Just saying

Your feedback on our bookshop

Your Saturday coffee

We’re now opening at 9am every Saturday, an hour earlier, so you can pop in for your coffee kick and browse for books first thing. See you soon!

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Easter hours

The shop is closing for Easter Sunday; otherwise we are open as normal (so, 9am-6pm Saturday; 10am-6pm Monday). Our website is, of course, open all hours…

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Better than Easter chocolates: a new Patrick Radden Keefe

London Falling — the latest from New Yorker journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Say Nothing and Empire of Pain — is out this coming Tuesday. It’s definitely the book release I’m most excited about so far this year.

Here’s a little nugget from a book-industry drinks do I was at a few weeks ago. Three newspapers’ literary editors were in the corner gossiping and I made up the gaggle.

Me: I’m very excited for the new Patrick Radden Keefe.

Lit Ed 1: Oh yes. Brilliant.

Lit Eds 2 and 3 (excited and jealous): So you’ve read it?

Lit Ed 1: No. But brilliant.

Well, I have now read it and can confirm it’s a brilliant tale of ambition, greed and corruption at the heart of London. It is a riveting and forensic investigation of the last days of a London teenager, Zac Brettler, who fell to his death from a luxury Thameside apartment in 2019 after months of posing as the son of a Russian oligarch. I’ve lived here for 15 years, but learned so much about the city’s underworld — and its web of enablers — from Radden Keefe’s typically gripping prose.

Nab your signed copy on Tuesday, or book a spot to meet Patrick in person at our ticketed signing next month:

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I’M AWARE THAT IT has now been a fortnight since I promised the second round of survey data “next week”. Anticipation has no doubt been building throughout the nation and perhaps overseas. Balham itself has, of course, spoken of little else.

So I scarcely need to remind you that 492 newsletter readers kindly gave their feedback on all things Backstory. In the first post, I shared what you told us about our website and what we are going to change in response. In this second and final post, let’s look at feedback about the physical bookshop.

Or, very largely, the bar. Backstory is, as you know, a bookshop/bar and I’ve felt for some time that it is the second-half of that equation that has most room for improvement. The survey underscored that and, even more usefully, provided a good deal of specific suggestions.

I’ve written before that, in setting up Backstory, I was inspired by several American bookshop bars — in particular Kramers in Washington DC, which I got to know during a stint reporting in the US capital a decade ago.

I liked that their bar was not an adjunct to the bookshop (as a lot of UK bookshop cafes traditionally were, clattery and carpet-tiled places tucked away from the books), but at its heart. That seemed to me a clear statement: this is a place you want to hang out in, not (only) conduct a transaction in and leave.

More generally, I liked that on reporting trips in the States I could perch at a bar in a restaurant and get chatting to others travelling on their own and to their bar staff. On assignment in a British town, I’d usually be given a table for one. I wanted Backstory to promote spontaneous interactions between readers as much as silent communion between readers and writers.

And that has worked: locals who have lived in Balham for decades have become friends with near-neighbours whom they had never previously met by striking up conversation at our bar. There’s a WhatsApp group of self-styled “bookshop babes” who regularly co-ordinate their trips to Backstory.

But it’s true that — although I had as little (ie, no) experience of bookselling as of hospitality — the former comes more naturally to me than the latter. I’m addicted to tea, like coffee and love wine, but I reckon it’s harder to run an excellent bar than an excellent bookshop. Or at least there’s more competition.

Which brings us to the first survey question:

More than a third of people who live close to the bookshop and read this newsletter have never had a coffee at Backstory. That is startling. When we first opened, our beans were not the best, but for the last two years we’ve served delicious specialty stuff from Volcano, roasted just down the road in Brixton and Norwood. It is now top-notch…. but we clearly need to do more to tempt you to give us a try!

To that end, we’re now offering a complimentary coffee with every order you click-and-collect via our website. I’m pretty confident that once you’ve tried it, you’ll be back for more. We’ve also just hired Emma, another fantastic barista, to join our team full-time. Together with Zoë, who runs our bar and is in charge of our beautiful displays and illustrations, they are upping our game significantly.

But your answers pointed to a bigger reason why many of you have not tried our bar:

This was a particularly helpful finding. When you stand behind the counter all day, it is easy to form the impression that there is plenty of space at the bar: on weekdays there are long stretches where several bar stools are available; at the weekend, the same is true in the lunchtime lull.

And when it’s busy at the weekend, we are so preoccupied by serving customers and making coffee, we don’t always notice whether every seat is taken and whether there are potential coffee or wine drinkers coming in, finding no space and heading straight back out.

So it is useful to know that, although mood lighting and further expanding our drinks list are on our agenda, finding a way to increase capacity should be our priority.

Of course, we can’t just knock through to next door. But there are ways we could make the space more flexible, for instance by pushing back some of the tables and bringing out more stools in the evening to create more of a buzzy bar vibe.

May I ask a couple of follow-ups? Please only answer if you live near Backstory!

Several of you suggested that we should host more informal events around the bar as well as our regular series of author events.

All of the following were suggested by newsletter readers, as well as all manner of other things. If you live locally, which — if any — would you be interested in attending?

The other main feedback from the survey was that you’re desperate for Backstory merch. More on that shortly!

People have extremely strong views on pens (someone requested a “pen which works”; another respondent was only interested in a “REALLY good writing pen”). Other requests hinted at personal experience, as in the request that “if it is a reusable coffee cup, please please [can it be] one that is completely leak proof ie you can turn it upside down and nothing comes out!”

As for “woolly hats — it’s the frozen north up here,” do let us know your details and perhaps we can all club together for a blanket, too.

Thanks again for so much incredibly generous and helpful feedback. Reading it was not only useful but also extremely humbling. It is so wild to me the degree to which so many of you have taken Backstory to your hearts. These were a couple of my favourites:

“You’ve genuinely reignited my love of reading, and I find it such a joyful space.”

“I love Backstory btw. You’ve created something local and wonderful. Thank you. Please never leave.”

We won’t! And we will keep getting better! Although there are probably some areas where we can’t improve. We will have to disappoint the contributor who wrote: “The only way you could improve would be to have Lyse Doucet give a weekly talk!”

One consistent ask was that I somehow find room in your childcare schedules for you to spend more time at our bar or browsing for books. One respondent described herself as “deep in the child-rearing trenches”; another said “I have three young kids so sitting down in a coffee shop is a distant dream”.

A third proposed a solution: “On-site childcare.” It’s a thought!

Happy reading,

Tom