Taking on an independent bookshop in 2006, Kastner talks about her love for literature, booking authors and expanding her business with partner, Ed.
Nikki and Ed were working part-time ‘while pursuing other careers as a photographer and an
artist when Clapham Books entered receivership in 2006. Working at the shop on and off since 2001 as students, the pair decided they loved the shop so much that they didn’t want it to disappear. They decided to buy it and 9 years on the shop is buzzing with excitement while planning for upcoming events.
The shop hosts events where authors come in and read from their new novels and answer questions. ‘Depending on when authors can make it, we try to do as many events as we can’, Nikki explains. Some of the most successful authors Nikki has booked to attend the shop include, Will Self, Sebastian Horsley, Paul Theroux and Vivien Goldman.
Although they have hosted a number of events already this year, they tend to start holding them from the beginning of March onwards but, ‘there’s no hard and fast rule to it, it depends who is available, who is actually in London, who wants to do it, and if they can fit the dates we have available. Usually I suppose we do around 15 a year, but last summer we were hosting one a week for about four months’, she says.
The shop boasts a unique selection of hand-picked titles, including fiction, children’s and art books. ‘It’s the choices we make that makes the shop special,’ says Nikki. ‘There’s six of us that work here and we all choose the books. We don’t allow any particular one personality to take over – we all do it together. That makes us quite interesting because no other book shop will have the same mix that we have. I think that’s important for book shops because people don’t want to see the same books which I think is why chain bookshops haven’t survived. People don’t want to see the same stock wherever they go’.
In 2009, Nikki and Ed decided to expand their business and opened Herne Hill Books, in Herne Hill. ‘It was a tiny little derelict shop that was in an area of London that we really liked. We chatted to the people who lived around there and they really wanted a bookshop. We couldn’t afford Brixton so we set it up in Herne Hill and it does very well’, Nikki explains.
Although Nikki has an English degree, she and her partner are not from a book-selling background so she says they have created their own. ‘Other people from the book-selling world might think we do things in a possibly strange way, but it works for us’, she explains. ‘We have fantastic people working with us and that makes the job; the lovely people that work here and the lovely people that come in’.
On Saturday 28th March, the author of Pearl Power, Mel Elliot will be in the shop reading from her book, signing copies and answering questions from 11am.
