Goldsboro Books hits 25 years with boss David Headley keen on growth

It was never meant to be a physical bookstore,” admits David Headley of Goldsboro Books, the retailer specialising in first edition and signed titles that he co-founded with Daniel Gedeon 25 years ago this month. 

The duo—who met while training to be Catholic priests—started out selling books online and through a publication called The Book and Magazine Collector in 1999, before a conversation with a book dealer in London’s Cecil Court led them to set up on the street a year later. After a couple of expansions, the business now occupies numbers 23, 25 and 27. Headley jokes: “We never want to leave Cecil Court, we just want to take over the whole street. We love it. The landlords are incredibly supportive, and we feel really at home.”

Four years ago, Goldsboro opened a second store in Brighton, which Headley says is “going from strength to strength”. He decided to buy the premises when he noticed a closed building during the pandemic and saw its potential. “I emailed the estate agents, took it immediately and opened within six weeks.” The shop is now home to the Goldsboro Writing Academy, as well as various book events and a reading group. Headley explains: “It’s a different beast to London, because London doesn’t have the community that Brighton has.”

Headley lives between the two locations but spends most of his time in London as the office of DHH Literary, the agency that he also heads up, is based above the Cecil Court store.

In the past year, the agency has added Abi Fellows and Diana Beaumont to its ranks and “formidable” Harry Illingworth was shortlisted for Literary Agent of the Year at this year’s Nibbies. “We have about 350 clients now. I used to think we were boutique, but at that level, it’s not really boutique anymore,” Headley says. “We’re doing incredibly well. It’s great having a bookstore and an agency because they work well together, keeping us informed about what the market’s doing, but also being able to get Goldsboro Books to support our clients’ books.”

The bookselling side currently has a turnover of just under £3m, and Headley is still exploring new ways to grow. To mark the 25th anniversary, he has launched a new crime subscription box, the Goldsboro Crime Collective (GCC), alongside Goldsboro’s existing monthly signed-first-edition-book subs box, Premier, and its fantasy book club, Goldsboro Sci-Fi and Fantasy Fellowship (GSFF). He says: “Goldsboro makes a lot of money from crime, it’s one of our biggest genres, if not the biggest genre that we sell. And because crime and thriller is so broad, I felt like there’s something more we could do.”

I love the community of crime writers, because they’re so supportive. It’s such a collegial, exciting genre — David Headley

The venture takes inspiration from the Collins Crime Club, which Collins ran from 1930 until 1994. All the books selected will be frontlist hardback first editions with the Crime Collective logo and a red ribbon, and some will include extra content. Subscribers will also receive a monthly newsletter, Uncovered, which will include “giveaways, extra content and exclusive information, so it’s not just a book, you’re becoming part of a community”. As with the Premier and GSFF boxes, there will only be a limited number of subscriptions available (“my business is all about exclusivity and collectability”); GCC is off to a strong start at 65% capacity in its first month.

It also builds on the success of Capital Crime, the festival that Headley co-founded with writer Adam Hamdy in 2019 and now runs alongside director Lizzie Curle. After facing the same challenges as all live events during the pandemic, the 2024 iteration was its “best year yet” with “1,000 people on site every day”. Next year, there are plans to grow it in its new home at Leonard Royal St Paul’s. He adds: “Publishers have really got engaged with it, and I love the community of crime writers, because they’re so supportive. It’s such a collegial, exciting genre.”  

Jubilee year 

As well as launching the Crime Collective, Goldsboro has produced a limited edition hardback anthology, 25, for its silver jubilee. It features short stories from a diverse group of 24 authors such as Abir Mukherjee, Paterson Joseph, John Connolly and Headley himself. His contribution (his first short story) is a coming-of-age tale about a young boy who raises a white dove, which he describes as “a little bit dark”.

Goldsboro will celebrate its 25th with a party at St Mary’s in Marylebone with 500 invitees. On the evening, the winner of this year’s Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award, given annually to an outstanding work of contemporary fiction in any genre, will be announced. Judging was a difficult this year as the Goldsboro team were passionate about a number of titles. Headley is quick to credit his “amazing” staff, namechecking the bookshop’s “incredible” administration manager, Pavla Safratova , who has been there for 19 years. “She treats Goldsboro like it’s her own business, and I think most of the booksellers do.”

Reflecting on the evolution of the industry over the past quarter of a century, Headley believes that “in essence, bookselling hasn’t changed, because bookselling is all about people reading a book and loving it and telling other people about it so that they buy it”. However, he adds: “The market’s changed [and] the way that we reach readers certainly has.” He also notes that, while publishers were “incredibly supportive of independents” during the pandemic, many have cut their sales teams down, leading to “a disconnect” with independent booksellers. “Even though we have an amazing relationship with publishers, I speak to lots of indies that don’t have any contact with them. I just feel like publishers don’t quite understand how difficult it is for an independent to do business. We’ve only have one chain bookstore and supermarkets are paring back on their range, so we have to find new ways to get books to readers—and I honestly believe the best way to do that is enhancing independents.”

Though he is not attending the upcoming Booksellers Association conference, he has nothing but praise for the organisation, and its leader in particular. “I think independent bookselling is better off because we have such a champion in Meryl [Halls]. She’s amazing.”

Headley deems setting up Goldsboro “the greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life”. He continues: “It’s been the most rewarding time. I really love what we’ve achieved… We were told that Goldsboro Books would never survive, that it wasn’t a business model that would work in publishing, and we’ve proved everyone wrong.

“Daniel and I had a vision, but this far exceeds whatever we thought Goldsboro could become. And I couldn’t have done it without Dan. I don’t want to take all the credit  because I can’t. It really has been a team effort.”