Please tell us when and why you set up your bookshop?

Rosamund and Bill de la Hey launched The Mainstreet Trading Company in June 2008. It was perfect timing, just after Northern Rock had collapsed, and shortly before the larger banking crisis! Rosamund had previously been working at Bloomsbury for 14 years (primarily running the children’s marketing/pr/sales dept), latterly she commuted from Scotland to London for four years. Something had to change and as she’d always loved selling books – why not sell to the person who is actually going to read a book for pleasure? Bill, was working as a freelance photographer, but retrained as a chef in 2007. It seemed obvious, when such a big space became available, to combine skills and do the bookshop/cafe thing.

Please introduce your staff:

• Bill – rules the roost in the kitchen, loves his cookery books, and swears he’s never going to have a Facebook page
• Rosamund – loves teen fiction, but after 14 yrs in children’s publishing is now trying to broaden her horizons to grown up books
• Thomas – makes a damned good latte (often with pretty pictures on the top), likes his books, regularly saves the day when technology defeats us and is the shop’s DJ.
• Vivian – a master of all trades, from the perfect scone to helping run the Hawick Children’s Book Award, and painting beautiful pictures on our windows.
• Katie – keeps calm under fire in the kitchen and is regularly asked for her soup recipes by grateful customers.
• Emma – will admit to OCD on the tidiness front – a very welcome new addition to the team.

Are there any specialisations, enthusiasms, interests you and your staff have that are reflected in the shop’s stock?

It’s no surprise, given Rosamund’s experience at Bloomsbury, that we have a big, well stocked children’s department. We are deliberately very child-friendly and like any excuse to offer suggestions to customers. Bill and Vivian have a keen eye for the cookery and gardening books, while Thomas prides himself on selling large quantities of 50 Physics Ideas You Really Need to Know. Fiction and biography are also very important to us.

Do you work with local authors, hold regular events and readings, etc.?

Yes, lots. We can seat about 60 people in the shop and 140 in our barn behind the shop. We space our events in the year and have sold out to capacity each time. We’ve had the likes of Clarissa Dickson-Wright, Alexander McCall Smith and Neil Gaiman and are looking forward to welcoming Tom Carver and Michael Morpurgo in June.

What are you reading at the moment?

Our shop Book Group is reading the shortlist for the inaugural Walter Scott Prize (for historical fiction) for our local paper – we’re over half way through, so far Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and The Glass Room by Simon Mawer are the front runners. Rosamund has just given up on The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds (too flowery, not enough story), and has just started Lustrum by Robert Harris (much more promising). She’s also a huge fan of Patrick Ness’ Chaos Walking series – the third has just come out in hardback and will be her YA treat for when she’s finished the Walter Scott shortlist.

What are your criteria for any book promotions (e.g. 3 for 2, window placements, etc.) you may run?

That we like the books. We only do a Book of the Month if it’s something we really love.. We’re lucky in having five huge windows to fill, so it’s also very helpful if we can work a dramatic display around a promotion. For example we’re currently promoting our event with Tom Carver for the paperback of his book, Where the Hell Have You Been? – the true story of his father’s year-long escape across enemy territory in WWII – we’ve used some of Bill’s grandfather’s old army kit to give the window dramatic focus. We rarely price-promote, but then to paraphrase marketing guru, Damian Horner when discussing 3 for 2s, “a book isn’t cheap if you didn’t read it or didn’t enjoy it” – better to buy two that you will like and want to read, and pay full price.

What makes your shop THE shop to visit when in town on a book-buying mission?

The comment we hear most often from customers is that they love being able to see the books laid out on our big tables. It’s a very light space as you might guess from all our windows. We also try to focus on the less obvious titles, and books that you hopefully wouldn’t see elsewhere, or indeed realise you wanted. The cafe is a huge part of the draw, with serious coffee, and homemade food (fresh from our kitchens, down to the pesto and cheese scones), we also have parking for 18 cars which makes a huge difference. Hopefully we are doing something right as, to our surprise, we’ve just won Children’s Independent Bookseller of the Year at The Bookseller Industry Awards. The lovely thing is that our customers have all been so pleased.

Find out more at www.mainstreetbooks.co.uk

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