The bookshop of Persephone Books in London

Inspired by The Seven Lives of John Murray by Humphrey Carpenter — a new biography of the great British publishing house — Rob at The Fiction Desk, in this thoughtful post, wonders if the company doesn’t offer up a model for success to modern-day small publishers, particularly in the way the founder of the house, John Murray himself, ran a bookstore as well as the publishing company.

For example, he says, “For a bookseller-publisher, costs can be spread across both sides of the business: premises serving as retail outlet, event space, and office; stockroom or shopfloor staff fulfilling web & mail orders in quiet moments; brand awareness campaigns benefiting both sides of the business.”

He notes that only a few publishers do this — notably, in the US, Melville House in New York, and City Lights in San Francisco, and in the UK Persephone Books and the newest, Big Green Bookshop, in London. (It seems only fair to throw in the great bookshop of the London Review of Books — not a book publisher, but close, and a terrific bookstore.)

It is, he says, “a fantastic way for both bookseller and publisher to reach new audiences, and it’s going to be interesting to see how it works out for them as they experiment with ideas which, while they might seem new, hark back to an era when John Murray I was urgently reissuing editions of Rousseau, hoping to capitalise on news of the French Revolution.”