April 21, 2025 • 41 mins
In this episode, I chat with Tom Muckian about Roe River Books, a thriving independent bookshop in Dundalk, Ireland.
The name itself carries a powerful story of resistance. Tom deliberately named his shop after the world's shortest river as a symbolic counterpoint to Amazon, the world's longest. "I want to be the polar opposite of what Amazon represents," he explains. "I want to be about people and community and recommending books, not algorithms."
Most compelling is Tom's perspective on what makes a great bookseller—understanding that it's not about individual expertise but creating a collective team that connects with readers. "Maybe you don't become a great bookseller individually, but as a collective in a bookshop, as a team, you can become a great bookselling team."
Whether you're passionate about books, interested in Irish culture, or curious about the future of independent retail, Tom's story reminds us why physical bookshops remain vital cultural touchstones in our increasingly digital world. Subscribe now to hear more conversations with remarkable booksellers from around the globe.
Not Your China Doll, Katie Gee Salisbury
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson-Beverly and I'm a
bibliophile.
Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast.
Each week, I present interviewswith authors, independent
bookshop owners and booksellersfrom around the globe and
publishing professionals.
To help the show reach morepeople, please share episodes
with friends and family and onsocial media, and remember to
(00:33):
subscribe and leave a reviewwherever you listen to this
podcast.
You're listening to Episode 289.
In this episode, I'm speakingwith Tom Markian, owner of Row
River Books, an independentbookshop located in the country
(00:54):
town of Dundalk in County Louth,Ireland.
The bookstore was traditionallyassociated with the sale of
school textbooks.
However, since 2015, they stocka full range of books and pride
themselves on being able tosource just about any title
customers require.
Hi, Tom, and welcome to theshow.
It's lovely to have you here.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Thank you so much for inviting us on, mandy.
I'm thrilled to be invited on.
This is my first podcastappearance, so it's the first
for me and I'm curious.
I know it's your show when youask the questions, but how did
you come across us from the farside of the pond?
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Well, I do a lot of research, I'm constantly looking
for bookshops globally and Ihappen to love Ireland.
I have a son and his wife wholive there and I love Irish
authors.
But let's learn about you andyour work as a civil engineer
and your career twisting in andout of book selling.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yes, I think I'm probably a textbook example of
what I've noticed from evenlistening to some of your
earlier podcasts, where Isuppose some of them ended up
being bookshop owners but hadn'tstarted out in the trade I was
listening to was itally from thedulwich bookshop who came from
publishing side of the industry,and then I think it was the
(02:11):
book barn in in australia wherethe guy had been in the armed
forces and then ended up workingin the family business that he
married into and I think thatspeaks to the.
The root of what mostbooksellers are is that it's
vocational and I would say I wasalways maybe not to be too hard
on myself more civil than moreof an engineer.
(02:33):
When I was in civil engineeringI enjoyed what I did to a
certain degree, but I alwaysenjoyed the interaction with
people, with builders, withlooking at a project coming
together, rather than the hardmaths that goes with an
engineering project.
That's not really where I'm atmy most comfortable.
So I'd started in civilengineering.
(02:54):
I was there for five or sixyears I suppose, and then the
economy here, well before theCeltic Tiger came prowling
around, went into a very steepnosedive.
I think the unemploymentfigures in Dundalk at the time
were around about 30% orsomething like that, and I was
laid off and I had the choice atthat stage, which a lot of
people of my age had, that theyeither hopped on a boat and went
(03:16):
to the UK or to America orAustralia or I needed to look
around to do something else andnaively, with no experience of
retail whatever, I thought thatthe fact that I liked books
would be enough if I couldscramble enough money together
to open a shop.
So I found a unit, a small unit, um, about eight, nine hundred
square feet, and I I stocked itby spreading the books very far
(03:38):
apart so that it didn't looklike I didn't have that much
stock and, in fairness, Isuppose I lasted about three or
four years.
There was a three-yearnine-month lease that I took out
and then, at the end of thethree-year nine-month lease,
there were a few things thatwere happening.
One the economy was starting topick up slightly, which was
good, and there was a jobavailable in my old engineering
(03:59):
firm where I'd worked previously, and the second one was that
there was a thing at the timecalled the net book agreement,
which was sort of a gentleman'sagreement in the uk and ireland,
which meant that I suppose, toput it in american terms that
you'd understand if anindependent book shop had a book
on sale at ten dollars, walmartwould have it exactly the same,
barnes and nobles would have itat exactly the same.
(04:19):
So you were never at a pricepoint disadvantage with your
bigger competitors.
And then that was done awaywith.
So I could see down the linethat supermarkets were going to
start selling, and this is inthe days before amazon.
So it wasn't that you wereworried about ebooks or about
online selling.
This was simply some of ourlocal supermarket chains.
(04:39):
We want to start selling booksand discounting them down
heavily, and the the marginswere just too tight and I was
always struggling to get thetraction together to be able to
make a real go of it.
So when the lease was up and mylandlord turned up and said,
listen, we need you to sign onfor another three years and I
(05:00):
had the offer on the table to goback to civil engineering, I
thought it would be nice to goback to a point where I could be
sick and not worry about who Iwould get in to replace me.
I could take holidays, I couldhave Sundays off and things like
that, because when you own andrun a bookshop, you may not
always be in the shop, butyou're constantly on call.
(05:21):
Your laptop goes on holidayswith you, you're always
researching new authors, you'rereading um, which is a pleasant
uh, diversion, but it is allpart of what you do as your as
your work.
So yeah, I think I did that andthen spent 20 years in civil
engineering and the old celtictiger thing was was really
really busy.
That kept going right up untilthe early 2000s and at some
(05:44):
point, possibly around about theintroduction of the mobile
phone, I noticed that when youwent home in the evening, work
didn't stop.
Your email came with you.
If you engaged with it, yourmobile phone would ring and it
would be somebody who probablyknew you well enough to think
it's okay to ring Tom because Iget on well with him.
But they would never havethought of ringing you on your
home phone if it was a landline.
(06:06):
But the mobile phone somehowelasticated your working hours
and your availability for them.
So I just began to get a bitdisillusioned with the constant
I suppose relentlessness of it.
It really was quite hectic overhere for a while and my wife's
sister lived in jordan, in ammanat the time, and we went to
(06:26):
visit her one summer and wespent three weeks over there and
it was such a culture shock,you know, waking up hearing the
call to prayer, the, the heat,the, the food, the, just the,
almost the feel in the airaround me that it was like a, a
cultural reset for me and I justthought I really don't want to
not that I wanted to stay there,necessarily.
It was beautiful and I went to,we saw Petra and did the um,
(06:51):
the, the Peter O'Toole thing,down in Jerash and stayed in the
Wadi Rum and it was beautiful.
But when I got back it took awhile to settle and I just made
up my mind.
I was leaving the company I wasworking for.
I had no bigger ambition thanthat and one or two of the
people that I used to work forsaid well, look, we'd like you
to keep representing us, if youwouldn't mind.
So I said fine, and then, Ithink, within about a year, one
(07:12):
of them bought a building and inthat building was an
educational bookshop and it wasa bit incongruous because he
wasn't a big reader, this guy,and I said, why are you buying
it?
And he said, well, I only wantthe building, but the guy who
owns it is getting out of thebusiness, so the business comes
with it, if you like.
So I said, well, if you're everdoing anything with it or if
(07:33):
you're selling it on, let meknow.
So I found myself about twohours later, over a cup of
coffee, having bought a bookshop, not really knowing what I was
doing.
But it was a different setup.
It was an academic bookshop,because in Ireland I don't know
what it's like in the States,but at that time parents bought
the books for their children forschool, so it had a backbone,
(07:53):
which was a terrific thing tohave.
At the time.
You knew that over a given yearyou would sell X amount of
books and I thought this isreally simple.
I'll just do that and then I'lltake in general books as well.
It'll go gangbusters, but itdidn't quite work out that way
immediately.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
And was that Carol's Educational Supplies?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yes, that was that.
Yeah, and they were a publisherat the time.
They did publish a small rangeof books, but the guy who owned
the company was getting on inyears and I think he wanted to
get out of the business.
So, yeah, we dealt with a lotof schools, um, and that's a
different thing entirely toselling general books.
It's it's you're selling topeople primarily.
You don't necessarily want tohave to buy them, so it's not an
(08:33):
elective thing.
The atmosphere in the shop is alittle bit more business-like
than it would be in a nice,comfortable, independent
bookshop, and the generalfeeling I've always had in the
intervening period is thatbecause we were so heavily
associated with school booksthat people sometimes resented
coming to us for theirpleasurable book buying, if I
(08:54):
could put it like that theydidn't think of us.
We were so firmly entrenched intheir minds as an academic
bookshop.
They wouldn't think of comingto us for books at Christmas or
birthdays or whatever bookshop.
They wouldn't think of comingto us for books at Christmas or
birthdays or whatever.
So it took a while to, Isuppose, get over that hurdle
with them.
But we did eventually and weopened the shop in 2007 under
our own stewardship, if you like.
(09:16):
And we're still there.
I can't do the maths.
That's how bad I was atengineering almost 20 years,
then 18 almost and is that whenthe store became known as row
river books no, we changed thename.
Initially I didn't want tochange the name because I
thought because there's anacademic bookshop, it had quite
a large catchment area.
A lot of um people from ruralareas, maybe 20, 30, 40 miles
(09:41):
away, would come to talk forthem and they would come once a
year.
And I thought if I changed thename and we had moved location
by this stage we moved locationwithin six months of opening I
thought they won't be able tofind us and they'll come to
Dundalk one day.
They won't find us and thenthey'll just go somewhere else
or they'll get them at theschool or they'll make other
arrangements.
So I thought we'll stick withthe name for a while and then
(10:02):
we'll change it.
And then it just got kickeddown the road for a while.
So we eventually changed thename in 2018.
Part of the reason I suppose ittook so long to change was just
trying to think of a name.
You know I went through lots ofstuff in my head and a few that
I really liked.
It turned out that someone elsehad already nabbed them.
So you know you were trying tocome up with something original,
(10:23):
something that wasrepresentative.
I could have just put my ownname on it.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
And can you share the story behind the name Row River
Books?
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah, well, I suppose to jump back a bit when I
closed the bookshop originallyin the 90s, the first bookshop
that I opened, for that I hadfor four or five years.
Amazon were only reallystarting at that stage and I had
an account with them and wouldnever bought from them,
obviously, when I had a bookshop.
But then when we closed theshop, I sort of it wasn't that I
(10:54):
stayed away from bookshops, butI was a little bit sad when I
went into a bookshop and I felt,you know that sense of failure
that you hadn't been able tokeep it going.
So I kind of stayed away frombookshops for a while and Amazon
were an easy option and at thetime, if I remember rightly,
game of Thrones was just maybestarting around about then and
(11:14):
my mother who's was a voraciousreader and that's where I got my
love of books from was startedreading the very first book in
the series.
So I would buy the books forher and I had ordered I think it
was I think the fourth book inthe series when it came out in
hardback and she died after anillness in 2004.
(11:34):
But I'd ordered the book beforebecause of the pre-ordering
option in 2003 and it arrivedabout six months after she died
and I'd never started reading it, because I've a rule I won't
start reading a series of booksunless they're all available and
obviously George R Martin isstill struggling with that side
of things, so they're notfinished, so I might never get
around to reading them, but I'vegot the TV show.
(11:56):
But I just thought that therewas something mercenary about
the fact that here was this bookthat I had ordered and
obviously they'd had my carddetails and and I I came across
it recently because I still havethe amazon slip in the book.
I just looked at it earliertoday and it was ordered in 2003
and delivered in 2005.
I think it was feast of crowsand I just thought there was
something mercenary about that.
That they had taken the paymentfrom me, they'd had my details
(12:18):
on card and they had sent thebook out to me and it just just
for some odd reason probablybecause it was my mother and
because of the fact that she'donly recently passed it just
struck me as slightly mercenary.
And I think I took a slightdislike to Amazon at that point
and at that stage they weren'tas heavily discounting books as
they subsequently did.
I think the book was $18.99sterling and I think it cost me
(12:43):
$16.99.
So it wasn't the half price newbestseller thing that they're
doing now.
And I just thought you knowwhat, if I was still selling
books, this would be horrific tobe dealing with this.
And after that I sort of made aconscious effort not to deal
with them.
And the more you learn aboutthe guy who runs the company and
what he does and how big hiscarbon footprint is and all that
and I know he's a businessmanand it's not a personal attack
(13:06):
on him but that sort of bigcorporate cultural thing always
seemed to me to be theantithesis of what an
independent bookshop should be.
And I think that was provedwhen their own bricks and mortar
stores didn't work.
You know that they weren't ableto replicate what an
independent bookshop does andwhat some of the bigger
bookstores in fairness canmanage to do.
(13:26):
So I was looking for somethingthat would identify us or
separate us out from Amazon.
And I thought well, the Amazonis the longest river in the
world and what's the shortestriver in the world?
And at the time it was the RowRiver, which is in Great Falls,
missouri Still is, although Ithink the designation in the
Guinness Book of Records hasbeen removed now, so there is no
(13:48):
shortest river in the worldanymore.
But it was 200 feet long, Ithink it was at the time and I
thought, well, I want to be thepolar opposite of what Amazon
represent and what they are.
I want to be about people andcommunity and recommending books
, not algorithms, and I wantedto encompass that.
So I thought there was a niceflow and a bit of alliteration
(14:08):
to calling it Row River Books.
So I did that and it seems tohit well with most people when I
say it to them.
They don't like the fact thatit's, you know, sort of putting
two fingers up to the big guy.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
And I would say that a large majority of society
doesn't actually understand howAmazon hurts authors and the
publishing industry in general.
And, of course, it hurtsindependent bookshops, and I
think, with that in mind, thebest thing that we can do is to
explain how book selling worksto people when we get a chance
(14:47):
and how, when they buy fromtheir local independent bookshop
, they're supporting their owncommunity.
They are putting tax dollarsback into their community.
The people in their communityare working at the bookshop, but
, my gosh, it's so much easierfor most people just to press
that button on Amazon and gettheir book delivered at three
o'clock the next morning.
(15:08):
I think in some ways, we'vebecome slaves to instant
gratification.
Yeah, I think it's importanttoo.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
They do serve a function and I do think that
there are some authors that I'vedealt with.
There's an author I have a sortof an email correspondence with
called Adam Neville, who writeshorror.
He's an English writer and Ispoke to him some time ago at a
convention in Dublin and he saidthat part of his problem is
that he was a horror author at atime when horror books weren't
(15:35):
in vogue and he was with PanMacmillan, who didn't really he
felt value what he was doing.
He was in a four or five bookdeal with them and I mean he's a
very good writer anyway.
I always think writing shoulddefine an author rather than the
genre they write in, which issomething I feel quite strongly
about.
Some of the best writing I'vecome across has been in genre
(15:55):
fiction, but it tends to getpushed to the side a little bit
too much.
But he, about 10 years ago,started his own imprint and he
sells a lot of his books bysolicitation now on his own
website.
He uses Amazon on his ownwebsite to sell the books.
But he said if he sells a booknow, he gets a much bigger
percentage of it than he woulddo if it was with a mainstream
(16:16):
publisher.
So I think Amazon in some waysare, I think, enabled by
publishers in a way thatsometimes helps authors, but
they can't offer as big and asadvanced as some of the big five
(16:45):
, or even imprints, and, let'sremember, amazon isn't in that
many countries.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
So when authors, if they're self-publishing, I
recommend considering going whatwe call wide, which is having
your eBooks available on many,many platforms, rather than
checking that little box asyou're uploading your e-book to
Amazon, which is a 90-daycontract, I think, which means
you cannot have your e-book forsale on any other e-book
(17:14):
platform for that 90 days.
You must only have your e-bookwith Amazon.
But apart from all this, yes,it can work for a lot of authors
and it has worked for many, butit's also worked for many
authors who self-publish, who gowide.
One thing I would like to bringup with you I was reading an
article in the Irish Independentfrom December 2023, and it was
(17:36):
titled New Home for IndependentLouth Bookshop in Dundalk Town
Centre, and I began thinkingabout the changes in pedestrian
traffic in certain areas.
And when this happens, do youfeel it is brought on by rental
prices and businesses relocatingto buildings off the high
streets, or do you think changeis linked to generational
(17:56):
behaviour, or both?
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Yeah, I mean, I think depending on where you open
your shop, you will have adifferent experience.
Dundalk is a relatively smalltown.
It's about 40,000 populationand we've had to sort of almost
create the need for anindependent bookshop in this
town.
And I think that's something alot of towns would identify with
, because visibility in terms ofreading is hugely important.
(18:20):
If you see a bookshop, ifyou're surrounded by books
surrounded by books, you're, youknow it almost becomes an
addictive thing.
You know people who haven'tread in a while suddenly pick up
a book again.
And if you're, if you live in atown in the Romanian Ireland
unfortunately, that don't havethe bookshop or an independent
bookshop, they will still buybooks, they will still, you know
, use Amazon, they will pick itup in the local supermarket or
(18:43):
whatever.
But the experience that Iassociate with going to an
independent bookshop is missing,and I think part of the problem
is that because book selling isvocational rather than a money
driven vocation for a lot ofpeople, I think you're
immediately behind the eightball because rents are high,
(19:06):
commercial rates are high,footfall on main streets is down
.
If you live in a town wherethere's a shopping center and
you have very seasonal changesin weather as we have, and it's
bitterly cold outside and it'slashing with rain, the option of
going onto the main street orwalking into a nice, comfortable
, air-conditioned, warm.
Um, I mean we have a shoppingcenter in dundalk which is
(19:28):
effectively a main shoppingstreet, but it's got a roof over
it, it's got air conditioning.
You know there's no anti-socialbehavior.
It's got nice shops to wanderup and down.
You can have a coffee, you can.
You know you could spend a daythere.
Now I can't compete with thatif it's teeming with rain and if
it's cold and miserable and wetand damp and you can't get
parked anywhere near my frontdoor.
So I think those sort of issueshave, I suppose I won't say
(19:52):
attacked, but they've certainlyundermined high street retail in
a way that is not helpful.
And I don't think localauthorities, who set commercial
rates and who in effect are thelandlords of that public high
street and have a responsibilityto keep it attractive and keep
it nice, sometimes don't followthrough in the way that they
(20:12):
should.
They take the commercial rates,but they'll always have a
little caveat on the bottom ofthe bill saying money collected
in your area does not mean itwill be spent in your area it
could be spent filling potholes10 miles away.
So I think there is that.
The generational thing isinteresting, I think, from a
book selling point of view.
I've often and it's funny we'reat it, 20 years now and more if
you include my previous fiveyears.
(20:33):
I have friends now who would be, maybe you know, 10, 15, 20
years young with me that Iregularly meet up with and talk
about books and I remember themas into the shop, you know
getting the famous five androlled out and stuff like that,
and you would know their parents.
And now I know them as adultsand I know their children and I
think there's always a periodbetween, I suppose, the end of
(20:53):
high school, as you would callit, and maybe college.
You know finding women, men,whatever particular variation of
that sort of thing you want toget engaged with buying a house,
getting a job, gettingpromotions, putting in the hard
yards and reading unless you'rean addictive, voracious reader
(21:14):
takes a backseat a little bitand then you get them back again
when they have their own kids.
So I think the demographics inmost bookshops and I think this
would be fairly universal iseither young up to the age of
about you know, reading HarryPotter and Scorch Trials and
that sort of thing, and then youget them back again when
they're reading the hard-bittenalcoholic detective who's
(21:34):
hunting down his wife's killeror whatever it might be, and you
lose them for about 10 or 15years in the middle because
they've got other demands on themoney and other distractions.
So I'm not sure generationallyit's as damaging as it might be,
because I think people who readwill always read and you might
lose them, but they will comeback.
I think the bigger problem isthat there are generations of
(21:55):
people being brought up now andmy first experience of money was
pocket money when I was a kidand it was going to the shop
buying sweets, comics, books,whatever.
The first experience a lot ofkids growing up have now is
being handed mom or dad's creditcard, so their spending habits
are being developed in front ofa keyboard, online browsing, and
(22:16):
, of course, the range I meanthe biggest shopping center you
will get in the world is sits onyour lap and and they can buy
from china, they can buy fromsouth america, they can buy, you
know, five miles down the road,or they can buy from the uk,
whatever.
So I think that mighteventually come through.
I mean, I know a lot of kidswho maybe are at school and you
(22:37):
would see them coming throughthe door and I'm not saying
they're socially dysfunctional,but they're different from
school kids when I was in school.
You know they come in and it'slike this, and they don't ask
you what, what school book?
They show you the cover on thephone, um, and then I always try
and engage them in conversationand say, oh, did you read the
previous book or what did youthink of it?
And there's almost a little bitof a double take.
And then they'll engage withyou and it's you know, and
(23:00):
that's what I love aboutbookshops is, and if I get
somebody who's really distractedor on the phone, I love saying
completely odd, weird left fieldthings to them, just to get
them to, you know, snap out ofit and pay attention, because I
love that idea of bookshopsbeing, you know, a part of the
community.
But I don't think.
I think I remember years ago,before we opened the bookshop,
(23:22):
there was a report commissionedby the booksellers association
of great britain and irelandwhich forensically broke down
the number of people who read ina given community obviously uk
and ireland only.
I don't know about america.
At that stage and this was backin the late 80s, the the
percentage of people in anygiven population who read
regularly was about 19 percentand that was broken down between
(23:44):
libraries, people who wouldborrow books, get them second
hand, whatever.
Now, that was before ebooks,that was before amazon, that was
before the distractions of themobile phone, before um, adhd,
and and an inability of peopleto read or to want to engage
with a, an image or a page thatdoesn't flick by waving a finger
across it.
(24:04):
So I would say that figure isprobably lower now in some ways,
but the good thing about it isit's a hard core percentage and
I think they will always readbecause I think they're
hardwired that way.
Um, but in retail terms, ifthose people aren't on the
street, that's where the problemstarts and I think you know I
still get people 20 years downthe line in the town of 40 000
(24:26):
people saying, oh, I didn't knowyou were here and it's like,
really, because they don't goout, they don't go to 10 centers
.
You know, um, you know they,they work, they, they get a
takeaway on a friday, they puton netflix and you know they
never go into town, they gettheir groceries delivered or
they go to a shopping center orthey go to a retail park and the
main street's just somethingthey drive through maybe.
(24:47):
So I think yeah, I think it's acombination.
It is yeah, and I think everytown you would find probably has
a slightly different um, Ithink the dock has always been a
town that's maybe slightly toobig to have a small village feel
, but a bit, but not big enoughto have a kind of a big city
vibe either.
I mean, I listened to your chatwith, again, dulwich Books and
(25:08):
they talked about there beingfive or six independent
bookshops within a radius.
I mean, if five or six otherbookshops opened in a radius, in
that radius of me, I'd be, I'dbe out of business tomorrow and
so would they, because I thinkthere is a sort of a
self-sustaining sort ofcommunity that comes with, um,
you know, that sort of villagetype vibe that you get in a
(25:29):
small town or and Hay-on-Wyewould be an example of that or
the bigger towns which wouldhave the population mass and
more people traveling through it.
Um, but yeah, I think you,we're still here and I'm not
going anywhere.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
And while we're talking about Dundalk, if I had
a few days to spare in Dundalk,are there any historic sites,
hikes, castles, museums do yousuggest I visit?
And, because I'm all aboutchocolate and coffee and books
and animals, where would yousuggest I go for a fabulous
afternoon tea?
Speaker 2 (26:05):
where would you suggest I'd go for a fabulous
afternoon tea?
Okay, from a pure tourist pointof view, I think the dock is,
and has been for a lot of itshistory, uh, an industrial town.
I mean, it's coming backslightly now.
We've got a couple of um, we'vegot xerox and paypal and ebay
and stuff like that here, um,but for a long time, from the,
you know, the late 90s maybeuntil maybe even earlier, maybe
(26:26):
even the mid 80s, until aboutthe early 2000s, dundalk was
quite badly affectedeconomically.
We're a border town.
So you know, you go 15 miles,you go five miles down the road
and you're in Northern Ireland,which is jurisdictionally a
different country, effectively.
And you have Newry, which a anorthern Irish town, under UK
governance, if you like, and ithas a population similar to ours
(26:48):
.
And then, down the road from us, we have Drogheda, which is
another population center ofabout 30 to 40,000.
So we, we really struggled.
We were neither one thing orthe other, and the troubles of
course, which, um, you know,scarred the country for a long
time, meant that people were abit wary of the border because
of all the connotations ofviolence and and whatever.
(27:08):
So a lot of it sort of wentover my head when I was growing
up because you were used to it.
It was just.
You know that's the way it was.
So as a result, it got quiterun down.
I would say it's it's a turn onthe up.
I would now and it's got acouple of wonderful things If
somebody was coming.
I was involved with a bidscompany.
I think you have them in theStates as well.
(27:30):
I think New York City was oneof the first bid companies.
It's a business incentivedistrict system and it's about
taking an element of thecommercial rates and giving it
to an independent company whowill spend that money to create
a nicer environment in the town.
And we've implemented since Ileft, so I can't take credit for
it.
I was on the board for a while aseries of murals depicting the
(27:53):
history of Dundalk on the sideof buildings that had previously
not been painted or cared forin a long time.
So you can walk around Dundalkand almost get a snapshot of
Dundalk's history by doing thiswalking tour, which happens at
weekends a few times a day.
It doesn't take too long, butyou get to see Oliver Plunkett
where he was held in prison.
You get to see a couple ofbeautiful murals of Cú Chulainn,
(28:16):
who was a mythical figure, whowas from this area.
You get to see people likePeter Rice, who was a locally
engineer, who worked on thePompidou and worked on the
Louvre and worked on the SydneyOpera House and things like that
.
So you get a kind of a pottedhistory.
And the guy who does it, LiamGaynor, is terrific because he
(28:36):
has the anecdotal stories to gowith it.
And all of these murals aredone by international artists
who are invited over and they'rehere for the two weeks and even
putting the murals on is almostlike a tourist attraction in
itself.
You watch them on the cherrypicker and they're up on these
buildings where I'd get vertigo.
You know You've got a fabulousand they do food during the day
(28:59):
as well a fabulous.
I live on Castle Road, which isone of the older towns, the
older streets in town, and onthe street parallel to us
there's a pub called the SpiritStore store, which is a great
local gig venue that does foodand is a an old-fashioned pub,
but it looks right out onto the,the castletown river, which you
know at almost at the mouth ofthe river and you can see the
(29:19):
moor mountains where you wouldbe spending your weekend hiking
across the moors, so you canstart in the south and you can
walk across the top of themountain and effectively you're
into another, another countrythen.
Um, but it's a beautiful part ofthe world and I often think,
because of the troubles andbecause I think a lot of people
who land in dublin sort of landand go south, they go left, they
(29:43):
go down to cork, carry thesunny southeast, they go across
to the west of to the WildAtlantic Way, and the north of
Ireland is absolutely stunning.
You know, game of Thrones wasfilmed there so you've probably
seen parts of that, albeit CGI'dup a bit.
We've got Carlingford Village,which is about a 15-minute drive
(30:04):
out the road, which is amedieval village which has
remained substantially untouchedin recent years.
The outskirts of it have becomequite clogged up.
Now at this stage there's not ahuge amount to see.
But at the end of the road thatI live on is a tower which was
built as part of a Franciscanfriary in 1270.
(30:26):
There's only one tower of itleft now at this stage, but it's
still there and it's, you know,100 feet high, or whatever it
is.
It was destroyed in the 1300sby Robert the Bruce, who you
might know from Braveheart andfilms like that.
He sacked the friary and Ithink he murdered 20 or 30
(30:49):
friars who were living there atthe time, and then he was
crowned King of Ireland in a pubwhich is just up the road from
where I am, so it's a part ofthe country that's steeped in
history.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
One of the things I love about Ireland is the Irish
mythology, so is there anywherein Dundalk that I can go to
learn a little bit more aboutthis?
Speaker 2 (31:11):
We do a thing again.
I haven't been involved in herin recent years, but um, the
anton, as it's called, is is thegreat irish myth, if you like.
It would be our equivalent ofthe king arthur legend, if you
like.
And cuhollin, um, when you readit, thomas kinsler wrote, I
think, the best englishtranslation of it um, it's, it's
mythology, but it's based verymuch in the geography of the
(31:34):
country.
And there's another lady I'llpass her details on to you by
email who lives in Arizona atthe moment, but she writes a
magazine called Reading Irelandwhich is all about, you know,
irish authors and the history ofwriting in Ireland.
But she's just compiled aseries of books which are essays
about Thomas Kinsley, who was afamous Irish scholar, probably
(31:54):
the preeminent Irish scholar.
He only died a few years agoabout on Thorn.
So we have in Dundalk a placecalled Cú Chulainn's Castle
which is on a mound.
It's kind of on the outskirtsof town and it's it's on a
raised mound well above.
It's about the highest point intown, I think.
Um, and you've got theremaining of the remains of a
(32:15):
tower.
That's there now.
I don't think it specificallyhas anything to do with cool
holland.
There was a famous wealthysmuggler who built a house there
but it was burned down in afire.
But it's still calledcoholland's castle and in the
field in front of it is astanding stone, um where he was
supposed to have been killed.
Um strapped to it as as themorrigan landed on his shoulder
(32:38):
and and signaled that he haddied.
So it's steeped in mythologyand there's a walk once a year
where people walk from themidlands on foot across it's
almost like a camino walk, ifyou like and they follow the
route of Queen Maeve's army whocame across to engage in battle
(32:59):
with Cú Chulainn.
So I mean again, it's thatthing.
It's on my doorstep, so I sortof take it for granted, but I'll
send you a few links in anemail and you can.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Well, that would be wonderful and I can put them in
the show notes.
Okay, we're running out of time, but I do want to ask you a
couple of things.
One of them is in your opinion,what makes a good bookseller a
great bookseller?
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Good bookseller?
Great, I'll let you know when Iget there.
I'm not sure.
Actually, I've been thinkingabout this a lot and I think a
lot of it is down to obviouslyyou need to be enthusiastic
about books, you need to be inlove with books, because if
you're not in love with them,then you know it's a tough job
(33:40):
to try and sell them to somebodywho isn't or is maybe, you know
, an occasional reader.
But given that most people readwithin a certain comfort zone,
if you like, I think once you doa job like yours or you do a
job like mine, you read muchmore eclectically than you ever
did before.
But most people read within thecomfort zone.
And I could quite happily gofrom one end of the year to the
other, skipping from James LeeBurke to Stephen King to Adam
(34:02):
Neville to whoever.
I never have to look at a newauthor ever, but I mean that
takes the fun out of it ever,but I mean that takes the fun
out of it.
So I think understanding books,but also listening to the
people who come in and out ofyour shop, because I don't know
everything about books.
I don't know everything abouteven the books that are in my
shop.
I'll often have somebody comeup and buy a book and I'll
(34:23):
always ask them why are youbuying that book?
I want to know, have they readit?
Have they read the authorbefore?
Was it recommended to them?
If somebody comes along and asksme to order a book, an author
that I haven't heard of before,I'll make it a point of picking
up that book when it comes inand, you know, flicking through
(34:44):
it to see if I like the writingstyle.
I mean, I think there are onlyso many stories out there, as
Shakespeare said, and he'sprobably done them all as good
as anyone will ever do them.
But but the writing style youknow the journey is is what
makes it enjoyable to read.
So, reading you know a fewpages from a book, I say, yeah,
I like that guy, I'll pick upone of his for myself, and I
think I like to to think thatyou know the staff that you have
(35:05):
, if you have.
You know one of the other shopsthat I heard on one of your and
it was funny because it was abook I love myself was talking
about somebody who wanted avampire novel, and well, I'm not
the person to talk to, butthere's somebody over there.
Talk to them.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Actually that was me.
I was at the last bookstoredowntown LA looking for vampire
books.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Yeah, and I read that way before ever.
I think I read that when itcame out first.
I picked it up in a hardbackcopy in a secondhand bookshop
somewhere.
So but I would like certaintypes of books and my staff, who
are all very good.
I work with members of my familyand then we have a few people
who come in and they all do afew days each.
So you know you get people whoonly come in.
(35:46):
They only want to come in whenSandra is there, or they only
want to come in when May isthere, and they'll be friendly
and chatty and they'll come in,or they might pick up a book,
but they come in to talk to thepeople because you know well, I
know they like my book or youknow I want to ask them about a
book, you know.
So I think, having having maybe, maybe you don't become a great
bookseller individually, but Ithink as a collective in a
(36:08):
bookshop, I think you know, as ateam you can become a great
bookselling team and I wouldnever be anywhere without the
team I have working with me.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
So yeah, I think a good indie bookshop is all about
the booksellers.
Okay, Tom, what are youcurrently reading?
Speaker 2 (36:24):
What am I currently reading?
Well, I've just finished onecalled Baby I Don't Care by Lee
Server, which is a biography of.
I mean, I'm a huge movie fan,particularly old movies, movies
where you can hear the dialogue.
You know, I want to be able tohear what the characters are
saying, not the door closing orthe you know or the cat in the
backyard screaming.
(36:45):
But I think that's just an agething with my hearing.
But I think that's just an agething with my hearing.
But I've always been a huge fanof Robert Mitchum and Lee
Serber's biography carries himright from his early days as a
kind of a hobo traveling acrossthe country, right the way
through his run ins with the law, right up until, you know when,
the winds of war and his latercareer.
So I've and I'm always readingtwo or three books at the same
(37:08):
time.
So the other books I'm readingis a series about a character
called Jackson Lamb.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
Yes, you're talking about Slow Horses.
Yes, I love the show.
In fact, I just bought thefirst book by Mick Herron.
I can't wait to start them.
But how are the books?
Did you enjoy them?
I mean, Gary Oldman playingJackson Lamb is fantastic.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
He's incredible.
The books are laugh out loudfunny.
He's the most politicallyincorrect character.
I mean, he's bad on the TV show, but in the books he's worse
and he's a much strongerpresence in the books.
He's almost in every chapter init nearly, whereas I think,
maybe because of you know, garyoldman's check that he gets he's
(37:54):
only in you know, um.
But they are incredibly funnyand very much on point.
I was reading them as they cameout over the years and you can
see boris johnson in them.
There is a character in it whois boris johnson, the faux guy
who tends to be a bit of a, anidiot for the cameras, but he's
ruthless behind it and he, theway he breaks down society and
(38:17):
political um, uh, chicanery andand backstabbing, is incredible
and you just fly through them.
They are proper thrillers, butdo do read them in sequence
though, because, like, a lot ofthem are standalone.
But the problem with them isthat, because he's quite vicious
with his characters and they doget bumped off, you'll maybe
get used to a character in bookthree and then it'll refer to
(38:39):
somebody who was in a previousbook.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
They sound a little bit like the Bosch books here
written by Michael Connelly.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
I love those two, yeah, and the other one, sorry.
I just want to give a shout outas well, which I'm really
looking forward to and I know ifyou're into movies, you like
this one as well, as I just gotthis for Christmas and I haven't
been around to reading it yet.
It's called not your baby dolland I've only just started it,
but it's it's.
I'm really enjoying it.
It's a biography of an actresscalled Anna May Wong who was
(39:06):
around and she was never really.
I think she was in a few bigbudget movies, but never the
leading actress.
But I love reading about oldHollywood and you know behind
the scenes with old Hollywoodand stuff like that, so I see
the Coast Road there behind youas well.
Is that the Coast Road?
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yes, by Alan Murren.
Oh, I love that book.
Alan's been on the show.
He's a lovely, lovely guy.
Yeah, yeah, no, it's a fabulousbook.
Well, tom, thank you so muchfor being a guest on the show
and it's been lovely chattingwith you about books and talk
and writers.
It's been a lot of fun, thankyou.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Oh, thank you for asking Delightful.
I really enjoyed it.
Lovely to chat to you, Mandy,and we'll be in touch OK.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
You've been listening to my conversation with Tom
Mookian, the owner of Row RiverBooks.
To help the show reach morepeople, please share episodes
with friends and family and onsocial media, and remember to
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To find out more about theBookshop Podcast, go to
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You can also follow me atMandyJacksonBeverly and make
(40:13):
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You can also follow me at MandyJackson Beverly on X, Instagram
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If you have a favorite indiebookshop that you'd like to
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The Bookshop Podcast is writtenand produced by me, Mandy
(40:33):
Jackson-Beverly, Theme musicprovided by Brian Beverly,
executive assistant to Mandy,Adrienne Otterhahn and graphic
design by Frances Perala.
Thanks for listening and I'llsee you next time.
Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson-Beverly and I'm a
bibliophile.
Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast.
Each week, I present interviewswith authors, independent
bookshop owners and booksellersfrom around the globe and
publishing professionals.
To help the show reach morepeople, please share episodes
with friends and family and onsocial media, and remember to
(00:33):
subscribe and leave a reviewwherever you listen to this
podcast.
You're listening to Episode 289.
In this episode, I'm speakingwith Tom Markian, owner of Row
River Books, an independentbookshop located in the country
(00:54):
town of Dundalk in County Louth,Ireland.
The bookstore was traditionallyassociated with the sale of
school textbooks.
However, since 2015, they stocka full range of books and pride
themselves on being able tosource just about any title
customers require.
Hi, Tom, and welcome to theshow.
It's lovely to have you here.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Thank you so much for inviting us on, mandy.
I'm thrilled to be invited on.
This is my first podcastappearance, so it's the first
for me and I'm curious.
I know it's your show when youask the questions, but how did
you come across us from the farside of the pond?
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Well, I do a lot of research, I'm constantly looking
for bookshops globally and Ihappen to love Ireland.
I have a son and his wife wholive there and I love Irish
authors.
But let's learn about you andyour work as a civil engineer
and your career twisting in andout of book selling.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yes, I think I'm probably a textbook example of
what I've noticed from evenlistening to some of your
earlier podcasts, where Isuppose some of them ended up
being bookshop owners but hadn'tstarted out in the trade I was
listening to was itally from thedulwich bookshop who came from
publishing side of the industry,and then I think it was the
(02:11):
book barn in in australia wherethe guy had been in the armed
forces and then ended up workingin the family business that he
married into and I think thatspeaks to the.
The root of what mostbooksellers are is that it's
vocational and I would say I wasalways maybe not to be too hard
on myself more civil than moreof an engineer.
(02:33):
When I was in civil engineeringI enjoyed what I did to a
certain degree, but I alwaysenjoyed the interaction with
people, with builders, withlooking at a project coming
together, rather than the hardmaths that goes with an
engineering project.
That's not really where I'm atmy most comfortable.
So I'd started in civilengineering.
(02:54):
I was there for five or sixyears I suppose, and then the
economy here, well before theCeltic Tiger came prowling
around, went into a very steepnosedive.
I think the unemploymentfigures in Dundalk at the time
were around about 30% orsomething like that, and I was
laid off and I had the choice atthat stage, which a lot of
people of my age had, that theyeither hopped on a boat and went
(03:16):
to the UK or to America orAustralia or I needed to look
around to do something else andnaively, with no experience of
retail whatever, I thought thatthe fact that I liked books
would be enough if I couldscramble enough money together
to open a shop.
So I found a unit, a small unit, um, about eight, nine hundred
square feet, and I I stocked itby spreading the books very far
(03:38):
apart so that it didn't looklike I didn't have that much
stock and, in fairness, Isuppose I lasted about three or
four years.
There was a three-yearnine-month lease that I took out
and then, at the end of thethree-year nine-month lease,
there were a few things thatwere happening.
One the economy was starting topick up slightly, which was
good, and there was a jobavailable in my old engineering
(03:59):
firm where I'd worked previously, and the second one was that
there was a thing at the timecalled the net book agreement,
which was sort of a gentleman'sagreement in the uk and ireland,
which meant that I suppose, toput it in american terms that
you'd understand if anindependent book shop had a book
on sale at ten dollars, walmartwould have it exactly the same,
barnes and nobles would have itat exactly the same.
(04:19):
So you were never at a pricepoint disadvantage with your
bigger competitors.
And then that was done awaywith.
So I could see down the linethat supermarkets were going to
start selling, and this is inthe days before amazon.
So it wasn't that you wereworried about ebooks or about
online selling.
This was simply some of ourlocal supermarket chains.
(04:39):
We want to start selling booksand discounting them down
heavily, and the the marginswere just too tight and I was
always struggling to get thetraction together to be able to
make a real go of it.
So when the lease was up and mylandlord turned up and said,
listen, we need you to sign onfor another three years and I
(05:00):
had the offer on the table to goback to civil engineering, I
thought it would be nice to goback to a point where I could be
sick and not worry about who Iwould get in to replace me.
I could take holidays, I couldhave Sundays off and things like
that, because when you own andrun a bookshop, you may not
always be in the shop, butyou're constantly on call.
(05:21):
Your laptop goes on holidayswith you, you're always
researching new authors, you'rereading um, which is a pleasant
uh, diversion, but it is allpart of what you do as your as
your work.
So yeah, I think I did that andthen spent 20 years in civil
engineering and the old celtictiger thing was was really
really busy.
That kept going right up untilthe early 2000s and at some
(05:44):
point, possibly around about theintroduction of the mobile
phone, I noticed that when youwent home in the evening, work
didn't stop.
Your email came with you.
If you engaged with it, yourmobile phone would ring and it
would be somebody who probablyknew you well enough to think
it's okay to ring Tom because Iget on well with him.
But they would never havethought of ringing you on your
home phone if it was a landline.
(06:06):
But the mobile phone somehowelasticated your working hours
and your availability for them.
So I just began to get a bitdisillusioned with the constant
I suppose relentlessness of it.
It really was quite hectic overhere for a while and my wife's
sister lived in jordan, in ammanat the time, and we went to
(06:26):
visit her one summer and wespent three weeks over there and
it was such a culture shock,you know, waking up hearing the
call to prayer, the, the heat,the, the food, the, just the,
almost the feel in the airaround me that it was like a, a
cultural reset for me and I justthought I really don't want to
not that I wanted to stay there,necessarily.
It was beautiful and I went to,we saw Petra and did the um,
(06:51):
the, the Peter O'Toole thing,down in Jerash and stayed in the
Wadi Rum and it was beautiful.
But when I got back it took awhile to settle and I just made
up my mind.
I was leaving the company I wasworking for.
I had no bigger ambition thanthat and one or two of the
people that I used to work forsaid well, look, we'd like you
to keep representing us, if youwouldn't mind.
So I said fine, and then, Ithink, within about a year, one
(07:12):
of them bought a building and inthat building was an
educational bookshop and it wasa bit incongruous because he
wasn't a big reader, this guy,and I said, why are you buying
it?
And he said, well, I only wantthe building, but the guy who
owns it is getting out of thebusiness, so the business comes
with it, if you like.
So I said, well, if you're everdoing anything with it or if
(07:33):
you're selling it on, let meknow.
So I found myself about twohours later, over a cup of
coffee, having bought a bookshop, not really knowing what I was
doing.
But it was a different setup.
It was an academic bookshop,because in Ireland I don't know
what it's like in the States,but at that time parents bought
the books for their children forschool, so it had a backbone,
(07:53):
which was a terrific thing tohave.
At the time.
You knew that over a given yearyou would sell X amount of
books and I thought this isreally simple.
I'll just do that and then I'lltake in general books as well.
It'll go gangbusters, but itdidn't quite work out that way
immediately.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
And was that Carol's Educational Supplies?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yes, that was that.
Yeah, and they were a publisherat the time.
They did publish a small rangeof books, but the guy who owned
the company was getting on inyears and I think he wanted to
get out of the business.
So, yeah, we dealt with a lotof schools, um, and that's a
different thing entirely toselling general books.
It's it's you're selling topeople primarily.
You don't necessarily want tohave to buy them, so it's not an
(08:33):
elective thing.
The atmosphere in the shop is alittle bit more business-like
than it would be in a nice,comfortable, independent
bookshop, and the generalfeeling I've always had in the
intervening period is thatbecause we were so heavily
associated with school booksthat people sometimes resented
coming to us for theirpleasurable book buying, if I
(08:54):
could put it like that theydidn't think of us.
We were so firmly entrenched intheir minds as an academic
bookshop.
They wouldn't think of comingto us for books at Christmas or
birthdays or whatever bookshop.
They wouldn't think of comingto us for books at Christmas or
birthdays or whatever.
So it took a while to, Isuppose, get over that hurdle
with them.
But we did eventually and weopened the shop in 2007 under
our own stewardship, if you like.
(09:16):
And we're still there.
I can't do the maths.
That's how bad I was atengineering almost 20 years,
then 18 almost and is that whenthe store became known as row
river books no, we changed thename.
Initially I didn't want tochange the name because I
thought because there's anacademic bookshop, it had quite
a large catchment area.
A lot of um people from ruralareas, maybe 20, 30, 40 miles
(09:41):
away, would come to talk forthem and they would come once a
year.
And I thought if I changed thename and we had moved location
by this stage we moved locationwithin six months of opening I
thought they won't be able tofind us and they'll come to
Dundalk one day.
They won't find us and thenthey'll just go somewhere else
or they'll get them at theschool or they'll make other
arrangements.
So I thought we'll stick withthe name for a while and then
(10:02):
we'll change it.
And then it just got kickeddown the road for a while.
So we eventually changed thename in 2018.
Part of the reason I suppose ittook so long to change was just
trying to think of a name.
You know I went through lots ofstuff in my head and a few that
I really liked.
It turned out that someone elsehad already nabbed them.
So you know you were trying tocome up with something original,
(10:23):
something that wasrepresentative.
I could have just put my ownname on it.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
And can you share the story behind the name Row River
Books?
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah, well, I suppose to jump back a bit when I
closed the bookshop originallyin the 90s, the first bookshop
that I opened, for that I hadfor four or five years.
Amazon were only reallystarting at that stage and I had
an account with them and wouldnever bought from them,
obviously, when I had a bookshop.
But then when we closed theshop, I sort of it wasn't that I
(10:54):
stayed away from bookshops, butI was a little bit sad when I
went into a bookshop and I felt,you know that sense of failure
that you hadn't been able tokeep it going.
So I kind of stayed away frombookshops for a while and Amazon
were an easy option and at thetime, if I remember rightly,
game of Thrones was just maybestarting around about then and
(11:14):
my mother who's was a voraciousreader and that's where I got my
love of books from was startedreading the very first book in
the series.
So I would buy the books forher and I had ordered I think it
was I think the fourth book inthe series when it came out in
hardback and she died after anillness in 2004.
(11:34):
But I'd ordered the book beforebecause of the pre-ordering
option in 2003 and it arrivedabout six months after she died
and I'd never started reading it, because I've a rule I won't
start reading a series of booksunless they're all available and
obviously George R Martin isstill struggling with that side
of things, so they're notfinished, so I might never get
around to reading them, but I'vegot the TV show.
(11:56):
But I just thought that therewas something mercenary about
the fact that here was this bookthat I had ordered and
obviously they'd had my carddetails and and I I came across
it recently because I still havethe amazon slip in the book.
I just looked at it earliertoday and it was ordered in 2003
and delivered in 2005.
I think it was feast of crowsand I just thought there was
something mercenary about that.
That they had taken the paymentfrom me, they'd had my details
(12:18):
on card and they had sent thebook out to me and it just just
for some odd reason probablybecause it was my mother and
because of the fact that she'donly recently passed it just
struck me as slightly mercenary.
And I think I took a slightdislike to Amazon at that point
and at that stage they weren'tas heavily discounting books as
they subsequently did.
I think the book was $18.99sterling and I think it cost me
(12:43):
$16.99.
So it wasn't the half price newbestseller thing that they're
doing now.
And I just thought you knowwhat, if I was still selling
books, this would be horrific tobe dealing with this.
And after that I sort of made aconscious effort not to deal
with them.
And the more you learn aboutthe guy who runs the company and
what he does and how big hiscarbon footprint is and all that
and I know he's a businessmanand it's not a personal attack
(13:06):
on him but that sort of bigcorporate cultural thing always
seemed to me to be theantithesis of what an
independent bookshop should be.
And I think that was provedwhen their own bricks and mortar
stores didn't work.
You know that they weren't ableto replicate what an
independent bookshop does andwhat some of the bigger
bookstores in fairness canmanage to do.
(13:26):
So I was looking for somethingthat would identify us or
separate us out from Amazon.
And I thought well, the Amazonis the longest river in the
world and what's the shortestriver in the world?
And at the time it was the RowRiver, which is in Great Falls,
missouri Still is, although Ithink the designation in the
Guinness Book of Records hasbeen removed now, so there is no
(13:48):
shortest river in the worldanymore.
But it was 200 feet long, Ithink it was at the time and I
thought, well, I want to be thepolar opposite of what Amazon
represent and what they are.
I want to be about people andcommunity and recommending books
, not algorithms, and I wantedto encompass that.
So I thought there was a niceflow and a bit of alliteration
(14:08):
to calling it Row River Books.
So I did that and it seems tohit well with most people when I
say it to them.
They don't like the fact thatit's, you know, sort of putting
two fingers up to the big guy.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
And I would say that a large majority of society
doesn't actually understand howAmazon hurts authors and the
publishing industry in general.
And, of course, it hurtsindependent bookshops, and I
think, with that in mind, thebest thing that we can do is to
explain how book selling worksto people when we get a chance
(14:47):
and how, when they buy fromtheir local independent bookshop
, they're supporting their owncommunity.
They are putting tax dollarsback into their community.
The people in their communityare working at the bookshop, but
, my gosh, it's so much easierfor most people just to press
that button on Amazon and gettheir book delivered at three
o'clock the next morning.
(15:08):
I think in some ways, we'vebecome slaves to instant
gratification.
Yeah, I think it's importanttoo.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
They do serve a function and I do think that
there are some authors that I'vedealt with.
There's an author I have a sortof an email correspondence with
called Adam Neville, who writeshorror.
He's an English writer and Ispoke to him some time ago at a
convention in Dublin and he saidthat part of his problem is
that he was a horror author at atime when horror books weren't
(15:35):
in vogue and he was with PanMacmillan, who didn't really he
felt value what he was doing.
He was in a four or five bookdeal with them and I mean he's a
very good writer anyway.
I always think writing shoulddefine an author rather than the
genre they write in, which issomething I feel quite strongly
about.
Some of the best writing I'vecome across has been in genre
(15:55):
fiction, but it tends to getpushed to the side a little bit
too much.
But he, about 10 years ago,started his own imprint and he
sells a lot of his books bysolicitation now on his own
website.
He uses Amazon on his ownwebsite to sell the books.
But he said if he sells a booknow, he gets a much bigger
percentage of it than he woulddo if it was with a mainstream
(16:16):
publisher.
So I think Amazon in some waysare, I think, enabled by
publishers in a way thatsometimes helps authors, but
they can't offer as big and asadvanced as some of the big five
(16:45):
, or even imprints, and, let'sremember, amazon isn't in that
many countries.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
So when authors, if they're self-publishing, I
recommend considering going whatwe call wide, which is having
your eBooks available on many,many platforms, rather than
checking that little box asyou're uploading your e-book to
Amazon, which is a 90-daycontract, I think, which means
you cannot have your e-book forsale on any other e-book
(17:14):
platform for that 90 days.
You must only have your e-bookwith Amazon.
But apart from all this, yes,it can work for a lot of authors
and it has worked for many, butit's also worked for many
authors who self-publish, who gowide.
One thing I would like to bringup with you I was reading an
article in the Irish Independentfrom December 2023, and it was
(17:36):
titled New Home for IndependentLouth Bookshop in Dundalk Town
Centre, and I began thinkingabout the changes in pedestrian
traffic in certain areas.
And when this happens, do youfeel it is brought on by rental
prices and businesses relocatingto buildings off the high
streets, or do you think changeis linked to generational
(17:56):
behaviour, or both?
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Yeah, I mean, I think depending on where you open
your shop, you will have adifferent experience.
Dundalk is a relatively smalltown.
It's about 40,000 populationand we've had to sort of almost
create the need for anindependent bookshop in this
town.
And I think that's something alot of towns would identify with
, because visibility in terms ofreading is hugely important.
(18:20):
If you see a bookshop, ifyou're surrounded by books
surrounded by books, you're, youknow it almost becomes an
addictive thing.
You know people who haven'tread in a while suddenly pick up
a book again.
And if you're, if you live in atown in the Romanian Ireland
unfortunately, that don't havethe bookshop or an independent
bookshop, they will still buybooks, they will still, you know
, use Amazon, they will pick itup in the local supermarket or
(18:43):
whatever.
But the experience that Iassociate with going to an
independent bookshop is missing,and I think part of the problem
is that because book selling isvocational rather than a money
driven vocation for a lot ofpeople, I think you're
immediately behind the eightball because rents are high,
(19:06):
commercial rates are high,footfall on main streets is down
.
If you live in a town wherethere's a shopping center and
you have very seasonal changesin weather as we have, and it's
bitterly cold outside and it'slashing with rain, the option of
going onto the main street orwalking into a nice, comfortable
, air-conditioned, warm.
Um, I mean we have a shoppingcenter in dundalk which is
(19:28):
effectively a main shoppingstreet, but it's got a roof over
it, it's got air conditioning.
You know there's no anti-socialbehavior.
It's got nice shops to wanderup and down.
You can have a coffee, you can.
You know you could spend a daythere.
Now I can't compete with thatif it's teeming with rain and if
it's cold and miserable and wetand damp and you can't get
parked anywhere near my frontdoor.
So I think those sort of issueshave, I suppose I won't say
(19:52):
attacked, but they've certainlyundermined high street retail in
a way that is not helpful.
And I don't think localauthorities, who set commercial
rates and who in effect are thelandlords of that public high
street and have a responsibilityto keep it attractive and keep
it nice, sometimes don't followthrough in the way that they
(20:12):
should.
They take the commercial rates,but they'll always have a
little caveat on the bottom ofthe bill saying money collected
in your area does not mean itwill be spent in your area it
could be spent filling potholes10 miles away.
So I think there is that.
The generational thing isinteresting, I think, from a
book selling point of view.
I've often and it's funny we'reat it, 20 years now and more if
you include my previous fiveyears.
(20:33):
I have friends now who would be, maybe you know, 10, 15, 20
years young with me that Iregularly meet up with and talk
about books and I remember themas into the shop, you know
getting the famous five androlled out and stuff like that,
and you would know their parents.
And now I know them as adultsand I know their children and I
think there's always a periodbetween, I suppose, the end of
(20:53):
high school, as you would callit, and maybe college.
You know finding women, men,whatever particular variation of
that sort of thing you want toget engaged with buying a house,
getting a job, gettingpromotions, putting in the hard
yards and reading unless you'rean addictive, voracious reader
(21:14):
takes a backseat a little bitand then you get them back again
when they have their own kids.
So I think the demographics inmost bookshops and I think this
would be fairly universal iseither young up to the age of
about you know, reading HarryPotter and Scorch Trials and
that sort of thing, and then youget them back again when
they're reading the hard-bittenalcoholic detective who's
(21:34):
hunting down his wife's killeror whatever it might be, and you
lose them for about 10 or 15years in the middle because
they've got other demands on themoney and other distractions.
So I'm not sure generationallyit's as damaging as it might be,
because I think people who readwill always read and you might
lose them, but they will comeback.
I think the bigger problem isthat there are generations of
(21:55):
people being brought up now andmy first experience of money was
pocket money when I was a kidand it was going to the shop
buying sweets, comics, books,whatever.
The first experience a lot ofkids growing up have now is
being handed mom or dad's creditcard, so their spending habits
are being developed in front ofa keyboard, online browsing, and
(22:16):
, of course, the range I meanthe biggest shopping center you
will get in the world is sits onyour lap and and they can buy
from china, they can buy fromsouth america, they can buy, you
know, five miles down the road,or they can buy from the uk,
whatever.
So I think that mighteventually come through.
I mean, I know a lot of kidswho maybe are at school and you
(22:37):
would see them coming throughthe door and I'm not saying
they're socially dysfunctional,but they're different from
school kids when I was in school.
You know they come in and it'slike this, and they don't ask
you what, what school book?
They show you the cover on thephone, um, and then I always try
and engage them in conversationand say, oh, did you read the
previous book or what did youthink of it?
And there's almost a little bitof a double take.
And then they'll engage withyou and it's you know, and
(23:00):
that's what I love aboutbookshops is, and if I get
somebody who's really distractedor on the phone, I love saying
completely odd, weird left fieldthings to them, just to get
them to, you know, snap out ofit and pay attention, because I
love that idea of bookshopsbeing, you know, a part of the
community.
But I don't think.
I think I remember years ago,before we opened the bookshop,
(23:22):
there was a report commissionedby the booksellers association
of great britain and irelandwhich forensically broke down
the number of people who read ina given community obviously uk
and ireland only.
I don't know about america.
At that stage and this was backin the late 80s, the the
percentage of people in anygiven population who read
regularly was about 19 percentand that was broken down between
(23:44):
libraries, people who wouldborrow books, get them second
hand, whatever.
Now, that was before ebooks,that was before amazon, that was
before the distractions of themobile phone, before um, adhd,
and and an inability of peopleto read or to want to engage
with a, an image or a page thatdoesn't flick by waving a finger
across it.
(24:04):
So I would say that figure isprobably lower now in some ways,
but the good thing about it isit's a hard core percentage and
I think they will always readbecause I think they're
hardwired that way.
Um, but in retail terms, ifthose people aren't on the
street, that's where the problemstarts and I think you know I
still get people 20 years downthe line in the town of 40 000
(24:26):
people saying, oh, I didn't knowyou were here and it's like,
really, because they don't goout, they don't go to 10 centers
.
You know, um, you know they,they work, they, they get a
takeaway on a friday, they puton netflix and you know they
never go into town, they gettheir groceries delivered or
they go to a shopping center orthey go to a retail park and the
main street's just somethingthey drive through maybe.
(24:47):
So I think yeah, I think it's acombination.
It is yeah, and I think everytown you would find probably has
a slightly different um, Ithink the dock has always been a
town that's maybe slightly toobig to have a small village feel
, but a bit, but not big enoughto have a kind of a big city
vibe either.
I mean, I listened to your chatwith, again, dulwich Books and
(25:08):
they talked about there beingfive or six independent
bookshops within a radius.
I mean, if five or six otherbookshops opened in a radius, in
that radius of me, I'd be, I'dbe out of business tomorrow and
so would they, because I thinkthere is a sort of a
self-sustaining sort ofcommunity that comes with, um,
you know, that sort of villagetype vibe that you get in a
(25:29):
small town or and Hay-on-Wyewould be an example of that or
the bigger towns which wouldhave the population mass and
more people traveling through it.
Um, but yeah, I think you,we're still here and I'm not
going anywhere.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
And while we're talking about Dundalk, if I had
a few days to spare in Dundalk,are there any historic sites,
hikes, castles, museums do yousuggest I visit?
And, because I'm all aboutchocolate and coffee and books
and animals, where would yousuggest I go for a fabulous
afternoon tea?
Speaker 2 (26:05):
where would you suggest I'd go for a fabulous
afternoon tea?
Okay, from a pure tourist pointof view, I think the dock is,
and has been for a lot of itshistory, uh, an industrial town.
I mean, it's coming backslightly now.
We've got a couple of um, we'vegot xerox and paypal and ebay
and stuff like that here, um,but for a long time, from the,
you know, the late 90s maybeuntil maybe even earlier, maybe
(26:26):
even the mid 80s, until aboutthe early 2000s, dundalk was
quite badly affectedeconomically.
We're a border town.
So you know, you go 15 miles,you go five miles down the road
and you're in Northern Ireland,which is jurisdictionally a
different country, effectively.
And you have Newry, which a anorthern Irish town, under UK
governance, if you like, and ithas a population similar to ours
(26:48):
.
And then, down the road from us, we have Drogheda, which is
another population center ofabout 30 to 40,000.
So we, we really struggled.
We were neither one thing orthe other, and the troubles of
course, which, um, you know,scarred the country for a long
time, meant that people were abit wary of the border because
of all the connotations ofviolence and and whatever.
(27:08):
So a lot of it sort of wentover my head when I was growing
up because you were used to it.
It was just.
You know that's the way it was.
So as a result, it got quiterun down.
I would say it's it's a turn onthe up.
I would now and it's got acouple of wonderful things If
somebody was coming.
I was involved with a bidscompany.
I think you have them in theStates as well.
(27:30):
I think New York City was oneof the first bid companies.
It's a business incentivedistrict system and it's about
taking an element of thecommercial rates and giving it
to an independent company whowill spend that money to create
a nicer environment in the town.
And we've implemented since Ileft, so I can't take credit for
it.
I was on the board for a while aseries of murals depicting the
(27:53):
history of Dundalk on the sideof buildings that had previously
not been painted or cared forin a long time.
So you can walk around Dundalkand almost get a snapshot of
Dundalk's history by doing thiswalking tour, which happens at
weekends a few times a day.
It doesn't take too long, butyou get to see Oliver Plunkett
where he was held in prison.
You get to see a couple ofbeautiful murals of Cú Chulainn,
(28:16):
who was a mythical figure, whowas from this area.
You get to see people likePeter Rice, who was a locally
engineer, who worked on thePompidou and worked on the
Louvre and worked on the SydneyOpera House and things like that
.
So you get a kind of a pottedhistory.
And the guy who does it, LiamGaynor, is terrific because he
(28:36):
has the anecdotal stories to gowith it.
And all of these murals aredone by international artists
who are invited over and they'rehere for the two weeks and even
putting the murals on is almostlike a tourist attraction in
itself.
You watch them on the cherrypicker and they're up on these
buildings where I'd get vertigo.
You know You've got a fabulousand they do food during the day
(28:59):
as well a fabulous.
I live on Castle Road, which isone of the older towns, the
older streets in town, and onthe street parallel to us
there's a pub called the SpiritStore store, which is a great
local gig venue that does foodand is a an old-fashioned pub,
but it looks right out onto the,the castletown river, which you
know at almost at the mouth ofthe river and you can see the
(29:19):
moor mountains where you wouldbe spending your weekend hiking
across the moors, so you canstart in the south and you can
walk across the top of themountain and effectively you're
into another, another countrythen.
Um, but it's a beautiful part ofthe world and I often think,
because of the troubles andbecause I think a lot of people
who land in dublin sort of landand go south, they go left, they
(29:43):
go down to cork, carry thesunny southeast, they go across
to the west of to the WildAtlantic Way, and the north of
Ireland is absolutely stunning.
You know, game of Thrones wasfilmed there so you've probably
seen parts of that, albeit CGI'dup a bit.
We've got Carlingford Village,which is about a 15-minute drive
(30:04):
out the road, which is amedieval village which has
remained substantially untouchedin recent years.
The outskirts of it have becomequite clogged up.
Now at this stage there's not ahuge amount to see.
But at the end of the road thatI live on is a tower which was
built as part of a Franciscanfriary in 1270.
(30:26):
There's only one tower of itleft now at this stage, but it's
still there and it's, you know,100 feet high, or whatever it
is.
It was destroyed in the 1300sby Robert the Bruce, who you
might know from Braveheart andfilms like that.
He sacked the friary and Ithink he murdered 20 or 30
(30:49):
friars who were living there atthe time, and then he was
crowned King of Ireland in a pubwhich is just up the road from
where I am, so it's a part ofthe country that's steeped in
history.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
One of the things I love about Ireland is the Irish
mythology, so is there anywherein Dundalk that I can go to
learn a little bit more aboutthis?
Speaker 2 (31:11):
We do a thing again.
I haven't been involved in herin recent years, but um, the
anton, as it's called, is is thegreat irish myth, if you like.
It would be our equivalent ofthe king arthur legend, if you
like.
And cuhollin, um, when you readit, thomas kinsler wrote, I
think, the best englishtranslation of it um, it's, it's
mythology, but it's based verymuch in the geography of the
(31:34):
country.
And there's another lady I'llpass her details on to you by
email who lives in Arizona atthe moment, but she writes a
magazine called Reading Irelandwhich is all about, you know,
irish authors and the history ofwriting in Ireland.
But she's just compiled aseries of books which are essays
about Thomas Kinsley, who was afamous Irish scholar, probably
(31:54):
the preeminent Irish scholar.
He only died a few years agoabout on Thorn.
So we have in Dundalk a placecalled Cú Chulainn's Castle
which is on a mound.
It's kind of on the outskirtsof town and it's it's on a
raised mound well above.
It's about the highest point intown, I think.
Um, and you've got theremaining of the remains of a
(32:15):
tower.
That's there now.
I don't think it specificallyhas anything to do with cool
holland.
There was a famous wealthysmuggler who built a house there
but it was burned down in afire.
But it's still calledcoholland's castle and in the
field in front of it is astanding stone, um where he was
supposed to have been killed.
Um strapped to it as as themorrigan landed on his shoulder
(32:38):
and and signaled that he haddied.
So it's steeped in mythologyand there's a walk once a year
where people walk from themidlands on foot across it's
almost like a camino walk, ifyou like and they follow the
route of Queen Maeve's army whocame across to engage in battle
(32:59):
with Cú Chulainn.
So I mean again, it's thatthing.
It's on my doorstep, so I sortof take it for granted, but I'll
send you a few links in anemail and you can.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Well, that would be wonderful and I can put them in
the show notes.
Okay, we're running out of time, but I do want to ask you a
couple of things.
One of them is in your opinion,what makes a good bookseller a
great bookseller?
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Good bookseller?
Great, I'll let you know when Iget there.
I'm not sure.
Actually, I've been thinkingabout this a lot and I think a
lot of it is down to obviouslyyou need to be enthusiastic
about books, you need to be inlove with books, because if
you're not in love with them,then you know it's a tough job
(33:40):
to try and sell them to somebodywho isn't or is maybe, you know
, an occasional reader.
But given that most people readwithin a certain comfort zone,
if you like, I think once you doa job like yours or you do a
job like mine, you read muchmore eclectically than you ever
did before.
But most people read within thecomfort zone.
And I could quite happily gofrom one end of the year to the
other, skipping from James LeeBurke to Stephen King to Adam
(34:02):
Neville to whoever.
I never have to look at a newauthor ever, but I mean that
takes the fun out of it ever,but I mean that takes the fun
out of it.
So I think understanding books,but also listening to the
people who come in and out ofyour shop, because I don't know
everything about books.
I don't know everything abouteven the books that are in my
shop.
I'll often have somebody comeup and buy a book and I'll
(34:23):
always ask them why are youbuying that book?
I want to know, have they readit?
Have they read the authorbefore?
Was it recommended to them?
If somebody comes along and asksme to order a book, an author
that I haven't heard of before,I'll make it a point of picking
up that book when it comes inand, you know, flicking through
(34:44):
it to see if I like the writingstyle.
I mean, I think there are onlyso many stories out there, as
Shakespeare said, and he'sprobably done them all as good
as anyone will ever do them.
But but the writing style youknow the journey is is what
makes it enjoyable to read.
So, reading you know a fewpages from a book, I say, yeah,
I like that guy, I'll pick upone of his for myself, and I
think I like to to think thatyou know the staff that you have
(35:05):
, if you have.
You know one of the other shopsthat I heard on one of your and
it was funny because it was abook I love myself was talking
about somebody who wanted avampire novel, and well, I'm not
the person to talk to, butthere's somebody over there.
Talk to them.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Actually that was me.
I was at the last bookstoredowntown LA looking for vampire
books.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Yeah, and I read that way before ever.
I think I read that when itcame out first.
I picked it up in a hardbackcopy in a secondhand bookshop
somewhere.
So but I would like certaintypes of books and my staff, who
are all very good.
I work with members of my familyand then we have a few people
who come in and they all do afew days each.
So you know you get people whoonly come in.
(35:46):
They only want to come in whenSandra is there, or they only
want to come in when May isthere, and they'll be friendly
and chatty and they'll come in,or they might pick up a book,
but they come in to talk to thepeople because you know well, I
know they like my book or youknow I want to ask them about a
book, you know.
So I think, having having maybe, maybe you don't become a great
bookseller individually, but Ithink as a collective in a
(36:08):
bookshop, I think you know, as ateam you can become a great
bookselling team and I wouldnever be anywhere without the
team I have working with me.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
So yeah, I think a good indie bookshop is all about
the booksellers.
Okay, Tom, what are youcurrently reading?
Speaker 2 (36:24):
What am I currently reading?
Well, I've just finished onecalled Baby I Don't Care by Lee
Server, which is a biography of.
I mean, I'm a huge movie fan,particularly old movies, movies
where you can hear the dialogue.
You know, I want to be able tohear what the characters are
saying, not the door closing orthe you know or the cat in the
backyard screaming.
(36:45):
But I think that's just an agething with my hearing.
But I think that's just an agething with my hearing.
But I've always been a huge fanof Robert Mitchum and Lee
Serber's biography carries himright from his early days as a
kind of a hobo traveling acrossthe country, right the way
through his run ins with the law, right up until, you know when,
the winds of war and his latercareer.
So I've and I'm always readingtwo or three books at the same
(37:08):
time.
So the other books I'm readingis a series about a character
called Jackson Lamb.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
Yes, you're talking about Slow Horses.
Yes, I love the show.
In fact, I just bought thefirst book by Mick Herron.
I can't wait to start them.
But how are the books?
Did you enjoy them?
I mean, Gary Oldman playingJackson Lamb is fantastic.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
He's incredible.
The books are laugh out loudfunny.
He's the most politicallyincorrect character.
I mean, he's bad on the TV show, but in the books he's worse
and he's a much strongerpresence in the books.
He's almost in every chapter init nearly, whereas I think,
maybe because of you know, garyoldman's check that he gets he's
(37:54):
only in you know, um.
But they are incredibly funnyand very much on point.
I was reading them as they cameout over the years and you can
see boris johnson in them.
There is a character in it whois boris johnson, the faux guy
who tends to be a bit of a, anidiot for the cameras, but he's
ruthless behind it and he, theway he breaks down society and
(38:17):
political um, uh, chicanery andand backstabbing, is incredible
and you just fly through them.
They are proper thrillers, butdo do read them in sequence
though, because, like, a lot ofthem are standalone.
But the problem with them isthat, because he's quite vicious
with his characters and they doget bumped off, you'll maybe
get used to a character in bookthree and then it'll refer to
(38:39):
somebody who was in a previousbook.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
They sound a little bit like the Bosch books here
written by Michael Connelly.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
I love those two, yeah, and the other one, sorry.
I just want to give a shout outas well, which I'm really
looking forward to and I know ifyou're into movies, you like
this one as well, as I just gotthis for Christmas and I haven't
been around to reading it yet.
It's called not your baby dolland I've only just started it,
but it's it's.
I'm really enjoying it.
It's a biography of an actresscalled Anna May Wong who was
(39:06):
around and she was never really.
I think she was in a few bigbudget movies, but never the
leading actress.
But I love reading about oldHollywood and you know behind
the scenes with old Hollywoodand stuff like that, so I see
the Coast Road there behind youas well.
Is that the Coast Road?
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yes, by Alan Murren.
Oh, I love that book.
Alan's been on the show.
He's a lovely, lovely guy.
Yeah, yeah, no, it's a fabulousbook.
Well, tom, thank you so muchfor being a guest on the show
and it's been lovely chattingwith you about books and talk
and writers.
It's been a lot of fun, thankyou.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Oh, thank you for asking Delightful.
I really enjoyed it.
Lovely to chat to you, Mandy,and we'll be in touch OK.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
You've been listening to my conversation with Tom
Mookian, the owner of Row RiverBooks.
To help the show reach morepeople, please share episodes
with friends and family and onsocial media, and remember to
subscribe and leave a reviewwherever you listen to this
podcast.
To find out more about theBookshop Podcast, go to
thebookshoppodcastcom and makesure to subscribe and leave a
review wherever you listen tothe show.
You can also follow me atMandyJacksonBeverly and make
(40:13):
sure to subscribe and leave areview wherever you listen to
the show.
You can also follow me at MandyJackson Beverly on X, Instagram
and Facebook and on YouTube atthe Bookshop Podcast.
If you have a favorite indiebookshop that you'd like to
suggest we have on the podcast,I'd love to hear from you via
the contact form atthebookshoppodcastcom.
The Bookshop Podcast is writtenand produced by me, Mandy
(40:33):
Jackson-Beverly, Theme musicprovided by Brian Beverly,
executive assistant to Mandy,Adrienne Otterhahn and graphic
design by Frances Perala.
Thanks for listening and I'llsee you next time.
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