The team
Ceridwen opened the shop in 2015 after twenty years of watching a chain's fiction tables shrink; Rhodri came for a Saturday job and stayed; Ffion taught Year 1 for a decade and now runs the children's floor; and Tom does the accounts, the orders and the Thursday chairs. Between them they have read most of the shop.
Owner and bookseller. Fiction, the Welsh wall, the fiction club, subscriptions
Twenty years at a chain bookshop in Cardiff, the last five of them watching the fiction tables shrink, and then a lease on a draper's on Glebe Street in 2015 and a van full of books. Ceridwen buys the fiction and the Welsh wall, chairs the Thursday club, chooses most of the subscriptions, and will tell you, kindly, when the book you are holding is not as good as the one next to it.
Bookseller and barista. Young adult, nature, non-fiction, the teen club, the coffee
Came for a Saturday job in 2019 while doing an English degree and never left. Rhodri runs the café counter in the mornings and the non-fiction and young adult shelves in the afternoons, chairs the teen club and the Sunday club, reads two books a week, and is the reason the ten-year-olds who said reading was boring now come in on their own.
The rest of us, and the paperwork
Ten years teaching Year 1 in Barry, then the upstairs here since 2017: the picture-book shelf, storytime every Thursday, the school visits and the summer reading challenge. Knows what a five-year-old will sit still for and which book turns a reluctant nine-year-old.
Ceridwen\'s husband, a retired accountant, who does the books, the daily order, the Thursday chairs and the wine. Reads history and will tell you which of the four new ones on the table is the honest one.
Members of the Booksellers Association and the Welsh Books Council\'s retail scheme; an accredited Living Wage employer since 2018; all four of us DBS-checked for the school visits and the children\'s floor.
Books are sold at the printed price because the margin on a book is about a third and the rent on Glebe Street is what it is. The café keeps the lights on in January; the events are run to break even on the wine.
Number seventeen
Ceridwen took the lease in the spring of 2015 with a van full of stock and a bank loan the manager called brave. The shelves came from a closed library in the Valleys, the ladder from a chandler\'s in Cardiff Bay, the counter was the draper\'s own, found under hardboard. The teal is the colour the front was in a 1962 photograph in the Penarth archive, and the bay window has held a book display every day since the June.
Finding the shopTitle, 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.