Open letter: on booksellers

Dear booksellers,

Is there any writer, anywhere, who doesn’t love bookshops? It seems so unlikely that I feel sheepish telling you that, ahem, I do. Surely it goes without saying that I love books, I love bookshops and yes, I love booksellers. (In a sane, non-stalkey way. Promise.) I love everything from the smell of new books to the heady embarrassment of ducking away from the till halfway through paying because there’s that cover, just there, which caught my eye—yes, that too, please…

None of that is very unusual—and why should it be? Writers (who, after all, are readers first and foremost) all have that in common. Right? But bear with me. If you’ve read my novel The Binding, it probably won’t come as a surprise to hear that I think books have a kind of magic—a real-life magic—because you can hold a piece of your future in your hands. You take a book off a shelf and you are literally looking at four or five hours of your life-to-come, hours where you will be somewhere else, where you will be someone else. Books take you over. You may be the same afterwards, or you may not. Open a book and there is a new world: boring or heartbreaking or glorious or dangerous. In fact, I feel about bookshops the way Lucy Pevensie must have felt about wardrobe shops.

I’ve worked in retail, and I know it’s not always romantic. I know that customers can be rude or aggressive or simply oblivious, and that some come in just to get out of the rain

I’ve worked in retail, and I know it’s not always romantic. I know that customers can be rude or aggressive or simply oblivious, and that some come in just to get out of the rain. I had a friend who worked in a bookshop who told me how people would say, “I’m looking for this book. I don’t know the title but it’s got a blue cover…?” (Apparently the answer was always Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.) And I know it can take more patience and skill and warmth to keep going than almost anyone realises—especially in recent times, when we’re all prickly and anxious. But that doesn’t change the fundamental thing: you’re the magicians. You’re the ones who keep the flames burning, who hold the keys not only to Narnia and Middle Earth, but Edinburgh and New York and the street outside.

I hope you’re not rolling your eyes. It’s something I’ve noticed: that everyone in the publishing chain thinks the clever bit is done by someone else. Whatever we do all day is unglamorous by definition, and so we always look elsewhere to find the real magic. But we’re all readers, and there’s something all readers can agree on: the person who matters most is the one who puts the book into our hands. That’s you.

So thank you. Thank you for everything you’ve done for my books, of course—but more, even more, for everything you’ve done for me, and anyone who has needed an escape, or a new life, or just a rest from reality.

Bridget Collins originally trained as an actor before publishing seven acclaimed books for young adults. Her first adult novel The Binding was a chart-topping bestseller. Her second, The Betrayals, is published in paperback by The Borough Press on 28th October.