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Indies aren't just for Christmas
Publishing must make more of indie bookshops, year round.
The "tables of temptation" look resplendent. Our festive events are sold out and the team are ferreting away empty toilet rolls for an upcoming Christmas toddler story time and craft session. And donations are steadily coming in from our customers, all generously contributing to our "Community Secret Santa" scheme, which provides bookish gifts to those locally who find this time of year especially tough.
It’s the busiest and most crucial time of year for us as an independent bookshop. That steady build up from "I thought I’d get ahead of the Christmas rush" in October through to "I can’t believe I’ve left it this late!" on Christmas Eve all makes for essential trade.
Beyond this seasonal rush, however, I can’t help but feel that there’s a kind of invisibility sometimes to the presence and impact of bookshops, and that the very term "bookseller" doesn’t truly do justice to the work of the brilliant people who work inside them.
As the clock ticks over at midnight on December 31st, this January launches us into the National Year of Reading. And while the stats around the crisis in reading for pleasure and lack of parity in access to books for children can feel overwhelmingly bleak, the existence and energy of the publishers, literacy charities and other literary organisations who are seeking to make a difference provides beacons of hope.
How much more of our expertise can be utilised, our passion distilled, and our customer bases rallied?
As a children’s bookseller, I hear of the many ways in which these organisations and bodies are planning to gift books, resources and author visits to schools, and of plans to ensure that school libraries get the boost they need to become essential hubs of literacy and reading joy. I feel proud to work within an industry built upon such generosity, creativity and passion.
But how brightly do the beacons of our independent bookshops shine? How seen is the work that indie booksellers do all year round, and every single year to promote reading for pleasure? How much has our unique offering been harnessed and considered by our colleagues in other areas of the book trade when planning for this coming important year?
Indie bookshops are not simply places where books are sold. They are hubs of social activism, wellsprings of empathy, trusted community spaces. And they are staffed by booksellers – the most energetic, resilient and creative people I’d argue you’ll ever meet.
High street retail is hard. And yet, in the face of all the challenges – business rates, supply chain issues, reduced footfall, localised flooding – indie booksellers keep going, and keep finding new ways to connect with readers, support schools and serve their communities.
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This isn’t all a plea to "support indies", but rather to make the point that this brilliantly resilient resource of the indie bookshop is one that should not be overlooked.
As the current chair of the Booksellers Association’s Children’s Bookselling Group, I have the joy of sitting in meeting rooms with children’s booksellers from across the UK and Ireland. A group of 17 committee members, it’s a microcosm of the bookselling trade – but the insights, expertise and networks within the room are huge. Former teachers, authors, academics with degrees in children’s literature, SEND specialists, award-winning booksellers, booksellers engaged in local government lobbying MPs on action around literacy – in this one room alone I see the wealth of knowledge and bookselling experience, which brings so much to conversations around national literacy initiatives.
Beyond this group there are currently 1,063 independent bookshops across the UK and Ireland, all owned, staffed and powered by humans who care passionately about championing literacy, developing readers of the future and building a strong reading culture, both locally and nationally. The sheer scale of the expertise and experience that these booksellers have to offer cannot be overstated.
The crisis in reading for pleasure and the opportunity that the National Year of Reading provides to make a difference is too big and too important for us not to work together as an industry. Collaboration is key if we want to ensure that all of our work has a legacy far beyond 2026.
So, my question is this: as I rush to wrap up another customer’s Christmas order, how many more rooms can we, as individual booksellers, be invited into in 2026 for the National Year of Reading? How much more of our expertise can be utilised, our passion distilled and our customer bases rallied? How much more can we be called upon — not out of obligation, but strategy — and as equal partners, not peripheral beneficiaries?
The bookshop’s Christmas lights may soon be packed away for another year, but the beacon of hope that indies offer will continue to shine long after. The question is: do you see us?
