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15
Jul
Harrogate bookshop celebrates birthday alongside secret author launch event
An independent bookshop in Harrogate is not only celebrating its ninth birthday this week, but will also be hosting a secret author launch event.
Imagined Things, on Montpellier Parade, first opened its doors on July 14, 2017 - although back then was located in Westminster Arcade.
Owner Georgia Eckert said:
It means a lot to me, celebrating nine years. It’s not always an easy industry in terms of making money, but everything else – the people you meet, the books you get exposed to, the authors you meet – we’re part of this amazing community. It means more to me that making lots of money would. We have so many amazing regulars and it’s because of them we’re celebrating nine years – we wouldn’t be here without them.
The viral Tweet
Just under a year after opening, Ms Eckert was becoming worried after a quiet few months was impacting their profit margin.
She put out a simple Tweet: “We took only £12.34 today. If anyone was thinking about buying a book now would be a great time! Things have been tough recently – today the worst day ever. A card, a book, anything makes a huge difference to a small business like ours. We’d be very grateful for your support.”
Unexpectedly, the Tweet went viral, with over 1.6 million people seeing it, a resulting in Ms Eckert appearing on Radio 4 and being flooded with orders.
She said:
We didn’t foresee that in the slightest. It was just me working in the shop at the time, and I thought maybe people didn’t know we existed or needed their support. So I just sent the Tweet and went for a walk, and it just exploded. The graph of our sales figures just shot up. We had people come in saying I just want to buy something, anything, and we had empty shelves. We didn’t have a website at the time which was a shame. I even had 3,000 emails in a day; I couldn’t respond to them all. It’s really made a difference; we’ve never gone back down to the sales figures we had before the Tweet.
Booksellers are always on hand for recommendations.
Special experiences
As an independent shop, there is a lot on offer to entice shoppers into the bookshop rather than places like Waterstones.
Imagined Things offers a whole host of special experiences, such as exclusive merchandise packages, author events, two book clubs, book subscriptions and personal shopping experiences.
One extra-special offering is the ‘private browsing experience’, where the shop is closed for everyone but you, with a selection of books specially tailored for your tastes on display.
We’ve had people come and ask ‘what’s the limit for what I can spend at the experience?’ and I’m like ‘there’s no limit’, and we ended up getting them several boxes to fill. We had one lady who completed an achievement in her life and said she’d always wanted to have a spending spree in a bookshop, so we got in extra things that she liked and she took several boxes home.
Truly a community store, Imagined Things works hard to give customers more than they could imagine.
“We have a regular we make an advent calendar for every year. We wrap the books up, we number them, but she’s such a reader it can be really challenging to find books for her. But I love the challenge, and every year I’m thrilled when I get her ones she hasn’t read. We also do a book subscription service – people fill out a form and tell us what they like to read, and we go through and pick out things just for them.”
Theakston Crime Festival
One of the biggest events in the calendar is Harrogate’s legendary Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Festival, which sees major crime writers – such as Lee Child, Kate Mosse and Richard Osman – come to town.
While Imagined Things isn’t directly involved, it benefits a lot from the increased number of bookish tourists, and from the authors directly.
We’ve been working with Harrogate International Festivals doing Salon North and Book and Brunch events, and at the Crime Festival we have about 60 authors come and do signings. This year for the first time ever we’re going to get these specially designed tote bags signed and sell them. It used to be that we were begging authors to come by, but now it’s a thing and people approach us, authors send their mates here and new authors come by asking about it, the signing of the tote bag has become almost part of the festival, unofficially.
CBeebies star Andy Day at his book signing event at Imagined Things in Harrogate.
This year, on July 26, there is an extra special event taking place at the bookshop: the ‘most exciting launch of 2027’.
With details still tightly under wraps, a well-known author is going to be launching a brand new project while here for the Crime Festival.
How did a small local bookshop manage to be the host of the event?
I’ve known the publicist for a number of years. She just said ‘can I confirm this event with you but I can’t tell you why’ and I said of course, because I trust her. She couldn’t tell me the author, or what they had planned. But I know now. I had to check how secret it was: thank God I hadn’t told anyone.
There is a whole shelf dedicated to staff picks.
Support for local bookshops
Independent bookshops seem to be popping up all over the place, with Bookstagrammers promoting them and publishers now understanding their value.
“Sometimes we get things that are exclusive to independent bookstores - merchandise to go with a book launch or special editions with sprayed edges. I think we’ve seen a lot more publisher support over the last few years, they recognise independents have their own share of the market. We can break through books into the market that you couldn’t in bigger retailers.”
And Harrogate, being both a wealthy area and one filled with book-lovers, is a great place to have a shop.
I think we’ve always had a lot of supporters, it’s maybe increased a bit over the last few years. We’re really happily seeing a lot of young people supporting us, people that are really against Amazon and places like that, and they like to chat to us. We do a book shelf of employee recommended reads, and people get to know what staff they have the same taste as and come in just to buy those.
With Imagined Things going from strength to strength, and continually coming up with original ideas for how to make itself stand out, no doubt it’ll be sharing the joy of reading with Harrogate for years to come.
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