When Chrissy Ryan opened the shutters at Book Bar for the first time in February 2021, she would not have believed what it would achieve in its first year. With its following of regular customers and its book club boasting 200 members, the independent bookshop on Blackstock Road is going from strength to strength. Recently it was nominated one of the five London regional finalists for Independent Bookshop of the Year.
“It’s the biggest bookshop award in publishing,” Chrissy explains. “It feels amazing to be a regional finalist, especially in our first year. It’s been such a whirlwind and I’m so proud of everything we’ve achieved. Obviously I would love to win,” she laughs.
Having worked in publishing and bookselling since she was 21, the now 28-year-old Chrissy returned to London from running a bookshop in the Maldives at the very beginning of the pandemic. She was slowly selling books online and all the while planning the space she wanted to create. “I wanted it to feel like your most well-read friend’s living room,” she says.
Short Fiction, Feminism, Racial Identity and Gender and Queer are just some of the titled sections now marking the shelves. Colourful, bold spines line the walls from floor to ceiling and a central display showcases the Book of the Month: Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield.
The shop is relatively small – the capacity for its in-person author events is only 25 people – and the selection of books is almost overwhelming. “If my brain was a physical space, it’s this,” jokes Chrissy.
Perhaps surprisingly, bottles of wine also decorate the shelves as this isn’t just an ordinary independent bookshop. “I always had this thing that books and wine were something that went together,” Chrissy explains. Bookshops can be brilliant community spaces, but they can be hard to navigate if you don’t know where to start. I wanted to create a space where people didn’t need to come to buy books; they could just come and have a glass of wine and hang out with friends.”
Chrissy champions a personalised approach to shopping for books at Book Bar. Unlike online algorithms that use key words to suggest books, its booksellers chat with their customers to get to know them and unpick what each customer likes to read. “It’s about getting to the heart of why you like a book and thinking about how you feel when you read. That’s a question I often ask”, says Chrissy.
“We are the antithesis of the algorithm,” she continues. People come in and I essentially personal shop for them. Books are about connection. When you’re reading a book you’re connecting with an author and the characters and when you’re in a bookshop you’re connecting with other readers in a really special way. I love it when someone is sitting here with a glass of wine, and I’m recommending a book over there and someone says, ‘Ooh that’s a great book’, and suddenly everyone in the shop is having a conversation together and it is such a special thing. It makes me so happy- it’s why I do it.”
Shelf Medicate is the shop’s innovative customer book-bundle scheme. Each customer fills in an online form to explain a bit about themselves and the kind of books they’re interested in. Then Chrissy curates a bundle of either three or six books.
“We have different bundles for different moods,” she explains. For example, ‘Gin and Tonic for the Soul’ is books that will lift your spirit, like the first sip of a gin and tonic; ‘Commute Buster’ is for gripping books that will make you miss your tube stop, and ‘Sophisticated Reader’ is books you want to boast that you’ve read at a dinner party, prize-winning books or contemporary classics.” No two bundles are the same and customers can contact Chrissy to discuss and review the books she picked or to request a certain mood for their next book.
Despite opening in lockdown, when people were unable to enter the shop, Book Bar took off straight away. “The posts went crazy on Instagram, and we launched our Book Bar Book Club to bring people together even though they couldn’t be together.” Book Bar’s main demographic encompasses those aged from 25 to 40 but members range from those in the local community, to across London and even across the country. “We have had people join from the very north of Scotland to the very south of Cornwall.”
For £12, monthly subscription members receive the book and access to a webinar with the author. It “feels very social even though it’s online” reflects Chrissy.
Keen to give back to the community, on World Book Day, she launched a loyalty scheme with Ambler Primary School on Blackstock Road. Customers receive a loyalty card and once you receive ten stamps a book is donated to a pupil at Ambler. “This makes me so happy. To work with a local school is something I wanted to do from the beginning but to have a scheme that allows our customers to benefit the local community in a tangible way is really special. And the response has been amazing; some people have already finished their cards!”
But Chrissy has only scratched the surface of what she wants to achieve. Next week, Book Bar has organised events with smash-hit debut author Abigail Bergstrom and Booker-shortlisted author Monica Ali. Chrissy is keen to expand the reach of future events so that more people can get involved.
“I’d also love to have more branches, but obviously that’s a while off,” she explains. “I am really ambitious for Book Bar and what it could be, and the first year has really shown me that so much is possible, possibly even more than I believed at the beginning.”
The London regional winner of the Independent Bookshop of the Year will be announced on 16 March. The overall winner will be unveiled at a ceremony on 23 May.
