Meet a Hay Bookseller

The Globe was the host to this event, and it was packed out, even up on the balcony.
On the stage were a selection of experienced local booksellers, some generalists, some specialists, and the lady who has taken over the books at Oxfam.
Judith Gardner, at the far end of the stage, came to Hay with her husband Bob. She started working for Richard Booth, and he went on a clock mending course. When they opened their first shop, half of it was clock mending and half children's books. There was a feeling back then, Judith said, that library books were the lowest of the low, but she had picked up some good quality children's library books from Richard's 30p section, where she was working, and she considered the authors to be good, so it started from there.
Pat Thornton, who works at Booths, mostly with philosophy and religion ("Richard used to buy seminary libraries for me"), first came to Hay with her family for the fishing! Now, she doesn't see herself retiring from the book trade anytime soon.
The Oxfam lady (I missed her name) came the farming route. Most farmers stay in one place for generations, but her family had moved around from farm to farm, at one point owning a vineyard in New Zealand! When she came to Hay, she discovered that the farm they were looking at had been mentioned in Kilvert's Diary, and she wondered why they didn't use that information in the brochure. Then she read the passage, which described the farm as damp and gloomy, and all sorts of words that estate agents don't want to use!
Mel Prince got involved because of her husband Chris - who's story was, she said, far more interesting than hers. He had been travelling round the country, wondering where he would like to put down roots, and everywhere he went, he headed straight to the nearest bookshop. He comes from a very literary family. Eventually, his sister told him he should try selling some of his books, and sent him to Hay. Within a week, he had got a job with a bookseller, Andrew Morton, and bought his collection of poetry because Andrew wasn't interested in them and needed to get rid of them! So he was really thrown in at the deep end!
Derek Addyman is a local boy whose father worked as a builder - and he got taken on by Richard Booth, and picked up bookselling on the job, now having 3 shops scattered around Hay.
They talked about the differences between when they started in business and now - far more dealers used to come to Hay, for instance, and the internet and Kindle have made a big impact on the book trade. But the book is not going to go away - research has shown that people who read a book retain more information from it than people who read the same thing on a computer screen. There's something about handling the physical object that helps the brain remember things. The Oxfam lady said that what she liked, and which you can't get with a Kindle, are the recipes and postcards and inscriptions in books, that give that particular copy of the book a history.
They talked about the most exciting find they'd ever made, too - for Mel it was an original copy of William Blake's poems, which had been kept in a box under the bed of a junk dealer for years, and needed a lot of TLC because there had also been a coal fire in the room, and the ash had got everywhere. That's a book she and Chris are not intending to part with.
One thing that all the panel agreed was that there was a magic about books, and there was always a sense of excitement when you opened a box or bag that someone had brought to sell, because you never knew what you were going to find. When that goes, is the time to give up.
The panel was excellently moderated by Joshua Boyd Green of Green Ink Books, who is also a local bookseller, though I don't think I'd seen him before.
It was a fascinating talk, and could have gone on far longer - at least one person crept out before the end to see the Independence Parade at the Cheese Market.