People often tell me they dream of opening a bookshop.
Whenever I hear it, the same thought arrives before anything else: do you really know what this demands? Of course, I never say that aloud. It would feel unkind to give someone the ending before they have even lived the first chapter. Instead, I usually smile and say something that is true, but gentler.
It can be life-changing. Just know why you are doing it and prepare properly.
Because the reality is simple and rarely said clearly enough. A bookshop is not a hobby. It is a commitment. In many ways, it is a vocation.
There is a romantic notion of independent bookselling that I fully understand. Shelves filled with discovery. Long conversations about stories. The feeling that books slow the world down, just a little. Those moments do exist, and they are part of why this work remains one of the great privileges of my life.
But they sit alongside another truth. Independent bookshops operate in one of the toughest commercial environments in retail. Margins are slim. Costs are fixed. Stock has to be paid for long before it earns anything back. Footfall is unpredictable, increasingly shaped by algorithms, screens, and a culture trained to move fast rather than linger.
At some point, every independent bookseller realises the same thing. The shop alone is not enough.
To survive now, a modern indie has to evolve. Signed editions, subscriptions, festivals, events, partnerships. These are not indulgences or side projects. They are infrastructure. They are what make it possible for the cultural work of a bookshop to continue at all.
At Goldsboro, we have launched new clubs, expanded our events, and deepened our relationships with authors and publishers over the years. Not because it was always the grand plan, but because the landscape made it necessary. If independent bookshops are to remain part of the cultural fabric of our cities, we have to innovate, take risks, and build models that keep the door open tomorrow as well as today.
What people do not always see is the responsibility underneath all of that. A bookshop is not just shelves and stock. It is people. A team whose livelihoods depend on stability. It is authors, especially debuts, who trust that someone will stand behind their book, sometimes before anyone else does. And it is readers who feel, often instinctively, that they belong the moment they walk through the door.
That responsibility sits at the centre of every decision. It is the weight that shapes strategy and the privilege that makes the work worthwhile.
There is also another thread running beneath all of this. Before books, my life was meant to follow a very different path. I once trained for the priesthood. I learned what it means to stand for something, to offer space, and to believe in the slow, unseen work of changing lives one person at a time. In many ways, I do not think I ever really left that calling. I simply exchanged one vocation for another.
And then there is the part almost no one warns you about. Visibility brings criticism. When an independent bookshop grows, changes, or tries something new, it will be scrutinised. Accused of being too commercial, or not commercial enough, or sometimes both at once. Opinions delivered confidently by people who have never seen a balance sheet, let alone carried the responsibility of one.
It is easy to forget that behind every decision are real people, working hard to keep culture alive on high streets where so much else is disappearing. Feedback lands directly, and it has to be absorbed quietly while the work continues.
There are more personal dimensions to all of this, but those belong behind the curtain.
What matters publicly is this. Independent bookshops are not fragile because they are badly run. They are fragile because they are deeply human. They are built on belief, community, and cultural value in a world that measures success by speed and scale.
And despite everything, I remain convinced of one thing. A city without bookshops is a poorer place. A society without spaces for slow discovery forgets something essential about itself.
People sometimes ask me whether, knowing everything I know now, I would still choose this path. My answer is uncomplicated. Yes.
Because all it takes is one reader discovering a book that becomes part of their life, or one author whose career turns because we backed them early, to remind me why this matters.
In the end, the privilege outweighs the price.
Perhaps that is the quiet truth beneath it all. Independent bookshops hold open a door that would otherwise close. As long as I can, I intend to keep that door open.
Why your support matters
Independent bookshops do not survive on sentiment. They survive because people choose them.
Goldsboro is unusual. We built a community in a city that did not have one waiting. We created a space for readers and collectors in the heart of London, where speed and convenience usually win.
Every visit. Every subscription. Every decision to buy from us rather than a faceless platform helps keep that community alive.
If you believe in what independent bookshops add to the world, I would love you to be part of ours.
Come in. Discover something new. Join a club. Attend an event. Or simply tell someone we exist.
We would be delighted to welcome you.
