Why subscribe?

Hi, I’m Tom.

I’m leaving a secure, well-paid job I love - writing for The Economist - to open my own independent bookshop.

It will be called Backstory, and I hope to open in south-west London some time this summer. It will be a meeting space as much as a bookshop, a place to share ideas, to hear from fascinating experts and authors and to lean back in a cosy chair with a glass of wine.

But there is quite a lot to do before then. I haven’t the first clue how to run a business and I haven’t even found a premises yet. I may well be the only journalist The Economist has employed who can’t really add up. So, each week, I’ll be sharing my adventure with you. Think of it as a cross between a diary and therapy. I’ll confide the ups and downs of scouting for a location, hiring staff and actually trying to make a bit of money. I’ll take you behind the scenes at London Book Fair, where publishers flog their latest wares. I’ll pass on the juiciest gossip I pick up and the secrets of the book trade as I learn them.

Please sign up and join the adventure.

Tom