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The Bolingbroke Bookshop in London is in discussions to become a community enterprise, the latest in a recent trend of bookshops looking to the alternative model.
Michael Gibbs' shop in Wandsworth, London, has been trading for 31 years but announced it would close this April after he couldn't keep up with rising business rate charges in the face of growing online competition from Amazon.
Not wanting to lose their only independent bookshop in the area, neighbours have rallied round to keep it open, and decided to run it as a community bookshop.
The enterprise is also in talks with Greenwich Leisure, which is set to take control of all 11 of the libraries in the Wandsworth area, to run the community bookshop from a community library.
It is the latest in a growing number of bookshops which have been taken over by their communities. Figures provided by The Co-operative Enterprise Hub to The Bookseller show that five bookshops became community enterprises in 2011-2012: Dartmouth Community Bookshop; Clevedon Community Bookshop; Crediton Community Bookshop; Malvern Book Co-operative; and Just Books Collective. Before 2011, the last community bookshop to open was Broadwood Books Limited in 2007.
Gibbs said: "We are trying to keep a bookshop in the area because people don't want to lose it and this seems like the only option. We are trying to follow the Crediton Community Bookshop model."
More than 60 people attended a meeting at Northcote Library to show support for setting up Bolingbroke as a community bookshop. Plans are in early stages but it is thought a committee of volunteers would be set up to run the bookshop.
The Crediton Community Bookshop, supported by The Co-operative Hub, currently has a live community share issue and is trying to rise £44,000 to save its bookstore because its present owner wants to retire. It has raised almost £30,000 and now has over 200 members.
Michael Fairclough, The Co-operative's Head of Community and Co-operative Investment, said: "We are witnessing communities across the country, driven by needs other than to maximise profit, turning to co-operative solutions for the running of businesses and services. The general public is increasingly concerned for accountability, sustainability and transparency and, enterprises such as this show how by working together, communities can overcome some of the unprecedented challenges currently facing our society, environment and economy."