My favourites this week
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Sex, lies and sub-zero Moscow: Snowdrops by A.D. Miller. A gripping novel of greed and betrayal in Putin’s Russia. And his Independence Square is partly set in Kyiv
Love in North Korea: It’s a running joke among Korea hacks that every article about Kim’s regime offers readers a “rare glimpse” into the country. But Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick is a genuinely rare thing: a true story of ordinary North Koreans, even of romance. It’s an oldie but a goodie
On the beaches: The Island of Extraordinary Captives: A True Story of an Artist, a Spy and a Wartime Scandal by Simon Parkin. The cracking tale of what a group of talented German artists got up to in an internment camp on the Isle of Man during WW2
As a journalist, I schmoozed my way through more than my fair share of book launches. But on Thursday night, I went to my first as a bona fide bookseller. It was Sally Hayden’s, for her harrowing but beautiful debut I raved about last week, My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on The World’s Deadliest Migration Route. (Thrilled to have sold 22 copies this week, by the way, and therefore to be donating £110 so far to a refugee charity of Sally’s choice. Thank you. We’ll keep the charity kitty open all the way to the paperback and beyond.)
In many ways, this launch party was no different. It was in a lovely bookshop that nobody mentioned; there was a little table at the back with wine; a gesticulatory literary type smashed a glass on a bookcase midway through proceedings; speeches were very earnest and very lovely; too many people left without buying the bloody book.
But in my head, it felt totally new. People kept asking how I knew Sally. “Well I don’t really,” I replied, “I just keep tweeting about her.” Once I’d explained that I’m opening a bookshop and not just very odd, the next question was always “where?” Ah, um, I mumbled, I don’t actually have a bookshop. It’s more of an aspiration. No, I haven’t found a site. No, I don’t know roughly where it’ll be. Maybe Balham? Yes, I like Balham, too… It all made me feel ever so slightly amateur.
There was, though, at least one thing I could boast about. I have my own Kirstie and Phil! And he’s actually called Phil - or at least Philip.
One of the things that’s amazed me in the last few weeks is how generous complete strangers have been with recommendations. When I mentioned on Twitter a few weeks ago that I knew less than nothing about commercial property, a lovely man called Tom Naylor got in touch to introduce me to someone who knows rather more than me about the whole thing, Philip Jemmett.
I was soon immersed in a world of square feet, “disposals” (a retailer flogging one of their stores) and “rateable values” (whether you pay the council too much or far too much for the privilege of competing against a company that isn’t very keen on paying taxes).
Philip has been messaging hundreds of commercial agents trying to find the right property for Backstory (fwiw, I’m after 1,500-2,000ish sq ft, over one or two floors, near a tube station in SW London but not cheek-by-jowl with an existing indie bookshop). We even went on a bike ride (as you do). There was no picnic involved, sadly: it was more of a scoping and scouting vibe.
But here’s the best bit he’s taught me so far. It’s called “zoning”. Brace yourself. Basically, the assumption is that shoppers are fickle and won’t go very far into any given shop. So most shops can be split into zones of 20ft each. The first zone - A - is the most valuable, then B, then C etc. So for the sake of argument, let’s say the Zone A rate for a certain location is £100 per sq ft. Zone B, the next 20ft back, is £50 per sq ft and Zone C the next - £25. Etc etc. The real bargains are the upstairs or downstairs (harder to persuade shoppers to use the stairs or a lift), or the fiddly bits hidden round the corner. They have big discounts - sometimes as little as 10% of the Zone A rate. Fortunately, the best bookshops are all about the fiddly bits hidden round the corner.
If you don’t care so much about having a big shop window to lure people in, your shop will have a much narrower (and therefore cheaper) Zone A. Philip tells me that banks and bookmakers often go for these “bowling alley” premises - long and thin - because they’re cheaper and they have no need to display merchandise in the window.
So my ideal shop is one with lots of cheap space at the back and a narrow restrictive frontage! I want to lure people in, sure, but what I really want is a bunch of nooks and crannies. And if they’re cheap(ish), so much the better. If you want to rent me one, please get in touch!
Well I hope I haven’t thoroughly bored you. I find this stuff interesting, anyway. Next week, I’ll tell you all about my first-ever London Book Fair. And if you’re going to be there, please reply to this email - I’d love to say hi in person.
Tom
Always on my bookshelves
Click on the link to buy a book directly from me.
Cycling round Ulster at the height of the Troubles, dropping in on pubs and chatting to people. The most amazing travel writing I’ve read: A Place Apart: Northern Ireland in the 1970s by Dervla Murphy
A sports writer so good he makes me care about sport: The Cost of These Dreams: Sports Stories and Other Serious Business by Wright Thompson
Still selling like hot cakes: Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn, Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year