Confessions of a Bookseller

This falls strictly in the ‘more of the same' category. Those who have read Bythell's previous book The Diary of a Bookseller will find Bythell offers up the same diary format with the same catalogue of interactions - his customers, his staff, his friends and acquaintances, the Wigtown community in general. (Wigtown is in the Dumfries and Galloway region of Scotland, and is known as “Scotland's National Book Town” with a high concentration of second-hand book shops and an annual book festival.)

The good news, for those who liked his first book, myself included, is this one offers another whole year of his trials and tribulations. Others have identified the year as 2015, but my edition either doesn't impart that information, or (more likely) I missed it!

We are also provided details of the second-hand book trade, and the inevitable impact that Amazon has on high street retailers (through their Amazon sales site, but also the Amazon owned Abe Books site), and the way the wider accessibility drives prices (and margins) even lower. Throughout the book there are frustrations with Amazon and with the backend cataloguing software called monsoon, but at least Shaun can be reassured he gets better support that that other Amazon owned book related website, which stutters its way into history with pointless cosmetic updates and functionality downgrades instead of updating technology to improve it... you know the one.

In this book, Bythell starts each month with an excerpt from a book called The Intimate Thoughts of John Baxter, Bookseller by Augustus Muir, a spoof diary (published 1942) in which a fictional John Baxter comments on the equally fictional Mr Pumpherston, and his interactions in his second hand bookshop of the era. Very relevant selections made. No doubt the value of this somewhat obscure book has increased.

As noted above - similar content to the previous book, but as a diary - a few year of happenings! Just don't go in expecting there to be many new revelations!

For me, I am happy to roll out the same star rating as last time - 4 stars.