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Bookselling in the Scottish Highlands

I suspect that most people living in England and a great many in Scotland have little awareness of what lies beyond Edinburgh and Glasgow, never mind beyond Stirling, Perth, and Dundee. Even beyond Aberdeen to the north and west only after a drive of nearly 300 miles do you reach the northern tip of the country. This great swathe of land (the area covered by the Highland Council alone is the size of Belgium with a population only a fraction in excess of 200,000) has a handful of small towns, mostly in the east, one, very new and quite small, city and a scattered rural population. In such territory how do sellers of second-hand books get by. The answer, for the most part, is, tenuously. Inverness (created a city for the Millennium), through which practically every visitor to the Highlands passes and which has a population of around 50,000, has grown rapidly over the past decade or so. Here in a converted church just off the city centre, is Leakey’s, a long-established dealer with a large general stock and a coffee shop in superb premises. It has never seriously been challenged as the premier bookdealer in the north and probably the only one to enjoy the kind of footfall common in the more populous areas in the south and in England.

North and west of Inverness, in the Highlands proper, bookshops are few and far between. There is one in the far north, in Thurso, and another, closer to Inverness, in Dingwall. Curiously, there appear to be very few dealers in the Highlands working from home and selling by mail order either via the Internet or by catalogue. Politicians and others charged with the economic regeneration of the area have loudly trumpeted the benefits that new technology would bring. It seems to have had very little effect on our business here and my guess is that the introduction of broadband will not make much difference either. It might be an interesting exercise to compare the north of Scotland with a rural part of England, like Cornwall, which has a similar population, though in a much smaller area, but sustains a much greater number of dealers in second-hand books, including those with shops.

From Inverness to Aberdeen a journey of just over a hundred miles takes you through mostly rural, mostly agricultural, country with small towns at fairly regular intervals. Some of these do support second-hand bookshops, although for the most part, only just. From a mood of cautious optimism two or three years ago with some considering expansion, the climate is now much gloomier. The longest-established shop in the area, the Dufftown Bookshop, closed its doors in the summer. Others are finding trading conditions generally harder, being obliged to find additional sources of income just to stay afloat.

Here again fewer dealers than one might expect have taken to using the Internet to sell their wares, curious, since such a move would surely compensate for the lack of customers coming in through the door. A quick look at ABE, for example, shows that in the whole vast area north and west of Aberdeen the number selling electronically can be counted on scarcely more than the fingers of two hands. Of these only a very few have shops, a very few more are established dealers in specialist subject areas and there will also be, no doubt, a number of dabblers. Only Grampian Books, Alba Books and The Moray Bookshop have sizeable stocks with only the latter pair having open shops.

Apart from the small numbers of people the other problem is distance. Potential buyers are unlikely to be persuaded to travel fifty miles or so from one small bookshop to another in the hope of finding what they’re looking for. Whether a ‘book town’ in the area is possible is very debatable. Nevertheless a handful of bookshops in the same small town along with, perhaps, others selling antiques and collectibles, would surely be attractive enough to persuade customers to travel the long distances that those who live and do business here are used to.

News from the
Independent Booksellers' Network

January 2003

Contents:

News from the Independent Booksellers' Network

January 2003

Contents:

News from the
Independent Booksellers' Network