Sevenoaks' Fleur Sinclair becomes President of the UK Booksellers Association
Sevenoaks Bookshop owner on the cultural value of the modern bookshop
At a time when the word ‘digital’ seems to be attached to every facet of modern life, the humble bookshop endures. In fact, it does more than endure. As more of us seek time away from screens, the return to tangibility and paper is becoming more prevalent.
A cornerstone of the high street, Sevenoaks Bookshop has been at the centre of the town for more than 75 years. In spring this year, its owner of eight years Fleur Sinclair was announced as the new president of the Booksellers Association for the UK and Ireland.
Taking over from Hazel Broadfoot, of Dulwich’s Village Books, Fleur had already been vice-President of the BA since 2020 and is well versed in issues that modern booksellers have.
“The Booksellers Association basically represents all high street bookshops, so large and small - Waterstones are members as well as tiny independents,” says Fleur. “Their job is really to sort of advocate for bookshops. They have a council and my new role as president is to help act as a steer - they have representatives from the trade telling them how it is and the challenges we have and the things we need.
“They advocate in all kinds of ways, forging good relationships with other people in the trade, be that publishers or even lobbying the government, or whether it’s looking at the competition rules with Amazon, or the business rates, which is a sort of very ongoing one.”
Fleur will bring her own experiences in the industry to the role for two years before handing on the baton. But, as she explains, the issues of 10 years ago are not necessarily the same today. In fact, they are changing constantly.
“The Kindle was the fight of the owners previous to me,” she says. “They had a tenure that oversaw the end of the Net Book Agreement when pricing could be heavily discounted, and that brought the beginning of Amazon and Kindles. But now I feel like eBooks are just a different format. That audience split happened some time ago.”
With Amazon continually hanging over retail like a big spectre, it has long been important for high street businesses to highlight their own USPs that cannot be (so far) replicated by online giants.
“When you look at price comparisons and stuff, sometimes the discounts are absolutely nominal,” says Fleur. “Also, I think it’s all very well if you know exactly what you want. But if you don’t know what you want, an algorithm is never going to represent or replace the advice you can get from a real-life person in a shop. And that’s the same for books, records, clothes, whatever. The high street is usually your best bet if you just need a bit more of a helping hand to find what it is that you’re after.”
While Fleur believes that the move to more remote working and people wanting to spend leisure time away from their screens is a positive influence in the hardcopy versus eBook battle, there will always be some elements that digital platforms just cannot replace.
“People just don’t do eBooks for children in the same way,” says Fleur. “Picture books are things of beauty and to share that with your child as the last part of their day, I just don’t think that’s replaceable. It’s a very valuable, lovely experience.
“I think books are incredible value when you think about other forms of entertainment, and for a paperback, to be lost in it for a few days will cost you round about a tenner. Now, it’s very difficult to go to the cinema for a tenner for two hours.”
The cultural value of bookshops in the UK is certainly going to be on the agenda as Fleur enters her first year as president.
“I feel that, as cultural spaces, bookshops are so valuable, but they’re not valued in the wider sense in that we have no direct access to funding in the same way as a theatre or a music venue would. It’s such a stereotype, but in France writers and bookshops are valued as ‘Oh, these are the thinkers, these are the spaces for free speech’. They’re given this sort of cultural cachet, if you like.”
Bookshops have been staging events, from conversations and book groups to poetry readings and author talks, for years and Fleur believes that hosting experiences will only help to entice wider audiences into the space.
“So many bookshops do it now, and it’s definitely something that I’ve put a lot of focus into during my time,” she says. “Events with authors enhance your reading experience like nothing else, whether the author has given a reading or if it’s a conversation around the motivations. People will take that book away and have a completely different reading experience to if they’ve just come at it cold.”
The Sevenoaks Bookshop, which Fleur took over from the previous owners eight years ago, collaborates with local producers when stocking the in-house coffee offer and alcoholic drinks during evening events.
“Taking over the ownership was a little bit of a trial by fire, although I was really well supported by the previous owners,” she says.
“It’s like any business: you have to be a complete jack of all trades, to try to manage everything.
“But with any independent shop, there’s great power in it because you do get to choose your stock, I do get to choose the people I do events with, and there are certain things that I will do because I know my customers will be so pleased about it.”
During the pandemic, Fleur took a risk and doubled the size of the shop, taking on the property next door to increase the size of both the cafe and the children’s department, but it’s one that she hasn’t looked back on.
“It felt like a really crazy, stupid thing to do in the moment. But I hope it has made the shop more of a destination space and a really nice place for people.”
INFO: booksellers.org.uk
