mike sansburythe grove bookshop, ilkleywe spoke to bookseller & manager of the grove bookshop, MIKE SANSBURY, this week to discuss the varied and eventful history of Ilkley’s longest running book retailer, and to find out all about Mike's own bookselling backstory, his favourite reads, industry advice, and what keeps him coming back to the job twenty-five years in!‘Doing something you love means it’s never a pain getting up to go to work… It’s enjoyable, it’s a subject I’m interested in and I’ve always loved doing it. You meet lots of people, you get to see new books all the time, and it’s fun. If you do it properly.’ |
JR: Have you had any snow on your end, Mike?
MS: Not snow, but lots of ice. We’re at the top of the hill and it was fun coming into work this morning. I could’ve skated down, probably.
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JR: How was your Christmas?
MS: It was good. It was really good. Every year you think, ‘Is it going to be as good as last year?’, and it was more or less the same as last year, to be honest. I think generally bookshops have had an average time over Christmas, so we’re quite happy with what we did. It’s bustling and busy and plenty of sales. Everything we wanted to sell sold and there weren't any disasters. So, yeah. It was all pretty good actually.
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JR: That’s great to hear. Did you have any stand-out titles in particular, anything that did particularly better than others?
MS: Yeah, Rory Stewart’s book. Politics On the Edge was our bestseller by a mile, which is interesting because, I suppose, it’s the acceptable face of Tory politics. He was a Tory MP but apparently, he’s thinking about standing for Labour in the next election, which is a bit of an about-turn. But yeah, he’s kind of the voice of reason, I guess, and appeals to people on both sides because he’s straight down the middle. That did pretty well.
And the little gift book by Rob Burrow and Kevin Sinfield, which is just a book of uplifting sayings and phrases and wisdom and illustrations, but all the profits went to Motor Neuron disease so it was a kind of charity seller and it did really well and was our second best, I guess. Otherwise, it was an across-the-board, general decent sales. |
JR: I guess it’s always a funny time. You want everything to sell equally well but I suppose we always have our own leanings, each shop has its own favourites, don’t they?
MS: Yeah, definitely. And at Christmas, sometimes there are a couple of standouts that do really well, and that’s great, you know, there might’ve been, in previous years, maybe, the Billy Connolly biography that came out about five years ago just went mad, or there’s a Richard Osman that flies out, and everything else just clings onto its coattails. And other times it’s more a range of averagely priced books, things around a tenner, those little hardbacks which are around a tenner because there’re lots of those different titles and they sell well. And it all adds up. Sometimes it’s weighted in favour of a couple of books, other times it’s across the board. And I’d rather have it that way, to be honest, so that everything gets a chance, think.
The problem with the big titles is if you run out or if you go out of stock or anything, then there’s nothing else to replace it. |
JR: Exactly, the worry at Christmas is always reprints, isn’t it?
MS: Oh god, yeah. I mean, it was not so bad this year, but in the last couple of years for various reasons, transport issues, printing costs, and things to do with Brexit and the follow on from lockdowns, there was a real danger that stuff wouldn’t get through. I think last year we ended up stockpiling stuff, so we ordered loads and loads of stuff in advance - whereas normally we could top it up on a daily or weekly basis but just to make sure we had the stuff, so we had tonnes of stock in a cupboard downstairs just hoping we had enough!
And that worked but this year it was much easier to top up, there wasn't so much of a panic, I guess. |
JR: Yeah, it takes some of the worry off. Obviously, there’s always that thing in the back of your mind, that you need the footfall coming in, but you don’t want to have to be chasing deliveries as well.
MS: No, no. I mean, it’s funny you mention footfall. It gets so busy in the shop, you know, it’s only a small shop. And following the lockdowns the year before last we were limiting it to eight people in the shop at any one time, which sounds reasonable but there were times this Christmas when there must have been thirty-forty people in the shop and I don't know how we possibly limited it, how we managed to stop people coming in, because it fills up and people stay there. You know, with a bookshop, people browse and like to hang around and it can be pretty crowded. But that’s what you want. It’s good. The more the merrier, really. Even if they’re not buying, they’re looking and noticing things.
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JR: And I guess at Christmas as well you get the added atmosphere of having a full shop, which makes all the difference.
MS: Oh, definitely! It just adds to the atmosphere.
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JR: So, Mike, let's talk about the shop itself then. You’re located in the Wharfe Valley in the Yorkshire Dales…
MS: That’s right, yeah.
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JR: You’re situated in the Victorian spa town of Ilkley. Am I right in thinking that the shop’s been open for about forty years?
MS: Forty-five, actually. It opened in November 1978.
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JR: And It’s had an interesting history, hasn’t it? I think before that, I read somewhere, there was freshly baked bread, pianos, wine and tobacco…?
MS: Ha! That’s right, yeah. It was a baker’s when it first opened and then it sold pianos and then briefly turned into a car garage, a kind of car repair place, whilst still selling pianos as well! And then a wine and spirits company called Dinsdales took it over in the Twenties and ran that for about twenty years, up until World War II. And then in the Fifties and Sixties, a different company called Luptons took over the same business. It was a gents outfitter in the Seventies and then became a bookshop in seventy-eight. And it’s been a bookshop for forty-five years, which is longer than it had been anything else.
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JR: Could you tell us a little bit about the bookshop’s history? I know it was taken on by new owners within that time as well.
MS: Yeah, a couple called Mr and Mrs Townsons opened the bookshop in 1978. Their son still lives in Ilkley. I chat to him about it from time to time, and he says his father would only open a bookshop if it could have the premises that we’re in now because it’s on a corner on the main shopping street. It is the perfect location. And he opened that - there was another bookshop in Lkley at the time but I think he thought he could do better - and they ran it for about ten years and then a local estate agent called Andrew Sharp bought the business, he was very interested in books, particularly antiquarian books, so he ran the bookshop for about twelve years, running his antiquarian business downstairs. And when he left he moved that business to Bolton Abbey. The current owner took over, Kevin Ramage who was based in Scotland at the time running a converted watermill which he turned into a bookshop, he’s been a bookseller of long standing. He’s bought and sold bookshops and worked for The Booksellers Association and his life has been bookselling. He now lives in Bristol where he watches over things from a distance and leaves us to do our thing.
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JR: I mean, that might be quite a freeing position to be in, I suppose.
Let’s talk about your role, then. You’re manager, is that right?
Let’s talk about your role, then. You’re manager, is that right?
MS: Yeah.
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JR: On the day-to-day then, a shop manager can mean an awful lot of things to different people, but having that relationship with the owner, being given quite a long leash, how does that work for you and how do you manage it?
MS: Well, it means that we’re free to order whatever we want. So, whatever we stock in the shop is stuff that we’ve chosen. I get to decide where we order it from - whether we go direct to publishers or go through our wholesaler. Wholesale is good for day-to-day stuff and if we want to order in things in larger numbers for an event or whatever we go to the publisher. We employ who we want. And a lot of the financial stuff is dealt with in Scotland as our sister shop - we’re not a chain but there are two or three shops that are owned by the same person - and they tend to do things centrally up there, so we’re freed up from that as well. So it’s purely the business of bookselling more than anything else.
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JR: yeah, and you’ve got the best position to be in, really, don’t you? To have that freedom.
MS: Yeah, definitely, yeah.
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JR: You might know this off the top of your head but you might not, but how many books have you got in stock at the moment?
MS: I think it’s something like six thousand. So, not a lot. We’re over two floors. The main ground floor of the shop is where most of the books are and we’ve got a smaller room in the basement, which used to be a music shop selling CDs, which currently has travel books, maps, guides and some sheet music in there. But that’s a much smaller area and I think whichever lives downstairs takes a second place, really. It’s kind of out of sight. A lot of people don’t even know it’s there I think, when they come in. So although we’ve got the extra space the rent on it is minimal, so it kind of pays for itself anyway down there. It’s just a bonus area.
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JR: And do you have a relatively sizable team to be able to manage multiple floors?
MS: There are seven of us all together. I’m full-time and Amy, the assistant manager, is full-time. And then we have various people filling in different days of the week at different hours just to make it work, fitting in with their lives. Everyone has a contribution, they just work the hours that are required and the hours that fit in with them. I mean, it’s a balancing act, you know, it’s a bit of a jigsaw pulling in the rota every month but that’s Amy’s job thankfully and not mine.
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JR: Is it a bit of a free-for-all and everybody covers all sections or do people gravitate to different roles?
MS: We have specialities, we have our favourite subjects which we concentrate on but everyone’s able to just chip in and make suggestions. We try to do most of the ordering between the management team but generally, if people have confidence in a book and they want to go for it we’ll never say no, because they use their expertise. So, we have Karina who knows a lot about children’s books, we’ve got Neil who’s into his military history and his politics, there’s Emily who does short stories and novellas and contemporary fiction. So everyone’s got an interest and it all kind of dovetails and means we’ve got a decent range of stock and a range of subjects.
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JR: Do you think there's a slight leaning in anyway, in your subject focus? Maybe more non-fiction than fiction? Presumably, you’ve got a fair bit of local history and travel.
MS: Yeah, I think the things we’re really big on are local books, a bit of Yorkshire history because in any small shop in a local area, you tend to pick on stuff that’s published locally and written locally and you wouldn’t get it anywhere else. So, you end up with quite a wide selection of local books which appeal not just to local people but to tourists and people who come visiting or returning to Ilkely on holidays and things like that. So that’s always been strong. Fiction is traditionally something that we do really well and is one of the most popular sections, probably the biggest section. It’s what you associate with a bookshop, I guess. And then children’s books, as well. But we do well across the board - politics, and world affairs, have always been popular, and history as well. History is a big subject, mainly with male readers, you know.
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JR: Do you think your demographic has changed over the years, especially maybe after the pandemic?
MS: I do, actually. I think when I first started here - and I’ve been working maybe thirteen, fourteen years - there seemed to be a lot more of the older generation and retired people. They’re still around, but there’s been a real influx of younger families so we’re doing a lot better with children’s books than we maybe did in the past because there are more young families around. And the kind of books, the kind of fiction books, might’ve changed a little as well, depending on trends but also on our customers as well. We try to bear our customers in mind whenever we order anything because they’re the people who are going to buy them, obviously.
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JR: Yes, of course. Do you have somewhere in-store that shows off your staff picks or your bookseller recommendations?
MS: We do, we try to keep that going all the time and we’ll either have the odd book on the shelf with a little note saying who recommends it, or we have a display from time to time. At the moment we’ve got a bookcase with books that we as staff intend to read this year, our sort of New Year’s reading resolutions, maybe. So, there’s a display of those right now, but yeah, if we recommend something we’re genuine about it. I think it really resonates with customers, they like to have a recommendation and they don’t always want to ask, ‘Can you recommend a book for me?’ But we might have a note saying, ‘I really enjoyed this book’, or the reason why you read it in the first place. It just gives it that extra push and it’s a seal of approval sort of thing. Whoever in the shop enjoyed that book you can take that as a sign that’s worth reading and you can give it a go.
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JR: Absolutely, and it’s forming those kinds of relationships as well.
MS: Yeah, definitely, yeah. And like you say, regular customers will know who we are as well and when they see my name on a book they have an idea what sort of thing it’s going to be. I used to review books for the local newspaper for a while and that was quite popular. We’d have a display in the shop and a copy of the review but that just became too much work in the end. There are lots of other things to be doing!
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JR: So, again, Mike, for those people who might not be so used to the area, could you give us an idea of the shopping landscape of Ilkley? I know you’re quite close to Bradford and Leeds, and a little farther away you have Harrogate, where you’ve got some brilliant booksellers. Do you have any other bookshops in your immediate area?
MS: No, we don’t. In Ilkley itself we have WH Smiths who are more of a stationers, I guess. They have a book department but I think it’s almost secondary, and the kind of books that they sell are the sort of thing you’d find in the supermarket as well. So we try and avoid what they sell and concentrate on what we do well instead. There’s Oliver Bonas, who has a selection of books, a small selection of books. But otherwise, that’s it in Ilkley. There used to be a Just Books but that’s closed now. And there’s Tesco for the big blockbuster titles.
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JR: Do you tend to avoid those kinds of titles or do you feel like you need to have them regardless?
MS: I think they’re things that we will probably have in single copies. So, if there’s a new Jamie Oliver cookbook, it would be wrong not to have it. We can’t compete with them on price so rather than having a pile of five of them at half price we’ll get two or three and maybe try and know some money off but not a lot. We’re not big on discounting because I think, to some extent, it devalues the product if you’re slicing prices all the time.
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JR: Yeah, it’s a really slippery slope, discounting, isn’t it?
MS: Once you start you’re kind of there and you get to a point where there’s no going back. If people choose to shop here they’re getting the added value of - they’re getting the atmosphere, they’re getting the service, they’re getting the display, the book knowledge of the staff, and it all adds up. Maybe that means more than having five pounds off the odd book.
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JR: Absolutely, and I think it’s like standing on your morals. I guess you don’t want to show a trend of your customers coming and then expecting some money off.
MS: That’s it. I think also, we’ve got overheads and we don't have the buying power of a supermarket or Waterstones, or whatever, so quite often online or in supermarkets they’re selling books at a price that we can’t even buy them for. We’ve got to concentrate on what else we can offer to make up for that. Which is good for us because it makes us think about what we do and how we do it, I guess.
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JR: And also where you get them from, presumably.
MS: Yes!
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JR: I spoke to Kevin at Bluemoose last week and we got onto the discounting and increased prices on their end and he did talk a little bit about that false ceiling, the inflated prices of some of these hardbacks these days, knowing that some of these massive retailers are going to be giving those away with ten pounds of or half price.
MS: Yeah, that’s the thing. The hardback prices have shot up in the last couple of years, three or four years, for various reasons. Partly, I think, because they were being kept artificially low for a long time in some cases. But yeah, that is a good point. If you price something at £22 it is because you know that a lot of people will be selling it for £12 or £16 or whatever, so no one is ever going to be paying that at full price but there are places that they will, and that’s where we might suffer, I guess. Where a hardback three or four years ago was £18.99 is now £22. It’s all money that people have to find, isn’t it?
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JR: I guess this year maybe more than even the last couple of people are really feeling that pinch, aren’t they?
MS: Yeah. people say that Ilkley is a bit cushioned from financial problems around the country because it’s quite a wealthy area, quite well-to-do. But even people here will reach the point where it starts to pinch and I think now is probably the time. And especially this time of year. January is always surprisingly quiet after the rush of Christmas and then as January goes on people are starting to struggle because they’ve maybe paid out too much for Christmas, they’ve been paid before Christmas rather than at the end of the month so it makes it a six week, seven week month, and by the 25th January, they’re basically battening down the hatches and waiting for payday.
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JR: Because of where you’re based, obviously, the Dales and of course, Ilkley itself, is such a great tourist draw. Since the pandemic, so many people have been talking about holidaying in the UK rather than going abroad. Have you found that you’ve seen the tourist numbers go up where you are?
MS: Well, I think it’s always been popular in the summer. It’s always been - the Yorkshire Dales - a tourist spot. What happens in the summer, generally, is that the local people go away on holiday, so a lot of our regular customers aren’t around for a while but that’s compensated by the influx of tourists. I think we had a bit of a double-whammy the year after lockdown when local people decided they weren’t going to go very far because they were a bit wary of travelling, but yet the staycationers were still coming to Ilkley so we had double the customers in a way which really helped. But it has gone up.
I think Ilkley has come together as a bit of a business town. The Ilkley Bid, a business innovation thing, has worked a lot with publicising the smaller businesses of Ilkley and it’s always been an attractive place to visit, the council always appear to be spending money on the things that make the difference, the floral displays, and street cleaning, all that kind of thing. It’s still a beautiful place to visit and an attractive place and there’s loads of accommodation around here, it’s right on the edge of the Dales, and if it rains you need a book to read. |
JR: And it’s that kind of influx of people that must benefit all the businesses in the area and not just retail.
MS: Definitely, it does. The two times of the year when that works perfectly are the summer holidays and then the Ilkley Literature Festival in October because it just brings people into the town. The festival in particular because it brings customers, it brings writers, it brings publicists, and people from various publishing companies, and Ilkley is on display. It’s almost like an advert for Ilkley to the publishing industry.
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JR: And it’s been running for close to 50 years now, is that right?
MS: It was its 50th year this last year. We’ve not had 50 festivals because it started off as a biannual thing but it’s been going since 1973 and it’s amazing. It’s wonderful for us, it’s wonderful for the town. It’s a lot of work. We’re the official booksellers and we just turn up and sell books at the event, basically, but there’s an awful lot of planning that goes into that. Not just ordering the books but staffing it as well, keeping the shop going, but it’s brilliant. It kick-starts Christmas as well, because by the time the festival’s over we’re right into that run-up to Christmas. And we’ve had a kind of dry run almost of being mad busy and it just doesn’t stop.
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JR: It’s that spinning of plates you need to get used to, I suppose, so October is a great time for that.
MS: It is, yeah. Because, I think otherwise you tend to be quite slow at picking up speed for Christmas and it really gets us on form and sharpened up by the time Christmas begins.
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JR: And The Grove’s been a part of the festival since 2002.
MS: That’s right. When Kevin took over the shop, when he bought the shop in about 2001-2002, either he was offered the chance or he investigated the possibilities of working with the festival, and that partnership has been going on ever since. That’s over twenty years now.
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JR: And the festival runs over outside of October as well, doesn’t it? I read somewhere it can sometimes get up to 150 events over the year, is that right?
MS: Well, I think it was not far from that in just October, to be honest. Until recently, I think there were slightly fewer this time, but yeah, they often have a little Spring mini-festival and a children’s festival and they put on occasional events throughout the year. As well as outreach things with the community in places like Bradford. It’s big, it’s much bigger than it looks. There’s a lot of work that goes into it than just the October festival and we get involved with it wherever we can, really.
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JR: I know that you’ve got the Yule Island event and a Persephone Books event next month as well. How do events work for you in-store, outside of the festival then?
MS: That’s right, yes. Yule Island is on Thursday and Persephone is on the 15th of February. We do them in various ways, we occasionally are approached by publishers when authors are doing a tour and they ask if we’re interested, and depending on the author or the size of the audience they’re expecting and our availability show-wise as well, we’ll take them up on it. Usually, our events in the shop are quite small because we can only fit about thirty people maximum, I guess, in the shop which is not massive.
Sometimes we’ll get an author, like last year we got Julia Chapman, that author of The Dales Detective Agency series, and she really wanted to come and we really wanted to have her, so we moved the event into a different venue where there was a bit more room and we ended up having over a hundred people there. Which was fantastic but we can't do that all the time. What you gain in doing that in audience numbers, is you lose in intimacy and the atmosphere of the shop. It’s nice to have something in the shop, it can be quite intimate. But you want to bring authors into your shop and you want to bring customers in to see the authors in the shop environment because it just makes it more of a special bookshop event, rather than just something in a hall, you know. |
JR: I guess because of where you are and because the festival is on your doorstep you can allow for these smaller ones to pepper throughout your year.
MS: And that’s the other thing, you don’t want to tread on the festival’s toes and you don’t want to arrange an author to find that that author was meant to be coming to the festival in October and it’s caused all sorts of disruptions. You don’t want to do that! Because, you know, we all work together and if we had someone coming they probably wouldn’t do it either.
Another thing we’ve done in the last few years with local, self-published authors particularly, we’ve offered them almost a kind of launch package, where they come to the shop and have an event where they invite friends, family, whatever, and we open it up to the general public as well, and we have some wine and they get to talk about their book. It just gives it a bit of a push and gives them the chance to celebrate the book with friends and family and also gives the shop and event and gives them a chance to get the book sold in the shop as well. |
JR: Yeah, it’s a good way to build those relationships with authors and they’re more likely to come back in the future, aren’t they?
MS: Yeah, well you’d hope so. It certainly seems to work that way, so far.
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JR: Mike, let’s just talk briefly, I know you mentioned it before, Kevin having opened the Watermill Bookshop up in Aberfeldy, but you’ve got another couple as well, is that right? There’s one in Lyme Regis and another one in Bristol.
MS: That’s right, yeah. Kevin moved down to Bristol about two-three years ago and bought the Lyme Regis bookshop because it was up for sale and that's been going pretty well since. And then he got hold of a unit down on the waterside in Bristol and opened Book Haus which is his newest bookshop. It’s very different from our shop, it’s quite modern, and obviously, it’s dealing with a more urban customer base so it’s much more focussed on political things and popular culture rather than the kind of cosy, Ilkley sort of thing that we do.
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JR: They all seem quite separate and unique shops. That must be a good thing.
MS: Definitely, every shop has its own identity. The Watermill is great because it’s quite touristy but they have a cafe as well. There’s something for everyone really. You wouldn’t know automatically when you go that they’re connected but there is similarity and there’s a kind of approach to things that’s probably due to the way Kevin runs the company. But yes, it's a good range of shops and each one fits in with its own environment.
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JR: Let’s talk a bit more about yourself, I’m interested in your background and how you got into bookselling.
MS: Right, well, I spent most of my life in bookshops until I was about sixteen and then exams got in the way because I was always hanging around bookshops. After university, I worked at the Tate Gallery in Liverpool for about ten years as a guide and as an information assistant. I left to do a teacher training course which I didn't like very much, needed a job urgently, once I’d dropped out of it, and found a place in Waterstones in Leeds where I worked for, again, about ten years, with a gap in the middle where I worked for a publisher. I was made redundant in Waterstones, moved to Leeds University where the uni had a bookshop, and just as that closed got a job here in Ilkley where I’d just moved. So I’ve managed to hang on in bookselling for about twenty-twenty-four years.
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JR: It’s a considerable amount of time. I mean, you must’ve seen the industry change a fair bit.
MS: Very, very much, yeah. I mean, just working in Waterstones was an education in itself because every time a new management team took over the approach changed. The Netbook agreement had already gone by the time I started, so that’s when all the heavy discounting started everywhere. Waterstones were discounting to some extent but not as much as they did eventually because the competition grew, Borders arrived and they had to compete with Borders on every level they could. With the Amazon challenge as well.
It got to a point where they were maybe not focussing on books as books but as items to sell, you know, and it was a struggle really. When I left I think they were having real problems. It's improved a lot since they got new management, since James Daunt took over that’s kind of improved the atmosphere in the shops, definitely. But yeah, I’ve seen all kinds, some academic bookselling, into the high street, and then eventually independent where I’ve been for the last fourteen years. |
JR: We’re so quick to down-talk Waterstones and Smiths and the supermarkets, in the indie world especially, but I’m interested if there’s anything from throughout your time, anything from the more corporate high street arena, that you thought was positive and have brought with you that’s benefitted the shop in some way?
MS: Oh, gosh, lots. I loved working for Waterstones for most of my time there. It’s one of the busiest jobs I’ve ever had, bizarrely. People think working in a bookshop you just sit there reading books all day, but there’s always something to do. You’re encouraged to take part in different aspects of the business from time to time, so you’ll run different sections, you won’t just run something you’re interested in. I think I ran computing for a year at Waterstones and I knew nothing about computing or computer languages but I had to just learn the basics so I could sell the books. You also do all the behind-the-scenes stuff, so you get to learn about the stock turns and about profit and loss and all that kind of thing. It’s that all-round knowledge that’s encouraged people to get people involved in everything and for everyone to have a specialism. Also, presentation, which is really important.
[In] Waterstones everything was very slick, you had to have everything looking just so, and it’s very easy to let things like that slip. Quite often it’s good to get away for a while and come back and look at the shop and you see things you don’t normally notice, because when you’re in a place all the time you just get used to the way things always are after a while and maybe you don’t notice that piece of wallpaper is hanging off the wall or that dusty book that’s been hanging off a shelf for six months. So, I think that is very important to keep the place looking sharp and smart and have a staff who’ll do that as well. |
JR: And I guess it’s important to harbour a relationship with your staff in a way that they then care as much about this stuff as you do.
MS: Definitely, yes. Also, the whole customer service aspect, talking to customers, you know, getting to know customers. It’s more valuable in our shop, I guess because it’s a smaller customer base, it’s more intimate, but that starts with the way you treat people in a big shop as well.
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JR: Oh, one hundred per cent. Do you think you’ve managed to maintain that kind of enthusiasm for books and for bookshops because of the time you spend on the shop floor? Rather than - you know, so many people end up hiding in the back a little more, especially when you’re managing a busy shop.
MS: I think in a big shop it’s easier to spend time off the shop floor. Where we are, because of the nature of the shop, I think everything you do is on the shop floor, really. I know I’m in an office now but that is only so I can talk to you without annoying the customers! I think it’s a hands-on thing. Like I say, you’re always doing stuff, so that way you get to spend most of your time with your staff and with your customers. I think it's really important. The one thing I didn’t ever want to do was be the kind of manager who just spends his time in the office looking at screens because it’s not what I went into bookselling for.
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JR: It’s an easy thing to slip into. But it is about where you find the joy, isn’t it? You still need to come to work every day.
MS: Yeah. I was talking to someone this morning about that, actually. Doing something you love means it’s never a pain getting up to go to work. And it might not be the best-paid job in the world and you might not do anything amazing, generally, but it’s enjoyable, it’s a subject I’m interested in and I’ve always loved doing it, you meet lots of people, you get to see new books all the time, it’s fun if you do it properly!
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JR: And it should be fun!
So, let’s talk books for a little to finish us up. What kind of books do you like to read, and which books do you like to push?
So, let’s talk books for a little to finish us up. What kind of books do you like to read, and which books do you like to push?
MS: I read all sorts, to be honest. I quite like a bit of crime fiction, more classic stuff, I guess. Historical fiction. Literary fiction as well. I went through a phase where I wasn’t reading a lot of fiction, I think because I’d been reading an awful lot - I did a Masters in Victorian Literature at one time and I got bogged down in massive Victorian novels and I wanted to get away from that. I think a lot of men as they get older tend to read a lot more non-fiction and history and politics, and that sort of thing. I had to force myself to get back into reading fiction but I’m so glad I did because I do love losing myself in a book. It just gets your imagination going.
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JR: What are your go-to staff recommendations?
MS: My favourite book is hard to say, it depends on what day you ask me I think. But if it was a book I’d go back to and read again it would be a travel book by Patrick Leigh Fermor called A Time of Gifts. I remember reading it in my twenties, in my early twenties, and being totally blown away by it. I think it’s so dense and so full of references and reminiscences and flowery language that I had to read it again and again. I think I go back to it every couple of years and read it. It just takes me back to this vanished Europe, walking across Europe in the 1930s and just seeing life the way it was before World War II. Just incredible I don’t know how accurate it is, how much he remembered and how much he just made up after the event but it doesn’t really matter because the picture it paints is just incredible. That’ll be my number one.
Fiction-wise… Possession by A S Byatt. A bit of a literary thriller in a way but it’s just incredible. It’s beautifully written. It’s all about history and poetry and the publishing world as well as the rare book world. It’s a mixture of black comedy, romantic fiction and historical fiction and it’s a big thick book. I do like to get stuck into a big thick book. Something that holds you, you know, and you can lose yourself in. I enjoy the shorter works as well but Possession is one of my favourites. |
JR: They’re a great couple of picks. What were your personal favourite books from the last year?
MS: Last year I was very very lucky to be invited to London to a pre-launch of Zadie Smith’s book The Fraud and it was incredible. There was a reading in a pub in Kilburn and it was fantastic. The book is incredible, it’s a sort of literary biography-come-analysis of slavery and abolitionism and it’s got all sorts going on in it but it’s all set in North London where Zadie Smith lives and where most of her work seems to be placed but this was her first historical novel, it’s a real departure. It had so much atmosphere. Historically, it appealed to me as well because it was all about, or partly about, [William] Harrison Ainsworth the Victorian novelist, and having done a Victorian literature Degree it took me back to when I was studying it and the event took place across the road from the cemetery where he was buried which was very appropriate.
What else did I enjoy last year? A book called Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford. It’s set in the 1920s in an alternative America where nothing’s quite the way it was and it’s a murder mystery and it’s just so atmospheric. It’s got that smoky, jazzy 1920s feel to it but with a subtle edge because nothing’s quite the way you expect it to be. That was fantastic as well, I loved reading that book. |
JR: Last question then Mike. I think you’re, potentially, out of the booksellers I’ve spoken to, the most hands-on experience, accumulatively over the various roles you’ve had, and I was wondering if you had any advice that you would give someone looking to get into the book industry or who may have recently joined the book world?
MS: Well, let me think… First of all, and I’ve said this to people before, I didn’t get into bookselling until I was in my thirties and it was purely out of desperation. I needed a job. And after I’d been doing it for six months I wished I’d done it twenty years earlier. I think if you’re interested in bookshops you can make a living, you’re never going to make a fortune, but you can make a living doing it. If you want to do it then do it, get in there. Go to your local independent shop, chat with people, and get to know them. Think about your interests, think about the kind of books you love, think about the kind of bookshops you’ve been in and how people have treated you, how they’ve recommended books and how you can do the same.
Publishing is a big industry, there are all sorts of aspects to it. There are loads of different roles that people can fill it’s just a question of being aware of it, I think. Of being aware of what you can do, what jobs are available, and just read. Read and read and read. Read lots, read widely. Get to know about books, read reviews, and get to know about the publishing industry because the more you know about it the better placed you are to find your place. |
JR: That’s really sound advice, thank you. It’s hard maybe looking back, in retrospect, because I think so many people do fall into bookselling, do they?
MS: Yes, yeah. Also, I work with a group of people who’ve got quite a lot of experience, one way or another, and it makes a difference. You can tell. I mean, at Waterstones there were certain people who were just so good at what they did. And where we are now, everyone’s got their skills, their strengths, and their interests. When it really clicks it’s just right. It’s a great place to work. As I say, I’ve worked in bookselling for twenty-five years and I think the number of people I’ve worked with who I haven’t got on with I can count on the fingers of one hand, probably not even that. It just attracts great people.
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JR: I would second that. Really well put and a great place to end on, thank you so much.
If you enjoyed reading about Mike's bookselling experience, staff recommendations, events, and the Ilkley Literature Festival, make sure you pay The Grove Bookshop a visit in person or online to show them your support.
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