Shout-out for the Bookshops by Nicki Copeland

GLO Bookshop in Motherwell, 2019 winner of Large Retailer of the Year
at CRT, sponsored by Instant Apostle (photo used with permission)

I’ve recently returned from the Christian Resources Together (CRT) retreat. This is an annual event that brings together Christian bookshops, publishers, suppliers of Christian gifts and cards, authors and anyone else involved in the trade. (If you want to know more about it, have a look at https://www.christianresourcestogether.co.uk/welcome.htm.)

I’ve been to the retreat for the last few years with my Instant Apostle hat on, working on the stand and meeting retailers, authors and fellow publishers. One of the things I love about it is the sense of community and of all being in it together.

One thing that comes across in conversations year after year, though, is how tough the Christian book trade is. And that’s right across the board – for publishers, writers and retailers – and it isn’t getting any easier. I love to chat to the bookshop owners and workers and listen to their stories about the difference they’re making in their local communities, and to hear the creative ways many of them are finding to make it work for them, such as sharing space with a coffee shop. At a time when so many bookshops are closing, this creativity is vitally important for the bookshops to stay afloat. In addition, they are all heavily dependent on volunteers, and I salute the commitment of both the paid staff and the volunteers.

So my post this month is simply this: to encourage us all to find our local bookshop and to support it. If you have a Christian bookshop near you, even better. I know it’s so much easier simply to go online and order the book we want and look forward to it arriving the next day – or even later the same day. But if we don’t support the smaller businesses, we run the real risk of losing them altogether. If you need to order online, there are alternatives to the big one that shall remain nameless – Aslan Christian Books and Eden.co.uk are just two examples of great alternative retailers.

If there’s a book you want, give your local bookshop a ring and ask them if they have it in stock, or if they can order it for you. Then when you go to pick it up, do offer some words of encouragement about what a fantastic job they’re doing to support authors and publishers and about the difference their presence is making in the community.

It’s a tough world out there. Let’s stick together, support one another and do what we can to retain the presence of God’s kingdom in our local high street.

Instant Apostle, Small Publisher of the Year 2018,
and our shortlisted title for 2019's Fiction Book of the Year

Nicki Copeland is a freelance writer, speaker, copy editor and proofreader – and loves anything to do with words. She is the author of Losing the Fig Leaf and Less than Ordinary? When she has the luxury of some free time, she can invariably be found with a book in one hand and some chocolate in the other.