How readers fell in love with the specialist bookshop

Hello and welcome to Bookmarks. On Thursday Rachel Clarke won the Women’s prize for nonfiction for her book The Story of a Heart, and you can scroll down to read her reading recommendations. Meanwhile, Yael van der Wouden, who won the fiction prize for her debut novel The Safekeep, used her winner’s speech to talk about the fact she is intersex – which she has spoken more about in her interview with Lisa Allardice.

For today’s newsletter, I’ve been talking to owners of specialist independent bookshops, which are on the rise, as we celebrate independent bookshop week. That’s right after this week’s picks.

Since Sarah Maxwell announced her plans to open London’s first romance specialist bookshop, there has been a lot of buzz around it. Saucy Books, which opens tomorrow, has attracted so much excitement among romance readers that Maxwell is ticketing entry for the first week, and some social media users have said they will be taking a day off work to visit.

“The reception was more than I could have ever anticipated,” Maxwell says. “It speaks to how there has been this gap.” Romance books have been booming in recent years, and clearly the genre’s many readers are keen for spaces dedicated to the books they love.

But it’s not just Saucy Books: bookshops that sell specific kinds of books are having a bit of moment, with shops such as Bristol’s horror-focused The Haunted Bookshop and Collected in Durham, which specialises in books written by women, opening in recent years.

Before she opened her sci-fi and fantasy bookshop in Lymington, The Imaginarium, Robyn Parker-Hales “was fed up with going into bookshops and seeing the same five authors on all of the shelves”.

“I found myself going online more and more to get recommendations,” she says, and was missing the experience of browsing and speaking to booksellers.

With The Imaginarium, “I wanted to create a space where people could physically come together and talk about the books that they like, to geek out and be nerdy about dragons and magic and far-flung worlds”.

Isla Coole, owner of crime specialist Criminally Good Books in York, also thinks a desire for fellowship is what draws people to her bookshop – and what drove her to set it up in the first place. “I wanted to create a like-minded community that loves crime literature, loves talking about it, and loves going to events,” she says.

Social media has made it easier than ever for fans of different genres to form a community. On TikTok and Instagram “there are many passionate bloggers who focus on specific genres, and there are thousands with crime and romantasy accounts for example,” Coole says. Specialist bookshops are a place where these online fandoms can gather in real life, but they can also offer something that online spaces can’t do as easily: curation.

“With so many choices and constant digital noise, readers can feel overwhelmed,” says fantasy bookshop owner Courtney Terwilliger. A specialist shop like hers, The Enchanted Spine in Mildenhall, “helps narrow that focus”.

“For romantasy readers, it’s a curated space that brings together the books and authors they love – and maybe haven’t discovered yet,” she adds.

Good curation is what customers come to specialist bookshops for, Alison Henry, co-owner of translated fiction-focused Veranda Books in London, agrees. “It’s really obvious when you come into our shop that everything is hand-picked,” she says.

The Little I Knew by Italian writer Chiara Valerio, translated by Ailsa Wood, is the book she’s going to be recommending to her customers this summer. Set in an Italian seaside town after a woman has died in mysterious circumstances, “it’s gossipy and claustrophobic and just a brilliant read,” Henry says.

Meanwhile Coole is going to be pressing copies of The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy by Brigitte Knightley into the hands of her customers. “It has everything you want in a summer romantasy,” she says. “A fun, slow-burn romance, sharp wit and a twisty mystery.”

Maxwell says choosing Saucy Books’ top summer pick is “like asking me to pick my favourite child!” But One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune, Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry and Till Summer Do Us Part by Megan Quinn are among the titles she and her staff will be recommending over the coming months.

When customers start flocking in tomorrow, they will find the shop decked out to look like a beach cabana, complete with a “smut hut” for the steamiest titles, which will be organised by “spice level”. Elsewhere in the shop, books will be organised by romance “tropes” such as “grumpy sunshine” or “enemies to lovers”.

“I’ve never seen another bookstore organised that way,” Maxwell says. “I’m hoping that when people come in, whether they have an idea of what they’re looking for or not, this will make it easier to find what they want.”