Guest Bloggers: The Save Wood Green Bookshop Campaign

In far North London we have a tragedy on our hands in that they are closing the local Waterstone's bookshop on Wood Green High Street and turning it into a clothes store.  The last day of trading is this Saturday.

This would be a complete disaster for the area. We do not need another clothes shop, mobile phone shop or fast food shop. Our kids need bookshops. We have started an online petition in the last few days which has already gathered over 200 signatures including those of writers Chris Salewicz, Jonathan Harvey, Lucy Gannon, Chris Lang, Paul Gilroy and Rafaella Barker. We have also complained to the local councillors, Lynne Featherstone and David Lammy MP, the Mayor and alerted the local press. There's no spam, no junk mail, no access to your email address and no money required and it only takes a minute to do. This is purely about supporting the idea of keeping the only good bookshop in our area and helping kids develop a love for reading.

Wood Green High Street is already full of clothes shops and this is the only dedicated bookshop for miles around. As you may be aware, Wood Green is an underprivileged area with quite a large ethnic minority population and it just seems that closing the only decent bookshop in the area will have a devastating effect. It does not seem to be an accident that Waterstone's are trying to do this in the school holidays when we cannot contact local schools and colleges.

This is not just about somewhere to buy books. This is about supporting a place where mums can have a coffee while their kids browse the books and develop an appetite for reading at an early stage, where the staff are actually knowledgeable and helpful, where kids can meet local authors at signings which bring books to life. We will certainly be opposing this move to the last and contacting all the local papers. We very much hope that Waterstone's will reconsider.

The link to our petition is below where you can read some comments from local people about this decision. Please sign it and forward on to your friends. If you have any other writers, celebs who you think might be willing to email-sign please forward it to them.....go on, this is your chance to show off that address book!

http://www.petitiononline.com/Bookshop/petition.html

Facebook group SAVE THE LAST DECENT BOOKSHOP IN WOOD GREEN!

Thank you!

Comments

[adam]

Sounds like a golden opprtunity for an enterprising bookseller to open their own shop. Local, vocal, loyal support. No bookshop for miles. It doesn't cost much to open one you know...

[Rachel Green]

I have mixed feelings about this, since Waterstones forced our local independent bookshop to close. I can understand the horror of not having a bookshop at all though.

[Clive Keeble]

Rachel

Most indies would love to have a branch of Wankles nearby, I can think of several newer indies which make a very good living when they are strategically placed only just round the corner from little "w".

Rather typical of the current Wankles senior management that they are opening yet another presumed white elephant on Oxford Street at the same time as they chose to close in a marginal trading area which with careful control could be highly rewarding. Perhaps the current Wankles directors are setting themselves up as leasehold property traders.

Any indie bookshop which fears Waterstone's has no right to be in business.

[Vanessa]

I may be wrong, but it strikes me that if Waterstone's found it to be commercially viable to run that bookshop, they wouldn't be closing it. They aren't there to provide a service to the community, they're there to make money.

[Paul S]

On the Bookseller blog, someone, presumably a member of staff, has commented that the W store has been hitting its targets - which makes this decision all the more bizarre. I shall be taking it up with Dumbledore (more dumb than dore? - only joking, Gerry!)- as he styles himself in Bent's Notes in last week's Bookseller - next time I see him.

[Scott Pack]

When it comes to the Waterstone's closures I am willing to bet that they aren't necessarily closing just the unprofitable shops but rather the shops where they are able to get out of the lease with some ease. They have some very large and high profile shops that don't make a profit but I doubt they will close those.

What a shame that Waterstone's are being so shortsighted here. This is a fab shop, with knowledgable & enthusiastic staff. Could it be that this particular area doesn't meet with their ideal?

[BanzaiBoy]

Is anyone thinking of starting a petition, or even better a fundraising campaign, to get Clive Keeble some support. I fear that with his commitment to add his comments to every single book related blog post on the web within 30 seconds of it appearing are a) probably causing him to neglect his customer and b) leading to a real lack of quality control in his posts. I mean, 'Wankles'? Come on, Clive, are you 13 or something? If you're going to try and be funny, put a bit more effort into it.

[Tim Footman]

Hey, is that really Annabella Lwin out of Bow Wow Wow who signed? I had a crush on her the size of Malcolm McLaren's ego...

[Steerforth]

A friend of mine set up the shop nearly eight years ago, when it opened as a branch of Ottakar's. She found working in Wood Green so traumatic that she decided to leave the book trade and take a lower paid job outside London.

From what she told me, it was a tough place to run a bookshop. She found many of the customers rude and aggressive and didn't particularly enjoy the ambience of the 'vibrant', multicultural local community (it probably didn't help that she was from Tunbridge Wells).

I'm not surprised that Waterstone's have taken the opportunity to close Wood Green. The rationale behind the shop opening was that the local area was going to become gentrified, but that didn't quite happen and as far as I can remember, the sales never took off.

However it's a shame that the shop's closing, both for the many thousands of people who regarded the Wood Green branch as their local bookshop and the dedicated staff who endured rudeness, harassment and, occasionally, violence from some of its visitors, but still managed to maintain their morale and run an excellent store.

And yes, closing the only bookshop in an underprivileged area will only serve to widen the schism between the rich and poor parts of London.

[Clive Keeble]

Steerforth, thank you for very perceptive comments.

If Wood Green had become gentrified - yuck - then of course the rent would have been hiked astronomically on the (presumed) next 5th year rent review.

Shoppers in a gentrified area often show very little customer loyalty, they are swanning along in their pretentious lives and just as likely to purchase goods via other channels (Waterstone's would not be the preferred internet supplier for most customers).

I suspect that the present Wood Green population would spend a far higher percentage of their disposable income in the local shops than would any gentrified pseudo middle-class.

Outsiders are lead to believe that the Wood Green shop was reaching its sales targets, and that the staff were happy in the shop. Obviously a Wood Green shop requires different staffing qualities than would say Kensington.

No, in my eyes, Waterstone's present management have shown that they care little for the less privilieged members of our multi-cultural society, and that they chose the easy cop-out by accepting the presumed pot of gold for assigning the lease to H&M.

The present Waterstone senior management are typical totalitarian demagogues who deprive their local management of anything other than the most basic autonomy, wish to impose draconian supply terms on the publishing world, and often treat their once loyal customers with absolute contempt. They deserve to go back filling supermarket shelves where they belong.

[Anon]

"Rudeness, harrassment and occasionally, violence"?

Try every shop in London...

[adam]

If anybody wants proof of how an independent bookshop can survive in a 'deprived' area of London just pay a visit to the Newham Bookshop in the shadows of Upton Park - http://www.newhambooks.co.uk/. They had Benazir Bhutto signing books there a couple of weeks ago. All it takes is guts, imagination and a willingness to reach out to the community. Any middle class lightweights put off by Wood Green's 'edginess' wouldn't last 5 minutes anyway. But where are the booksellers with a bit of spine then?

[Lynne Featherstone]

Excellent campaign. I've signed the petition and plugged it on my blog, but do let me know if I can help more in any way.

[Justin Hinchcliffe]

Have also signed the petition - best of luck with it! We have issued a press release, too! - Justin Hinchcliffe (Haringey Conservatives)

[Nich Starling]

It might make people take your campaign a little more seriously if you didn't refer to the local members pf parliament as councillors !

Good luck with your campaign though although I feel that trying to persuade a company that wants to make a profit that keeping what is probably a loss making store open is not going to be successful.

[Wood Green guy]

Ha! Lyn Featherstone you are a hypocrite. You, of all people, should know petitions are pointless. I signed a petition in Wood Green after objections were invited to the proposed increase in parking permits. Haringey Council wanted to raise the cost of permits for cars over a certain size. Thousands of us objected: families live in the areas where CPZs are enforced and need bigger cars. I have a big family so a big car is vital. Anyway, the protests were ignored, the council state “objections are invited, but it does not mean we have to listen to them”. I notice that the middle class houses on the other side of Alexandra Palace can park their nice big cars for free in their streets. Also, they get nice traffic calming measures on their roads- the rat run where I live (behind boots) has no such luxuries. I thought CPZs were to reduce illegal parking but it’s just turned into a revenue raiser for Haringey. I wonder how many signatures would be collected on a petition to get rid of MPs, councillors and council staff?