Mr B's and Bertrams to host festival pop-up bookshop

Independent bookshop Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights is to launch a pop-up bookshop at Glastonbury Music Festival this summer in partnership with wholesaler Bertrams Books.

The bookselling team from the Bath-based Mr B’s will join some Bertrams staff to run a festival version of their independent bookshop at Glastonbury Festival, which takes place in June, headlined this year by the likes of Ed Sheeran and The Foo Fighters. The 44 sq m shop will be located near The Park Stage at the festival and will feature a "specially honed" selection of books around themes of music, travel, sustainable living and current affairs as well as the bookselling team’s own favourite "back-pocket-sized" novels.  

Bertrams will provide support with large scale transport and order fulfilment at the festival, which is attended by 175,000 people, while Mr B's staff will bring their "passionate handselling" expertise to the event.

Mr B’s co-owner Nic Bottomley said: “We love to try new things and had long wanted to give bookselling at Glastonbury a go. Collaborating with our friends at Bertrams makes it a viable possibility because we can combine their logistics nous, industry knowledge and familiarity with larger scale book projects with our locally familiar bookselling brand and very hands-on approach to customer service. We’re looking forward to some loud, frenetic and hopefully not too muddy bookselling.”

Bottomley told The Bookseller that the organisers have "a lot of ideas" for the project and are looking to "try and recreate passionate hand selling that goes on in our shops". 

"We want it to be a place people want to come and discover", he said.

The Mr B’s/Bertrams Glastonbury shop will host book group meetings and pop-up signings by authors and musician-authors present at the event. In May, it will also launch a special Book Bundle celebrating the festival which will be sold throughout the summer and at the event itself. The titles for the bundle haven't been devised yet, but it will contain five books across different genres specifically-curated to give a flavour of the Glastonbury festival experience.

Bottomley added that the partnership with Bertrams is "one of the great aspects" of the project. "We all got to talking about this one day and they were as excited by the idea as we were", Bottomley said. "It's a really interesting way to collaborate. Bertrams has experience in large scale transport and order fulfilment."

Bertrams Books executive director Marc Dubery added: “What a great opportunity for Bertrams to be fully hands-on in such an innovative bookselling project with Nic and the Mr B’s team. We are always looking at ways we can work in partnership with our independent customers and this presents a really exciting opportunity for us to use our existing skills and develop new ones in a unique environment. We’re looking forward to the experience whatever the weather.”

Glastonbury Festival has been running since the 1970s, attracting music lovers from around the world. Headlining at this event are the Foo Fighters, Ed Sheeran, and Radiohead, along with the likes of Katy Perry, Biffy Clyro and The National.