The Bookshop Book
by Jen Campbell
(London: Constable, 2014)
Stories have always been associated with magic.
Page xi.
In the Ancient world, most books were read out in public by would-be writers - the notion of silent reading came much later - and if an audience approved, it was likely that a patron would pay to have the author’s work copied out by slaves.
Page xii.
Vespasiano da Bisticci, a famous bookseller in Florence, was so outraged that books would no longer be written out by hand that he closed his bookshop in a fit of rage, and became the first person in history to prophesy the death of the book industry.
Page xii.
Bookshops as physical places only became prevalent from the 1500s onwards. For thousands of years before, travelling booksellers went from town to town selling books.
Pages xii-xiii.
The early booksellers often sold other wares too, such as fabrics and plain parchment, and with the invention of the moving printing press they took on the role of bookbinders, often designing bespoke book covers which, for a premium, could be dyed a particular colour.
Page xiii.
Stories connect people.
Page xiv.
All bookshops are full of stories, and stories want to be heard.
Page xiv.
As a reader, I think bookshops are important because nothing beats the experience of browsing. You cannot replicate it online In a well-run bookshop you are always going to find something that you want to read. If not, hopefully you can chat with the bookseller and they will tell you about something you didn’t know existed. You get that personal recommendation. You build up a relationship.
Page 16.
It would be a very sad world without bookshops and literacy. Literacy is a ladder: just as comics took me to books, children’s stories take you to adult stories. Hopefully parents help their children build up a passion for reading, a passion for knowledge, and a passion for entertainment.
Pages 16-17.
Good bookshops put on events which connect writers with the public.
Page 17.
That’s what good bookshops do: they work against the grain. They don’t accept the pessimism, and they carry on with what they believe in.
Page 32.
A good bookshop is not just about selling books from shelves, but reaching out into the world and making a difference.
Page 32.
Bookshops are places where people congregate. Some of the people who pass through our doors do so on an almost daily basis, because they have found a warm and empathetic reception and a place where they can bring their troubles. For them, bookshops are safe places.
Page 42.
It’s a sort of ritual, really, the journey you go on with a book in a bookshop. It starts with our eye being drawn to a title or an image, and you pick that book up and read the back of it, and then you choose to look inside. There you stand, with this real thing in your hand that you can hold and weigh and even smell, perhaps, before you begin looking at the fonts used and the way the pages are put together. We don’t do this enough: go into bookshops and touch the books. We should choose them in the same way we choose friends.
Page 55.
This is … what all good bookshops should be like: the tangible, bookish expression of the people who own them.
Page 56.
All books hold a history. I love second-hand books for that fact: you just hold the in hour hand and they’re full of story, apart from what’s written inside them.
Page 62.
You know a good bookshop because you can’t just walk past it. Bookshops mean a kind of sanity, and a communal individualism.
Page 62.
A bookshop is a bookshop owner’s vision, and book-lovers tend to share visions.
Page 63.
A bookshop’s aim is the same as a reader’s aim, and it isn’t restricted to time: they help things stay steady, and balance everything out.
Page 63.
Are books going to die out? Many people have prophesied that, but I say that can’t happen. Books re important, so very important. They teach you things; they show you different views of the world. You can’t help having a soft spot for books, and everything that they stand for.
Page 72.
The oldest bookshop in Europe is the Bertrand Bookstore in Portugal, which opened in 1732.
Page 73.
I think there are as many versions of a story as there are people who read it.
Page 77.
There are two well-known types of pest by whom every second-hand bookshop is haunted. One is the decayed person smelling of old bread crusts who comes every day, sometimes several times a day, and tries to sell you worthless books. The other is the person who orders large quantities of books for which he has not the smallest intention of paying.
Page 80.
Seen in the mass, five or ten thousand at a time, books were boring and even slightly sickening.
Page 80.
The future is already here - it’s just not evenly distributed yet.
Page 90.
The key to good staff is to keep then long term, to build their careers; to reach them the trade. I think that the intelligent, pro-active people who make good booksellers also make good bookshops.
Page 91.
E-books don’t mean the end of physical bookshops. There is still a place for bookshops, or rather a retail space that sells books and is also an engaging, compelling environment. … If you own something digital, you don’t own a physical thing. I can see e-books replacing the paperback copies one might give away after a single read, but I still think that people like to own books - physical books and beautiful objects - and, because of that, good bookshops will stay.
Page 92.
Good bookshops often become hubs of local communities.
Page 93.
Second-hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.
Page 100.
I think people in general have special connections with second-hand bookshops because we judge them differently. We go into a new bookshop and rule out 90% of the stock before we’ve even looked around; when we go into a second-hand bookshop, we think anything in there could be amazing.
Page 101.
There are worse things in life than being locked inside a bookshop.
Page 103.
Although I was always a keen library user, buying books was a different order of bliss, because I would get to live with these ones.
Page 109.
It’s impossible to brows only by looking: you are forced to engage with the books, flipping through cover by cover. In an age where we are becoming more accustomed to web pages and clicks, there is something magically tactile about choosing a rack where something catches your eye, delving deeper into the books with your fingers and then coming back up and out and down again until the one perfect book has been chosen. This is a shop that insists you touch the books.
Pages 119-120.
Learning to enjoy books is not always synonymous with learning to read.
Page 121.
I think the enthusiasm and passion of bookshop staff is what will keep bookshops going in the future: you can`t replicate that online. The bookshops I know that are doing really well are the ones who have knowledgeable staff, aren’t afraid to organise events, and know their clientele. These are the bookshops that use their space for more than just selling, and the bookshop therefore becomes a destination for customers, not just a means to an end. Anyone can sell books, and anyone can buy books online: good bookselling is all about making the buying of books and experience.
Pages 124-125.
Books for me mean looking at the world, earning about it, seeing it through the eyes of others. They are a brilliant device for shape-shifting, as we can slip into the skin of authors form other times, other cultural backgrounds, brilliant minds who give us a new perspective on life and the world - something we all need from time to time. Books give us the unique chance to talk to the dead, listen to their stories, use their words as a time machine, a flying carpet to faraway lands. Books make time and space meaningless; they give us witty and wise companions; they teach us that our worries and fears are shared by others - and they give us words for what we sometimes cannot express.
Page 143.
We all order books online by now, but that only gives us the books we know about. The bookstore delivers a completely different thrill: we can find printed treasures we hadn’t heard about. We can touch and open and taste words between the pages, discover, fall in love … A bookstore offers a much more sensual encounter with books. It reminds us of all the life that is hidden within them. And when we find a book in a beautiful bookstore irt adds to it the memory of a place and time.
Page 143.
There’s no better chat up line than, “Want to come see my bookshop?”
Page 152.
Finding great books is a real great. Looking for a book on the Silk Road and discovering a travelogue form 1953 of some French guys who drove from the Balkans to Kashmir is a very analogue experience, and this is why I think bookshops are important. They offer a tangible experience of human creativity.
Page 153.
Reading is like a fun drug - only safe, legal and cheap!
Page 156.
Bookselling is not about money. … Our passion is in the word, the power of the word, its freedom and the ability of stories to take us to other places
Page 156.
I think bookshops remind people that we need to slow down - to stop and appreciate other human beings, read about other people’s lives, about new discoveries and past misadventures. There are no gender or age restrictions in bookshops, just a whole lot of soul.
Page 161.
A life without stories is no life at all.
Page 165.
The best things about running a bookshop are: the people I get to meet, the books I get to hunt down and buy, being my own boss and not being too stressed about things in general.
Page 165.
We in the trade are actually evangelists of bibliophilia, and embracing and spreading that passion is the only way to ensure our survival.
Page 172.
The beauty of a second-hand bookshop is that, while they might be the same flavour of books, the individual titles are always different. Many visitors to the shop will never see the same book twice.
Page 173.
We try to offer customers the experience of bibliographic surprise and discovery. … We try to exhibit maximum cultural diversity, even dissonance.
Page 173.
A good bookshop shows you the books that you never knew yu wanted. It doesn’t merely fulfil your desires, it expands them. If you know the book you want, go into a bookshop and buy it, you have failed.
Page 175.
Books cost money because they are items of value, and I think that in our hunger for deals and discounts we have forgotten what value is.
Page 177.
Bookshops are information centres - they seen to be a place where people can ask all sort sof questions, questions you would never ask in a shoe shop!
Page 178.
Bookshops are dreams built of wood and paper. They are time travel and escape and knowledge and power.
Page 179.
I think independents will survive the online threat, and that’s because they offer a service in a way that big chins don’t. It’s not about price: it’s about quality
Page 190.
We’re becoming less tangible as people, really: so many things are virtual. … Our books and our music are becoming lists on our screens, and we don’t have the experience of going somewhere and picking up a book, touching it and taking it home. It’s aesthetically unpleasing. Our lives are becoming more convenient but less tangible, and bookshops are the victims of that choice.
Page 190.
Atmosphere is huge when it comes to a good bookshop. You know you’ve found a special place when you walk through the door and yu just feel comfortable, surrounded by like-minded souls.
Pages 198-199.
If I opened a bookshop it would be full of books that you didn’t know existed but would be very happy to discover.
Page 199.
I don’t think bookshops will change that much in the future. They’ll still be beautiful and helpful and cozy and wonderful. It’s easy to underestimate physicality in today’s world. I mean, the machine I’m typing on has access to more words than any bookshop in the world. But a curated, physical information space is maybe more valuable because of that, not less. We need duration. Access to everything is eventually paralysing.
Page 216.
Books are one of the greatest gifts mankind has given itself. They are knowledge, understanding, comfort, imagination; they are the original radio, the original television, the original internet. Real printed paper books have a character, a soul which lives within the feel and smell and sound of the pages, and this could never possibly be re-created on a screen. The various devices available for ebooks may allow a person to carry more books with them, and in many ways that is a good thing, but it (sic) in many ways it is a bad thing. It takes away the character of that one book: its magic is lost. Perhaps that is the best way to say it: printed books are magical, and real bookshops keep that magic alive.
Page 256.
We’ve always used stories as a way to pass on our history, as a way to explain things in life that we don’t understand. We use them to make us feel connected to everything around us, and to help use escape to another time or place.
Pages 259-260.
Walking into a good bookshop is like walking into another zone. These places are time machines, spaceships, story-makers, secret-keepers.
Page 260.