Welcome to Three Years Later!

A photo by Jo Emmerson that ran with a profile in The Times on March 11, two days before we announced we would close to customers because of the pandemic.

I don’t mean to do it, but somehow I do everything in reverse. I launched The Second Shelf in August 2017 at The Brooklyn Antiquarian Book Fair and the following May I launched a Kickstarter to fund an online bookstore of rare books and modern first editions by women as well as a quarterly literary magazine and rare book catalogue. I haven’t quite managed either of these things. Until today.

The debut of The Second Shelf at the Brooklyn Antiquarian Book Fair in 2017. Photo by Lisa Baskin.

Not exactly, anyway. Instead, I started the magazine (though it is not quarterly), continued going to book fairs, and suddenly had a surprising opportunity to open bookshop, and just sort of went for it. The Second Shelf is a bit different than I’d conceived, but our purpose, which is to focus on rare books by women and encourage the collection of their work in a trade that has long prioritized books by men, has remained the same. It’s been a little hectic to say the least. It has also been thrilling and wonderful.

It’s been a lot to digest.

At the beginning of the year the bookshop was just beginning to find its sea legs. Or, I was beginning to feel that I could take a breath and feel like I was moving into a less precarious position. I was digging out from a mess of unfinished or poorly organized paper work (reburied now, I’m afraid). I never had a business plan for a bookshop. I didn’t know what it would cost at the end of the day.

I leapt before looking and knew i wouldn’t have tried to do it if I had added up what it would cost to survive before hand. I was exhausted, have been exhausted, and that fear and anxiety of meeting the cost of opening and running a shop and magazine, with all possible investment and savings already spent, and no fall back plan, was beginning to reduce slightly. It was a wonderful feeling, just that slight release of pressure and anxiety. And it was because of lots of coordinated efforts and hard work by a lot of people who’ve cared about The Second Shelf, as well as good customers. We have the most incredible supporters.

I’m really at a loss for words about how great and wonderful everyone is and how far people have traveled to show up at the doorstep of our tiny bejeweled sardine-can sized bookstore and be so glad to have arrived.

Until late last year we ran on a shoestring staff, and I was the only full-time employee of The Second Shelf. It is impossible to keep up with our opportunity for growth and the needs of the shop that way, and so we’ve grown, we have an additional two-and-a-half booksellers who love putting books into our customers hands.

I get to work with the most talented writers, editors, designers, illustrators, photographers to make our magazine and our catalogues. The Second Shelf gets to acquire and handle some of the most significant work produced by women and then has the energizing challenge of advocating for it to be placed on collectors shelves or in world-renowned libraries and institutions. But we now have a new world to navigate.

In late February I told the shop’s booksellers that I didn’t know what would happen if we had a pandemic! What a sentence! I felt very strongly the risk was real, it would effect us, and I was worried. I didn’t know how I would afford to employ them, how I would keep the store afloat. But we are here still today, however many months and days later, we are floating. It has not been easy. Things are unsteady. We are doing the best we can. We haven’t been around long enough to really weather this particular kind of event. We were just starting to weather our daily existence.

I am so worried for everyone’s health and well-being, concerned about small businesses and bookshop colleagues, and generally bewildered. I thought I was exhausted before, but, you know, I’d take that level of tired back now. I am a single mother and there have been severe limitations due to lockdown on how well I can tackle the work to protect The Second Shelf or even distribute it to others in a way that feels deliberate and thoughtful and productive. I feel frustration that I haven’t been better at this part, and also know there is not much I can do about it. Resignation is not a feeling I am that comfortable with.

Yet, I am feeling ok too.

We are lucky so far. There is a lot to be scared of and angry about in the world, but I also see how much people are helping for each other.

So far the reason we are still a business and hopeful for the future is because we have had support. Our customers placed orders as we went into an early (and as organised as possible) lock down. We also sold merch and gift certificates (which you can now use online! we are sending you an email, but if you don’t get one, email us!).

We took work home with us. We hustled. We applied for grants we were eligible for. We have had generous humans swoop in at hard moments. We are negotiating rent and have made a very tiny bit of headway, not enough though. And we worked on our commitments. We are making our third magazine and we finally, finally have The Second Shelf has an online shop. We have worked incredibly hard. Resources are dwindling to cover our costs, and that is why the website is so important right now.

We didn’t have access to our stock until recently, so what we’ve added is a range of what we were all able to take home or arrived while we were home, at when we didn’t know what was happening. It is what I call a random pandemic assortment of books at a range of prices, and what brings them together is the randomness of an emergency and the determination to keep going. The books also have, like all of our stock, whatever quality it is I find that makes them interesting acquisitions for The Second Shelf. Putting single copies of a book online is a remarkably labor intensive endeavour and hard to do with all this going on. It is also why I didn’t manage it before while opening a bookshop. But I am so glad we have the chance now.

In addition to rare books and modern first editions, art and ephemera, we also have new books from our previous author events, and new releases coming to the site. We will be continuing to grow our new book business online focused on modern first editions, small press and limited editions, and zines. Also, we have our very-popular-from-our-initial-crowdfunder Subscription Boxes returning but with more offerings.

Nearly three years after our first fair, we are finally delivering as close as we can to what I originally proposed in my Kickstarter two years ago. I can honestly say that I don’t know what the future is at this moment for our brick and mortar store. I am usually in on Saturdays. Come say hi if you are up for it. We limit the number of customers at a time to two. We have required masks and will continue to do so.

It’s been three weeks since we reopened quietly and it has been quiet. I know I can’t maintain our business as a shop and stay in business on its own. People are not out yet, and that is ok if we can balance sales with this site. I’m prepared to try to continue to pivot. All we can do is try. We’ll sell our stock online, sell more new books, make catalogues and rare book lists, toss up whole categories of our stock on social media (that proved popular for our books by Obscure Victorians), email our collectors when we find something for them, roll out a variety of subscription and limited edition boxes, and attend virtual book fairs. I also am trying to pick up after a messy founding, I have a pile of dropped balls the size of our store. I opened this store during a particularly difficult time in my life for personal reasons and it has been so important to me, however difficult. I do not quite feel at home in England since moving here four years ago, but I do feel at home in my London bookshop.

This is a lot of words to say

that we are working as hard as we can at The Second Shelf to exist in whatever form we can. I am proud to run a shop that has a social purpose, and I am so thankful to everyone for our reception from the very beginning. I can’t list everyone here, but thank you all. The shop is open in London and now here, we’ve opened the door for good circulation, and put out a VIP red velvet rope for our browsers.

We will continue for now to problem solve this pandemic to celebrate works by women and non-binary writers and encourage that these books be collected and do our small part to redress of gender imbalance in the literary canon and rare book trade, and with a commitment to intersectionality and advocating for our trade to be welcoming and open to all.