The Book Barge

Gentleman & Player loves bookshops, and second hand bookshops in particular.  G&P also loves canal boats.  So, you can imagine the suffusion of joy that inhabited every fibre of G&P’s being when on the BBC web-site there was a wee four minute documentary about ‘The Book Barge’, a second hand bookshop…on a canal boat.

That’s right, for those of you who find the environment of a traditional second hand bookshop just too stressful, there is a place where you can browse for literary bargains in the relaxing environment of the riverbank or canal.
The documentary reveals that the people who visit the Book Barge often end up paying for their book by offering the owner a bed for the night or a meal or both.  I think the hosts get the better of that deal, as they not only get a slightly-foxed copy of ‘Rural Rides’ but get to tell all their friends for the next three years about the night they gave a ‘stranger’ hospitality. 
Owning a second-hand bookshop is, as has been remarked upon before here, an indication of eccentricity, as it tends to lead to carpet slippers being considered business attire and opening hours being from ‘when I feel like it’ to ‘when I feel hungry/thirsty/sleepy’.  However, putting eccentricity on a barge makes it adorable, and so socially acceptable.
The only way in which the story of a second-hand bookshop being based on a barge could possibly be improved is if the owner also solved literary-themed crimes.  Maybe Sunday evenings?  I smell format!  Somebody get me ITV3 and tell them I have their first original afternoon drama series ready.  They can get that river-cruise company to sponsor it.
It also makes one wonder what other business models can be adapted to the barge model.  Pub is the obvious one, and how wonderful if it could be the riverbank that was tethered to the pub on the boat, rather than the more traditional arrangement.  It could be like one of those dreadful ‘party boats’, but with a fine selection of real ales and, best of all, no room for morris dancers.
The proprietor (can we say ‘skipper’, I think we can) of the Book Barge acknowledges that she does not shelve her books by subject.  This is an approach to stocking the shelves of a second hand bookshop that G&P heartily endorses.  G&P holds the view that a good bookshop is not stocked, it is curated, and taking this further would like to propose that while stocking by subject in a sort of half-arse Dewey-decimal system may be appropriate for a behemoth like The Book Barn (indicating a corporate warehouse-sized discount bookshop that occupies three postcodes, rather than a bookshop in a barn, possibly also occupied by horses, pigs, and other animals with a literary connection, which is an excellent idea), true second hand bookshops adopt the serendipity method. 
The curation method is to place books in proximity that, although not of the same subject, complement one another so that in choosing one book and looking the regulation six inches to the left and right of the now empty space on the shelf to see if there is anything else of interest, the browser will see a book on an entirely different subject that will be of interest.  For instance, any ‘Star Trek’ or ‘Doctor Who’ novel would be shelved in proximity to ‘Cooking for One’, and any book about Hitler would be shelved next to, well, frankly, more books about Hitler – one thing you soon realise about people who read books about Hitler, they rarely have just one book about Hitler.
The serendipity method is curation by instinct rather than design.  People need to know about the hidden meanings in pub signs, and they also need to know about the Opium Wars, they just don’t know they need to know it.  But one visit to a serendipitously stocked bookshop, and they leave on the path to enlightenment, and probably also with a novel by Jilly Cooper.
One question though.  The proprietor has written a book about her experiences; ‘The Bookshop that Floated Away’, but it’s a new book.  So can she sell it?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27065292
http://thebookbarge.co.uk/

e publishing

It’s called a Kindle because it’s the next best thing to burning books!  Centuries of traditional type and publishing have given us everything from the Bible to Penguins – the books, not the bird or the biscuit.  Ten minutes with electronic publishing has given us fifty fucking shades of fucking grey and fucking fan-fucking-fic.  Time was when you wanted to read filth discreetly you wrapped a copy of the Times around your Razzle and the only thing fans produced were scary shrines and purple-printed fanzines advertised for sale in the back of the NME. 

And what of the second-hand bookshop?  These are among the greatest places on Earth, what will happen to them without any second-hand books?  And what about the smell, slightly musty, slightly academic, wholly bookish?  What about the proprietors of these magical places?  Do you know how hard it is to find a job in retail that enables you to open and close when you want to and to wear carpet slippers on the job? And what about their smell, slightly musty, slightly academic, wholly bookish?  Do you know why so many wannabe writers complain that they could paper their walls with rejection letters from publishers?  I’ll give you a clue, it’s not because editors, agents and publishers are all sadists.  Time was when self publishing was rightly described as vanity publishing and was the only way the otherwise unprintable memoirs of retired men with forthright views about foreigners saw the light of day.  Now, any idiot with an iPad and a few hours to waste can publish their ‘original’ moody bloody vampire novella.

As for digital magazine downloads, what a shocking idea.  Every edition of the ‘People’s Friend’ had a free rain-hood stuck to the front cover. Try giving away free essential old-lady apparel as a digital bloody download.