A bookseller's view? - Julia Jones
Years ago, back in the 1980s, I opened a bookshop. It was in an Essex village - far too small (according to Publisher Association guidelines) to support a general bookshop selling new, non-specialist titles. But that was the village where I liked to do my shopping and it didn't have a bookshop so, if I wanted to buy books at the same time as I shopped for food, china, newspapers, furnishing fabrics, saddlery (yes there were all those shops in the same short high street) someone need to open a bookshop and, as a young mother, I decided that that someone might as well be me. As well as books my shop sold greeting cards and local artists' paintings: acted as the box office for the operatic society and after a while began to dabble in local interest publishing. I didn't get rich but I didn't go bust either and after about ten years, I was able to sell the shop on to a frie...