A Family-run Bookshop – Storytellers, Inc.
Storytellers, Inc., opened in December 2010 as a children’s bookshop, and then expanded into a general independent five years later. We’ve always been a mother-daughter team, with no additional staff, but our business has always been manageable because we’ve able to keep our expectations in line with our personal circumstances; chasing events and projects when we had more time and energy to dedicate to them, and then dialling down when other things needed prioritising. That flexibility that being a family business has brought us is what has kept us going – as well as our loyal customers, of course!
Our ambitions for the bookshop have changed since we opened; we still love our monthly book clubs, giving reading recommendations in the shop and helping to choose gifts for loved ones, but we try not to overcomplicate the message anymore. We’re a bookshop. We sell books. Through becoming a parent myself, making sure we have time off together as a family, my own writing career, and unexpected occurrences like Covid, we’re really proud to still be open for business.
Passing Books through the Generations
Sometimes I catch myself rolling my eyes at parents who insist their child should read some ‘classics’ instead of something that’s fun and popular, but in most instances, it’s an act of love. Parents and grandparents just want to share the books they discovered as a child – it’s an offering of a time-machine of sorts, to some sort of shared experience with a child from the past that grew to an adult in the present. The great thing about bookshops of course, is that they can definitely sell you that copy of Swallows and Amazons that you so loved as a child, but they can also sell you the new Ross Montgomery, the new Nadia Shireen and the latest Kieran Larwood and Katherine Rundell, and maybe Grandad should read one of your favourites in return!
Bookshops play an important role in passing on books through the generations, but I like it best when a bookshop can help books pass between generations. Sharing a book doesn’t have to mean reading aloud, it can be passing on a copy to a friend or a family member and saying, I loved this book! We have a book club where adults read and discuss books that are published for teenagers – most of those readers are parents who might share those books with their own teens at home. Bookshops promote conversation about books and that’s how the entire industry survives.
