Fidra Books opens second Edinburgh bookshop

Scottish publisher Fidra Books is to open a second bookshop in Edinburgh, with the aim of "bringing back the core values of customer service, wide-ranging stock selection and well-informed staff" to the city centre.

The Edinburgh Bookshop will open its doors on Saturday 5th September, and will be managed by Andrew Bentley-Steed, who began his bookselling career at the Methvens chain, where he oversaw the introduction of the first in-store trade cafe and studio theatre. He has also worked at BCA, where he was a category buyer for fiction and memoirs.

The bookshop will stock almost 3,000 titles, with a wide range of fiction and non-fiction. If a particular book is not stocked, the shop owners said it will be ordered within 48 hours.  Owners Vanessa and Malcolm Robertson, who set up Fidra Books in 2005, launched The Children's Bookshop on Bruntsfield Place two years ago, a few doors down from where The Edinbugh Bookshop will stand.

Vanessa Robertson said: "Moving away from the recent trend of homogenous book superstores, we hope to go back to the core values of bookselling - with the bookseller as expert and the customer as king. In these recessionary days, people are still reading books and we want to provide a first-class services for those people." She added that she was "delighted" to be working with Bentley-Steed, saying he had "the perfect credentials" to make the new venture work.

The Children's Bookshop has been shortlisted for Children's Independent Bookshop of the Year at this year's Bookseller Retail Awards, which will be announced on 17th September.