‘We’ve rediscovered the joy of reading’: how customers are rescuing UK bookshops

theguardian.com:

A vase of hydrangeas sits among a crop of the latest releases, including What Writers Read and Blake Morrison’s Two Sisters. There is a cosy rug and a bright window display. It looks like a lovely bookshop. What there aren’t, however, are any customers. “Winter is killing us, it’s soo quiet,” tweeted Sapphire Bates, the co-owner of Book Bodega in Ramsgate, Kent, on Saturday afternoon. “We need to make £800 by Tuesday to pay our bills.”

Her tweet has since been viewed 6m times and retweeted nearly 12,000 times. She has had messages of support from Ian Rankin, Sue Perkins and the historian and podcaster Tom Holland. Although she is reportedly still doing the sums, Bates thinks the support that has flooded in will cover the bills.

But there is no getting away from the fact that this is a tricky time for many independent bookshops. “The massive cost increases bookshops, like all other businesses, are facing is presenting them with an enormous challenge this year,” says the aptly named Benedicte Page, the deputy editor of the Bookseller magazine. “Margins are tight in bookselling at the best of times – and if customers are also hit by the cost of living crisis, that squeezes their sales.”

Book Bodega is not the first indie to call for help: many have taken to social media to try to mobilise book lovers around the world. In December 2021, the UK’s first specialist black bookshop, New Beacon Books, raised £50,000 in just a few days after announcing it would be forced to close its store in north London if it didn’t get help. Even some of the biggest names in bookselling have put out pleas. In October 2020, at the height of lockdowns, the legendary Shakespeare and Company in Paris begged for help, as did downtown Manhattan’s Strand