{"id":10937,"date":"2023-07-27T09:37:18","date_gmt":"2023-07-27T07:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2023\/07\/27\/my-big-birmingham-bookshop-crawl-why-booksellers-are-suddenly-thriving\/"},"modified":"2023-07-27T09:37:18","modified_gmt":"2023-07-27T07:37:18","slug":"my-big-birmingham-bookshop-crawl-why-booksellers-are-suddenly-thriving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2023\/07\/27\/my-big-birmingham-bookshop-crawl-why-booksellers-are-suddenly-thriving\/","title":{"rendered":"My big Birmingham bookshop crawl: why booksellers are suddenly thriving"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2009, two bookshops a week were closing in the UK and the days of physical books seemed numbered. Now, indie stores are booming. What explains the turnaround \u2013 and can it be sustained?<\/p>\n

When Sarah Mullen was asked to set up a children\u2019s book festival in a leafy suburb of Birmingham in 2012, she couldn\u2019t find an independent bookseller to run the bookstall. \u201cSo we all rolled up our sleeves and did it ourselves,\u201d she says. Pregnant with her third child, she had recently given up her job as a solicitor to work for the Bournville Village Trust. Mullen\u2019s task was to set up the Bournville BookFest, which ran for 10 years before being brought to a halt by the Covid pandemic. But far from accepting defeat, she rolled up her sleeves once again and \u201cpivoted the whole thing into a bookshop\u201d. Two years on, the Bookshop on the Green<\/a> is thriving \u2013 a living rebuttal to the once widely held idea that the digital era meant certain death for the neighbourhood bookstore.<\/p>\n

When I visit early on a Friday morning, a turquoise vintage Smith Corona typewriter holds centre stage in the Bookshop on the Green. Beside it stands Bradley Taylor, a poet whose job is to write poems on demand for anyone who asks. He has composed a lot of Batman and football poems for the children who pile in on Saturdays, he says, before sitting down to tap one out for me about the joy of bookshops. In the multitasking tradition of small retailers, Taylor is also assistant manager. He made his cosplay debut last month as the Gruffalo, in a sold-out storytelling session<\/a> on the village green, as part of a week celebrating Birmingham\u2019s independent bookshops.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nIn 2009, two bookshops a week were closing in the UK and the days of physical books seemed numbered. Now, indie stores are booming. What explains the turnaround \u2013 and can it be sustained?
\nWhen Sarah Mullen was asked to set up a children\u2019s book festival in a leafy suburb of Birmingham in 2012, she couldn\u2019t find an independent bookseller to run the bookstall. \u201cSo we all rolled up our sleeves and did it ourselves,\u201d she says. Pregnant with her third child, she had recently given up her job as a solicitor to work for the Bournville Village Trust. Mullen\u2019s task was to set up the Bournville BookFest, which ran for 10 years before being brought to a halt by the Covid pandemic. But far from accepting defeat, she rolled up her sleeves once again and \u201cpivoted the whole thing into a bookshop\u201d. Two years on, the Bookshop on the Green is thriving \u2013 a living rebuttal to the once widely held idea that the digital era meant certain death for the neighbourhood bookstore.
\nWhen I visit early on a Friday morning, a turquoise vintage Smith Corona typewriter holds centre stage in the Bookshop on the Green. Beside it stands Bradley Taylor, a poet whose job is to write poems on demand for anyone who asks. He has composed a lot of Batman and football poems for the children who pile in on Saturdays, he says, before sitting down to tap one out for me about the joy of bookshops. In the multitasking tradition of small retailers, Taylor is also assistant manager. He made his cosplay debut last month as the Gruffalo, in a sold-out storytelling session on the village green, as part of a week celebrating Birmingham\u2019s independent bookshops. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2009, two bookshops a week were closing in the UK and the days of physical books seemed numbered. Now, indie stores are booming. What explains the turnaround \u2013 and can it be sustained? When Sarah Mullen was asked to set up a children\u2019s book festival in a leafy suburb of Birmingham in 2012, she …<\/p>\n

My big Birmingham bookshop crawl: why booksellers are suddenly thriving<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10937"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}