Booksellers Association Conference

Booksellers Association Conference and Trade Show, 21st September 2025

We were away at nine on a bright cold Sunday morning in nervous good mood, crossing the ridge of the Wrens Nest and down to the Birmingham New Road, picking up speed as we approached the motorway system, confidence wavering only when we shot off the M6 by mistake, for a quick view of Perry Barr. But it was the view of Hinckley Island that we wanted. It is called this, comedian-turned novelist Tony Robinson later informed us, because any defensible high point could be called such by Saxon warriors of earlier times.

The Leonardo Hotel offered us comfort unknown to those rugged early settlers. There was coffee and cake throughout the day, a memorable buffet lunch, and, around three levels of a central well called The Rotunda, tables to sprawl by and network with delegates from places as distant as Cornwall and Cumbria.

Gardners, the distributor on which every independent bookseller depends, sponsors largely of the event and movers and shakers in the Booksellers Association, were the first to address us – from across the balcony in a building so acoustically good that a microphone was hardly necessary. Nigel Wyman, Chief Sales Officer’s welcome was genuine and witty, tributes paid to his organisation’s longevity and to its seasoned staff, and to the interest of working in this industry, to which he came twelve years ago.

As if further warm-up were necessary, we had TV presenters Carrie and David Grant, to teach us to sing. Firstly each of the three levels practised notes in harmony, to conclude in a rendering of ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas’, our keyrings serving as snowbells. If that, and lunch, hadn’t put us in high spirits, then the addresses by Lisa Jewell, Jessie Burton and Tony Robinson – certainly would.

Saturday Book-er Jayne meets actor/writer and now booksigner Tony Robinson at the Booksellers Association trade show

Call it what you will, whether honesty, humility, self-awareness, compassion, a combination of all four qualities that declared itself as soon as they spoke, each one of them was a compelling speaker. Lisa Jewell was just as charming at the book-signing, though by that time her hand must have been aching. Jessie Burton’s reading from her magic-realism new novel, set on the shore beneath Battersea Bridge, a child’s view from a century age, moved us. But Tony Robinson, who mentioned the Saxon connections of Hinckley and the drive that brought him to write historical fiction, spoke out of the imposter-syndrome agony of a first novel, and his utter relief when the first volume of his King Alfred-based saga was praised and therefore validated by established authors to whom he’d sent the proofs.

His tribute to booksellers will stay with me. He said how we transformed the world around us, though he doubted our sanity in doing so. He loved us! The theme had been taken up elsewhere, that bookselling was an identity and a means of restoring community. That we were the means to put these wonderful stories ‘in the hands of’ readers. And so the sociability of the day, of a people, dare I say it, united by a common purpose. I came away with new ideas, of making links with local schools thanks to the Wallingford Bookshop, and the importance of gift items, something we have actively had in place since our move to the Fountain Arcade) amongst traditional stock. Most of all, a wave of energy, that makes this weekday morning quite unlike the usual ones.

Jayne with Jessie Burton