Ten years ago, Britain had reached its nadir when it came to independent bookshops. There were only 867 across the United Kingdom, which sounds like a decent enough number but when you consider that we were a country of 65 million back then, it’s not an especially impressive amount. However, it isn’t hard to see why many shops were shuttering. Ever since Amazon had begun to make its presence felt in the bricks-and-mortar bookselling trade, independent shops were simply unable to compete with that online behemoth on the one hand and the Waterstones group on the other. This left the indies stranded in the middle without, apparently, much hope for a renaissance.  

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Well, somewhat surprisingly this renaissance has now taken place. While pessimists might have expected that the numbers of bookshops would have fallen yet further after Covid, the economic effects of Brexit and the ever-resistible rise of screens, independent shops are now at their largest number since 2012.

The Booksellers Association has reported that there were 1086 shops registered in Britain last year, and, hopefully, even more to come this year. In my home........

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