Bookshops Online and On the High Street

The 2nd Annual Bookselling Research Network Conference, in association with the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing, 3rd-4th July 2023 at the University of Reading, UK.

To register for in-person attendance, please go to event store here.

Jeff Deutsch, in his recent In Praise of Good Bookstores, reflected that because “we no longer need bookstores to buy books…bookstores might well be an inefficient and inconvenient way to buy books in the twenty-first century.” Yet, as he goes on to show, and the industry seems to confirm, “good bookstores” are evident everywhere. The second annual Bookselling Research Network conference looks to discuss both the impact of bookshops in an era of online retailing and how booksellers, the book trade, and book-reading communities use online environments to return people back to the bookshop – wherever in the world these might be. What are the affordances, pitfalls, and challenges of bookselling in a digital era? What innovative, unique, or era-defying practices are evident and thriving? How have changes in bookselling affected literary production and reception? What cultural or political concerns remain prevalent for booksellers? What does it mean to operate a bookshop today?

Schedule
Monday, 03 July

London Road Campus, University of Reading

11:00-11:30 Registration & welcome (room G03) Coffee

11:30-13:00 PANEL 1: Bookshop Profiles (room G07)
Chair: Nicola Wilson (University of Reading)
* Sarah Pyke (Institute of English Studies, University of London) “Literary and Extraliterary Reading at Gay’s the Word bookshop”
* Andrew Thacker (Nottingham Trent University) “Conversation and Daily Liveliness: City Lights Bookstore”
* Peter Willis (Coventry University) “The Bookplace: Community Bookselling and Publishing in Peckham 1977-1994”

13:00-13:45 Lunch (room G03)

13:45-15:15 PANEL 2: Independent Booksellers (room G07)
Chair: Matthew Chambers (University of Reading)
* Lanora Jennings (Princeton University Press) “A Store of Her Own: The History and Legacy of Women-Owned Bookstores in America”
*Aditi Kumar & Charlie Richards (Bookbag, Exeter) “Independent Bookshops in the Publishing Marketplace: In Conversation With Bookbag”
* Louise O’Hare (London Bookshop Map) “Interrogating the “Halo” Effect of Independent Bookshops – Mapping Cultural Ecosystems and Interdependencies”

15:15-15.30 Break

15:30-16:30 Presentation and exhibition of Bookseller Documents (Special Collections)

18:00-19:00

Booksellers’ Panel (At Fourbears Books, Caversham)
Moderator: Philip Jones (Editor, The Bookseller)
Panelists: Emma Corfield-Walters (Book-ish), Alex Forbes (Fourbears Books), Eben Muse (Parnassus Book Service)

Tuesday, 04 July

9:30-11:00 PANEL 3: Bookselling: Other Spaces, Concepts (room G07)
Chair: Eben Muse
* John Rigney (Second Reader Books) “A Moving Collection: Books, Friends and Poetry at the Second Reader Bookshop”
*Pritha Mukherjee (University of Reading) “‘Pirated’ Boi Bajaar in Kolkata: Books that Sell”
*Samantha Rayner (University College London) “Penguin Books and Penguin Bookselling: A ‘Quiet Radicalism’”

11:00-11:15 Break (room G03)

11:15-12:15 Keynote Address: Corinna Norrick-Rühl (University of Münster)
“Bücher & Books: Cross-Lingual Bookselling in German Bricks-and-Mortar Bookstores”

12:15-13:00 Lunch (room G03)

13:00-14:30 PANEL 4: Algorithms and Bookselling (room G07)

Chair: Samantha Rayner (University College London)

*Anna Muenchrath (Appalachian State University) “Selling Books with Algorithms”
*Nayantara Srinivasan (University of Münster) “Digital Bookselling and ‘Independent Bookstore Activism’ in India”
*David Piovesan (Lyon 3 University) “Bookshops in Europe: The Era of Digital Competition”

14:30-14:45 Break (room G03)

14:45-15:15 Closing remarks/open discussion (room G07)

We are holding the conference in-person at the University of Reading, but we can make accommodations if you are unable to join us there. Any sessions with virtual participation will be hybrid and some of our events will be only for those attending (Special Collections, Waterstones).

To register for in-person attendance, please go to event store here. There will be a £20 fee (for staff/salaried) to help us cover the cost of catering. We are working on a registration process for those attending online. For now, if you could please let us know as soon as possible if you plan on attending online and we will get back to you with a link and other information (contact Dr Matthew Chambers: m.chambers@reading.ac.uk).

The Call for Papers can be seen here.

For more information please contact m.chambers@reading.ac.uk