'Dream' bookshop bucking national industry decline

An independent bookshop has been providing a community and economic boost to one Cornish town, despite a national decline in the industry.

The Bookshop in Helston, the southern-most bookshop on mainland Britain, opened in November 2023, giving the town a bookshop for the first time in 40 years.

The shop, run by Ginny Sealey, has been telling a story of continued resilience as the Booksellers Association (BA) revealed the number of independent bookshops has been on a downward trend over the last two years.

Ms Sealey, for whom owning a bookshop was a long-held dream, said Helston's high street had had its ups and downs but was "on its way back up again now".

Ms Sealey said: "We're not a supermarket - you're not coming every day to buy a book - so we work closely with the library.

"There's a balance there for special treats, birthday presents."

The latest membership numbers released by the BA showed the number of independent bookshops had fallen in 2024 from 1,063 to 1,052.

It said independent bookshops were, however, outperforming the wider retail sector , which saw about 37 shop closures per day in 2024.

Meryl Halls, managing director of the Booksellers Association said: "Bookshops provide local jobs, enrich local communities and fuel local economies; they bring social cohesion and cultural capital to their towns and villages; they bring authors to schools, readers to high streets, donations to charities and support to literacy programmes.

"They should be celebrated by us all but not to the point of complacency or at the cost of action."

The BA said bookshops such as Helston's were having to show resilience and innovation in the face of economic uncertainty.

A survey by the association revealed the top five concerns of independent bookshops for 2025 related to financial pressure via increasing overheads and softening consumer confidence.

Melanie Young, who attends a book group at the Bookshop in Helston, said having it on the high street was "good for the economy".

"You come to the bookshop, you maybe go down the road to the deli, you see a poster in the window for something that's happening at the new little theatre space and everything starts to snowball," she said.

Poetry group member Margaret Logan said Ms Sealey had "added something to the town" and ran lots of additional events for locals.

Gary Matthews, another poetry group member, added: "It's something the town has needed for a long time and this has fulfilled every expectation of having an independent bookshop in town.

"I spend a lot of money in this bookshop, but I think it invites you to and I think that's for the good of the book trade as well as for the readers."

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