For this week’s Book Club, Sam Leith, the Spectator’s literary editor, is joined by Shaun Bythell, proprietor of The Book Shop in Wigtown, Scotland, and author of The Diary of a Bookseller series, to discuss the fourth instalment, The Return of the Bookseller’s Diary.
They discuss the strange characters who wander into second-hand bookshops, the customers who haggle over £2 books, and how Bythell’s shop helped turn Wigtown into Scotland’s unlikely book town.
They also explore the changing world of bookselling, from the rise of online marketplaces to the 18th-century bookseller James Lackington, whose ‘buy cheap, sell cheap’ philosophy has more than a little in common with Amazon.
Plus, Bythell reveals how keeping a diary has changed the way he sees his customers, the unexpected consequences of becoming a published author, and why the Covid-19 pandemic proved surprisingly good for business.
Produced by Abigail Brierley.
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