Struggling Bookstore Owner Makes Plea For Help – Then She Is Astonished At Who Shows Up
By Christina Williams
Struggling Bookstore Owner Makes Plea For Help – Then She Is Astonished At Who Shows Up

There’s nothing better than wandering into a small bookstore and seeing, feeling all the possibilities you can find there. Bookstores have a bit of magic in them that few other places can offer. A chance to step into the shoes of anyone you want to, just by picking up a book and letting the pages send you to another world.

As time goes on, we see more and more of these places losing out to bigger stores, online sites – and the charm and magic you can find in the local bookstore loses out to competitors you can’t beat. This was what happened to a small bookshop in England, run by young owner, Sapphire Bates. ‘Book Bodega’, her little shop, had suffered through a winter with few sales. She posted a photo to Twitter of her pretty store empty of customers on a weekend afternoon.

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Sapphire Bates stands outside her store, Book Bodega. Photo by Bates

Bates was in trouble. She needed to make £800 ($956 USD) in just three days, or she’d lose her business. What she needed was a miracle. So she tried one last thing – posting online to see if anyone would just stop in and shop.

Tagging #BookTwitter, she wrote: “We need your help! I run Book Bodega, an Indy bookshop in Ramsgate. Winter is killing us, it’s soo quiet & we need to make £800 by Tuesday to pay our bills. This is my current view = no customers. Please shop with us and help us stay open!” And Twitter didn’t disappoint. 

Instead of buying books from Amazon, let’s buy from an indy book store and keep the economy more local! Here’s a book shop that needs support!” one user wrote.

Authors and celebs alike reached out:

  • “Your shop looks beautiful! And this post gave me the perfect excuse to order a book from you for my sister,” author Hazel Gaynor wrote.
  • “Good luck! Your shop looks amazing and you all clearly have brilliant taste in books. We need you!” tweeted film producer Paul Fischer.
  • “No better time or place to order your next book,” added Tim Burgess, lead singer of the rock band The Charlatans.
  • Adam Kay, author of “Undoctored” and “This is Going to Hurt,” even offered to stop by and do an event.

Soon, Bates was given an offer by Jamil Qureshi, a follower on Twitter. Qureshi wanted to pay the full amount Bates needed, however she couldn’t let herself take the funds. But, the two finally reached a deal. Bates said that Qureshi would donate £1,000 ($1,119 USD). Bates would take a third of that amount and use it to start a fund to help customers purchase books they wouldn’t be able to afford, otherwise.

Bates was finally able to tell everyone that her shop was saved. She wrote on Twitter: “I just paid our bills that were due. Thank you SO much for your support, this has given me faith that we can do this.” Sapphire, who runs the business with her partner Nicholas Turner, says it has been ‘a little bit crazy’ since the post went viral. She told Insider that this had been such an important lesson for her.

[I] didn’t really expect anything to come from it. That was in my head, the best-case scenario—never in a million years would I have guessed it would be seen by 6.1 million people,” Bates said.

She hopes this reminds others to visit their local small businesses. “Please continue to support independents when you can,” she said. “They will definitely appreciate it.”

Sources: Upworthy | Daily Mail | Insider