BRN event: History of Bookselling – 18th March 2022
In this first themed event, the BRN explored the history of bookselling, beginning with two fifteen minute presentations. The first was from Dr Will Smith who is a practising bookseller at Sam Read Booksellers in the Lake District, followed by Professor...
Call for Papers: The Matter of Bookshops: Histories, Communities, Practices
The Bookselling Research Network will hold its first conference at Hay-on-Wye between Wednesday 7th and Thursday 8th September 2022: The Matter of Bookshops: Histories, Communities, Practices.
‘Booksellers as Placemakers’: new report now live
A new study, Booksellers As Placemakers, commissioned by the Booksellers Association, shows that over 90% of booksellers work actively to support local priorities, such as place marketing, walkability, provision of recreational and cultural spaces, and maintaining economic attractive town and city centres....
BA Report on booksellers as placemakers published
A new study, Booksellers As Placemakers, commissioned by the Booksellers Association, shows that over 90% of booksellers work actively to support local priorities, such as place marketing, walkability, provision of recreational and cultural spaces, and maintaining economic attractive town and city centres....
First Annual Bookselling Research Network Meeting – 21st January 2022
In January, we were delighted to host the first annual meeting of the Bookselling Research Network (BRN), bringing together those from industry, associations and academia that share a common interest in the history, practice, and culture of bookselling. Despite the challenges...
Notes from BRN Annual Meeting 2022
Participants: Samantha Rayner (SR); Eben Muse (EM); Meryl Halls (MH); Noel Murphy (NM); Rachel Calder (RC); Matthew Chambers (MC); Simon Eliot (SE); Audrey Laing (AE); Andrew Kamei-Dyche (AKD); Eleanor Shevlin (ES); Joe Cain (JC); Louise O’Hare (LOH); Simon Frost (SF); Will...
Revisiting El comercio de librería en América Latina
Since 2019, the Instituto Caro y Cuervo, under the lead of the M.A Publishing Studies coordinator, Juan David Murillo[1], worked to develop an international colloquium to reconstruct and reflect on the socio-cultural history of bookshops in Latin America: Coloquio internacional. El comercio...
Santa Cruz and the Livraria Duas Cidades
Livraria Duas Cidades was the bookstore and publisher for São Paulo's intelligentsia. Founded in the middle of the last century with the encouragement of the Dominican Order, and under the leadership of a Dominican priest who left religious life in the 1970s to devote himself only to the world of books, Livraria Duas Cidades took root in the urban and socio-cultural space of the city of São Paulo between 1954 and 2006.
Interview with Pen’rallt Gallery Bookshop
Machynlleth, an ancient market town in Mid-Wales, supports 4 bookshops: Dyfi Valley Bookshop (used and antiquarian books), Coch-y-Bonddu Books (angling, game shooting, sporting dogs and falconry), the newly opened Literary Cat Books, and Pen’rallt Gallery Bookshop — opened by Diane Bailey and Geoff Young ten years ago, not “so that we can make a lot of money” but “because books are important.” They specialize in “books that we are happy to have on the shelves, books that mean something to us” especially photography, politics, Welsh writers (in Welsh or English) and interesting fiction. The shop is just a few doors from the MOMA Machynlleth art gallery with which they have close links, and they write a regular photography feature for the O’r Pedwar Gwynt literary newspaper. I spoke with them shortly after they had re-opened for browsing.
Interview with Anne Brichto of Addyman Books
Anne Brichto and Derek Addyman opened Addyman Books in 1986, Murder and Mayhem in 1997, and in 2003 the Addyman Annex. All three stores are within walking distance of each other in the book town of Hay-on-Wye. The stores specialize in collectable...
