Backing the new blood

A shop full of people. Booksellers jumping between making recommendations, taking orders, restocking the shelves, chatting to regulars, offering mulled wine and searching the stock room for a single copy of that book that’s now out of stock at the wholesalers, a single copy that will (in that moment at least) make or break someone’s seasonal spirit. Christmas brings a special energy to book shops, a tangible frantic, festive joy. January on the other hand…

January is the time to catch a breath after the maelstrom of December. But, it’s also a stark reminder of the balancing act of profitability. As days drift past with barely a customer in sight, the pot of gold you gleefully gathered the previous month dwindles before your eyes. January is not a time to rest, not a time to count your blessings, but a time to jump straight back on the treadmill and keep the wheels of your business moving. It’s a time of planning, of evaluating and of beginning to build the next round of bestsellers. It’s debutante season. (Just without the ball gowns, looming nuptials and sexism.)

While autumn sees literature’s heavy hitters and the celebrity world’s latest chancers fill the shelves, January and February is when the young turks, the shiny new things, the next voice of a generation arrive in store. For booksellers, it’s probably the most interesting time of the year. Voices you’ve never heard of telling stories you didn’t know you needed. Almost always over-hyped, but often excellent and occasionally your new object of obsession. 

Last year debuts from Eleanor Shearer, Tom Crewe, Jacqueline Crooks and Alice Winn arrived on our counter amid much fanfare from the publishers and little to no prior knowledge from our team. We went on to hold events with all of them, and River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer and In Memoriam by Alice Winn both featured on our books of the year list; Jacqueline Crooks’ Fire Rush was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize and Tom Crewe won the Orwell Prize for The New Life. But when they first crept through our doors, buried in a box with countless other titles, it was almost on a wing and a prayer. 

Around 180,000-200,000 books are published in the UK each year, which means any single author is less the needle in the haystack than the droplet in the lake. And debut authors are starting from the bottom. They have to swim furiously towards the surface amid the boiling waters of big names and bigger series for even the vaguest chance of success. For a debut author to rise to the top they need luck, the PR and marketing genius of the publishers… and the love of booksellers. 

[January] is when our booksellers find the books they’ll champion through the year, when our core customers have their “I was there…” moment

The publishers will put the book in customers’ minds. Booksellers will put the book in customers’ hands. We write the shelf notes that draw customers’ attention to the unknown debut over the big budget blockbuster. We sing its praises and match it to its audience. We provide the (mostly) unbiased recommendation, the trusted viewpoint, that an advert never can. Debut books need the hard-sell delivered with kid gloves. And that’s where we come in handy.

Last March, in the middle of our events with the aforementioned debutants Eleanor Shearer, Tom Crewe, Jacqueline Crooks and Alice Winn, we held our biggest event to date, with another debutant. Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons In Chemistry was the runaway success of 2022’s debut novels, selling just under 220,000 copies. When the paperback arrived in 2023, it was already set to be one of the biggest of the year. We squeezed 180 people into a sold out Elmgrove Centre in Bristol. Yet just months earlier, when Bonnie first visited the UK, she was appearing at events to audiences of just 15 to 20.

Why bother doing events to such small audiences? That’s a lot of time, effort and travel for little reward. Little immediate reward that is. These events reach the book lovers that attend or organise book clubs and tell all their friends about the unknown title they just have to read. These events are organised by the booksellers who will go on to thrust this testament to hope, hardwork and lifelong dreams into customers hands for the next year. These events are the ripple that can become, in Bonnie Garmus’ case at least, a tsunami of sales.

Supporting debut books takes a lot of effort from booksellers. It’s a lot harder to convince a potential reader to choose a book they’ve never heard of, by an author they don’t know, then it is to hand them the latest bestseller from Richard Osman, Marion Keyes or Maggie O’Farrell. When the debut is in hardback it becomes harder still, the increased cost and weightier format setting the tide firmly against us. But nothing good ever came easy.

There’s nothing more satisfying than a customer coming back to say they loved the book you recommended, especially when they add they’d have never considered it without your recommendation. There’s no better way to build a relationship with a publicist than to support their labour of love when it first enters the world. And there’s no better feeling than when authors return for events with you year upon year, book after book, because you were there for them at the start. 

January may be gloomy in many, many ways. It may be cold, it may be wet, it may be penny poor and never ending, but it’s also the start of something new. It’s when our booksellers find the books they’ll champion through the year, when our core customers have their “I was there…” moment, and when we both help to write the next chapter of the debut author’s life story. 

Business is about profit. Bookshops are about joy. At this time of year the former is very hard to come by. But the latter? The latter is arriving through the door daily.