Shelf Life: What Two Months as a Bookseller Taught Me About Writing Books
Five surprising lessons that changed the way I write, pitch, and think about readers.
Hello! This is the section of my Substack where I document my book writing journey. The creative chaos, the manuscript in the making and the attempts at research, retreats and representation. It is an incredibly vulnerable share as I will ultimately fail either along the way or completely. But so many of us have a book dream and I want you to see that it’s worth it (and maybe convince myself along the way). I promise to always be honest with you. This is part of my paid subscription, you can upgrade below.
Coming up on Dream to Deal
⚰️Why I’m done writing about death.
🛠️Breaking the block: The tools that brought me back to writing.
🛬Sunrises, solitude and a a story in the making. Sharing my experience of a writing vacation in my home town.
✏️Writing in the Margins of Books I Love; How I’m learning from the best in my genre without losing my voice.
You can find all the previous articles for ‘Dream to Deal’ here
The Day I Stepped Behind the Counter
Working in a bookshop had been a quiet dream of mine. The kind of dream I would write about in my primary school creative writing lessons. A bookshop with it’s own café, cream cakes and quirky pots for tea. Laced doilies on all the tables, mismatching crockery, all of it quaint enough to be charming and not peculiar. A romantic fantasy you might find in books like Rewitched or The Pumpkin Spice Café where I’d spend my days surrounded by stories, chatting with curious customers, maybe even recommending a future classic. So when I landed a temporary job as a bookseller over Christmas, I was ecstatic. A sign from the Universe perhaps?
But as dreams go, it wasn’t quite what I imagined. If you’ve come here hoping for a wholesome story about how magical bookselling is, and how every bookseller will read your book and recommend it to just the right reader than you’ve come to the wrong place. Today I share with you a dose of reality about book selling and how it was the best crash course in book writing I ever had.
The shop was busy, relentlessly so, and I quickly learned that bookselling, especially during the holidays, is about pace. Not lingering chats or literary matchmaking. I wanted to talk to readers all day long, to discuss what they loved and why, but the job was more about moving stock, shelving fast, and keeping queues down. At least in this big name bookstore, during this season, there was little time for connection, despite the wants of the manager. I remember speaking to a woman in her 70’s who was spending Christmas alone, she was keen to share with me her favourite poem of the year. It would be a poem she would write in her notebook, where she collected every single piece that had touched her since she was a teen. I spoke with her for little over 5 minutes, and after was scolded for not moving her along. Not quite how I imagined it would be.
And when it came to the books themselves, particularly the new releases and debuts, I realized something else: booksellers don’t care about your book nearly as much as you do. Not unless you give them a reason to. The hard truth? Your beautiful prose and clever concept won’t matter unless you can make someone else believe in it first.
I watched which titles got picked up and which were ignored. I listened to people explain, sometimes beautifully, sometimes clumsily, why a book mattered to them. I saw how booksellers hand-sell certain authors again and again, and why some books, even good ones, just didn’t move.
It was like pulling back the curtain on the industry and suddenly, everything I thought I knew about writing felt too theoretical. Because here’s the truth: writing a book and getting it into people’s hands are two very different skills.