Passionate about books (From Stroud News and Journal)

Passionate about books

CHRISTMAS is the busiest time of year by far for booksellers. At the Stroud Bookshop, for example, there is one transaction every 30 seconds for eight hours of each working day during most of December.

It is no wonder then that when, ten years ago, Charles Tongue finally found the courage to enter the big bad commercial world and open his own bookshop after almost 20 years of working for large bookshop chains and wholesalers he chose the end of November to do it.

"I was absolutely terrified of taking the step but straight away there was a flood of response and I knew it was going to work," said Charles.

If you were asked to compile an identikit picture of the archetypal bookseller, it would probably look like Charles Tongue - tall and thin, a full head of slightly dishevelled hair, elegant and expressive hands and casually dressed in slightly crumpled cotton trousers and matching, possibly hand-knitted, round-necked sweater.

Charles, 50, looks bookish and he is. After leaving Nottingham Uninversity (where he read politics and economics but also managed to study English literature on the side)in 1974 he went to work for the book chain Websters, which later became Waterstones, became branch manager in Guildford, Surrey and was soon responsible for setting up new branches in the area.

In the early 1980s he moved to another chain, Hammicks, running their wholesale operation with the emphasis on independent bookshops and also, more importantly for him, helping other people set up bookshops. One of his clients at that time was Ottakars, now a large chain.

"I helped them to get started at their first shop in Brighton. They asked me to work with them but I didn't want to because I didn't want to work in yet another big company and they were intent on becoming big," he said.

What he really wanted was to open an independent bookshop for himself. "But it was a dream," he said. "I never thought it was a real possibility."

Then by a circuitous route he came to live in Stroud, which he had been aware of through reading the Laurie Lee books in his late teens. "His idealised and romanticised image of the countryside was close to my heart."

It was then that he started looking at the possibility of setting up his own shop and by a stroke of luck premises became available in Stroud High Street right at the very last minute and just in time for the Christmas market.

"I was very lucky to get the opportunity for a really good site and with a very short lease because someone had just pulled out."

The Stroud Bookshop opened on November 28, 1992 and has been on the same site ever since.

Starting tentatively and with a very small stock the business quickly boomed and expanded to such an extent that it was soon bursting at the seams and three years ago Charles opened The Children's Bookshop in The Cornhill to make more room for adult books in the High Street premises.

There is now again a space problem in the adult shop and Charles is looking at the possibility of yet further expansion.

The range of books stocked at The Stroud Bookshop is enormous and comprehensive but, largely due to the enthusiasms of the owner, there are larger than usual sections on contemporary novels, travel (Charles won the first Unwin Travel Scholarship and spent six months travelling around Europe studying comparative bookselling in Germany, Holland and Norway), biographies, history and - because this is Stroud - mind, body and spirit.

By rights an independent bookshop today should not be doing as well as The Stroud Bookshop. The competition is now more fierce than ever, with supermarkets and the large chains being able to offer cut-price books since the end of the Net Book agreement and the advent of the internet and companies such as Amazon offering amazing deals.

So why is Charles Tongue doing so well? The answer is expertise. "I don't want to sound too sickly, but I genuinely do feel very lucky with the staff that I've had all the way along the line," he said. "And those that I have now are the best ever.

"I think that the shop is successful because we can offer an excellent level of personal service, make specific recommendations if that is what the customers require, and a very quick ordering service, the next day usually."

And he sees the internet as an opportunity rather than a threat. By this time next year, he says, the Stroud Bookshop will have its own website through which customers will be able to place an order.

Despite thoughts of expansion Charles has no plans to leave Stroud, which he feels has played a large part in his success.

"I love living in Stroud, and feel very lucky," he said. "There is nowhere that I'd rather be and nothing that I'd rather do. And," he added, "it is nice to feel that I'm making some kind of contribution to the rich cultural mix of life in Stroud."

*The Stroud Bookshop Christmas catalogue is now available, featuring 250 books, all of which are available at a 10 percent discount.