The shop
A bookshop is more than its shelves: ours has a café, a stage of sorts between the fiction and the Welsh wall, three book clubs, a children's floor with a window seat, and a subscription service that is a person choosing. Each has a page with what it costs and how it works.
01
Fiction, crime, poetry, history, nature, cookery, children's, young adult, a wall of Welsh books in both languages, and the staff picks shelf with the reasons on cards. Anything we do not have, we order: in print means next working day, usually, and we text you when it is in. Nothing to pay until you collect.
Books at the price printed on them.
02
Eight tables at the back of the shop and two in the window: a flat white at £3.20, cakes from a Penarth baker, soup and a toastie at lunch, loose-leaf tea, and a rule that you can sit with a book you have not bought yet and nobody will hurry you. Open nine to five, Sunday ten to half past three.
Flat white £3.
03
An author in the shop most Thursday evenings: a reading, a conversation, questions, a glass of wine and a signing, in thirty-five mismatched chairs between the shelves. Tickets £6, taken off the price of the book on the night; launches for Welsh authors usually free. The events page has the next two months and the seats left.
£6 a ticket, redeemed against the author's book on the night; launches usually free.
04
The Thursday fiction club, the Sunday non-fiction club and the teen club on the first Saturday of the month: free to join, ten per cent off the month's book, one of us chairing, the café open for the evening ones, and the book chosen by the members from a shortlist. The clubs page has each one, its next book and whether there is a seat.
Free.
05
Upstairs is for children: picture books, first readers, middle-grade, a window seat with cushions that is the best spot in the building, and a wall of young adult. Storytime for under-fives is every Thursday at half past ten, free, with a book and a song; we host school visits, run a summer reading challenge, and know which book will get a reluctant nine-year-old reading.
Storytime free, no booking, Thursday 10:30.
06
The present that is a person choosing: a subscription of one book a month picked by us for the reader you describe, posted or collected, three months £48, six £90, twelve £170. Or come in with a description of the person and leave with the right book, wrapped in brown paper and string for nothing. Book tokens, gift cards and a wedding or baby list too.
Subscriptions: three months £48, six £90, twelve £170, including postage in Britain.
How the shelves are chosen
Every new title on the front table was read in proof by one of us, or by a bookseller we trust in another shop. The publishers\' catalogues arrive in February for the autumn; we order from the ones we have read, not the ones with the biggest advert.
A chain shop returns a book that has not sold in three months. We keep the one we believe in for years, because the right reader walks in eventually and the card under it says why we waited.
A whole wall for books from Wales: the big names, the small presses, the poetry pamphlets, a third of it in Welsh. We launch about a dozen Welsh books a year and the authors sign stock for the shelf.
Four of us disagree about most things, which is why the shelves have range. Ceridwen buys the fiction, Rhodri the non-fiction and young adult, Ffion the children\'s, and nobody gets the last word on poetry.
Title, author or ISBN on the order page, at the counter, by phone or by email: we order it this afternoon, text you when it is in and hold it a fortnight. Nothing to pay until you collect; posted anywhere in Britain for £2.95, free over £25.
