Indie revival: high street bookshops upbeat about next chapter in story | Books | The Guardian

Last year almost twice as many bookshops closed down as new ones opened. There are 939 independents left in the UK and Ireland, compared with more than 1,500 a decade ago, according to the latest count by the Booksellers Association. Among the survivors, though, there are signs of a renaissance.

Booka in Oswestry, Shropshire, which was recently crowned independent bookshop of the year by trade magazine the Bookseller, is one of the retailers leading the fightback. Carrie and Tim Morris opened Booka in 2010, during the depths of the economic downturn when high street shops were closing and banks had stopped lending. Cheap books were everywhere: on the internet and on supermarket shelves. E-readers were just taking off, sparking endless conversations about the death of the paperback.