By the Booka: how one indie leverages community and networking to keep its schools business thriving
Award-winning bookshop Booka’s Sian Wadey on engaging teachers, parents and authors to spark children’s joy in books.
At Booka Bookshop there is no particular Back to School season, it is “constantly ongoing, a constant engagement” process with schools and students. So says Sian Wadey, children’s bookseller at the Oswestry and Bridgnorth, Shropshire-based award-winning indie (Booka took home the overall British Book Award for Independent Bookshop of the Year in 2015 and is a serial Midlands regional finalist).
Wadey explains: “It’s not like we kind of sit down and at one point say: ‘Right, let’s talk about Back to School.’ It is just happening all the time. World Book Day, however, is one big point in the calendar that gets us thinking about the new school year in September, about the book fairs we can offer, the authors we can bring into schools. But it is a constant building process year after year about what we can do to benefit the schools and their pupils.”
Wadey has a particular insight into the schools part of Booka’s business as she did her BA and MA in education at Wrexham University and taught at Oswestry and nearby Gobowen schools prior to joining the Booka team in 2022. She also sits on the Booksellers Association Children’s Booksellers Group executive committee. Her past is part of the reason that Booka has worked hard at building links, which includes inviting all the local schools to teacher evenings in-store where booksellers and educators can discuss how they can work together.
School libraries have been under strain and the process has led to administrators coming to the shop “and saying, ‘Here’s our budget, what can we get?’”
Wadey adds: “One of the benefits for the teachers [from different schools] is that they can also meet each other. So, in a way we are providing networking that benefits not just us but the teachers as well.” Booka also does some events that might be termed professional development-lite sessions, such as an upcoming session with dyslexia specialist publisher Barrington Stoke.
Booka provides a range of services for schools but the main planks are library supply, book fairs and author visits. School libraries, of course, have been under strain and the process has essentially led to administrators coming to the shop “and saying, ‘Here’s our budget, what can we get?’”. Of late, this has meant Booka provides “top-ups and not complete rehauls” but the shop recently helped a nearby boarding school, Moreton Hall, with a rebuild of its library stock.
Book fairs involve Wadey bringing in 24 titles per key stage, visiting classes and essentially evangelising about the books. She says: “It’s my favourite part of the job, because I get to chat to kids, and they tell me about what they love – it’s just lovely to have that enthusiasm and share that excitement. After the fairs, pupils and parents can purchase the books, of which the school earns a commission, which will generally sit in their library budget. So it’s a two-way thing: the schools are helping us, but we’re giving them something in return for hosting a book fair.”
Orchestrating author visits is “a joy” and there is usually plenty of enthusiasm from students. Recent in-school events include turns from Catherine Cawthorne, author of Oh No, Flo! (illustrated by Mike Byrne); Bex Hogan, creator of the middle-grade Bronte Tempestra series; and Cowgirls and Dinosaurs graphic novelist Lucie Ebrey.
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Just after the end of May half-term, Rachel Morrisroe will be talking about her newest, the Paddy Donnelly-illustrated Felix and the Future Agency, followed by MG Leonard, who will be showcasing her new time travel adventure, Hunt for the Golden Scarab. Wadey says: “We’re really lucky, we get lots of amazing authors that are current, relevant and the kids absolutely love.”
Yet there is sometimes a delicate balancing act in bringing authors into schools. Wadey explains: “Obviously we need to guarantee book sales because the author is coming to promote their book. But the sales are more difficult to guarantee for hardbacks, because they’re more expensive. Schools bite my hand off for author visits, but they do ask if [the book being promoted] will be hardback or paper which I understand as parents are already expected to pay for things like school trips and it is hard to ask them for more. So we have to be understanding of the school’s needs, the author’s needs and the publisher’s needs.
“But it is interesting that we just booked a virtual school event with [actor, singer and now children’s author] Floella Benjamin. With virtual events, there is no expectation of guaranteed book sales. But there has been a really positive response from the school and students, and we actually have had a decent number of sales for it. So sometimes it’s about having faith in the schools that they will encourage their students to buy the books.”
In addition to the direct relationship with the institutions and events in auditoriums, Booka has some “schools-adjacent” activity. The three kids’ book clubs it runs monthly in-store, for example, have a significant turnout of home-schooled children. “Which is really good for them,” says Wadey, “as speaking to other young people and socialising is just as much part of enjoying books as the act of reading is.”
There is a subscription service, run in conjunction with one of the local schools, which pays for a book for 75 students – most of whom normally would not be able to purchase their own – every half term. Booka also runs a similar subscription service in-school at one of the local primaries. Wadey says: “The students receive them all wrapped up and the children get to open them and get their exciting new book. So that’s making books exciting and is something to look forward to: and what are we going to get this time? And then they stock their library. So it kind of helps them keep their personal library up to date, and keeps reading and books exciting, as well.”
At the Booka tills, study guides are not the driver of its schools sales – in fact, it rarely stocks them. But the big push in the sector tends to be around mental health, stress and anxiety; Wadey particularly flags up Anu Adebogun and illustrators Soofiya and Lila Cruz’s It’s a Brave Young World, a guide to life aimed at Years Five and Six.
Graphic novels, meanwhile, are the stars of the in-school book fairs. Wadey says: “They are hugely popular among young people and are an accessible way of entering books and reading, because there is text but there are also pictures, and children can still use their inference skills to work out how the characters are feeling by the images. Sometimes, though, there is some resistance from the schools and graphic novels are not always encouraged.”
Ultimately, Wadey believes that running a successful schools business for an indie shop is about communication. She says: “The key is understanding on both sides. In the past, we have had some schools have us price X amount of books, and we have spent the time doing it, then they go away and buy them somewhere else like Amazon. And that’s disappointing, but I understand it as their budgets are limited. However, on their side, they have to understand what we can add as a business that places like Amazon or other retailers can’t, like author events, personalised advice, book fairs and staff experiences in-shop.”
