JIM TAYLOR

LIGHTHOUSE, EDINBURGH

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Our final Bookshop spotlight of the year is with Edinburgh’s radical bookshop, Lighthouse: a queer-owned and woman-led community shop: previously nominated for Scotland’s Best Independent and stocks an unapologetically intersectional, feminist, antiracist and LGBTQ+ selection.

​We caught up with bookshop manager Jim Taylor during the Christmas rush to find out about their shop’s unique position within the competitive bookselling community of Edinburgh, their current bestsellers, team recommendations, book clubs, and more.

JAMES (JR): I guess what I wanted to do Jim, was showcase Lighthouse as a bit of a standalone, certainly in Edinburgh, but in some respects across the UK, by looking at the range you have and at your programme of events. I’m hoping we can talk about the shop, the team and at what you’re reading and what you’re getting excited about.

​So, we’ll start talking about the shop itself. For those who haven’t been to Lighthouse before, could you explain your shop’s focus and speciality which makes it stand out from other bookshops in Edinburgh?

JIM (JT): Well, we class ourselves as a radical bookshop, and what that means in practice is we specialise in progressive left-wing political writing but also queer writing; queer theory, and queer experience. We’re very much an intersectional, LGBTQ+ bookshop. 

We inherited the premises from Word Power, a left-wing bookshop [that had] been here in Edinburgh for many years, but what we try and do is to, as I say, be intersectional. So we have an interest in the political economy, anticapitalism and environmentalism, but also the LGBTQ+ angle is very important to us. And try and marry all these things in one offering, while at the same time stocking, what we like to think given the size of the shop, a pretty good range of general fiction and non-fiction and things like that. But you know, there are certainly authors we won’t stock if we don’t agree with their work or their values, and we will try and foreground queer writers, writers of colour, indigenous writing where relevant, and these kind of voices. Working class writers as well. Just to try and foreground those voices. 
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And I don’t really… There are a couple of bookshops in Edinburgh that do have a progressive outlook and who tend to stock authors like that, but that’s very much our speciality. It’s probably unique to Scotland, some bookshops really emphasise queer writing like Category Is in Glasgow for example, but I don’t think it’s as fully integrated into the kind of wider left-wing progressive offering that we have. And there are radical bookshops down in England with a similar profile but north of the border I think it’s just us, or as far as I’m aware, anyway. So yeah, it’s that focus on these areas and subjects that we think are really important and should be prominent, but coupled with this general offering.

JR: Could you give us a bit of an idea of the size, I mean for anyone who’s not been in? How big is your team, how many people work with you?

JT: Well, we employ 6 people, but of them only 2 are full-time. So the majority of the staff are part-time covering smaller shifts, so not a huge team. And there are days when it feels a little bit stretched, but it’s a nice size of team. It's easy to coordinate and easy to communicate. I’m hopeless at working the square footage and things like that but if I had to guess I’d say the shop is maybe 100 metres square. So it’s not a huge place. But you also don’t want to end up on top of each other or whatever so yeah, it’s a small team but a nice size of team for the bookshop.

JR: Could you explain how the shop is split up? I mean, within the political sphere, the radical side of things, you’ll perhaps have some genres or more specific or unique sections compared to other bookshops.

​In terms of the split of your stock, do you think that leans more towards non-fiction, then? 

JT: I would say that just in terms of sheer shelf space in the shop area there is a slight bias toward non-fiction but I’d say it’s maybe something like two-thirds non-fiction to one-third fiction, just in the sheer wall space. But it is because we have very large politics and LGBTQ+ sections. That’s the main reason. We also have a pretty sizeable history section. I mean, history and international current affairs are all thrown into one, so that’s really why. I think if we didn't specialise in those two things it’d probably be about 50/50. But that’s definitely where it skews. 

JR: Do you think that with such a small team you have members of the staff bringing their own tastes in what they like to read, or do you have a core stock that you maintain?

JT: There are some titles, I wouldn’t call it core stock, but there are a handful of titles that we do like to keep on hand. But I think generally we like people to bring something of themselves to it, their passions and things. You know, recently our romance section seems to have taken off, in the last year or so. It seems that romance and particularly queer romance is becoming a lot more popular with our younger demographic.
In fact, it was someone who was only working part-time with us who started doing more hours in the last couple of years - they are quite into their romance books, so having that passion but also that knowledge is hugely beneficial. Because we said, ‘Okay, we’re going to make a romance section’, or we’re going to expand it, and ‘Can you suggest some titles, do you want to do some research?’ and that’s just one example.
​But even since I started here, six or so years ago now, the science-fiction section has increased considerably because that’s an interest of mine. Again with that emphasis on progressive politics and queer interest, but in the realm of that genre, and that’s expanded significantly because of my efforts. And that happens throughout the shop. So, there are a handful of titles, like I say, that we would always have on hand, but I think it’s more about letting the team operate pretty freely within the parameters of what the shop’s about. And actually, you end up with some really interesting titles that way, I think. ​

You know, one of the main attractions to working as a bookseller for me is the people you work with. You meet some amazing people as a bookseller and such an interesting range of people...

But it’s also the nature of what we do, the mission of the shop. You know, there is a real sense of purpose to Lighthouse, I think, and that really affected me from the start.

JR: Absolutely, I think a really strong indie comes from having a really passionate readership. A staff that reads passionately makes all the difference. ​

JT: Yeah, and you see that you know, both in the title selection but also in how staff interact with customers, and there’s almost an infectiousness to it, you know. When you’re recommending books you’re passionate about someone can tell. You’ve actually read it and you very genuinely liked it. It makes a big difference. And I think that’s why it’s one of the many reasons that relationships between small bookshops and small publishers are important because small publishers don’t have the marketing clout of bigger entities and so having booksellers interacting with people on the retail frontline, as it were, you know, ‘I read this and it’s great’, or ‘You might not have heard of this press but they’re really good at this, this and this.’ It does make a big difference, and it’s not big and not a lot of noise but it does make a big difference and you see that over time and in different places.

JR: Let’s just quickly talk about that retail frontline then. I mean, you’re obviously not alone in Edinburgh as booksellers, you've got a fantastic selection of bookshops, independent and otherwise, across the city. We spoke to Jonathan at Golden Hare recently.

​What’s it like having bookselling in the family, first of all, and what’s it like sharing Edinburgh with so many amazing bookshops?

JT: Well, it’s interesting. There was a point about ten or so years ago when four out of the five members of my immediate family all worked in bookselling. 

JR: Really? Wow.

JT: Yeah! And it might’ve all been for Waterstones, actually, at the time. But at various different places across the country. But yeah, I don’t know, it’s a shared passion among my family, reading books anyway. So it kind of made sense. But me and my brother were both at similar positions at different points of our lives where we’ve been like, ‘I don’t really know what I want to do, but I know I like books’, and so that carries you into this world a little bit. 

So yeah, I don’t know what the figures are but I think that per capita Edinburgh’s got to have one of the highest rates of bookshop presence in the country. It’s not a big city but we’ve got at least half a dozen independent bookshops operating, and I think that everybody has their own niche to a certain degree, and that’s how it’s able to persist. Edinburgh’s always been a city with a strong cultural heritage and it kind of feels like that is very much still alive in part because all these wonderful bookshops are doing their own thing. And you know, we collaborate every year on the Book Fringe with other shops in the city, and the most recent incarnation of it we were working with Argonaut and Typewronger, and it’s great, you know, it’s always a pleasure to work with other cool bookshops and just to have that shared common experience but you learn things you maybe didn’t know about the trade or certain titles you weren’t aware of. Yeah, it’s great. A really nice experience every time, actually.

JR: Talking more about events then, I know that you’ve recently done The Radical Book Fair, and I know you’ve got a ‘Badvertising’ event tomorrow night as well. Could you tell us about how events work for you and maybe one or two of your event highlights of late?

JT: Yeah, for sure. We try to have at least a couple of events a week. Like many indie bookshops, they’re very much the lifeblood of what we do. We strive to be a community hub as much as a retail space and I think events are absolutely a part of that. I think they are particularly important, we try and ensure our events programme has a decent amount of book talks and author appearances from writers from more marginalised backgrounds and that in particular I think creates a sense of solidarity in the community. When we put on these events that you don't necessarily see in most bookshops, not necessarily due to any deliberate omission but just because it’s not their wheelhouse necessarily, and so that’s very much about community with those events.

The Radical Book Fair as you say is something we do every year and we’ve just had this one at the end of November. It’s a huge undertaking but I’m very pleased to say that six years after we started doing it, when we took it over, it’s still going strong. And this year I think we had the most events attended ever across the four days. So events are essential in what we do. I think for myself - I mean, most of the staff will take turns in chairing events so we’re all also involved in running them but also in the participation of them - I think getting to chair James Meek a couple of years ago was a highlight for me. 

Also, as you mentioned, the Book Fringe is something we run every August alongside the book festival, and it’s essentially creating a complimentary series of events that are free to attend and that we just put on at lunchtime at the shop. And so people come along and hang out and it’s a nice atmosphere, it’s a very much kind of festival of life in a very low-key way. We’ve had some great authors over the years. But we had Terry Eagleton come do a book event with us a few years ago, just before the Pandemic, which was really gratifying because it was a really interesting event but also because he particularly commented on how different the audience was at Lighthouse compared to the book festival. which does tend to skew a bit older. But he said coming to us and looking at a group of people who were predominantly young people was quite inspiring as a writer, to be reminded that your writing is influencing people of a younger generation. So yeah, being reminded that we can connect authors and readers like that is a nice feeling.

JR: Do you find the demographic of your shop is generally quite young? I know you’re relatively close to the university, I’m sure you’ll have some great connections there. Do you find generally speaking it’s on the younger side?

JT: I think so, yeah. I mean, we’ve never really done anything like market research or anything like that but definitely, anecdotally in my experience our demographic is skewed relatively young. I think when Mairi, the owner, opened the shop in 2017 there was and for a while afterwards, our clientele was predominantly students and tourists. Which was interesting because it meant that August was our biggest time of year, whereas Christmas didn’t do that much, it was all a bit busier but not this huge thing that it is in most bookshops. And that’s changed a little bit over time, I think more locals have discovered us so there’s more of a mix, but definitely on the whole a bit younger. Which is nice to see. I think there is this caricature of the kind of people going to bookshops being of an older generation, so it’s always nice to see students and younger people generally coming into the shop looking for interesting books and being turned on to some really cool literature. 

JR: And do you find that with your book clubs as well? I know you run a few different book clubs throughout the year. Are they back in person now? Because I know they were virtual for a while.

JT: We do. There are a couple we do in person but there are a couple still virtual. There are a few reasons for that: some of it has to do with accommodating immunocompromised readers and attendees, which is something we do for all our events actually, we still have a policy of masking for our events and do provide masks for that as well, for that reason. But also it’s because a lot of people who are still close to the shop and are wanting to attend our book clubs have ended up moving away from Edinburgh; or the other thing is that we often get orders from people from quite far-flung places, in Europe or North America, and places like that, who love the idea of a queer radical bookshop and find a real sense of connection there and it allows them to participate as well. So it doesn’t just limit participation to Edinburgh. 

But there’s something nice about in-person book clubs though. I used to run a science-fiction one in the shop and there is something nice about that. So we’ve talked about bringing some of the in-person book groups back, and while there are a couple who meet in the shop - the Readers of Colour meets in the shop, and I think one other - it isn’t something that is immediately going to change. 

JR: Is the responsibility of those clubs shared amongst the team? 

JT: Yeah, there was a point a couple of years ago where I think three or four staff members were running a book club each, whereas now it’s a little more mixed-and-matched. There are a couple of clubs run by staff members, there are a couple that are affiliated with the shop and run through the shop but are actually convened and run by people on our behalf who are friends of the shop. For myself, I don’t personally run one anymore because my plate is already too full of various other things to do. And I think that’s the case for a few people. So it’s a mix. 

JR: So, let’s just talk a bit about your background. What’s your current role within the bookshop and how did you get into it?

JT: I’m shop manager and I have been since November 2017 when I joined. I, before that, worked at Waterstones for about 13 years. Actually, I initially joined Ottakar’s when it was still a thing, when that was still going, back in 2005 and that was me straight out of university, with no idea what I wanted to do. I thought, ‘Well, I like books.’ So I applied for a spot at a bookshop. I got taken on there and I enjoyed it. You know, one of the main attractions to working as a bookseller for me is the people you work with. You meet some amazing people as a bookseller and such an interesting range of people. So I was in Aberdeen at that point when I started working at Ottakar’s just out of university, I then got taken on by Waterstones. And then across the span of years, I ended up working in five or six different branches but mainly around Edinburgh. I worked in each of the Edinburgh branches. So throughout those thirteen years, the reason, or one of the reasons I kept doing it and stuck with Waterstones, was that my role was quite varied, I did a lot of different things.
​However, by 2017 I’d gotten a bit tired of it and I thought, ‘Actually, books aren’t for me anymore.’ I’d done a good stint of it. But then Mairi offered me the job of managing the shop here. And it really reinvigorated me, it’s reignited my passion for bookselling being here. And I think a part of that is being in smaller operations, a less corporate entity. And one where you are much closer to the decision-making, day to day, about the shop. But it’s also the nature of what we do, the mission of the shop. You know, there is a real sense of purpose to Lighthouse, I think, and that really affected me from the start. It’s part of the fulfilment, I find, in working here. So, it’s been quite a long time being a bookseller but only the last few years as an indie bookseller. ​

JR: Yeah, you know it’s funny how many people I’ve spoken to, whether they’ve stumbled into it from another sector or whether they’re lifers like yourself, who it’s all they’ve known. And it’s interesting to hear people’s different perspectives of [working at or coming from] Waterstones. And of course, in the indie world, it so often gets a bit of a bad rap. 

​Are there any good elements of that job that you thought the indie bookselling world could benefit from, and what are the key things you’ve brought with you from Waterstones that you’ve managed to maintain?

JT: That’s a really good question, actually. Because it’s easy to be wholly negative about the corporate experience, and yeah, there’s plenty to be negative about, in my experience. But Waterstones, I would say, has been at different times the best and worst job I ever had. And that depended on who my manager was or where I was at any given time. And I do think that without a doubt the indie experience is a better one, but there are really valuable lessons I’ve learned working for Waterstones. I have a great affinity for systems and for precision and things like that and I’ve also worked at health and safety at Waterstones for a while as well, so that experience of being more precise with the way you organise things is certainly something I brought over to working at Lighthouse.

And as much as independent bookselling is this wonderful romantic endeavour it does have a tendency, and I’m sure this is a cliche of it, to be a little rough around the edges, in terms of some of the organisational elements and stock-taking and things like that. So for me, coming to it and being able to apply some sense of structure to the gentle charm and chaos of indie bookselling has been something that has been really valuable for me. I don’t know if my colleagues would agree with me on that! But that’s definitely something. And also, the other thing is just really basic fundamental customer service skills. I don’t know what it’s like starting to work at Waterstones now, but when I started there was an awful lot of time spent on honing the fundamentals of good customer service, and I learned a lot from that.

​​So, I have been able to bring that experience with me and pass those lessons on to other people. Because that makes a difference. And it’s easy for customer service to become very corporatised and very hollow in a big company setting but there’s a lot of value there, and being able to take that and apply it in an indie setting, in a small bookshop setting, I think is worthwhile.

JR: Did you bring the organisational side of things over in your managing of stock as well? ​

JT: Yeah, there’s an element of it. It’s a tough question. Because I think myself and the owner might have very different opinions when it comes to stock. I can definitely become too… erm, bloody-minded about what we should keep, what should be gotten rid of, based purely on things like sales figures and stock turnaround and things like that. I have a great affinity with numbers and spreadsheets so that’s perhaps understandable, whereas Mairi might say, ‘Okay, yeah, but that’s a really important book’, or ‘That writer is a friend of the shop’, or ‘We’ve had a few people say that this writer’s work has really affected them, so maybe we should give it another six months’, or something like that. And so there’s been a kind of push-and-pull in which I’ve come to appreciate other aspects of it.
​But there is a time and a place where that bloody-mindedness is actually useful, particularly when you’re shelves are heaving and you have to make hard decisions about what stock to get rid of and which stock to foreground in your displays and all that. So, it’s a balance, I think. There’s this idea, again, like a caricature of the two extremes of corporate bookselling and indie bookselling where one is all about selling them at a discount and the other is about hurling a bunch of books at the shelf and seeing what works. Where in reality, as with many other things, the ideal is somewhere in between. You push the books you believe in but you also look at the data. Mairi and I are a pretty good team in that respect. ​

JR: Yeah, absolutely. And even now, people aren’t going to get the benefit of your backdrop on Zoom after I type this up, but I can see the mountains of books behind you!
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Is that all overstock or are they returns?

JT: These are returns, and we are at that time of year when, post-Radical Book Fair, so many books come back to the shop. I mean, we sell loads but obviously, we order a load of stock. So we integrate an awful lot of stock back on the shelves, and in a way, it’s good because we have fresh stock coming in just in time for Christmas but we do however have to get rid of a lot of old stuff off the shelf and make space for it.
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At the same time, it’s way too busy to do proper returns in December, so the compromise I’ve found is that we pull off all the old stock just now and put it in the basement and then in January we work on sending it back. But it does just mean at this moment in time that there are a lot of books sitting down here in the office! 

JR: I mean, I’m sure there’s some order to the chaos but it is the nuts and bolts of the job, isn’t it?

JT: Yeah, and again, that’s the thing. It’s the balance between the passion and the romance of it, and the, yeah, the nuts and bolts and the spreadsheets. But then, I guess, in bookselling, perhaps more than many other forms of business, it’s very much about that.

JR: So, let’s focus a little more on the nuts and bolts before we talk about the romance, then. Let’s talk about your bestsellers at the minute. I’m sure you’ll have a general feel for it when you’re on the shop floor but if you’re casting an eye over sales figures you’ll probably have a better idea, especially now in this period of Christmas.

​What are people coming in for and what seems to be doing well?

JT: Well, it’s a great question. We in particular see certain trends that have been popular with a lot of our customers. Environmentalism and things of regrowth in particular have been a big hit recently. In the wake of the George Floyd protests of 2020, there’s been a huge uptake in interest in books about antiracism and the concrete actions people can take to deal with that, critical race theory and things like that, so yeah, there’s a lot. And at the moment, given what’s happening in the world, a huge interest in books on Palestine and books by Palestinian authors. So, with us, and I suppose this is the case with many bookshops, but particularly the case with us, current events and current affairs do play a big role in what are bestsellers are at any time. Because there does tend to be a trend in what people are interested in, or interested in learning about, I should say. And like I say, queer romance has been a big hit for us recently. I think, this Christmas in particular.

We always joke, or Mairi and I always joke that anyone who comes in and asks us for a feel-good read is really in the wrong place. There are a lot of really depressing political books on the shelf. However, there is a more optimistic side to it which I think is what is going to be a big thing for us this Christmas, which is books that say, ‘Yes, there are a lot of really terrible things happening in the world, a lot of difficult stuff in the world, but here’s what you can do, or here’s what you can try, or here’s what you can get involved with, or here’s how you can help some people.’ That’s what we want to try and do is to promote an idea of hope that isn’t idealistic but routed in actuality. Realistic hope, I guess. So that’s always the kind of theme at Christmastime for us.

But yeah, it does very much depend on, as I said earlier, traditionally our clientele were students and tourists and so Christmastime was not this huge thing. It’s gotten bigger, but it’s always a bit unpredictable for us in terms of how big Christmas is going to be. But I do think that books on Palestine, books on environmentalism, degrowth and books on how to transform the despair that people might have about how the world is into a kind of hope for action - transform into a point of action. I think that’s where we’re at. And those are the books that seem to sell and have been selling particularly really well for us. And if we can do that that’ll make me very happy, if we’re able to fulfil that desire and that need.

JR: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s always great when you can marry the books you want to sell with the books that you are selling. Do you find that your staff picks and recommendations are the books that people gravitate towards, or is it just a free-for-all this time of year?

JT: It really is a mix. We are terrible at having a good system of staff recommendations in place. Which, given the type of shop we are, you might be surprised to hear. Given how passionate all of our booksellers are about various things. But it’s just the logistics, it’s about just not getting around to it. I mean, every other independent bookshop I speak to says, ‘Staff recommends are such an important part of our sales and our stock profile’, and so it’s always a thing for us. People are always involved in what we order but the actual writing out shelf-talkers and creating a space to say, ‘Here is a book that I think is great’, we’re not so good at that. But we’re trying to be a lot better. I think that if we could do that they would be a very good part of our Christmas sales. 
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As it is, I think it’s going to be driven by these trends our customers, these readers, are interested in. But within those trends, we will have, with the help of all the staff, ordered books within those topic areas that we think are particularly valuable and what the staff think are worthwhile. I’m struggling to think of examples right now. I know a few Palestinian writers that a couple of our booksellers have found who we’ve made a point of stocking and showcasing in our fiction section. And there are some books which I always - for example, I’m a big fan of Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism, which I think is a wonderful little book, and we sell it pretty steadily all the time. Because I always make sure there’s a face-out of it in the shop but I’ve not taken the time to write a recommendation for it. 

JR: It’s funny that because I think maybe the last time I came in, which admittedly might’ve been a little while ago now, that was put in my hands as a ‘Jim recommendation’. So that must mean that that’s working, that that system is in place. 

JT: I think so. It’s there in an informal way. So if we speak to customers and they say, ‘Oh, can you recommend me a book?’, then we can recommend a book and say, ‘Oh, this one, this one!’ But I ordered that in particular because I believe in it. But if somebody comes into the shop and it’s too busy for them to speak to a staff member who’s stuck at the till they’re not unfortunately going to have an awareness of that, so it really is something we need to be better at. I think ultimately what I would like is to have a full display of books that have all been recommended by each staff member with a shelf-talker explaining why and what it’s about. 

I think in a way, it works very fortuitously because with our clientele there are a lot of people looking to learn more about things happening in the world but there are also a lot of people who are very knowledgeable about current affairs, so that’s why they come to us because of the breadth of books we have. And so often there’s a situation where the people coming into the shop can know the books better than we do. But yeah, I’d like us to formalise that staff recommends offering because it’s really a part of who we are. I do think there will be those books that we choose as a team will play a big part in what we do over Christmas but that will be more because we have them and we are very much putting them in our displays and in front of customers, rather than because we’ve specifically said, “oh, I recommend this one for these reasons.’ 

JR: It’s been great seeing some of the staff Books of the Year posts online. I think it’s tradition now really that every bookshop does a round-up of the team and does a little stack, but it’s great and really useful, especially when I’m not just down the road from you. It’s been nice to see what you’re all reading.

Do you have some examples of your Books of the Year this year?

JT: Yeah, absolutely. I have just finished reading In Ascension by Martin MacInnes which was on the longlist for the Booker. And full disclosure, Martin is a friend of mine. We worked at Waterstones together. But it’s a wonderful book. It’s this amazing fusion of great science-fiction ideas with beautiful wholesome prose and characterisation. I love that book and I was sorry it didn’t make the shortlist for the Booker, it’s a fantastic read. 

And there’s one which is very much a Lighthouse book as well, which is called Luda by Grant Morrison which is published by Europa. And Grant Morrison, they are much better known as a comics writer, originally from Glasgow, but much better known as a comics writer and this is their first novel and it’s kind of a cult thriller set in the Glaswegian drag queen scene. So, very much a Lighthouse book. 

So.. erm, unfortunately, I have a one-year-old at home so I’ve not done as much reading as I would’ve liked this year.

JR: I think that’s very forgivable! You’ve probably read more kids' books than you’ll have done in ages.

JT: That’s true actually. That’s a very good point.

I guess the last one I’d say… I chaired an event at the Radical Book Fair or a book called Friends of Isreal by Hil Aked, and that’s a fantastic book [published by Verso]. The depth of the research coupled with the readability and just the way that they sketch out this profoundly important political situation in the UK was great, and they were also a fantastic speaker and a lovely person. So, that’s another book I’ve enjoyed. And that has been doing well for us recently as well.

JR: That's fantastic, they sound great. Now, for the last question and a final note on bookselling for the year, I’m just curious about what you’re looking forward to coming out next year, if there’s anything on the publishing horizon that’s been jumping out at you or if there’s anything you’ve ordered in recently?

JT: That’s a great question. Erm…

JR: I know, it’s terrible putting you on the spot like this.

JT: You know, I see publishing reps all the time and I’m always seeing new books coming out.

I think that rather than any particular titles, I am very interested in seeing what’s next from the various small presses that we engage with and sell the books of and have always done well with. People like And Other Stories in Sheffield, Charco Press in Edinburgh, Peepal Tree Press, and there are too many to name but the breadth and diversity and quality of these fascinating titles you can only get from small presses who are dedicated to what they do. I am always excited to see what’s coming from that side of the industry. 
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But just the breadth of wonderful stuff from small presses is just a constant source of excitement for a bookseller, I think. 

JR: Yeah, brilliant. And I think that’s a wonderful place to end on, Jim. Thank you. 
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I totally second that. I’m bowled over by some of these small presses at the minute and at how incredibly productive they’ve been these last few years, coming off the back of the Pandemic in the way that they have. And, if anything, they’re just getting started.

JT: Totally. And it’s nice to see that something like the Pandemic didn’t kill off all those endeavours, you know. And if anything people are coming out even more determined, more resolute, and more committed to bringing out really good stuff to the marketplace. And I see publishing reps all the time and they say, like, ‘Oh, thank you for placing all these big orders with us’, and I’m like, ‘Well, you’ve brought us some great books!’ You know, these publishers are putting out some great stuff and we’re always going to order more if there’s good stock there. And that’s just an illustration of the really nice and really productive relationship between small bookshops and small presses. Just that sense of character and diversity, which is really valuable.

So yeah, I guess I'm interested to see where the industry as a whole goes in the next twelve months. But yeah, I guess that is a nice note to end on. 

If you enjoyed reading about Lighthouse then make sure to give them your support online or in person this Christmas and beyond. Visit their events page to watch back some of these events and many, many more.
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Our Bookshop Spotlights will return in 2024 with interviews from some of the indie book world’s newest players and some of the industry’s biggest names. Follow along on Instagram or Twitter for daily news.