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Ask a Bookseller: Katie from Storytellers, Inc.
Bookshops are the very best places to go for book recommendations – and booksellers are the friendliest, most knowledgeable of readers!
Katie from Storytellers, Inc., a family-owned independent bookshop in St. Annes on Sea, Lancashire, and author of Receipts from the Bookshop: A Bookseller's Year, has joined us to celebrate Independent Bookshop Week (13th-20st June 2026) by answering your burning bookish questions.
Want a recommendation of your own? Submit a question for our guest booksellers and if it's answered, we'll send you a £15/€20 National Book Token to spend in your local bookshop.
What makes Storytellers, Inc. a great place to visit?
"Storytellers, Inc. is a small bookshop with an entire staff of two people, which means we can operate on a very personal level. Customers get to know us pretty quickly, and that means it's easy for us to recall previous sales and enquiries – you can come back and literally pick up the conversation we were having last time. This proves very useful when we're helping shoppers pick presents for their grandchildren, or suggesting a new author to try, because we know what we sold you last time! We're also dog-friendly, have a separate children's room, and are situated on the same street as an exquisite French patisserie, if that helps."
Katie Clapham, owner of Storytellers, Inc.
What genre of books do you think is often overlooked? – Emma
Emma, I'm going to be annoying here and give an answer that is not strictly correct, but has the correct sentiment. I'm going to pretend that 'children's books' is a genre, and it is clearly is not, but I'm using it as a genre here because my answer is that adult readers overlook children's books as something they might themselves enjoy. It's very rare that an adult tells me they're buying a children's book for themselves, and it usually comes with some sort of apology or explanation, and it's really unnecessary. Books written for children are great gift to an exhausted adult mind, and I don't mean returning to a book you loved as a child, or reading a book with a child, I mean just enjoying a current children's book as you would a book for adults. They're generous, well-paced, and hopeful, from picture books to teen fiction; they're a wonderful and worthwhile place to spend some time. I wish more adult readers would allow themselves that experience in amongst their grown-up reading.
What's a recommendation for a book written in an unconventional style? – Katherine
I'm afraid I've picked this question so that I can recommend what I currently refer to as 'my favourite book', which is Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan. It's the story of a female horse trainer, narrated in brief chaptered vignettes. It's a very short novel – under 100 pages – and some of the 'chapters' are just a single block of text on the page, but the voice has so much character and energy, and each vignette is packed with so much detail, you certainly know a whole novel's worth of story and information by the time it's finished. Horse training is not an area I had or have had any interest in either side of this book, but I love this voice and I love the writing at work in this book. The unconventional format really excites me, and it suits the character perfectly.
What's a book you've sold to ten different people who all loved it for completely different reasons? – Idrees
I run a book club at my shop that has about 50 members, and the ages range from early twenties to the mid-eighties. It's always fascinating to hear how the same book has landed differently with readers, and sometimes they've had completely unique experiences with the same material. So often a book will meet you where you are at that time. Just using our book club reading list alone there are so many I could pick, but I'll go with The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall, because it's a book about so many different things; nature, motherhood, love, family, politics, Scottish independence, conservation, and animal protection and what it means to be wild. It really swept the board with all my book club groups, nearly everyone truly loved it, but different elements of the story had spoken to different people. It helps that it's also a cracking good story!
Do you have any recommendations for books that might appeal to a boy whose reading is good but currently only wants to read books if they are about Minecraft? Thank you! – Emma, on behalf of Rowan, age 7
First, let me admit that I know almost nothing about Minecraft except that it's a video game, so I'm going to recommend the Super Rabbit Boy series by Thomas Flintham, which has a pixel bunny main character, and the chapters are like levels in a video game. It's a brilliant concept, and the colour illustrations throughout make it really appealing to eyes that love colourful graphics. Even the text boxes sometimes appear as they do in games, so I'm hopeful that it'd be a seamless transition for an unsuspecting Minecraft fan who might suddenly find himself addicted to a new book series! As it's published by Nosy Crow, we know the quality is top-notch, and there's loads of books in the series now, so plenty to go on with if he likes them. Good luck!
As a primary school, we already visit our local bookshop during World Book Day week. How else could we try to forge links to promote reading throughout the year? – Luke
As we know, reading for pleasure is the strongest indicator for a child's future success, and it's really imperative that it's reading for pleasure that's promoted, rather than just 'reading'. This means making a range of books and comics available across all parts of the school and not trying to impose rules on what children should read at different ages. Picture books should still be available in KS2 – they're great for lessons, and cover so many different topics and experiences. Your bookseller can help you with this! Use story books where possible to link to lessons other than English to show that reading is way into absolutely everything. I think one of the best things a primary teacher can do in any year group is read to the class – whether that's a poem or picture book a day, a chapter book across the week, or a novel across a term. That shared experience of reading is really the thing that can catch the reluctant readers unaware. It can be life-changing.
About Receipts from the Bookshop: A Bookseller's Year by Katie Clapham
Many of us dream of owning a bookshop, but for Katie Clapham it happened by accident, when she moved back to the seaside town she grew up in and went into business with her mum.
Once a week, Katie sits behind the counter and chronicles the day's comings and goings – mostly people who were actually hoping to catch her mother. The triumphs here are small but hard won: a tea crisis averted, a book title correctly identified from a cryptic clutch of clues. Not to mention the emotional rollercoaster of being named the Seventh-Best Bookshop in the Country by The Times on a day where takings came to around £16.98.
Customers appear for a browse and a chat, in search of a recommendation or the perfect gift. Others enter the shop for more unexpected reasons – to borrow a screwdriver, locate a priest, or simply to ask if there's 'a nice place for an omelette around here'. Each day brings its own joys and frustrations, though not always in equal measure...
Funny, surprising and affectionate, here is a bookseller's year in all its weirdness and wonder – a life-affirming celebration of bad weather, good books, and the irreplaceable role of a local bookshop.
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