Books are my Business: Independent book shop owner Wally O’Neill

Red Books in Wexford town stocks secondhand, antiquarian, and collectible books as well as a selection of new books, with a focus on local writers

Wally O’Neill opened a shop in a little shed in Bridgetown, near where he lives in County Wexford before moving the business to Wexford town in 2019. 

Wally O’Neill owns Red Books, an independent bookshop in Wexford town. 

It stocks secondhand, antiquarian, and collectible books as well as a selection of new books, with a focus on local writers.

How did you get into the books business?

I was always into books. Before the recession, I was in construction, then with the crash, I ended up doing several different jobs and eventually got into being a courier. One of my contracts was delivering books for an independent book supplier who I now get a lot of my stock from.

Coming up to Christmas 2016, we opened a shop in a little shed in Bridgetown, near where I live in County Wexford — it was actually the smallest bookshop in Ireland for a while. We moved to Wexford town in 2019. 

Bridgetown was good but it was very much a tourist trade down there — the summer was good and winter was long.

When we moved in here initially, we took over the first two rooms in the building which had been an auctioneer’s office. During covid, we knocked down some walls to expand, then the shop beside us closed down, so we ended up moving into that. 

We have quite a big space now and we are working on another extension. The whole building used to be a factory in the 1960s, we are trying to reclaim it, it has been out of use for so long.

You took a leap of faith opening a bookshop in such tough times

We have been very lucky, right through — especially through — covid, in the way readers were prepared to support us. 

We were in a difficult situation because we couldn’t open. Locals were ordering books, often as gifts, and we would deliver them.

Now we get customers from all over the country because there are so few bookshops like ours left, over a space this size. 

We do a lot of events here as well, which has built that community. Every day we have at least two groups meeting here, even now, there’s someone here setting up for the chess group tonight.

We also set up our own press in 2020, Red Books Press. We had a lot of local writers hanging around in the shop who were always complaining no-one was looking at their books, so we decided to be proactive about it. 

So we set up a co-operative publishing house, and we published our 40th book last year. We do everything from poetry to history.

What does your role involve?

When I got into this, I thought I would just be sitting in a bookshop by myself selling a few books. But it is really about meeting people — they are as important as the books. 

Every day we get people coming in asking us about books, telling us stories or seeking advice about putting a book out there.

What do you like most about what you do?

Getting new stock — some would say I can’t say no to any book. So going through boxes and new stock, you never know what you’re going to find next. 

Also the people, they bring the colour to the shop. Every day is magic, I couldn’t be happier doing anything else.

What do you like least about it?

We often get called to do house clearances when someone dies — you see a person’s entire life in the books they’ve collected. 

If we don’t go and take them, they could end up in a skip, and there is something terribly sad about that.

Three desert island books

I love Claire Keegan — I would pick Antarctica, her book of short stories, which is brilliant. We’ve also been lucky enough to have her in the shop a few times and she is such a nice person.

My next pick would be Atomised by the French author Michel Houellebecq, who is quite controversial. It’s one of those books you read and a week later you are still thinking about it.

If I don’t mention a local writer, I’ll be shot. There’s a guy in Wexford called Daithí Kavanagh, he started writing late in life. He was on the construction sites and went back to school after the recession. 

He has written eight or nine books at this stage but the first one he brought out was The Small House Co-operative. 

It’s about Wexford town in the 1980s, a group of guys slumming it, going from pub to pub trying to right the wrongs of the world. 

There is something very real in it and it’s also very funny. 

I think it ranks with Billy Roche’s Tumbling Down as one of the best books written about the town, it captures the essence of it.