
Sam Read bookshop in the news
Read more at the Westmorland Gazette


In Memorium: Dr. Frederick Nesta, 1945-2025
It is with great sadness that we mark the passing of our good friend and colleague, Dr Frederick Nesta, Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Information Studies at University College London. Frederick was a regular attendee of the BRN symposium, joining conversations with humour and insight. He will be greatly missed by us and by those studying and working in bookselling and publishing.

Shai Feraro: Occult and New Age Spirituality Bookshops
his paper presents exploratory notes from my ongoing research project, which focuses on occult and New Age spirituality bookshops in Britain and aims to illuminate their function as hubs and arenas for the transference of knowledge and information within these respective milieus, c. 1893 - c.1993.

Michael Robb–author of Shelf Life
Shelf Life is a meticulously crafted exploration of bookselling and publishing that spans two millennia. This engaging narrative unveils the resilience and innovation of key figures who have shaped the literary landscape, from the pioneering days of William Caxton to the contemporary influence of Jeff Bezos.

Radical Bookselling in the UK in the 1970s – 90s
The Radical Bookselling History Project explore the vibrant history of radical bookshops (1970s-80s): community hubs, activist networks, and pioneers of progressive literature.

Anna Muenchrath: Just Browsing: Time and the Online Bookstore
Convenience and the saving of time are attractions of buying books online, particularly on Amazon, which advertises rapid delivery speeds at very low prices. Algorithms are designed to save time, making a database of books easily searchable, but they are also...

Women Booksellers in the Twentieth Century
Hidden Behind the Bookshelves Join Prof Samantha Rayner to discuss her recently published Cambridge Element, Women Booksellers in the Twentieth Century. The British women booksellers who built and ran successful businesses before, during, and after the Second World War have largely...

Mark Thornton from Bookshop.org
Mark Thornton, Senior Partnerships Manager for the UK side of Bookshop.org will be talking to us about the way this online platform is trying to support physical indie bookshops, and some of the connected bookish initiatives the B-Corp company has initiated.

Nina Stavisky on European Bookselling Courses
Bookselling seems to be an innate profession, after all we learn to read at school and to be a bookseller you have to love reading, don't you?
Across Europe, a number of bookselling schools, whether public or private, apprenticeship or university-based, for initial or continuing training, provide high-quality training for future booksellers, department managers or company directors.
What do they teach and how do they train the booksellers of tomorrow?