I Didn’t Open a Bookshop Because I Love Books

That probably sounds like a ridiculous thing to say.

After all, I own a bookshop.

Surely loving books is somewhere near the top of the job description?

The truth is, I do love books.

I love that they can transport you somewhere else for a few hours. I love that they can make you laugh, make you angry or completely change your perspective. I love that there is a book for almost every moment of your life.

But books weren’t the reason I opened House of Joy.

Not really.

If my biggest passion had simply been books, there would have been much easier ways to indulge it.

I could have filled every wall in our house with shelves. I could have started a BookTok account. I could have reviewed novels online or spent my weekends wandering around second-hand bookshops.

Opening an independent bookshop in 2026 probably wouldn’t have been my first choice.

Because if you strip away the cosy aesthetic people imagine, running a bookshop is mostly cardboard boxes, invoices, stocktakes, coffee grounds, spreadsheets and trying to remember where you put that one book somebody is asking for.

It’s wonderful.

It’s exhausting.

And it’s very rarely as romantic as people think.

So why do it?

The answer is surprisingly simple.

I wasn’t trying to build a bookshop.

I was trying to build a place.

That distinction has become more important to me with every passing month.

When Erica and I first started talking about House of Joy, we didn’t spend hours discussing profit margins or bestseller lists.

We talked about how we wanted people to feel.

We wanted someone to walk through the door and immediately relax.

We wanted children to grow up thinking bookshops were places where they belonged.

We wanted someone new to Colchester to wander in and accidentally end up in a conversation with somebody they’d never met before.

We wanted parents to have somewhere they didn’t feel they had to apologise for bringing their children.

We wanted someone to pick up a book they’d never normally choose because another customer had quietly recommended it.

Books were always part of that vision.

But they weren’t the whole vision.

Sometimes I’ll look around the shop and realise one of my favourite moments of the day had absolutely nothing to do with selling a book.

It’s watching two strangers end up talking over coffee.

It’s seeing children colouring while their parents finally get ten minutes to themselves.

It’s somebody returning to tell us how much they loved the book we recommended three weeks ago.

It’s hearing K-pop Demons Hunters sung by our Little Readers Club before I’ve even walked into the shop on a Sunday.

It’s someone saying, “I just wanted somewhere nice to sit for a bit.”

Those moments don’t show up on a balance sheet.

But they’re the moments that make me think we’re building what we hoped to build.

I think we’ve become strangely good at creating spaces that encourage people to consume.

Buy something.

Eat quickly.

Move on.

Everything feels optimised.

Efficient.

Transactional.

There’s nothing wrong with buying things—we’re a shop, after all it helps)—but I do think we’ve lost something.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve forgotten the importance of places where you don’t have to rush.

Where staying an extra twenty minutes isn’t seen as bad business.

Where conversations happen naturally.

Where people slowly become familiar faces.

I think that’s why independent bookshops still matter.

Not because they’re competing with Amazon on price.

They aren’t.

Not because they stock books you can’t find elsewhere.

Often, they don’t.

They matter because they offer something algorithms can’t.

Serendipity.

You come in looking for one book and leave talking about another.

You overhear a recommendation from the next table.

You discover an author because somebody has handwritten a little card saying, “This made me cry.”

You bump into someone you haven’t seen in years.

None of that can be delivered in a cardboard box.

House of Joy has taught me something I probably should have known already.

People are hungry for places where they can belong.

Not in some grand, life-changing way.

Just quietly.

Somewhere they recognise the person behind the counter.

Somewhere somebody remembers how they take their coffee.

Somewhere children get excited to visit.

Somewhere that feels familiar.

I don’t think we’re just selling books.

I think we’re collecting little moments.

A child reading on the rug.

A conversation that lasts longer than expected.

A recommendation that becomes someone’s new favourite novel.

A customer saying, “We’ll be back next week.”

Those moments matter.

In fact, I think they’re the whole point.

Books just happen to be the thing that brings people through the door.

What keeps them coming back is something much harder to put on a shelf.

Connection.

Community.

A feeling that, for half an hour or so, this little corner of Crouch Street belongs to everyone who walks into it.

That’s what House of Joy has always been about.

The books matter.

Of course they do.

But if, years from now, somebody remembers House of Joy not because of the book they bought but because it was where they met a friend, discovered a new author, brought their child every Saturday morning or simply found somewhere they felt welcome, then I think we’ll have succeeded.

Because I didn’t open a bookshop because I love books.

I opened a bookshop because I love what books make possible.