Risk, reward, and reality for indie bookstores – with Griffin Shea

09/13/24 • 40 min

There is no place more universally loved than a good bookstore. For its owner, achieving that is not as simple as it seems.

The best book shops are much more than books on shelves and a coffee bar. Behind the tranquillity, its tiny team is buzzing for twelve hours a day, liaising with publishers, distributors, authors, literacy projects, landlords, even local government, trying to build a community of people who’ll buy books and help others to buy books.

No one exemplifies this energy and broad-mindedness better than Griffin Shea, our guest in this episode. Born in Louisiana, USA, and once a journalist with AFP, Griffin now runs Bridge Books in Johannesburg, and the incredible African Book Trust, a non-profit that gives African books to libraries and schools across South Africa. He and Arthur talk about sourcing and pricing books, working across languages, connecting booksellers, the highs and lows of running a business in the inner city, and judging South Africa’s most prestigious non-fiction award.

Links from the show:

Bridge Books
The Golden Rhino by Griffin Shea
Bridge Books Underground Booksellers Walking Tour
The African Book Trust on forgood
Griffin Shea and Ekow Duker in the Sunday Times, on chairing the judging panels at the 2022 Sunday Times Literary Award
‘“Star Wars” locations that actually exist’ by Griffin Shea for CNN, annotated by Mark Hamill
Electric Book Works

There is no place more universally loved than a good bookstore. For its owner, achieving that is not as simple as it seems.

Links from the show:

Bridge Books
The Golden Rhino by Griffin Shea
Bridge Books Underground Booksellers Walking Tour
The African Book Trust on forgood
Griffin Shea and Ekow Duker in the Sunday Times, on chairing the judging panels at the 2022 Sunday Times Literary Award
‘“Star Wars” locations that actually exist’ by Griffin Shea for CNN, annotated by Mark Hamill
Electric Book Works

Previous Episode

How editors and ghostwriters make books better – with Tim Phillips

Behind every great author is a host of unsung editors. By convention, they don’t get their names on books. What are they doing behind the scenes?

A good book needs hundreds of decisions made and pieces organised. For this there are commissioning editors, development editors, production editors, copy editors, permissions editors, assistant editors, and proofreaders. Many books have ghostwriters, too. They’re all focused on making books better.

Arthur speaks to editor and writer Tim Phillips about what editors do, and how they work with authors and publishers. We also get an insider’s view on the world of ghostwriting, and Tim’s advice for making your own writing clear and effective.

Links from the show:

Next Episode

Fine lines in type design – with Thomas Jockin

Everything we read is coloured by its typeface. And humans read a lot, so font choices probably affect more people than any other field of design.

In our daily lives, we rarely appreciate how much work goes into good type decisions, and how much energy we spend accommodating bad ones.

Every day, by choice or otherwise, we read messages, posters, menus, documents, web pages, and, of course, books. Not only did someone design their layout, but someone designed the fonts in that layout. Every single letter was painstakingly designed. And every letterform has a personality: it’s trying to make you feel something, just like Comic Sans feels like silliness, and Times New Roman feels like school.

In this episode, Arthur talks to type designer Thomas Jockin. Thomas is the founder of TypeThursday, a worldwide community of type designers, and a lecturer in design and philosophy. They discuss how type decisions are made, how type designers work on new and existing typefaces, how fonts can make it easier for people to understand what they read, and what technological advances mean for type design, for reading, and for society.

Links from the show:

The End of Print: the Graphic Design of David Carson by Lewis Blackwell
Lexend
Readex Pro on Google Fonts
Quicksand on Google Fonts
TypeThursday
Exploring Hangul with Aaron Bell
Digital Transformation in Design: Processes and Practices, edited by Laura S. Scherling
Electric Book Works

How Books Are Made - Risk, reward, and reality for indie bookstores – with Griffin Shea

Transcript

Arthur Attwell00:00:03.439

Hello, and welcome to How Books Are Made, a podcast about the art and science of making books. I'm Arthur Attwell.

Arthur Attwell00:00:22.614

There is no place more universally loved than a good bookstore. They are truly special places. For their owners though, they are surprisingly hard to get right. I used to work in a bookshop, and I loved it. Even after I became an editor at a big publishing company, I kep