THIS WEEK


Bookshop Spotlight Village Books


Village Books ? 1D Calton Avenue, Dulwich, London SE21 7DE


As she steps into the role of president of the Booksellers Association, Hazel Broadfoot takes The Bookseller through a day in the life at her shop, Village Books in Dulwich, south London


Hazel Broadfoot Owner, Village Books & Booksellers Association president W 14


e open at 9 a.m., so we get here at 8.45 a.m. On a tpical day I might have had a yoghurt for breakfast, or I might wait until I get here, where I will be on an intravenous drip of coffee with flap- jacks or whatever treats we have—customers bring us home-made cakes and biscuits and things. One customer brought in Otolenghi’s custard roly-poly’s she had made. The first thing we do is pick up our invoices from Batch—check what books are being delivered, seeing when our Gardners delivery


22nd April 2022


boxes are going to arrive, unpacking the boxes—we order new titles from them every day. Then we will have a good tidy up, make sure the display stands look tidy. We would normally have quite a few


customers first thing, and are oſten very busy bang on 9 a.m. because parents have dropped off their kids at school, and then bring the weeny ones in to look at books. We get a lot of dog walkers too—this bookshop is very dog friendly... oſten the dogs bring their walkers in!


Paperback fiction is doing very nicely at the moment. We have done brilliantly with Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson (Penguin). He’s local, he went to one of the schools near to here. And we’re still doing really well with Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers (Orion), which has been out for a while now but I absolutely loved it, it’s been a really good word-of-mouth seller. The end of the novel was devastating. I’ve got an events manager who is great—we work on the ideas, then she does all the practical side of things. We did loads and loads of virtual events last year, our customers loved it. We’re now back into doing in-person events, but they take a lot of work, you need about two months lead time. Pre-pandemic, we would be selling out a 320-seat venue, and our [recent] Justin Webb event didn’t quite hit that—I think there’s still a bit of reluctance to atend live events post-lockdown.


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