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New independent bookshop aims to promote Hackney’s publishers

An independent bookshop in Hackney is aiming to harness the area’s innovative publishing scene following its grand opening last week.

Burley Fisher Books on Kingsland Road, Dalston, which opened last Friday, is run by the same people behind Camden Lock Books, and stocks the usual range of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and children’s books.

However, owners Jason Burley, who has over 30 years experience in publishing, and Sam Fisher are hoping to capitalise on their familiarity with the area to push and promote local authors and smaller publishers.

Speaking about his hopes for the new shop, Sam told me: “We hope to be a community and small publisher focussed bookshop.

“There is a huge amount of innovation in publishing in the area. It’s a borough with a very diverse and creative population that we felt could support an independent bookshop.”

Stocking titles from the likes of Pushkin Press and Fitzcarraldo Editions, both of which are based in London, Sam hopes the shop can be a lightning rod for the area’s writers. And with Iain Sinclair, Hackney resident and author of books including London Orbital and Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire, gracing its doors and lined up for a reading, it is already doing just that.

The shop’s opening comes at an intriguing time for the publishing industry. As ebook sales stagnate, the appetite for physical books shows no signs of abating despite years of doom-mongering which proclaimed the death of the printed word.

Such is the upturn in fortunes for bricks-and-mortar bookshops that even online giant Amazon is plotting a chain of real-life bookshops across the Atlantic, following on from the opening of its maiden outlet in Seattle last year.

Commenting on these developments, Sam believes there is still plenty of life left in traditional bookshops owing to the distinct advantages they pose over their digital competitors.

He explained: “I think whilst online retailers offer the illusion of choice, you are in fact often funnelled to a very limited selection of books. Bookshops offer a real sense of discovery. There is no substitute for picking a book off the shelf and flicking through at your leisure to see if it interests you.

“I think the future is bright for the physical book. Having fallen for a number of years book sales are recovering. There is an appetite for big stories and big ideas and the physical book is proving still to be the best medium for these stories to be told, and for these ideas to be explored.”

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