Hello, it’s Cat here, children’s specialist at The Children’s Bookshop.  Vanessa’s (unwisely?) let me loose on the blog.  Oops!
I love being a bookseller but I never expected unsolicited approaches to stock self-published books to become the bane of my life and I feel inclined to issue some suggestions based on my own experiences. Vanessa has [...]

A while ago, a very nice Swedish journalist came in and asked whether she could take a picture of the first Jill book for a magazine she works for. I said yes, and then promptly forgot all about it; the other day her article arrived in the post. We have absolutely no idea what it says, [...]

As some of you may know, we also have a blog called State of Independents where we talk about booktrade type stuff that’s not as relevant to this blog.  Last night, I wrote a post about self-published books and how they are the bane of our lives…
Self Published Authors – Before You Send Me Your [...]

Vanessa and I looked at each other one day last week and were both completely unable to form a coherent sentence: such is the world of working in retail near Christmas. (Don’t misunderstand me, we’re definitely grateful for the rush of customers, but it doesn’t make for chipperness at the end of the day.)
Therefore, have a peek at [...]

Regular readers will remember that we planned to start reissuing the Jill series by Ruby Ferguson this year.  Well, they’ve been delayed (one printer sadly going into administration, pressure of work in other areas of the business and you can imagine how time-consuming setting up the new bookshop has been!) but sneaking in under the [...]

One of the weird things I’ve noticed since we opened the first bookshop is that when I say that I’m a publisher people often respond in a completely different way to when I say that I have a bookshop.  As a publisher I’m seen as intelligent, professional and literary but when I have my bookseller hat on that’s regarded [...]

As many of you know, the Edinburgh International Book Festival kicked off on Saturday.  If you’re in the book trade in Scotland the year can pretty much be divided into pre- and post-EIBF.  Once it’s over, the Christmas season starts with ordering stock, gearing up for the rush etc and this year, the end of [...]

I love the book trade.  I love being a bookseller; I love publishing the books we rescue from obscurity; I love having new ideas – an exhibition, a second bookshop – and I hate to see the trade being driven in what I feel passionately is the wrong direction.
This afternoon I discovered that I’m completely wrong in my [...]

We didn’t go to the Booksellers Association conference earlier this week.  We were planning to as it was supposed to be being held in Gateshead at a rather swanky new conference centre.  But there were complaints about the distance from London and so the venue was changed to Cambridge.  That’s over 5 hours on a [...]

Kathleen Peyton is one of my favourite authors and has been ever since I saw the TV series of Flambards in the late 1970s.  I was allowed to stay up late to watch it because it had horses in it and I was the classic pony-mad child.  I devoured the books and decided, aged 9, [...]