The Day the Bookshop Felt Most Alive!
To explain the day the bookshop felt most alive. We weirdly begin with the day it felt most dead. I had been open since 9 am. 8 people through the door. ZERO sales. ELEVEN THIRTY THREE. I had spoke over emails about someone coming in and potentially doing an interview for the Gazette. I was apprehensive. Who reads the Gazette? Is it even worth my time?
As a Gen Z who spends little time reading the local papers I honestly did think it would be something that would bring very little success. HOW WRONG I WAS. When Anuska came into the shop at 11:33 she asked how the day had been and I lied. Something I was doing at the beginning if it was quiet and someone asked how it had been since opening. “It’s actually been so good to be honest” (Note to self - when someone says “to be honest” they are not very often being honest in my experience.) “I had no real expectations or targets, but it’s been positive” (Translation: I expected to make no money but I made £9.99 in the last three hours so it’s going great.) “I was expecting to open the doors and have no customers for weeks” (This was completely true.) See I was in a weird mindset when I opened the shop, I felt I hadn’t done enough. Like I wasn’t where I was supposed to be and I still do feel like this at times, it’s in my nature.
What’s also in my nature is to project positives and so it was going so well, even on days where I wasn’t making much money having people come into the shop and chat was great. I had set myself some financial safety targets and in those first few weeks I never dropped below them. Anuska was so lovely and we chatted for 10 minutes or so about my motivations for the shop, my upbringing, my partner Erica and her book readings in HOJ. Everything. Then she was gone.
I had no idea when the article may be uploaded, she mentioned it might not be until next week. I vainly worried if I looked ok in the picture taken. I never get a haircut and was looking a little shabby. Within three days it was live on the website! Behind a paywall but it was there. My words. My not too bad picture. It was a Friday evening when it was published online and Erica sent it to me while I was at my other job away from HOJ (more on that another time). Initially I felt dejected, I saw the post on Facebook and on the Gazette’s website and the first thing I went to was the comment section. Nasty people making nasty comments, few and far between but still enough to catch my eye and make me think perhaps it wasn’t a worthwhile effort getting myself into the Gazette.
I opened up on Saturday not knowing exactly what to expect. A part of me pictured the nasty commenters stood like the Simpsons angry mob at my door.
Instead it was quiet, first customer came into the shop at around 9:35. Then from 10 am it exploded. I had customers coming in constantly, people having seen the Gazette article online. I had gone from having very quiet periods frequently in the early weeks to not having an empty shop from 10 am until 3:15 pm. When that customer left at 3:15 pm I finally was able to take a breath, it had been so busy I hadn’t eaten lunch, hadn’t had a chance to do anything!
At one point around lunchtime the shop was so busy I had two sets of people awkwardly standing drinking their coffee, parents reading to their children and couples sat chatting. It was amazing. The shop finally had found its pulse. Everything I had hoped the shop could become in that moment it was alive. By the end of the day we had taken 2/3 of our monthly rent. In one day. The Gazette was amazing in promoting and it continued to bring people into our shop for weeks and even two months down the line we still get customers coming in mentioning our article in the paper.
This day will not be a singular event. We haven’t hit that Saturday in March again. Some Saturdays are quieter now. But I think about that day often, because for the first time House of Joy didn’t feel like an idea or an experiment.
It had a pulse.
