cruel for everyone!

also the only way we can afford to get hold of other people's books on staff discount 🙃

(other than selling our own books at readings, which is bookselling but perhaps doesn't quite count in this instance).

Poets in particular - who hasn't at some point worked for at least some time in a bookshop of some type?

This!

There's another conversation to be had about the structural barriers that certainly limit whose books about bookselling we get to read, and it's great to see Cook's novel and memoir out there, and hopefully more to come from many other bookseller writers!

Coming back to the first point, really. My hypothesis is that bookseller writers are not rare at all, so tell me some of the ones you know (which might be yourself). Specific notice for bookshop owner writers, who I suspect might be slightly less common, but also probably not rare.

As with all areas of the arts world, bookselling can seem on the surface a very white, abled, middle-class space, but there is an amazing and v long history of radical bookselling, of black owned and run bookshops, of specialist bookselling we need to recognise and build on. Citation is praxis.

I'm also really grateful that in the UK we have The Booksellers Association to work for and advise bookshops and booksellers, and the booksellers network to make sure we all get to know and learn from each other, so we can get a real sense of who is in our community and what we're doing.

I realise I'm spoilt by the fact my partner in bookselling and life @likewinterblue.bsky.social takes as keen an interest in bookseller books and history and other bookshops as he does in bookselling. We read extra booky bookselling books like Parnassus on Wheels for fun. Our handbook is:

There's a great bookseller memoir, 'Reading the Room' by Paul Yamazaki, City Lights Bookstore's chief buyer for over fifty years - which you can read about here. There is just such a beautiful rich history of books about bookselling, as well as an interconnected rich history of bookseller writers.

I know many bookshop owner writers, like Katie Clapham who runs Storytellers, Inc (primarily a children's writer) or Deb Alma of @poetrypharmacy.bsky.social (primarily a poet). There's also a long history of #BooksellerMemoirs, like Cook's own, from George Orwell to Nanako Hanada to Nadia Wassef.

There are 1000s of writers who are / have been booksellers/ booksellers who write. Most writers and most booksellers earn very little ofc, but the roles can be compatible in other ways. It also blurs kinds of writing. Patchett, Straub, Blume and Owens are novelists. Erdrich a novelist and poet.

I snagged on this: "Cook says her author-bookseller combination is rare. Until recently, she knew of only five such people in the US – all of them women, and all except her, white." Setting aside not knowing about Birchbark Books, using bookseller instead of bookshop owner here confuses things.