Got Books? Conversations with Booksellers

Do you judge a book by its cover? Well.. let's face it, most of us do. And that's probably alright. T oday we will go behind the scenes of Book Cover Design. How does one capture the essence of a book in just one beautiful image? Where do you even start? And how does the entire process unfold? These are some of the questions I'll be asking my two guests. As with most jobs in the book industry, the...

News in Books 1. The French parliament is protecting booksellers: https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/news/french-mps-vote-against-free-book-deliveries-targeting-amazon/ 2. Rare Birds Books, Scotland’s first female-centric bookshop, opens in the heart of Edinburgh: https://www.scottishfield.co.uk/culture/books/scotlands-first-female-centric-bookshop-is-a-hit/ 3. 9 Very Niche Bookstores: https...

Today we step in to Golden Hare , a design-led bookshop taking its cues from design museums. The difference here is that you can touch the art, pick it up and discover what’s inside. Golden Hare Books in Edinburgh is one of the city’s most charming and thoughtfully curated independent bookshops. It boasts a wall of beautifully displayed face-out books, an inviting fireplace (with real fire) for th...

News in Books 1. Book Sales are up in the US https://www.wbjournal.com/article/revival-the-independent-bookstore-industry-is-growing-with-a-loyal-customer-base-wanting-to and in the UK https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/05/covid-19-book-sales-reading/ 2. Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller is coming out soon!   3. Literati: a bookclub you may want to join 4. Speaking of curating boo...

This is the 2nd season of Got Books, the (now weekly) podcast where we celebrate our love for books and those who make and sell them. On our first season, we spoke to booksellers from the UK, Canada, Australia, all the way to Senegal, Singapore, Palestine.. On this next season, coming Oct 1 2021, I decided to dive a bit further into the world of books. We'll continue having conversations with book...

This is the final episode of our 1st season, so we thought we'd make it a bit different. On this episode we chat to..future booksellers. We usually chat to booksellers from quirky bookshops all around the world (and we hope you've enjoyed these conversations so far). But for today's we prepared something special: you'll be listening to our conversation with a group of children who recently complet...

Wandering around New York, it’s very likely that you will stumble upon or make it your mission to get into one of the fantastic four McNally Jackson bookstores located in Soho, Williamsburg, Downtown Brooklyn or Seaport. Each a well-lit, cleanly-designed literary oasis away from the maddening crowds but with their own flair and ambiance. McNally Jackson became a bookshop in 2004 and it offers a be...

A Sydney institution, the Gertrude and Alice Bookstore & Coffeehouse has become part of the fabric of the surf-themed Bondi suburb where it is located. Named after Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas who were notoriously part of the Parisian artistic elite in the roaring 20s, the bookstore was also designed to be a salon itself where literary conversations flourish over good food, coffee and cha...

Located in Goose Creek, Turning Page is the only black-owned brick-and-mortar bookstore in the state of South Carolina. Painted in bright yellow, the Turning Pages bookshop opened in 2019 and in the words of its owner, it's "a space to hold poetry readings, where students may display their art work publicly, where book clubs can meet, where authors may hold readings and signing events. A place whe...

This episode is a bit a different than our usual conversations with booksellers. This is a recording of a phone call we had last week with Samir Mansour, the founder of Samir Mansour Bookshop in Gaza, Palestine. Founded 21 years ago, this two-story bookshop was a much-loved part of the local community and had tens of thousands of books covering everything from philosophy and art history to fiction...

An independent bookshop like Books Actually was easy to spot in Singapore's artsy neighbourhood Tiong Bahru. Away from the interconnecting malls, the entrance was marked with pots of wabi-sabi and painted with books growing on trees. Now operating exclusively online, Books Actually houses the largest collection of English literature in Singapore , with many local gems and rarities. The bookstore h...

Today's episode may seem like a bit of a detour from our usual bookseller interview, but you can rest assured, it's guided by the same love for independent bookshops. In November 2020, a new chapter began for UK indie booksellers with the opening of Bookshop.org . The platform prides itself with ethical and transparent book e-commerce that celebrates independent bookshops and with reading lists cu...

On our 10th episode of Got Books?, we sit down with Martin Latham, bookseller extraordinaire and author of The Bookseller's Tale. Martin has been the longest standing manager for British book retailer Waterstones, having been at the Canterbury bookshop since 1990. He even ordered the excavation of the Roman Bath-House floor at his bookshop, paying for it with the biggest petty cash slip in Waterst...

Located in the Art District of Santurce, Puerto Rico, Libros AC was an independent bookstore and remains a publishing house with a simple goal: to document the current and the now for future generations' viewing pleasure. It first opened its doors in 2012 as a publishing house, bookstore, café, bistro, bar, piano practice and live music venue. With a selection of Spanish and English books, Libros...

When you walk inside Cappelens Forslag, you are reminded that strong essences are kept in small bottles. This Oslo bookshop is dressed up in leather and wood and sells, in the words of its owners, interesting books; new, second hand or antiquarian titles, mainly in English and Norwegian. No bestsellers, chick lit, crime nor self-help make the cut, unless extremely well written, out there weird, co...

There is only one English-language bookshop in Dakar, Senegal and it's called Chez Alpha Books . Initially located inside the owner's garage, it turned into an independent bookshop with a rich and diverse collection of fiction and non-fiction, with a particular focus on writers from Senegal, other parts of Africa and diaspora but also international classics. The bookshop doubles as a library servi...

Located in Chelsea, London, John Sandoe Books has books on every available surface and nook over three floors and three shops. The 18th-century Georgian premises have been home to this beloved bookshop since 1957. A former newsagent and tobacconist, John Sandoe Books locked the spirit of the 50s inside and remained faithful to its ethos and passionate dedication to great books. A testament to the...

If you ever find yourself in Cotroceni, one of Bucharest's oldest neighbourhoods, you might walk right past the Asteroid B612 , a small children bookshop that opened just before 2020 started -  and against all odds, it's thriving. It's no small victory in a country where few independent bookshops exist. It's a bookshop like a living room where you are allowed to draw on the walls and where a...

You will not go inside the Monkey's Paw to find a book, but a book you never knew existed will find you. This Toronto bookshop is home to the beautiful, the arcane, and the absurd. Bread sculpture, outer space humour, wild-animal celebrities, useful drugs and guides on how to hate Toronto are all things you can find inside the pages of Monkey's Paw's books, all dated before 1980. And the cherry on...

There is a pair of lemon trees outside the Desperate Literature multilingual bookshop in Madrid and you could say that if God gave them lemons, owners Terry and Charlotte made a damn good lemonade with this literary haven. In their own words, Desperate Literature sells books. Real books. Desperate ones. Paper and glue. But actually, Desperate Literature is also a community, event space, a publishi...

Got Books? is a podcast for those who love getting lost in (and among) books. For those who appreciate the comfort of a bookshop, the smell of a new book and the story of an old one. It's a podcast with those making this possible: the booksellers. We chat to bookshop owners all around the world to find out: Is owning a bookshop as romantic as we might imagine? How are the books on the "staff picks...

In the heart of Neukölln, Berlin’s famed bohemian Babylon of a neighbourhood lies Curious Fox, a small bookshop with a big atmosphere. Curious Fox is a cultural refuge for those native English speakers or English language lovers when things get lost in translation. This seven-year old bookshop sells a new & used selection of English-language fiction, bookish accessories, tea and coffee. Curiou...

This is the first episode of Got Books? , a podcast for those who love getting lost in (and among) books. For those who appreciate the comfort of a bookshop, the smell of a new book and the story of an old one. It's a podcast with those making this possible: the booksellers. We will be interviewing bookshop owners all around the world and for our very episode we travelled to Scotland.  In the...