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Gay's The Word manager Jim MacSweeney steps down after 27 years
Gay’s The Word manager Jim MacSweeney is stepping down after three decades at the bookshop, as the Bloomsbury institution is in the best financial health it has ever been.
MacSweeney is handing over this week, as the store celebrates its 46th birthday, to Uli Lenart, who has supported him in the role of deputy manager for the past 20 years. MacSweeney will continue as a bookseller, book buyer and accounts manager for the store.
Based in central London, Gay’s The Word is the UK’s oldest LGBT bookshop, founded in January 1979 by a group of gay socialists as a not-for-profit community space and it continues on this basis today. The staff of four also includes booksellers Erica Gillingham and Pao Salcedo.
MacSweeney told The Bookseller about his reasons for stepping down: “I’ve worked there for 35 years, I’ve managed it for 27 years. At the moment, since Covid, sales have gone through the roof. Sales have doubled then increased again… It’s dementedly busy.
“I turn 65 next month and I don’t have the mental energy to deal with it all… it’s good to step back and let someone else with good ideas just ride with it, be nice that the buck doesn’t stop with me.”
MacSweeney also said that the shop is now doing better than ever: “Of all the problems Uli will deal with, it won’t be cash flow because we’ve never been so cash-rich. We’ve always been a case of any money that comes in goes back into the shop, we were set up as a community bookshop.
“It’s extraordinary… We’ve never sold so many books. After we shut after Covid, we set up a website and sales doubled and things just continued. We have a strong presence on social media: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. Young people come in droves and there’s been an explosion in the books available, none of the books we sell would be on the bestseller list.”
MacSweeney, who helped with his parents’ antiquarian bookshop while growing up in Ireland, has also noted a proliferation in LGBT bookshops in the UK in the past few years. “Since Covid there’s been a host of [LGBT bookshops]: Queer Lit in Manchester, Bookish Type in Leeds, The Common Press in London,” he said.
“One of the things in the LGBT community is as bars and things have closed, people want queer spaces, it’s the thing of visiting a physical space, in a very straight world, to find a space.
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“We’re a destination bookshop. People come and make special trips… we get talking to such a wide range of people coming in, it reaffirms my faith in community, we see everyone aged from 15 to 95, we get activists and academics and then people on the very first start of their journeys of exploring their gender or sexuality or parents coming in with their teens. I find that very moving.”
“I called up, the line wasn’t connected. I thought ‘that’s terribly sad, it’s probably gone out of business’ but then I tried again later and ended up speaking to Jim. I went in the next day and took in a copy of my CV, which he took off me and did not look at, he just started talking to me. I started doing a few casual shifts here and there and the rest is history.”
He emphasised the special working relationship they had enjoyed: “Jim and I have worked together over 20 years… sometimes seeing things a different way, if there’s a relationship and you respect and like each other, it can make your business stronger and you can consider things from different perspectives.
“But then you’re also having this major long-term relationship with another human being, it does involve affection and I’d go so quickly as to say love. It’s a lifelong relationship we have with each other – he continues to teach me so much, he has a wealth of knowledge of books but then also queer culture generally… there’s a lot of love and affection there as well as respect.”
The shop also released a statement celebrating its 46th birthday, which reads: “The plan is for that to continue, just from slightly adjusted vantage points, and with the natural continuation of all the laughter, connection, community and book discovery that makes Gay’s The Word hold such a special place in so many people’s hearts.
“The bookshop gets to retain all of Jim’s knowledge and expertise, and after an incredible period at the helm, he hopefully gets to have some pressure taken off him, with more time to enjoy being a bookseller and getting to interact with you, our customers – his very favourite part of the job.
“Working at Gay’s The Word is an honour and privilege for all of us here, and we intend to carry on doing what we do, and hopefully deliver some improvements to make things even better, for the staff, our customers and all the amazing, talented authors whose work we get to read and share with the world.”
