A Day in the Life: working as a bookseller at the Edinburgh International Book Festival

Posted on September 5, 2019 in Scotland

Every year, Edinburgh’s Charlotte Square is filled with thousands of people congregating to celebrate, discuss –  and buy – books. The Scotland Society of Young Publisher’s own Kirsten Knight tells us what it’s like working as a bookseller at the centre of the world’s largest literary festival.

Working as a bookseller at the Edinburgh Book Festival is like painting the Forth Road Bridge with your eyes closed while it’s being simultaneously built and taken apart, and it is absolutely the best summer job I could have asked for. This is my third year in the role; I spent 2017 and ’18 in the mayhem of the Children’s Bookshop, and this year in the somehow increased mayhem of the shiny new behemoth that is the Garden Bookshop (a shop located within Charlotte Square Gardens, not one that sells gardening books, as one rather optimistic customer had hoped).

Each day is a whirlwind of customers, authors and publishers, and sometimes very confusing people who are all three. Bookselling is very much only one part of the role; I have frequently found myself facilitating signings, comforting lost children, creating displays of Gruffalo plush toys, building bookshelves, comforting lost authors… the list goes on. One of the highlights of spending every day surrounded by book writers and illustrators and publishers and general enthusiasts is being able to constantly indulge one’s own love of books – from informing frazzled customers at the checkout that they’re “going to LOVE this book” to creating extra-fancy displays of books that in your ‘professional’ opinion deserve the limelight. The book festival is a haven for people who love words, and there’s nothing like a good appreciative rant about the new Rankin with someone you’ve only just met to get you through the day.

In the unique business of connecting readers directly with writers that the Edinburgh Book Festival does so well, being stuck somewhere in the middle of all that is an absolute joy. I can’t recommend enough getting involved in whatever capacity you fancy – ask me to search for an obscure book for you, serve customers alongside me on Gala Day dressed as Where’s Wally, sign your books in the shop while I bring you a glass of water and gush over your work, entertain hundreds in a sell-out performance that I by some miracle managed to get a ticket to. The Festival may be over for this year, but next year will bring another host of new voices that need to be celebrated, and what better place to do it?

By Kirsten Knight

Photo: Robin Mair via the Edinburgh International Book Festival Press Office