend of his, and there was the daughter of someone who went to school with him, so in the school picture, they could find who it was. She tried to ring him. The reception in the shop is not great, unfortunately, so she couldn't get through to FaceTime, and so Chris did a video to him which was just that next level.
And then there's a guy sitting where I'm sitting now and we just assumed that he was with the photographer or with someone through there, and at the end he went through and it was Chris' best man. So they sat at the end of it all. Mel had to disappear and go back and check that the dog hadn't wrecked the house and so we were sort of just pottering about and they were like, ‘Do you want a drink?’
I said, ‘Is that alright? Is that okay? Can we just sit and have a chat for a bit?’ And I'm like, I am absolutely not gonna turn around and go, ‘No you can't’ because I'm gonna dine out for - as I am now - years on, ‘Oh! Chris Kamara wouldn't let me go home that night because he was talking to his best man!’
And again, it goes back to that thing… I know Chris isn't an author per se but he just properly channelled that whole author thing. Authors are incredible people. They’re really selfless and interested in their audience and they're, you know. You see some scenarios where that doesn't quite work.
I spent a lot of time watching cricket as a kid in Scarborough and Geoffrey Boycott, who is widely perceived as the most curmudgeonly man on the planet, would sign all of the autographs and wouldn't leave until they were all signed. And that's my standard point. So, therefore, if you aren't doing that, if Boycott can do it then you can do it! But authors without fail do.
JR: It's like a weird sort of cross-pollination of interests I think, when you've got a book like that.
RD: Yeah.
JR: It’s getting a different audience into the bookshop. It'd be interesting to see if that audience continues to come back and support you with other things as well. Or was that too special a moment?
RD: I think, yeah. I mean, there were a lot of customers that knew the shop already who were there that night and there were a lot of people who came specifically, I'm quite sure. Have we seen all of them since? No, but also, that's alright. They know about it. We have regular customers who we only ever see for birthdays and for Christmas. Regular doesn't have to be every day, every week, every month.
JR: But it's nine years this year.
RD: Yeah!
JR: And you still know your first customer. Nine years is a long time. And building up regulars on a regular basis.
RD: Yeah, absolutely. Those connections and relationships do blossom further. I have a meeting based on seeing one customer at Christmas who I hadn't seen for quite some time, but we've got a conversation around The Great North Author Tour coming out of that.
So it's all of those kinds of things, and it is all those that come about from us being in that position where we could actively chat in the first instance. I'm not saying that other bookshops don't, because of course you do, once you've met two or three times and so you know. Of course, you spend time chatting. We've got people who come in, as with countless bookshops, because it's a safe space and they know they can come in.
JR: I'm glad you mentioned The Great North Author Tour because I want to mention it again. It started with three authors in the back of the car and you...
RD: Four authors. Five in a car. 320 miles that day, because I rocked up to Corbridge twice. Once to pick up, once to drop off. It's all Vashti Hardy's fault! I'm not completely sure Vashti appreciates that it's her fault. She was doing a bookshop tour in London, and I'm like, that's easy, right? How difficult can it be to do a bookshop tour in London?!
So I just tweeted Dan Smith and Chris Callaghan, and I was like, ‘We can do that, right?’ We've already got the connections. We knew you were up in Corbridge, we knew Jenny over in Saltburn, we know the folks over at Guisborough, my first BA social was when we were a few weeks old at White Rose in Thirsk, and we knew… I did a whole day's work experience in the Little Ripon Bookshop as a way of working out, finding out, how you run a bookshop. And so it was like, ‘Well, this could be a thing, right?’ And it's just grown... We do a minibus with 12 authors. ‘What could possibly go wrong?’
Well, actually no, nothing. It has been brilliant. We do events in Stockton on Friday, multi-school events with half the authors in the morning, and half of the authors in the afternoon, and then they do workshops as well. And then Saturday is still the tour.
JR: The big tour. Which is, what, 300 miles?
RD: It's not quite as many because I don't have to go from Stockton to Corbridge and Corridge back again. So it's fewer miles than it used to be, but it is still a fairly hefty day. I think it is pretty much a 12-hour day, maybe not quiet. We've recently added the Wonky Tree Bookshop in Leyburn, and everyone kind of rolls their eyes when I talk about it, in as nice as possible way and goes, ‘It's a stupid idea but yes, of course we're in!’ And I think that, again, talks to and engages with the book world.
JR: And it’s about managing expectations as well, you know. Because it doesn't have to be a room full of kids to make it a worthy stop on the tour.
RD: Exactly, yeah. It's interesting, I get here and I sort of breathe a little bit of a sigh of relief. For a while I can be off duty, which is clearly not right. Because again, everyone else is like, ‘You're always off duty Richard!’ But I sort of relax a bit when I'm here. So, Mel was saying, ‘So, what does everyone else do?’, and I was like, ‘Well, so the Wonky Tree interviewed everyone, they did a kind of 60-30 second soundbite of their latest book and that went out on social media. And Jill does a sort of speed-date thing where she has the bell and allows them to talk for a minute about their books’. And so,, everyone does something slightly different. I was like, ‘Yeah, we just go relax!’
JR: Maybe, but you need a bit of a pitstop!
RD: Yeah, absolutely. But it is brilliant because I saw the other five shops and it was full there and and that was packed there and we blocked someone in. We are standing taking a photo opportunity and there's a lady who just went, ‘Excuse me, could I get passed?’ She photo-bombed the fourth or fifth photo. And it was like, ‘Oh God, I hope people come. Are people gonna come? Loads of them have seen them yesterday, so are they gonna need to come?’
But then they do or they've come back, or, I mean, Andy Ruffle brought his fan base last year. He had his cheerleaders with him and so it is, yeah, it's fabulous.
And the side effect of that one is we spoke earlier, again, about how I just rock up on stage and off I go. Author School doesn't include how to do events or how to cope with, etc., but we get five or six authors in the same room at the same time doing a 10-minute slot and it allows those other five authors to see five different people doing something. And I know for a fact Alex Fowlkes has gone, ‘Yep, stealing that, absolutely. Stealing that idea!’, or it gives them an idea and so that kind of considered professional development - for want of a better phrase - is interesting.
The nattering, the chattering in the back of the minibus, the discussions about the machinations of the world of publishing, the world of writing, and everything else in between is a valuable thing.
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JR: Well, it's like when you get a group of booksellers in a room together and actually places like the London Book Fair aren't always the best environments for that kind of conversation, but the trip to the pub afterwards, sometimes you gain way more.
RD: No, absolutely you do. And also, friendships are built. Beth [Walker] and Lisette [Auton] are now inseparable best buddies and a right pair of tearaways, so I apologise wholeheartedly for any time those two are together. But it comes about from, yeah, just a stupid idea, but quite often, we said earlier on, just do it, just have a go, just… ‘What's the worst that happens?’ JR: Which takes me on as a slight seque to your children's podcast. RD: Yes. JR: Just another string to your bow. But that was, was that December, the year before last? |
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RD: It was, again, I keep blaming people for these really good ideas, maybe I should start, but now that's Frank Cottrell Boyce and Robin Stevens, because they were on the news talking about how, they were on Radio 4 talking about how little airtime, column inches, social media space, virtual, whatever there was for children's books. And so Mel came up with the brainwave of, ‘Well, you should do a podcast’. And I was like, ‘Well, why aren't you?’, she's like, ‘Well, I'm not going to do it’
Again, we talked about that idea of her not doing, feeling comfortable doing all the talking and that kind of thing. And so it just started out as a, well, I could kind of natter about books.
On the table, there is a pile of books that I've reviewed. It's not as if I'm not reading kids' books. We've got a Book Group, so sometimes the kids get to ask questions and do book reviews on there. We get authors on there having a natter about stuff. So, we've we kind of changed the format a little bit this time so we didn't manage to get an author on the current month but we do have two guest book reviews. I'm starting to join the Book of the Year ‘best book’ review winner and Eve, one of our friends of the bookshop, reviewed Lauren Child’s new book, so that that was kind of not just having to listen to me bang on about books.
JR: But whether it's 16 minutes and it's book reviews or whether it's an hour with an author, they're all very different. It's been a good listen.
RD: Oh, thank you. And I obviously haven't edited and obviously haven't listened back, because although I clearly like the sound of my own voice, I don't like the sound of my own voice. So why on Earth would I go back and listen to any of it? But I hope it is something of a thing. I'm hoping that I kind of can engage with a few more listeners to make it more valuable from that point of view. I'm certainly not looking to use it as a revenue stream or anything like that.
I go back to my mum. I was slightly too old to read Roald Dahl. A lot of Roald Dahl came out as I was about 10, 11, and 12, but my reading age was higher and that age-old thing of, ‘Yeah, you should be reading this, but what can you read?’ My mum subscribed to a regular supplement that came out that was talking about kids' books. And so that's where she discovered The Machine Gunners and therefore I read pretty much all of Robert Westall’s back catalog.
You know, she discovered Alan Garner, Rosemary Sutcliffe, Eagle of the Ninth and things like that. And so they've stayed with me. I can't belive Tom's Midnight Garden wasn't in there as well. So all of those things have stayed with me as books that I really, really loved. And so if there is somewhere that allows people, that gives everything a platform… I tend to read the kid's Book Club books, and I tend to read proofs that I get. So if any publishers are out there and they fancy sending us any, it's quite likely that the book will be mentioned because - and again, damages. And that's how they're all picked.
I have an author who I'm going to have a natter with and so that'll be on next month's podcast. I'm hoping that we might find 10 minutes to interview Annabel [A.F. Steadman] when she's up but that's the other slightly tricky thing. You're doing it during an event or a day of school talks and it's like, ‘Yeah, where do you sneak that 10 minutes for a natter in?’ So, it's usually either people dropping into the shop or people that we know or etc., etc. But it's fun. I need to streamline it. But it seemed like good idea at the time. I'm hoping it is a good idea. I'm not expecting it to explode and go, you know, viral, but if there’s an author that sells more books as a consequence of it, and if there are some people who come to us as a consequence of it, and anywhere in between, then I think that's a thing, right?
JR: It's a win.
RD: Yeah. I hope so. I think so.
JR: On top of podcasts, and events, you do your book clubs, you do your Silent Book Club. Just sort of defining this safe space in a bookshop again, isn't it?
RD: Yeah, it's Mel's baby. Mel will be in late today. Um, just set up, there are a few blankets, there are some candles, and at, you know, half five till half six, people just rock up and they just sit and read for an hour. And then there's a natter afterwards, or there isn't, or there's coffee beforehand, or there isn't, or whatever. And it just allows, again, it just, one of those things that suddenly seemed like an idea.
And it's not rammed to the rafters. Sure, we've had double figures on a few occasions, and multiple people every time. So, you know, some people can't do it tonight, but they did it last week, and not everyone can do it every week…
JR: You don’t really want 30 people, do you?
RD: No, well, no, because it can't be silent at that point! But it's, again, it's a safe space, it's where people can come and they get into the habit.
I mean, we had, there was a point at which someone's bus arrived at, I don't know, a quarter past six, for argument's sake, so they came here for 40 minutes because it was somewhere that they could wait when it was dark when it was unpleasant. And so, yeah, it's, I think if you strip the bones back of almost every bookshop - being very, very, very broad brush strokes here, and maybe completely wrong - I don't know how many of them are financially viable in any way, shape or form, but they all make sense.
JR: Yeah.
RD: They all do what feels right for either that area or books or whatever, whatever. And I think that's kind of what it's about, isn't it? It's about engaging with the community. It's about having somewhere the community know that they are able to come to.
I still maintain, we have our pay-it-forward scheme, and I still maintain we haven't got that bit right. Because the book trade is, feels, might be, a very specific thing. And I think that is generally speaking, very, very white, generally speaking pretty female, generally speaking slightly older than the average person and potentially quite middle class. That would be my perception if I was asked to describe a bookshop, I think that's what I would describe it as. Not all of them, obviously, but that feels... So if you are struggling, if you can't afford to turn the heating on, if you can't afford to pay for various things, school uniforms and anything else, but you've just about managed to scrape together to get into town on the bus and you're coming for the essentials, I don't really see you going into that bookshop that feels as though it's a barrier. And we need to break that down a little bit in terms of how we go about doing that. We tend to solve that problem by using it for schools that we know are in particularly deprived areas and we give books.
So, the Loki event [Louie Stowell], one of our customers, again, demonstrates just how ridiculously amazing customers are. His bonus was bigger than he was expecting from work, so he gave us some money for the Pay It Forward scheme and that allowed us to give somewhere between 10 and 14, I can't remember how many, 10 and 15, Loki books, two kids that have come from the school in the middle of Middlesbrough.
JR: Which is amazing. But the downside occasionally is that you have to go to them and making the bookshop accessible to everybody and asking them to come to you is the main issue, isn't it?
RD: Yeah. And I think that is that barrier thing. I'm not saying that that is what a bookshop is necessarily, but I think it's the perception of what a bookshop is and it's definitely not the place that you would go to... I would suggest that if the choice was library or bookshop, you would probably go to the library before you go to the bookshop.
JR: Drop-in centres, community centres. I hesitate to use the words ‘community bookshop’ because I think sometimes that means something else, but a bookshop for the community. And you speak to people who do have pay-it-forward schemes, they do, you know, free workshops, they do book clubs, they do free reading evenings, they do all sorts of things to make it as easy as possible for people to come in and not have to spend a fortune.
RD: Yeah.
JR: And you speak to them and the things that they get the most from in their job isn't just selling a book to somebody, it's actually quite often all the ‘community work’ they end up doing. And maybe half of them are becoming their own little community centres on their high streets disguised as retail. But retail is such a loose term for a bookshop, is it?
RD: Absolutely, yeah. Knowing that the lady who says goodbye five times before she actually leaves is well and is still popping to Stockton and is still coming in here, you know, tick.
Knowing that the guy that's coming for a coffee is, you know… I wasn't worried. I hadn't seen him for a week or so, and I knew the seriousness of how he'd been. And I saw him going to the train station as I was driving in so did a u-turn in the middle of the street and said, ‘Hi, how you doing? It's great to see you!’ Knowing that - clearly can't pay the bills - but knowing that is of value and will be of massive value to any independent bookshop. Bookshop potentially full stop. I don't even know that has to be an independent bookshop… It's knowing that those people who come in because it feels like a safe place. And I suppose that's where it feels a bit of a juxtaposition.
We're saying that people come in because they know it's safe place. We have the offer of a safe place with something a bit more, but we haven't reached those people quite yet.
JR: Yeah.
RD: And so, we need to reach to out to the food banks or out to the schools again or out to various other places.
Again, we talked about that idea of her not doing, feeling comfortable doing all the talking and that kind of thing. And so it just started out as a, well, I could kind of natter about books.
On the table, there is a pile of books that I've reviewed. It's not as if I'm not reading kids' books. We've got a Book Group, so sometimes the kids get to ask questions and do book reviews on there. We get authors on there having a natter about stuff. So, we've we kind of changed the format a little bit this time so we didn't manage to get an author on the current month but we do have two guest book reviews. I'm starting to join the Book of the Year ‘best book’ review winner and Eve, one of our friends of the bookshop, reviewed Lauren Child’s new book, so that that was kind of not just having to listen to me bang on about books.
JR: But whether it's 16 minutes and it's book reviews or whether it's an hour with an author, they're all very different. It's been a good listen.
RD: Oh, thank you. And I obviously haven't edited and obviously haven't listened back, because although I clearly like the sound of my own voice, I don't like the sound of my own voice. So why on Earth would I go back and listen to any of it? But I hope it is something of a thing. I'm hoping that I kind of can engage with a few more listeners to make it more valuable from that point of view. I'm certainly not looking to use it as a revenue stream or anything like that.
I go back to my mum. I was slightly too old to read Roald Dahl. A lot of Roald Dahl came out as I was about 10, 11, and 12, but my reading age was higher and that age-old thing of, ‘Yeah, you should be reading this, but what can you read?’ My mum subscribed to a regular supplement that came out that was talking about kids' books. And so that's where she discovered The Machine Gunners and therefore I read pretty much all of Robert Westall’s back catalog.
You know, she discovered Alan Garner, Rosemary Sutcliffe, Eagle of the Ninth and things like that. And so they've stayed with me. I can't belive Tom's Midnight Garden wasn't in there as well. So all of those things have stayed with me as books that I really, really loved. And so if there is somewhere that allows people, that gives everything a platform… I tend to read the kid's Book Club books, and I tend to read proofs that I get. So if any publishers are out there and they fancy sending us any, it's quite likely that the book will be mentioned because - and again, damages. And that's how they're all picked.
I have an author who I'm going to have a natter with and so that'll be on next month's podcast. I'm hoping that we might find 10 minutes to interview Annabel [A.F. Steadman] when she's up but that's the other slightly tricky thing. You're doing it during an event or a day of school talks and it's like, ‘Yeah, where do you sneak that 10 minutes for a natter in?’ So, it's usually either people dropping into the shop or people that we know or etc., etc. But it's fun. I need to streamline it. But it seemed like good idea at the time. I'm hoping it is a good idea. I'm not expecting it to explode and go, you know, viral, but if there’s an author that sells more books as a consequence of it, and if there are some people who come to us as a consequence of it, and anywhere in between, then I think that's a thing, right?
JR: It's a win.
RD: Yeah. I hope so. I think so.
JR: On top of podcasts, and events, you do your book clubs, you do your Silent Book Club. Just sort of defining this safe space in a bookshop again, isn't it?
RD: Yeah, it's Mel's baby. Mel will be in late today. Um, just set up, there are a few blankets, there are some candles, and at, you know, half five till half six, people just rock up and they just sit and read for an hour. And then there's a natter afterwards, or there isn't, or there's coffee beforehand, or there isn't, or whatever. And it just allows, again, it just, one of those things that suddenly seemed like an idea.
And it's not rammed to the rafters. Sure, we've had double figures on a few occasions, and multiple people every time. So, you know, some people can't do it tonight, but they did it last week, and not everyone can do it every week…
JR: You don’t really want 30 people, do you?
RD: No, well, no, because it can't be silent at that point! But it's, again, it's a safe space, it's where people can come and they get into the habit.
I mean, we had, there was a point at which someone's bus arrived at, I don't know, a quarter past six, for argument's sake, so they came here for 40 minutes because it was somewhere that they could wait when it was dark when it was unpleasant. And so, yeah, it's, I think if you strip the bones back of almost every bookshop - being very, very, very broad brush strokes here, and maybe completely wrong - I don't know how many of them are financially viable in any way, shape or form, but they all make sense.
JR: Yeah.
RD: They all do what feels right for either that area or books or whatever, whatever. And I think that's kind of what it's about, isn't it? It's about engaging with the community. It's about having somewhere the community know that they are able to come to.
I still maintain, we have our pay-it-forward scheme, and I still maintain we haven't got that bit right. Because the book trade is, feels, might be, a very specific thing. And I think that is generally speaking, very, very white, generally speaking pretty female, generally speaking slightly older than the average person and potentially quite middle class. That would be my perception if I was asked to describe a bookshop, I think that's what I would describe it as. Not all of them, obviously, but that feels... So if you are struggling, if you can't afford to turn the heating on, if you can't afford to pay for various things, school uniforms and anything else, but you've just about managed to scrape together to get into town on the bus and you're coming for the essentials, I don't really see you going into that bookshop that feels as though it's a barrier. And we need to break that down a little bit in terms of how we go about doing that. We tend to solve that problem by using it for schools that we know are in particularly deprived areas and we give books.
So, the Loki event [Louie Stowell], one of our customers, again, demonstrates just how ridiculously amazing customers are. His bonus was bigger than he was expecting from work, so he gave us some money for the Pay It Forward scheme and that allowed us to give somewhere between 10 and 14, I can't remember how many, 10 and 15, Loki books, two kids that have come from the school in the middle of Middlesbrough.
JR: Which is amazing. But the downside occasionally is that you have to go to them and making the bookshop accessible to everybody and asking them to come to you is the main issue, isn't it?
RD: Yeah. And I think that is that barrier thing. I'm not saying that that is what a bookshop is necessarily, but I think it's the perception of what a bookshop is and it's definitely not the place that you would go to... I would suggest that if the choice was library or bookshop, you would probably go to the library before you go to the bookshop.
JR: Drop-in centres, community centres. I hesitate to use the words ‘community bookshop’ because I think sometimes that means something else, but a bookshop for the community. And you speak to people who do have pay-it-forward schemes, they do, you know, free workshops, they do book clubs, they do free reading evenings, they do all sorts of things to make it as easy as possible for people to come in and not have to spend a fortune.
RD: Yeah.
JR: And you speak to them and the things that they get the most from in their job isn't just selling a book to somebody, it's actually quite often all the ‘community work’ they end up doing. And maybe half of them are becoming their own little community centres on their high streets disguised as retail. But retail is such a loose term for a bookshop, is it?
RD: Absolutely, yeah. Knowing that the lady who says goodbye five times before she actually leaves is well and is still popping to Stockton and is still coming in here, you know, tick.
Knowing that the guy that's coming for a coffee is, you know… I wasn't worried. I hadn't seen him for a week or so, and I knew the seriousness of how he'd been. And I saw him going to the train station as I was driving in so did a u-turn in the middle of the street and said, ‘Hi, how you doing? It's great to see you!’ Knowing that - clearly can't pay the bills - but knowing that is of value and will be of massive value to any independent bookshop. Bookshop potentially full stop. I don't even know that has to be an independent bookshop… It's knowing that those people who come in because it feels like a safe place. And I suppose that's where it feels a bit of a juxtaposition.
We're saying that people come in because they know it's safe place. We have the offer of a safe place with something a bit more, but we haven't reached those people quite yet.
JR: Yeah.
RD: And so, we need to reach to out to the food banks or out to the schools again or out to various other places.
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JR: And then, you know, we've talked about World Book Day before, and just making sure kids have got books and how important that is and how kind of difficult that that can be and and knowing how important the value of a book is, not its shelf price, but on top of that, the value of what a book can mean to people is a deal.
So, with that in mind, what's on the horizon for Drake? What's coming up, what are your events, what's your next big plan? RD: So, the next bit… So, the 18th of April, Pip Fallow [Dragged Up Proppa] is coming along. I'm really, really looking forward to that. That will be a really interesting and thought -provoking evening, I think. The discussion around that I'm kind of still settling in my head how that all works as a thing. We've then got A F. Steadman back for Skandar at the beginning of May. Crossing The Tees happens around the same time as Independent Bookshop Week but there is an evening with Sir Alexander McCall Smith in May at Middlesbrough Town Hall and I've been invited to interview him, so I'm excited about that. I'm just kind of… I don't think I'm nervous, I think it's gonna be one of those where I'm gonna have to do a bit of planning and research for a change. Rather than rocking up on the evening and doing… |
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JR: I mean, you can't read them all!
RD: No, no, True! They gave me some notes and at the beginning, the first line talks about basically the premise being about bringing joy to the reader, and I was like, ‘Oh, hang on, there's potentially no need for me to read anything else in this. This one sound bite sentence is just it, and off we go!’ So, that'll be um a fascinating evening. And yeah, Independent Bookshop Week is obviously a big thing.
JR: And then The Great North Author Tour again.
RD: Yeah, I can't imagine not. But yeah, and then I'd really, really, really, really love - and I've said this for quite a long time - to reach the point where at this time of year I'm thinking about, I don't know, Bookshop Day in October, or Christmas, or things like that, and planning massively ahead.
But if you bear in mind we opened on the 22nd of September and the 3rd of October was Bookshop Day and we did stuff on our very first Bookshop Day with 12 days notice, then yeah, it kind of apparently happens where you can just do stuff really quickly. Which I want to get out of the habit of! I really genuinely do but it doesn't ever... I'm a fan of a deadline but if the deadline's too far away that deadline doesn't really work.
JR: So you're not thinking about the 22nd of September 2025 just yet, then?
RD: No, not yet! So, Little Ripon are a few years older than we are and when they were six they did the traditional A.A. Milne, Now We Are Six, and so I was very very excited to reach six because that's been a poem I think every book lover loves, isn't it? So that that was quite exciting when we got there. Yeah, the double digits, the big one oh… No, not yet. We've got this one to get to and then I guess we'll start having a ponder and think about.
I mean, I wrote in the calendar last year, ‘longest job ever.’ I worked out I clearly am the best boss I've ever worked for because this is my longest job - which I clearly don't really mean, but yeah, this is the longest time I've ever worked in one place - and although I was teaching for longer,
you know, that was across three places. That'd be a bit of a mementous occasion as well, reaching the point where we've had the bookshop longer than I was teaching.
JR: Yeah, it's personal milestone and it's a big one.
So, we'll we'll finish on my my favorite last question. Which books are you looking forward to the most?
RD: This is a tricky one because I do so little of the buy-in these days. Which is fine. I mean. Once upon a time it was all in my head. I knew how many of what we'd sold, where it was, etc., etc. And now I kind of probably couldn't really tell you what there is.
What I am excited about is… Ronan Hession's back. Yeah, and Ghost Mountain comes out and so Mel and I've been very fortunate, thank you Kevin at Bluemoose for sending us the proof. So we have read it. I'm really, really fascinated to to hear him talk about it. It's a phenomenal read. It's so different and I'm just really excited to hear what he has to say about it. And also I'm really excited to hear what everyone else has to say about it. It is brilliant but it is so, so different. I don't think Ghost Mountain is going to be the Leonard and Hungry Paul in as much as I don't think it's something I'll be able to recommend to everybody. But that doesn't mean it isn't a stellar book. It is a phenomenal book. So yeah, that's something I'm really, really looking forward to.
We were talking earlier about the hero of Teesside, Mr Bob Mortimer. His new book is out later this year and that has gone bonkers in terms of pre-orders and pre-sales. I'm hoping that maybe if I put a nice lovely pitch into Simon and Schuster or if they [read] this that they might suggest, or we might suggest, that he could do something up here.
So, yeah. As a bookseller, that's a rubbish answer. Because I don't know what's coming out because it's someone else that's buying in…
JR: Well, then it's Christmas every day isn't it?
RD: Well, yeah, and we need to remember that. Sometimes the unpacking of those boxes becomes a commodity and it's so easy to forget that it shouldn't be.
You know, those days when you open, when you first opened the new shop or the extension of the shop and a whole pile of stuff came in you went, ‘Look at this!’ And yeah, it's easy to forget that there are some absolutely stellar and amazing and beautiful books out there and to just sit and enjoy it for five minutes. Rather than just get ready to get these out because I've got to reply to that email about something particularly random and rubbish that isn't the joy of books.
JR: It's still really heartening talking to booksellers like yourself over these last six months or so, when there's still the joy for the job. It doesn't matter if you're doing it for nine years or if you're doing it for forty years. I think there's still that ‘every day is Christmas’, excited to get the next big book out on the shelf, and not just out on the shelf, but to talk to somebody about it.
RD: I'm a bit guilty of forgetting that bit from time to time. If I could change one thing. I've definitely done the becoming an old bookseller bloke of, ‘What do you mean you've come in wanting recommendations for books?! I'm busy working here! Can't you say - ‘, but hang on, ‘No, stop it! That's absolutely ridiculous, Richard! Just get on and enjoy recommending the books and finding the books!’
JR: Yeah, it's it's why we all got into it -
RD: - Absolutely, yeah. The love of books and the love of sharing books is the one thing that I've maybe let slide from time to time.
JR: It’s easy to do when you're so busy. But it's going back to the basics sometimes. Just remembering to reset. They're the good days, they're the days when you say, ‘Yeah, I caught up with X, Y and Z, and I hand-sold my favourite book of the day’, or favourite book of the month, or whatever.
RD: Because at the end of the day, it's about finding that book that they didn't know they wanted or that they didn't know existed... There's definitely a warmth and a fire and a sort of a feeling of satisfaction in the back of my, you know, sitting here having remembered those things. I suppose that's the good thing about doing that Nibbies pitch each year is that it gives you a chance to remind yourselves why you're so knackered!
JR: It's not rekindling things it's just reminding yourself that the fight is still there.
RD: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely!
RD: No, no, True! They gave me some notes and at the beginning, the first line talks about basically the premise being about bringing joy to the reader, and I was like, ‘Oh, hang on, there's potentially no need for me to read anything else in this. This one sound bite sentence is just it, and off we go!’ So, that'll be um a fascinating evening. And yeah, Independent Bookshop Week is obviously a big thing.
JR: And then The Great North Author Tour again.
RD: Yeah, I can't imagine not. But yeah, and then I'd really, really, really, really love - and I've said this for quite a long time - to reach the point where at this time of year I'm thinking about, I don't know, Bookshop Day in October, or Christmas, or things like that, and planning massively ahead.
But if you bear in mind we opened on the 22nd of September and the 3rd of October was Bookshop Day and we did stuff on our very first Bookshop Day with 12 days notice, then yeah, it kind of apparently happens where you can just do stuff really quickly. Which I want to get out of the habit of! I really genuinely do but it doesn't ever... I'm a fan of a deadline but if the deadline's too far away that deadline doesn't really work.
JR: So you're not thinking about the 22nd of September 2025 just yet, then?
RD: No, not yet! So, Little Ripon are a few years older than we are and when they were six they did the traditional A.A. Milne, Now We Are Six, and so I was very very excited to reach six because that's been a poem I think every book lover loves, isn't it? So that that was quite exciting when we got there. Yeah, the double digits, the big one oh… No, not yet. We've got this one to get to and then I guess we'll start having a ponder and think about.
I mean, I wrote in the calendar last year, ‘longest job ever.’ I worked out I clearly am the best boss I've ever worked for because this is my longest job - which I clearly don't really mean, but yeah, this is the longest time I've ever worked in one place - and although I was teaching for longer,
you know, that was across three places. That'd be a bit of a mementous occasion as well, reaching the point where we've had the bookshop longer than I was teaching.
JR: Yeah, it's personal milestone and it's a big one.
So, we'll we'll finish on my my favorite last question. Which books are you looking forward to the most?
RD: This is a tricky one because I do so little of the buy-in these days. Which is fine. I mean. Once upon a time it was all in my head. I knew how many of what we'd sold, where it was, etc., etc. And now I kind of probably couldn't really tell you what there is.
What I am excited about is… Ronan Hession's back. Yeah, and Ghost Mountain comes out and so Mel and I've been very fortunate, thank you Kevin at Bluemoose for sending us the proof. So we have read it. I'm really, really fascinated to to hear him talk about it. It's a phenomenal read. It's so different and I'm just really excited to hear what he has to say about it. And also I'm really excited to hear what everyone else has to say about it. It is brilliant but it is so, so different. I don't think Ghost Mountain is going to be the Leonard and Hungry Paul in as much as I don't think it's something I'll be able to recommend to everybody. But that doesn't mean it isn't a stellar book. It is a phenomenal book. So yeah, that's something I'm really, really looking forward to.
We were talking earlier about the hero of Teesside, Mr Bob Mortimer. His new book is out later this year and that has gone bonkers in terms of pre-orders and pre-sales. I'm hoping that maybe if I put a nice lovely pitch into Simon and Schuster or if they [read] this that they might suggest, or we might suggest, that he could do something up here.
So, yeah. As a bookseller, that's a rubbish answer. Because I don't know what's coming out because it's someone else that's buying in…
JR: Well, then it's Christmas every day isn't it?
RD: Well, yeah, and we need to remember that. Sometimes the unpacking of those boxes becomes a commodity and it's so easy to forget that it shouldn't be.
You know, those days when you open, when you first opened the new shop or the extension of the shop and a whole pile of stuff came in you went, ‘Look at this!’ And yeah, it's easy to forget that there are some absolutely stellar and amazing and beautiful books out there and to just sit and enjoy it for five minutes. Rather than just get ready to get these out because I've got to reply to that email about something particularly random and rubbish that isn't the joy of books.
JR: It's still really heartening talking to booksellers like yourself over these last six months or so, when there's still the joy for the job. It doesn't matter if you're doing it for nine years or if you're doing it for forty years. I think there's still that ‘every day is Christmas’, excited to get the next big book out on the shelf, and not just out on the shelf, but to talk to somebody about it.
RD: I'm a bit guilty of forgetting that bit from time to time. If I could change one thing. I've definitely done the becoming an old bookseller bloke of, ‘What do you mean you've come in wanting recommendations for books?! I'm busy working here! Can't you say - ‘, but hang on, ‘No, stop it! That's absolutely ridiculous, Richard! Just get on and enjoy recommending the books and finding the books!’
JR: Yeah, it's it's why we all got into it -
RD: - Absolutely, yeah. The love of books and the love of sharing books is the one thing that I've maybe let slide from time to time.
JR: It’s easy to do when you're so busy. But it's going back to the basics sometimes. Just remembering to reset. They're the good days, they're the days when you say, ‘Yeah, I caught up with X, Y and Z, and I hand-sold my favourite book of the day’, or favourite book of the month, or whatever.
RD: Because at the end of the day, it's about finding that book that they didn't know they wanted or that they didn't know existed... There's definitely a warmth and a fire and a sort of a feeling of satisfaction in the back of my, you know, sitting here having remembered those things. I suppose that's the good thing about doing that Nibbies pitch each year is that it gives you a chance to remind yourselves why you're so knackered!
JR: It's not rekindling things it's just reminding yourself that the fight is still there.
RD: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely!
