WE SELL BOOKS: Joy of being in the Gutter

Bob Johnston, originally from Brighton, is the owner of the Gutter Bookshop, one of Ireland’s leading independent bookshops, which has two branches in Dublin, in Temple Bar and Dalkey, writes Marjorie Brennan.

How long have you been in business?

We opened our Temple Bar shop in November 2009 so we’ll be turning 10 later this year.

I’m a bit shocked myself to be honest — we opened in the middle of the recession because it was the only time I could find a property I could afford to rent but in a way it helped us out because we got the difficult years out of the way early on. We opened a second branch in Dalkey, South Dublin in 2013.

How did you get into the book business?

I’ve been a bookseller for nearly 30 years.

I started in my local bookshop as a teenager working weekends and holidays and once I’d finished my degree — in English literature, of course — I found a job in a big bookshop in Stoke-on-Trent in the UK where I was living at the time.

From there I moved around various bookshops and spent 10 years working for Waterstones in London and Dublin. I then worked as a book buyer for a large chain in the UK.

Eventually, I ended up back in Dublin as the buyer for Hughes & Hughes bookshops before jumping ship to open the Gutter Bookshop.

How has business changed over the years?

When I first started we still had the Net Book Agreement which meant that we didn’t have to deal with the heavy discounting you see these days. That made it much easier for smaller independent bookshops to keep going

And of course, Amazon didn’t exist either. Computerised stock systems were in their infancy and we used to look up book information on a microfiche and phone the orders through to publishers on a daily basis.

Customer orders were written on little cards and filed away in a box. So quite a lot has changed, really. But lots of things are still the same too — talking to customers, finding books that you’ll know people will love reading, and the sheer joy of reading something brilliant that you know you’ll be recommending to everyone who walks through the door.

What challenges have you faced?

Running a small business is tough.

You have to do everything – from being behind the counter serving people to doing the monthly accounts to ensure all your suppliers and services are paid. You have to market your business effectively, manage your staff and also find time to maintain a life outside of the business.

Larger companies have people to fill specific roles but you have to be an expert at everything and customer expectations are high – you can’t just be as good as the large companies, you actually have to be better and shout louder about your business to make sure people know about you. And all on a tiny budget.

But working for yourself and running your own company is hugely rewarding, I can honestly say that opening the Gutter Bookshop is the best decision I’ve ever made.

What has helped you stay in the business for so long?

Our customers. When it comes down to it, people choose to buy their books from us and that’s what makes my business work – we’d be lost without them.

There’s so many choices for customers these days so I’m always immensely grateful when people choose to spend their money with us. I hope that in return they get the satisfaction of supporting an independent Irish business, as well as some great books.

How have you countered the Amazon effect?

I think that we offer something different. Bookshops are places of discovery and browsing — places where you can find something that you didn’t even know existed because computer algorithms can’t replace the ‘oh, you really have to read this’ experience.

We also have a lot of community involvement — a busy events programme and seven bookclubs across the two shops. I think, I hope, that people are beginning to realise value is about so much more than ‘the cheapest’ — although we’re often cheaper than Amazon especially when you factor in postage — but also about the experience and the desire to support local. Oh, and we pay our taxes and decent wages too.

What genres are popular?

Fiction and children’s books are our biggest sellers by far. It’s great to see that there is still so much enthusiasm for getting physical books into children’s hands, especially in this age of never-ending screens. We also do well with our signed first editions — we ask contemporary Irish writers to pop in and sign books for us and then offer them both online and in the shop for purchase. We’ve shipped some great Irish books all across

the world.

What books do you enjoy reading?

I read mainly fiction with a smattering of non-fiction thrown in. Books I’ve enjoyed so far this year include Anne Griffin’s When All is Said, Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, a brilliant children’s book called ‘The Murderer’s Ape’ by Jakob Wegelius and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë. Currently I’m reading How To Lose a Country by Ece Temelkuran about the current threats against democracy.

It’s both fascinating and deeply worrying.

What are the rewards of being a bookseller?

Free books is one. It’s never been a hugely well paid job but I’m lucky enough to get sent reading copies of new books so, if I like them, I can recommend them to our customers.

But the biggest reward is getting to talk to people about books all day, I’ve always been a big reader and telling people about a fantastic new book that I’ve just read is one of my favourite things to do.

It sounds a bit twee, but making people happy is also very rewarding — people love bookshops and I feel that we’re doing something that brings a little bit of joy into the world, I think we need a bit more of that to be honest.