There’s nothing like visiting a Waterstones. Spending a quiet morning or evening surrounded by row upon row of books, looking at all the fascinating titles and immersing yourself in a cocoon of stories. The atmosphere is amazing, like a library where you can keep what you check out. But there’s a catch.
There’s nothing wrong with major book retailers like Waterstones and WHSmith, indeed, they are important to our high streets. But what about independent bookshops? The people with no ties to corporations who build themselves up from nothing and occupy the small towns and villages where the bigger companies rarely tread. They are the ones who need our support and who support us in turn.
Bringing books to small communities
In small towns and villages, big chains are less likely to come around. Yes, in the smaller towns, you get your chain supermarkets and coffee shops, but they sell what everybody in the world needs. But what about books? Books aren’t live or die items such as food and water, so big chains will be less likely to gamble their money in putting one of their branches in a small town like Kelso or a village like East Linton.
Enter the independent bookshops. Where the corporations fail to tread, independent booksellers make the leap. They invest their money in acquiring and renting a premises and their time in serving the community. Books may not be life or death like food and drink, but they offer a wealth of relaxation, learning and expansion of the mind. Whether it be fact or fiction, books expand horizons and open minds.
Take the small town of Kelso in the Scottish Borders for example. It’s a very localist and independent town where independent businesses dwarf big brands. That’s good. One example of this is with books. Yes, there’s a TG Jones but there’s no Waterstones and no Works. There is, however, a small, independent bookshop that brings books to the local community. 20 Storey in The Square gives locals a bigger and more diverse range to choose from than they would have with just one chain bookshop.
What about places with no chains, however? Who supplies the people of East Linton with their daily dose of reading? For this East Lothian village, Night Owl Books comes to the rescue. For if it wasn’t for this small, independent bookshop, then nobody there would have access to a wide range of titles on their doorstep.
Berwick-upon-Tweed, just over the border, is another example of why they’re needed. Just as the town was lost to Scotland for the last time in 1482, so too are the chain bookshops now lost to Berwick. With the loss of WHSmith and the more recent loss of The Works, The Book Loft and the few other independent bookshops are now the last bastions of bookselling in Berwick.
Of course, charity shops play an important role too, but are less likely to stock new books as they rely on what’s donated to them. That said, they’re always, definitely worth a look. Supermarkets sell new titles too but there’s always the risk, as happens in some cases like new releases of DVDs, that books might disappear too.
If we don’t use them, we’ll lose them
As with every other independent business, be it a pub or a clothes shop, a café or a gift shop, if we don’t use them, we’ll lose them.
Independent businesses rely on trade from the local community; without it they have little chance of survival. They have no big business to back them up in hard times and no corporation to bail them out; local communities are their lifeblood. And if local business dries up, they can’t supply the community with new and varied books.
Bookshops everywhere across Scotland’s cities, towns and villages provide people with a way into further knowledge or an escape into fantasies and thrillers. But support independent bookshops where you can, for without them, smaller communities will be deprived of easy access to books.
