Conversation with Evan Friss, Author of The Bookshop
Evan Friss’s The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore is “an affectionate and engaging history of the American bookstore and its central place in American cultural life, from department stores to indies, from highbrow dealers trading in first editions to...
Bookshops are bucking the high street trend. There are lots of reasons why
Samantha Rayner, Professor of Publishing and Book Cultures at UCL and co-Director of the Bookselling Research Network, has published a piece in The Conversation on how bookshops are “bucking the high street trend”. Read the full story on the link below.
BRN Conference 2025: Bookselling as Resistance
Book historical work has been increasingly highlighting books - their publication, distribution and reception - in intersectional activist contexts, shining light on interconnections between community-building, politics and the book. In our conference, scheduled for September 2025 in Münster, Germany, we plan to hone in on bookselling as a practice and consider the ways in which resistance can be interpreted vis-à-vis bookselling and bookstores.
BRN Conference 2025: Bookselling as Resistance
Conference in Münster, Germany, combined with the annual meeting of the Bookselling Research Network (BRN).
Champions of Literature by @GeorgethePoet
Written and performed exclusively for #IndieBookshopWeek “Champions of Literature” by @GeorgethePoet Filmed at New Beacon Books: https://www.newbeaconbooks.com/ Independent Bookshop Week takes place 15 – 22 June 2024. Find out more about the campaign: https://booksaremybag.com / booksaremybag https://x.com/booksaremybag / booksaremybag
In Conversation with Jane Cholmeley
In 1982, in the midst of Thatcherite-Britain, Jane Cholmeley, Sue Butterworth and Jane Anger decided they needed to open a feminist bookshop in London. The result was the Silver Moon Bookshop. For seventeen years, the Silver Moon survived commercially, selling books...
Reading, Wanting and Broken Economics: with Dr Simon Frost
An Interview with Dr Simon Frost Dr Simon Frost, Principal Academic in English at Bournemouth University and author of Reading, Wanting, and Broken Economics: A Twenty-First-Century Study of Readers and Bookshops in Southampton around 1900 (SUNY Press, 2021) part of SUNY, speaks with Dr...
History of Bookselling
The BRN's first themed event featured presentations from Dr. Will Smith and Professor Simon Eliot. Dr. Smith discussed the multi-generational history of Sam Read Booksellers, emphasizing oral histories and archival research. Professor Eliot highlighted the value of "unwitting testimony" in archives, using examples like public library catalogues and publisher correspondence to reveal hidden insights.
Developing Collaterals: Book Retail Networks in the Creation of Social Prosperity
The second themed Bookselling Research Network event featured a round table discussing bookstores' financial and social dimensions. Three presentations explored the complexity of book retail (Dr. Simon Frost), bookstores as cultural and entrepreneurial nodes (Prof. Corinna Norrick-Rühl), and factors like community and curation explaining the resurgence of independent bookstores (Dr. Ryan Raffaelli).
Feminist & Queer Bookshops – Community and Censure
Join Dr Kathy Liddle and Dr Sarah Pyke as they present their work on feminist and queer bookstores as places of contested cultural interactions. Kathy Liddle My presentation today will focus on two strands of my research on North American feminist bookstores. First, I will...
