Today, we continue our author interview series by speaking to Sarah Henshaw, the owner of The Book Barge and the author of The Bookshop That Floated Away!

We’ve already reviewed The Bookshop That Floated Away over on the main site, and we even paid a visit to the barge and released a video of it over on our YouTube channel. We were lucky enough to coax Sarah in to agreeing to an interview, so listen to what we talked about below, or read on to find out more…

“”You have to give an experience to customers”

We speak to with author and book shop proprietress Sarah Henshaw

It’s the weekend after we paid a visit to Sarah and the Book Barge, and we’re catching up with her on the phone after a hard day’s work selling books. “I’m in the Peak District this weekend at a vintage bicycle festival,” she explains. “It’s called L’Eroica Britannia - it’s held annually in Italy but it’s in England for the first time.”

“I’m selling books from a bike,” Sarah continues, referring to the Book Bike that she mentions in the book that she released about her adventures. “It’s a 1940s butcher/baker delivery bike with a big metal front basket which can fit about fifty books in, so it’s a very tiny bookshop on wheels.” The unique look is her USP at events like these, and it certainly seems to be working - “It’s been really busy,” she explains.

When Sarah was touring the country on the barge, she took some time out to cycle to Hay-On-Wye, but she explains that “this time it’s a little bit more laid back.” Last time, she cycled from Cardigan Bay on the west coast of Wales to Hay-On-Wye near the English border, “so it was over four days and there were lots of mountains in the way. This time,” she continues, “I’m just wheeling it around a festival – much more chilled out and easier on the legs.”

Sarah Henshaw

Sarah and Joseph (Joseph is the name of the barge) are currently docked at Barton Marina in the Midlands, not far from where I grew up - “When I set up the Book Barge,” she explains, “I was living really close by, about twenty minutes away. It just seemed like a convenient place to moor the boat and it has the advantage, that marina in particular, of being all set up for retail already.”

We paid them a visit a couple of weeks ago, and we filmed the whole thing in the clip that you can watch below - it’s a great location because, as Sarah explains, “there are pubs there, shops along the promenade and there’s a cinema now as well, so it gets quite a lot of footfall.”

It’s a little different to some of the spots that she visited during her tour of the country - “When I first started in Barton,” Sarah reveals, “I had no intention of moving it at all, so I didn’t really look in to the possibility of trading in different places. When I got to Bristol, I realised it’s not under British Waterways’ jurisdiction, so there were problems with trading and health and safety.”

The book itself came about almost by accident - “I didn’t think it would be picked up by a publisher,” Sarah explains. “I did a six month trip with the boat to try to promote it, because it would’ve closed otherwise, and I was writing blog posts as I went. When I got back, the shop did really well for a couple of weeks – it thrives on the novelty value so once people were used to it being back again I thought I’d be in the same situation as I was before I set off.”

That’s when the idea for the book came about. “I turned some of the blog posts in to book chapters,” she says. “And after four of these chapters a publisher got in touch and said, ‘Do you fancy turning this in to an actual published book?’”

And it’s not just Sarah’s own blog that’s been useful - book bloggers and social media users have “been absolutely invaluable” in helping her to get the word out. “I was so skeptical of social media to begin with,” Sarah admits. “I’m a bit of a technophobe, and I only set up the Twitter account for the book barge about two weeks before we set off. It was a lifesaver – people were following me and retweeting me when I said where I was and what I needed, because I was swapping stock as I went for showers and meals and things. I couldn’t have orchestrated it as well if I’d relied on sending press releases to the local newspapers. I don’t know how else I would have done it without bloggers and social media.”

Sarah Henshaw - The Bookshop That Floated Away

Being a book shop on a boat gives Sarah a huge advantage when competing against the modern giants of the industry, like Amazon and Waterstones - she says that modern book-selling is all about the experience. “I don’t think many independent booksellers can compete on price with Amazon,” she explains. “You have to give a really good shopping experience to customers. People enjoy the novelty of stepping aboard a boat - kids especially enjoy it.”

“It was the same at the festival today,” Sarah continues. “People are really excited about seeing a book bike, taking pictures and tweeting them and putting them on Instagram and stuff. You have to give them something to get excited about as well as the books.”

Which is where the cakes come in - Sarah’s notorious for her love of Victoria sponge cakes, and she offers free tea and cake to her visitors. “I kind of want people to linger a bit and spend more time browsing,” she confesses. “I think that’s where you get the sales anyway, but it’s also because I like having like-minded people to talk to. With Amazon it’s a completely different experience, but obviously they’ve got low prices and next day delivery and stuff like that.”

The Book Bike

Another difference between the Book Barge and the huge online stores is that the barge can’t stock as many books. “That works both ways,” Sarah explains. “A lot of people are disappointed by the small stock, but I also think you can curate the shop with a lot more thought, so I feel like I can sell every single book on there. They all feel familiar, and I live on the boat as well and so I see them all the time.”

Which begs the question of how she decides which books to stock, and Sarah thinks that she’s the worst bookseller to ask. “I just choose ones I like and hope that my enthusiasm for them comes across when customers walk in,” she says. “I have a few regular customers who come in and I’ll order stuff for them, but mostly I buy books that I’m curious about.”

Tragically, though, living and working in a bookshop doesn’t actually mean that you get to read more. “I think people assume that if you work at a bookshop then you can just sit and read all day,” Sarah explains. “That was one of the things that made me want to set up the shop in the first place, but it’s really hard because people will keep walking in and interrupting, so I don’t read as much as I used to when I had a 9-5 journalism job.”

Still, she wouldn’t be much of a bookseller if she didn’t read it all, and Sarah says that she’s currently reading Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton. “She’s an author and an artist,” she explains, “and she wrote one recently called ‘Was She Pretty?’ She talks about her relationship with her boyfriend and all his exes – she’s slightly jealous and without meeting them she draws pictures of what she imagines them to be like. It’s just a really quirky, lovely book.”

Leanne Shapton - Swimming Studies

Living on a boat can get lonely at times, so Sarah took on board a rabbit called Napoleon Bunnyparte to keep her company. He’s not always well-behaved, though - “he put me off having more animal shipmates for life,” Sarah says. “He destroys about 10% of my stock through nibbling. And a dog weed against some of my books at this festival today, so I’ve been put off animals.”

Still, Napoleon has earned his keep - “I wanted company when I was moving around the country,” Sarah explains. “You meet a lot of people along the way, but there were lots of really long stretches when I was just at the tiller outside on my own. I just liked the thought of having some kind of companion.”

When you read Sarah’s book, her travels sound quite glamorous, but it’s not always the case. “There’s nothing worse than a rainy day on the canal,” she says. “My spirits fluctuated along the way, but going back to social media and blogging, there’s nothing better than when you’re feeling a bit low and then you find a nice message waiting for you or a really encouraging e-mail.”

Sarah Henshaw and the Book Barge

So what’s next for Sarah and the Book Barge? “I don’t know if I can inflict my writing on anyone else,” Sarah laughs, but she does say that she’d quite like to write a book for kids. “I’ve sort of half-started one,” she tells us. “But I think there’s a limited market for dung beetle children’s stories.”

As for the Book Barge itself, there are plans afoot - “I’m taking it to France next Spring,” Sarah reveals. “I’ve been desperate to do it and I’ve been trying to figure out an excuse to, and last summer I found a really, really cheap building in Burgundy for £15,000, which seems ridiculous. It comes with a plot of land and a well and it’s on the canal, more importantly. I’ll go there, live on the boat, do up the house and then hopefully turn it in to one big bookshop.”

Logistically, that could be difficult, but there are ways of doing it - “I want to take the boat across the channel,” Sarah explains. “It has been done a few times. They’re not the most stable things, you have to wait for a calm day and you need some sort of ex merchant navy type to go with you and to try and avoid the P&O Ferries bearing down on you, but it is possible and so that’s what I want to do.”

It’s at times like these that I’m glad that both of my feet are firmly on the ground.

The Book Barge

Sarah Henshaw is the author of The Bookshop That Floated Away and the owner and proprietress of the Book Barge. Be sure to follow her on Facebook and Twitter to keep up to date with her exploits!

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