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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/10/tales-of-the-unexpected-inside-the-thriving-world-of-independent-bookshops>
"Just off the market square in Beaminster, west Dorset, is a small,
glass-fronted bookshop with bright green walls and an even brighter yellow
armchair in the window. “I definitely call it my happy place,” says Gracie
Cooper. She co-founded the publishing house, Little Toller Books, with her
husband, Adrian, in 2008.
The bookshop opened in 2020. The couple took on the lease of the whole building
and “rather than leave the downstairs empty or full of ugly office furniture, I
thought, we’ll open a bookshop!” More than 40ft of shelf space is dedicated to
their own titles – books that celebrate place and the natural world. The
remaining stock is thoughtfully selected by Cooper and her small team. “The
plan has always been to support indie presses and to curate the shop along the
lines of our own publishing,” she explains. “We wanted to sell books on the
natural world, place writing, natural history, as well as fiction, poetry,
biography and a really great children’s section.” Packed into the space are
beanbags for kids to nestle into and vases of unruly flowers from Cooper’s
garden.
“The wonderful thing about having a bookshop is the amount of time you spend
talking to people. You can be that person who opens the door, looks at a
customer and knows that they need just a little bit of you today. I’ve often
described it as being a GP without handing out prescriptions.”
In 2022, two days after the war in Ukraine broke out, Cooper initiated a
humanitarian aid effort called Packed With Hope. She galvanised 250 volunteers,
arranged for 10,000 rucksacks to be sent to children displaced by the war and
raised £80,000. “We also put a blank postcard in with the address of our
bookshop, so if the children wanted to write back to us they could.” The
heartfelt responses are displayed on a shelf behind the till.
“It was the most important thing I’ve ever done in my life, no question,” says
Cooper, who travelled to the border in Romania to distribute the packages
herself. “And it was all enabled by this space.”"
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
