Running a small business anywhere comes with its difficulties - but with books becoming increasingly digitised and irregular footfall making year-long business difficult in rural mid-Wales, booksellers in these parts have looked to new ways to stay relevant.

That’s where booksellers like Gwisgo Bookworm in Aberaeron and Literary Cat Books in Machynlleth thrive - where being “quirky” sells.

For Independent Bookshop Week 2025, the Cambrian News spoke to rural sellers to find out how they stay afloat in an economic environment that has caused 30 UK indie bookshops to close in just the last six months.

Niki and Karen Brewer of Gwisgo Books weren’t always booksellers - having run a farm for close to 40 years, trading ear tags for ISBNs wasn’t an obvious transition, but it turns out the ex-dairy farmers are naturals at punting pages.

The couple, both 64, were looking for something new after their bodies called time on the hard labour of seven-day-a-week farm work in 2017 when a “scruffy” bookshop appeared for sale in the sleepy coastal town - having both been “avid readers and book collectors” their whole lives, they put in an offer after one viewing.

Having survived a pandemic and recession, their “risky” investment has worked out, put down to what Niki calls their personalities - Niki curating their new books section whilst Karen’s “elephant” memory lent perfectly for selling the second-hand collection - along with the personality of the shop.

“We’ve always been quite brave,” said Niki.

“In farming, you have to deal with everything life throws at you.

“We’ve put our own personalities into it.

“We came to the realisation that we didn’t have to do everything - we can just do what we want.

“We got rid of the sections we found dull and filled them with books we love and second-hand vinyl.”

They can tell the month and week of the year by the regular holiday families who arrive on their hearth, whilst the 1,200 locals who make up the town support the bookshop fiercely the rest of the year.

“We have a tight community here and a substantial regular customer base”, said Karen.

“We’ve become an important part of the community - we have younger people working out what they like to read, and we help broaden their horizons.

“We have older people for whom it's an important part of their week to pop in for a conversation.

“We have nooks and crannies for others to hide away in their own space - we say the shop has its own time zone.

“We know when people are struggling with things, those who have difficulty with memory - it's important to be open and welcoming and allowing people to be who they are.”

Rather than being self-congratulatory, they put their success being in-part down to the “incredibly artistic population” of Ceredigion, estimating a disproportionate percentage of writers in the county by those they get to meet - who have now become regulars of the Aberaeron Book Festival Gwisgo Bookworm host annually, now in its seventh year, as well as events twice a month.

Despite Gwisgo Bookworm’s success, the Booksellers Association has reported a mixed outlook for independent bookseller numbers in the UK.

Meryl Halls, Managing Director of the Booksellers Association, said: “This year’s Independent Bookshop Week comes at a pivotal moment - we’re seeing encouraging signs of growth in exciting areas, especially the surge in genre specialist bookshops responding to changing reader tastes, but the overall picture remains mixed.

“While new openings bring the energy and innovation that independent bookshops can uniquely offer to consumers, their communities and their shopping destinations, the fact that more bookshops have closed than opened so far this year is cause for real concern and punctuates a need for tangible action.

“From business rates to landlord disputes and rising costs, independent bookshops are battling growing pressures on several fronts.

“Every closure represents a lost cultural hub in a local community and a less vibrant high street in a weakened local economy.

“Therefore, we urge consumers to show their support during and beyond Independent Bookshop Week and call on governments across the UK and Ireland to step up and act to secure the future of these vital businesses and their ability to capture the hearts and minds of the next generation of readers.”

Surprisingly, independent bookshops bloomed after the pandemic, with 1,052 across the UK in 2024, compared to a sector low point of 830 in 2016.

Cornelis Pieter van Woerkom (Kees for short) says his shop, Literary Cat Books, named after his two favourite things, thrives by being “quirky”: “You’ll never be Waterstones.

“There’s no point stocking books like Richard Coles’ because I can’t match the price in Tesco or Amazon.

“[Independent bookshops] need a good selection of local books - we have a very good selection of Welsh folklore.

“Waterstones may have some, but the selection won’t be as good as ours.

“It’s something we can sell that they can’t.

“If we have a book we love, we can really sell it to people.”

This is true by Kees' numbers - having sold 130 copies of Victoria MacKenzie’s book about two female writers set in Norfolk - For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain - simply by not being able to shut up about it - creating a running joke (and tally) with his staff.

Kees, 54, has been a purveyor of antique books for over 30 years, having learnt to read independently by age six.

After moving from Holland to Tywyn for love, Kees found he needed more storage for his online book-selling business and realised “it may as well be a shop” - opening Literary Cat Books on Machynlleth’s main street in April 2020.

Thanks to his online business, he was able to weather the unpredictable storm of the many Covid-19 lockdowns, but has developed a thriving business in the “exceptional” mid-Wales town which, extraordinarily, boasts not just Literary Cat but four other book shops: “Having an independent bookshop builds community - people stop by to find out what’s going on, ask for help with transport, health queries we can find books for - we’re a part of the community here and value that.”

Niki recommends Attention All Shipping by Kathy Biggs, set in West Wales.

Karen recommends Caryl Lewis’ Bitter Honey set on a Welsh farm.

Kees recommends the new Palestinian cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi business partners, Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley, Falastin.