On 27 August, I will be in Kuala Lumpur with Daniel to officially open Goldsboro Books’ first international shop. Even now, writing those words feels extraordinary. Goldsboro has travelled a very long way from the business Daniel and I began in 1999, yet in all the ways that matter, we are still doing what we did at the beginning. We are finding books we love and putting them into the hands of people who will treasure them.
There is something especially meaningful about this first international opening because Goldsboro’s story was international before the business even existed. Daniel is from the Seychelles, and I am from York, so we came from different continents and very different backgrounds. There were countless reasons our lives might never have crossed, but books brought us together. That is one of the things books do best: they cross borders, collapse distances, and allow people who might appear to have very little in common to recognise the same feeling in the same story.
When Daniel and I started Goldsboro, we did not have a grand design for what it might become. We simply loved first editions, signed books and the sense that a particular copy could carry a story beyond the one printed on its pages. A treasured book holds the memory of where you found it, who recommended it and who you were when you first read it. The signature, the number, the binding and the jacket give that memory a physical home, but the real treasure has always been the story itself.
That belief has shaped Goldsboro for more than twenty-seven years. We have never wanted simply to put more books into the world; we have wanted to help people find the books that will matter to them. There is a particular joy in introducing a reader to something they were not looking for and watching it become the book they cannot leave behind. It is the reason good bookselling still matters, no matter how sophisticated online shopping becomes.
A website can show you a beautiful edition, but it cannot quite reproduce the moment you pick it up. It cannot give you the weight of the book in your hand, the way the foil catches the light or the surprise of opening the title page and finding the author’s signature. More importantly, it cannot recreate the conversation in which a bookseller listens to what you love and says, ‘I think you should try this.’ Some of the most important books in our lives are not the ones we searched for, but the ones we stumbled across.
The Goldsboro Room at The Library by BookXcess will give readers and collectors in Malaysia that experience without asking them to come to London first. It is a beautiful, purpose-built space in Kuala Lumpur, filled with signed first editions, exclusive editions and books we are genuinely excited about. I want Malaysian readers to walk into it and feel that the room belongs to them. This is not a temporary display sent from London; it is Goldsboro’s first international shop, and it will develop through the people who visit it and the books they respond to.
Some visitors will already be experienced collectors who know exactly what they are looking for. Others will be tourists passing through Kuala Lumpur, or readers who have never heard of Goldsboro and simply wander in because a jacket catches their eye. I want all of them to feel welcome. Exclusive should describe the edition, not the person allowed to enjoy it, and nobody needs specialist knowledge or permission to begin collecting.
Every collector begins with one book. You find a copy that means something to you, then perhaps another, and before long the shelves are full and the piles on the floor have become what you insist is a perfectly sensible system. Collecting grows from affection, curiosity and memory. Our job is to make it easier for readers to experience that first spark, wherever in the world they happen to live.
Kuala Lumpur will not be our last international opening. Other Goldsboro shops will follow, and sooner than people might expect, although I cannot share everything just yet. Each must feel rooted in its city and welcoming to its readers, rather than like a British shop has simply been lifted from London and placed somewhere else. We will bring Goldsboro’s identity with us, but we will also listen, learn and allow every new shop to find its own place within the community around it.
The world has changed enormously since Daniel and I began the business. Brexit, tariffs, customs rules and rising international postage costs have made it harder and more expensive to place a book into the hands of a reader overseas. These are business problems, but they quickly become reader problems when postage costs almost as much as the book or the process feels too difficult to navigate. I can spend my time being frustrated by that, and I certainly have my moments, or I can look for solutions.
Kuala Lumpur is a positive solution. If it has become harder to send Goldsboro to individual readers around the world, then perhaps we should bring Goldsboro closer to them. I am increasingly convinced that the next phase of our growth cannot come from the United Kingdom alone. Britain remains our home and our existing customers remain at the heart of everything we do, but there are readers across the world who would love Goldsboro if it were easier for them to find us.
Goldsboro has always looked forward. I do not say that arrogantly, or because I believe we are the only people in the book trade with good ideas. I say it because we have trusted our instincts and our identity, even when the safer choice would have been to wait and see what everyone else was doing. We created opportunities because we were passionate about books, and because excitement has a way of making an idea feel not only possible, but necessary.
We championed signed and special editions long before they became a publishing trend. We created subscription clubs because we believed readers would trust us to put an exceptional book into their hands each month, and we backed debut writers when an established name might have been the easier choice. Occasionally, that instinct has produced a remarkable moment, such as being the only bookshop with signed copies of The Cuckoo’s Calling when it was first published. We did not know what would happen next; we simply believed in the book and acted on that belief.
The same instinct lies behind First Edition, our new bookshop, café, wine bar and events space in Cecil Court. The name connects it to the thing that began Goldsboro, but ‘first’ also suggests an introduction: a first visit, a first discovery, a first signed book or a first conversation with an author. I want it to feel relaxed, warm and full of character. You might arrive for coffee, stay for a conversation and leave with a book you had no intention of buying, which is usually the sign of a very successful afternoon.
The details matter because they create that character. We are developing our own First Edition coffee blend with a small producer, rather than choosing something anonymous and merely serviceable. Our wine will come from a small local company that also understands the importance of identity and place. A good independent bookshop, a small coffee producer and a local wine company share something important: each is trying to make something distinctive in a world that constantly encourages everything to become larger, faster and more uniform.
First Edition and the Goldsboro Room may be separated by thousands of miles, but they come from the same impulse. Both are invitations to enter, browse, talk and discover. Both recognise that physical places still matter because they create memories and allow the unexpected to happen. Perhaps two people who might otherwise never have met will begin talking at an event because they loved the same novel, just as two people from different continents were once brought together by books and created Goldsboro.
I am enormously proud of what Daniel, our team and I have achieved, although I do not always stop long enough to say it. Running a business tends to keep your attention fixed on the next problem, the next deadline and the next idea. This moment deserves to be recognised. More than twenty-seven years after we began with our love of first editions, Goldsboro has brilliant teams of booksellers in our shops in London and Brighton, a team of diligent and hardworking book packers in our warehouse, communities of passionate readers around the world, and now its first international shop.
That makes me emotional as well as excited. I do not want Goldsboro to become bigger simply for the sake of being bigger, but I do want us to reach more readers, make it easier for people to find treasured books and give the authors we champion new audiences. Kuala Lumpur is the beginning of that next chapter, and First Edition is another expression of the same belief. We love books, we love the people who read them and we are still excited by what we might create next.
To everybody who has helped us reach this moment, thank you. Every book bought, every subscription renewed and every recommendation shared has allowed Goldsboro to keep imagining what might be possible. To readers discovering us for the first time in Kuala Lumpur, welcome. As long as there are readers looking for extraordinary books, we will keep finding new ways to reach them.
