The Bookmonger’s food, books and wine recipe for success in Glasgow and beyond
A health scare led Caitlyn Payne to launch Bearsden’s bookshop and cheese emporium, one of Scotland’s many new cutting-edge indie stores.
Those who come into the indie bookshop game after careers in other fields do so because of a business opportunity or because they see a gap in a local market. But that can be twinned with more personal reasons; often – if owners’ testimonials in submissions to the Nibbies Independent Bookshop of the Year are any gauge – it is bibliophiles’ realisations of long-deferred dreams. Part of the motivation for Caitlyn Payne, who launched The Bookmonger in the Glasgow suburb of Bearsden in 2025, was deeply personal as she kickstarted her business after books helped her through a recovery from cancer.
The bi-coastal American – Payne grew up in Delaware and worked for a good portion of her adult life in Seattle – moved to Bearsden with her Scottish husband John and young family in 2020. She had been a high-flyer in the fashion industry, latterly working in senior roles for the US department store giant Nordstrom’s head office, and was just settling into her life in the UK when she was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. “That kind of derailed any immediate career plans for me. It was all hands on deck and we just focused on me getting better.”
A lot of her treatment was during the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic and, because of distancing restrictions, she often had to attend chemotherapy sessions on her own. A voracious reader since childhood, she then “doubled and tripled down on books as my companions, to escape, to lean on when it all got overwhelming”; all told, she hoovered up 275 books during her year of chemo.
Payne says: “When you go through something traumatic like that, you’re obviously going to rethink your life: it changes who you are and you come out a different person. So when I got the all clear, I knew I wanted to do something for the community. And I knew it had to be a bookshop because I was so deeply connected to reading. I mean, reading was my entire personality at that point.”
Yet, after thinking about the business for some time, Payne opted to do something other than a general bookshop, so The Bookmonger was born as a bookstore-cum-wine and cheese bar concept (though, she was going to call it The Bookmonger even before she thought of adding a cheese shop to the mix).
Payne says: “Maybe this was because of my background as a merchandiser, but I got thinking about something more experiential. Which came out of my own background of being part of book clubs over the years – you have wine and some food as you talk about the books. And it was also about how we can be different from Amazon and Waterstones. We can’t compete with them, so how do we get a seat at the table?”
Payne put a lot of thought and all her merchandising and retail know-how into the opening. The branding was done with Glaswegian designer Jordan Brier, while the premises was built in a cosy 400-square-foot site with a comfortable eating and drinking space – which resembles a Victorian bar crossed with a speakeasy – surrounded by very browsable bookshelves.
The “tech-forward, data-led” back-end was a priority, with The Bookmonger having a slick, transactional website from day one – built by her software designer husband John whose career in the US included stints at Microsoft and (sorry, booksellers) Amazon – and a Shopify point-of-sale system.
Bearsden locals responded enthusiastically with The Bookmonger sales “much better than expected” since its spring 2025 launch (almost incredibly The Bookmonger is the first-ever bookshop in the relatively affluent town).
The wine and cheese bar is certainly a draw, helped by Payne’s use of local suppliers. Plus, The Bookmonger does outside catering with its charcuterie box range, all of which are book-themed, from the one-person The Novel (£15) to the party-platter The Library (£120).
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But books are the core, accounting for 51% of sales in 2025, with 36% from the wine and cheese side and the rest a blend of event ticket sales and non-book merchandise. The space is limited, though, so the curated stock amounts to around 1,500 titles. Payne says: “Before we opened our doors, I reached out on our social media and asked [our potential customers]: ‘What are you reading? What do you want to see in the shop?’ The responses boiled down to books about Scotland, books by Scottish authors and crime. And those are still our most-shopped categories.”
Though website visitors might think that The Bookmonger has 25,000 titles in stock, as its online shop is integrated with the range from Gardners CDF (Home Delivery); the wholesaler’s service packs and ships titles that are not in-store directly to customers. Payne is a big fan: “With your website, and particularly for a new shop, you have one shot to get it right with customers, and delivery has to be quick. We don’t have an endless budget for [the e-commerce side] but what CDF does is allow us a bigger books footprint, while still being able to tailor and merchandise the range to our customers.”
The events side has been strong with one to two per week, which includes the regular Bookmongers Society book club, storytelling nights, a pub quiz and a range of author readings with big names such as novelist and Edinburgh Makar (poet laureate) Michael Pedersen, and crime writing stars Liam McIlvanney and Chris Brookmyre.
To date, all the author events have been in-store which, as noted, is not the biggest space. But that has become a draw for both authors and readers, says Payne: “They love the intimacy of it, and the audience gets to really interact and meet the author. My customers love the one-on-one time with the writers, which you don’t always get in the big author events.”
Summing up the first year of trading, Payne says one of her proudest achievements has been the fundraising events and charity book of the month promotion, for which all profits (£1,600 to date) go to Glasgow-headquartered Beatson Cancer Charity, which was so helpful with her treatment. That leads into a look at the future.
Payne stresses that it is still early days and there is much to iron out, but there are some long-term goals for The Bookmonger: “Without revealing too much, I built this business to scale up. I believe in it, I think it could be bigger than it is. But right now I am really focused and am putting my heart and soul into the shop because it’s in my community. And we have no intention of ever leaving.”
Scotland's indie newcomers
The Bookmonger is just one of many fresh and relatively fresh entrants to Scotland’s independent bookselling landscape, with 54 indies opening their doors in the country since 2020, which eclipses the number of launches in the previous decade.
A number have special focuses, including three in Edinburgh: Rare Birds Book Shop, launched in 2021 by Rachel Wood, which stocks titles written by women; Wild Fungarium, Katrina Alexander and James Mclauchlan’s nature/wildlife specialist that debuted in the West End last year; and Caden Armstrong’s Book Lovers Bookshop (right), which became the UK’s first romance bookseller upon opening in 2024 and is this year’s Scotland Nibbie winner for Independent Bookshop of the Year (IBOTY).
In fact, the 2026 Scotland Nibbie IBOTY contest was dominated by post-2020 entrants as Milngavie’s Daydreams Bookshop, Stirling’s The Book Nook, Jedburgh’s Heron & Willow, Dollar’s The Wee Bookshop and Leith’s Argonaut Books joined Book Lovers on the shortlist.
