Cheshire-based fantasy writer Matthew Palmer was rather excited when a new fantasy-focused bookshop opened in a nearby village. Just before Christmas, he met with the owner, Abby Munro, and spoke about the journey to opening Paper+Word.
Matt: To start would you like to introduce yourself?
Abby (pictured left): I have recently opened a fantasy exclusive bookshop in Bebington Village on the Wirral. We are the first brick and mortar, fantasy-only bookshop of our kind, which is very exciting. It has been going incredibly well so far; we’ve been open for three weeks. Prior to that, we did exist online, and we did everything except for books. We do a lot of book accessories as well. Now my life is now twenty-four-seven fantasy books, and it’s great.
Matt: That is great. What was your what was your background before you started Paper+Word?
Abby: My professional background is in project management. I was a project manager for an engineering company, and then I moved over into the design world. I did architectural visualisation and VR and CG images. I managed a team in Liverpool, which was amazing.
Before Paper+Word, I would have said it was my dream job. But it got to the point where Paper+Word had grown bigger than we ever expected it to, and I had to make a choice between the two. I think I would have always had a regret if I didn’t try and see if I could make it my full-time jam. So that’s what I did.
Matt: I think there is living the dream and then there is living the fantasy! Most people have dreams that are within reach and dreams that are further off, and somehow, you manage to make this happen. What started your love of fantasy in general?
Abby: I’ve always been a very big reader. My siblings are much older than me. They’re thirteen or sixteen years older than me, so I was almost like an only child growing up. My favourite thing to do was read. My mum was a very big reader, as was my grandma. My mum was very into fantasy and scifi. When I was younger, I didn’t really realise that was what she chose to read. I just knew that she had cool books. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was one of her favourites, and, of course, Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
I think The Hobbit was probably the first book of hers that I tried to steal. It blossomed from there, but I have always just been an avid reader. For some reason, fantasy has been the genre that just makes me happy. I have quite a busy brain, and I find that fantasy is one of the few things that turns that off and takes me into another realm. Literally, I guess! And there’s always more fantasy to read. Every time I tell myself maybe I’ll try something else, there’s just always more there to read.
Matt: If you were having to narrow it down, who would be your favourite fantasy writer of all time? I know that’s a difficult question!
Abby: That is a difficult question! I absolutely love Robin Hobb. The Realm of the Elderlings, especially, I am not sure how many times I’ve read them all now, but I know I will do it more times, because it’s just beautiful. It’s an incredible story, but her writing is so special. I really like to put sticky tabs in when I’m reading a book. They have no organisation to them—it might be something funny or a plot line or whatever—but her books are so heavily tabbed because she describes everything in such an effortlessly beautiful way. I always try and persuade people into reading Robin Hobb because it’s so much more than just the story with her. It’s her writing as well. And you can stay in those books forever. There’re not many series that you follow a character from the beginning to the end of their life.
Matt: I think her work was really ahead of its time as well. She’s got a more realistic view of fantasy that influenced the trend towards Grimdark. I especially I love the Fool; as very early non-binary/genderfluid representation I think it was quite a big deal for a lot of people.
Abby: Definitely. Especially as the first books were coming out in the nineties, and that wasn’t a representation that you had very often then. I really like that it’s just accepted. I know that Fitz struggles with it in in parts, but mostly because I think he feels left out. He just wants all of the Fool for himself. Knowing that there were secret parts that he didn’t have, I think, was what hurt him more than anything.
Matt: And, of course, Fitz never had any secrets… Paper+Word existed before the physical bookshop. So how did you get started?
Abby: When I got my job in Liverpool at the design agency, I was living on the outskirts of Chester, so I had the entire Merseyrail track beginning to end to get to work and back. I absolutely loved that because it meant I could get on and read my books the whole time. I’m a hardback reader; I prefer to read in hardback. The books I was taking with me were getting bashed and broken and I was looking for a book sleeve. At the time, they didn’t really exist and the ones that did were not really my vibe. So I made some for myself, and then more people kept asking me for them—fellow readers at work or people on the train. Then it turned into a business that just kept snowballing and snowballing.
A couple of years ago, alongside the book sleeves we were making, we started to incorporate other small businesses that had really lovely items aimed at readers. Reading journals, bookmarks and things like that. The big dream, the unattainable dream was always maybe this might turn into a bookshop one day. About eighteen months ago, we kind of sat down and had that conversation with numbers and thought, is this actually doable? And we thought, fuck it. I think it is.
Matt: I’ve got one of your book sleeves right here!
Abby: Yay! That’s tutti frutti!
Matt: It’s lovely. I travel on public transport all the time to get to work and back again. Being able to keep books nice and safe, especially when you’ve got signed copies or special editions that you want to keep nice, is a real boon.
It was a big leap to go to real life from the online digital space. Was there anything holding you back? Did you have any second thoughts?
Abby: We definitely did a lot of thinking. I kept it to myself for a little while because I thought that if I told my husband he might just pop that bubble. After I thought that the numbers felt okay, we talked about it. If you decide to open a bookshop in an age where there’s plenty of other places for people to buy books, and cheaper if they wanted to, you really have to be confident in what you’re doing. You need to believe in the vision that you want to bring to life to actually go for it. It did feel a bit insane for a while, but then we just kind of convinced each other that it was the perfect thing to do.
Matt: And you’ve got a great location. I haven’t been to Bebington too much, but I’m going to become a regular now because you’ve got you’ve got Paper+Word, then you’ve got a comic shop a little bit down the road, and then you’ve got a gaming shop just past that. Was that intentional? Did you think, ‘oh, that’s a good location, we’ve already got some people there.’
Abby: It was a happy coincidence, to be honest. In in my dreams I’d always thought that when I grow up and have my bookshop, that it would be in Bebington Village. I did think that it would be in Boots the chemist, as they have these lovely windows, and that was what I envisioned in my dreams. But the building that we’re in is perfect. We wanted a building that was beautiful. I think if you’re opening a bookshop, the shop itself has to be part of what makes it special. I knew that I didn’t want a new rectangular unit that didn’t really have any soul.
That limited us when it came to Bebington Village. The dream of moving there felt like it was unattainable because there weren’t any of those spaces that were unoccupied. Then one day, we were walking through the village to the pub, and there was a little sign in the window of the florist saying that it was up for let. We both just stopped in our tracks and were like, oh my god. I can’t believe that they knew we needed this building.
We kept it a secret for a while because there’s loads of things and hoops you have to jump through and lots of stuff to do in the background. When we finally did tease where we were going to be, Bullwark Games, who are a board game café, messaged us and said ‘we think you might be in our village, and we need to talk.’ I met with them, and this was before Kraken Comics had announced their opening, but they got in contact. We talked about how the three of us fit together and it’s just been it’s been a great relationship because, obviously, we share a customer base. The majority of people that go to one want to go to the other two as well, and we can make sure that we can complete each other’s stories. So if I have the book, we’ll make sure that Kraken have the graphic novels or that Bulwark might have the games. We can cover the full story across the three of us, and it worked really well.
Matt: I think that that brings us into something that is going to be an ongoing theme in this conversation. That this is a story about the little communities that form. Which that leads me on to my next question: You went on to Kickstarter to raise some of the initial funds for opening the shop. What was that experience like?
Abby: Absolutely terrifying! It was really, really scary. We knew that it would be difficult for us to raise the full volume of money needed from our savings. We knew that we needed to top it up in some way. Kickstarter was the best option for me because with Kickstarter backers get something back, and I really wanted to make sure that it was a two-way thing. We weren’t just doing a crowdfunder and asking for funding; we wanted people involved. We wanted that community.
It took a lot of time and maths and setup and thinking, before we started. I was just hoping, really, that people would turn up and would believe in us.
Kickstarter has very specific rules relating to things that don’t yet exist. You’re not allowed to show CG images of what the bookshop might be, for example. You have to be very clear that it doesn’t exist yet. Trying to get across the vision that was in my head, and hoping that people will believe in that, it was a lot. It was me showing up on social media every day saying what was happening, the updates with the shop itself, and it was absolutely crazy and exhausting, but it was so, so rewarding. Everyone was so excited, and everybody shared it. Everyone thought it was a great idea. And we went over our target in the end. We raised twenty-six thousand pounds, which is wild.
Matt: As the kickstarter finished, it was looking slightly touch and go for a while, wasn’t it?
Abby: It was questionable, yeah, at the end.
Matt: What sort of initial what challenges did you have between that point and making the bookshop a reality?
Abby: We had a bit of bad luck for a while. The first thing is that during the Kickstarter, we had to register for VAT and that then meant that when the Kickstarter funds came through, all of the calculating that we’d done did not include VAT. So we lost a good chunk of money at that point.
Then things became very difficult with our building. We were very lucky that one day we happened to be going in to do some measuring. It was the day after we had heavy snows very early in the year. The snow had just started to melt, but we had loads of snow. When we opened the door, it was just raining inside. Which is terrible, but also it was great that we were there on that day, because it meant that we knew that there were issues. We ended up paying for a survey to be done because we seemed to be the only ones that thought that inside rain was an issue…
The survey told us that we needed a new roof. The supporting lintels above the windows and the door were not supporting the roof and needed to be replaced. There was a big crack through the building and everything then became very complicated. Structural engineers were involved. We were hoping that we’d be open in May, and we didn’t then manage to open until mid-November.
During that time, we had a whole new roof, but more than just the roof came off because the bricks had to be taken down to the level of the windows and to be rebuilt. The whole roof structure was rebuilt inside and out, all the wooden beams, the tiles and the felting. Because we’re in a conservation area the bricks had to be taken off, cleaned, numbered and put back where they were before.
It was a lot of work and a lot of stress. Fortunately, that didn’t come out of any of our money. That was the landlord. It did mean that all of our plans were pushed back. We’d already set wheels in motion. We had boxes and boxes of books arriving all that time. Our house was full, from floor to ceiling in every room. There was one point where we thought, is this actually going to happen? Have we just done something crazy? Do we need to find somewhere new? Just as we were starting to make a plan B, everything started to come together and fall into place.
Matt: It adds to a sort of fairy tale quality of this. First you have the rising tension, and then you have your opening day—which was spectacular.
Abby: Yeah.
Matt: Some people I spoke to waited for two hours to get in. There were massive queues going all the way down the street. Did you have any idea that that was going happen on that day and that it would be such a roaring success?
Abby: No. Not at all. I knew that we had a lot of Kickstarter backers that were invested in this, and I knew that there had been a really great reception from the local community as they saw things happening with the building. We were supposed to open in May and it took us so long, I was so stressed about the promise that we’d made to everyone and the content we were putting out into the world. I just started sharing everything. I think somehow out of my panic, it actually generated a community of people that were so invested in the journey and this bookshop finally opening. The world and his wife seemed to be there on open day.
I was like: ‘Oh, it’d be really nice if there’s just a few people ready for us opening. That would be really lovely.’ And there were a few people there before we arrived, and then by the time we unlocked the door, we couldn’t see the end of the queue. It went all the way through the village, and then it stayed like that all day. We had to stop people joining around two o’clock, and we still ended up staying open till six just to cover everyone. Suddenly, I needed to order a lot more books very quickly!
Matt: That’s a good problem to have! How did you recover afterwards? By the end of that day, you must have been absolutely shattered.
Abby: We were. I know that when we finally locked the door, the rest of the team had gone because we were open a little bit later. It was just me and my husband and our little boy who’s five. We just sort of sat in our big comfy chairs in the shop and had a little cry and said how insane the day was, and we couldn’t believe that it’s happened.
We locked up, turned everything off. We met our friends in the pub, which is in the village as well. I came home and had a takeaway and, again, just sort of sat thinking; ‘I can’t believe it. I can’t believe how many books we sold.’ I had to work out which ones did the best, and ended up trying to order more books at eleven o’clock at night.
It’s been a dream. It’s been absolutely crazy. It still doesn’t really feel like it’s mine if I’m honest. I feel like I’m just playing shop.
Matt: it’s fantastic that so many people turned out, and you’re still very busy. What do you think the success of that day says about fantasy as a genre, and how popular it is at the moment?
Abby: I think it is hugely popular. I think that epic fantasy has been a part of a lot of people’s lives for a long time. Then over the last few years BookTok has taken off and it’s introduced a whole new chunk of people to different types of fantasy. Romantasy has brought a lot of people into fantasy that didn’t know that they liked it.
What we’re certainly noticing in the shop is that a lot of people are coming in saying that they’ve started with BookTok titles like A Court of Thorns and Roses or Fourth Wing and they’re saying that they just need more. They need bigger. They’re branching out into dark fantasy or epic fantasy or going back to classics like Terry Pratchett and Tolkien. It’s so incredible to see that journey of people finding all these things for the first time and, like I said earlier, there’s just always more to read. There’s always something else. Whatever it is that you like—whether it’s dragons, the romance, or the battles—there is a path you can follow and there’s an infinite number of stories along those lines. It’s so exciting to see all these new and old fantasy lovers exploring the different corners of the genre.
Matt: What does the future hold for Paper+Word?
Abby: That’s a good question. I can’t imagine us ever leaving our building. I feel very attached to it now. I think if we were going to expand physically, we’re more likely to either eat in further down the road, or to have a second location somewhere. I kind of like that idea but it would have to be, again, the perfect building, the perfect place.
For now, what I really want to do is expand our offering within the bookshop itself. Next year, we’re going to introduce indie authors and smaller publishing houses. We’re going to start doing author events, whether that’s signings and releases or even just talks. We have an artist lined up that’s going to do some fantasy map making with us. You know, just more enjoyable community bookish things.
Matt: You have great interview technique, naturally leading me to my next question. In the British Fantasy Society, we’ve got a lot of aspiring authors and indie authors that are members. What advice would you give to indie authors who want to see their books in Paper+Word?
Abby: We’ve had a lot of people reach out to us or popping into the shop and telling us all of their exciting things that they’re writing. The reason that we’ve staggered the addition of indie books is because with independent authors or smaller publishing houses, we’d have to order in a very different way. Person to person, book to book. It’s a very lengthy process for us. We didn’t want that to get lost in our initial freak outs of about how the tills work and the day-to-day things.
We’ve set up on our website an author submissions form, so you can send in details for something that you’ve finished writing or if there’s anything that you want us to be involved in. We will continuously be working through that. Anything new that pops up, we get a notification. We will check out that book, see how we buy it, where we buy it, whether we think it fits within our bookshop, and then we will add them in when we will start filling out our independent shelves.
Matt: So just to close things out, what are you reading at the moment? What’s your what’s your book of choice?
Abby: I’m currently reading Quicksilver by Callie Hart. I feel like I’ve been persuaded into that because the second in that series came out about two weeks ago, and everybody has been coming in asking for it and I felt like I had FOMO. My next read is going to be The Dandelion Dynasty by Ken Liu. Which is going be one of our next book club picks. We have a fantasy book club as well. I like to get ahead and read that before we go into it as a group. And I might maybe sneak in a little festive one in between as well.
Matt: Are there any books that you are desperately excited for in the new year?
Abby: There is something I’m desperately excited for that I only actually found out about a week or so ago: The Broken Binding are having their own press from next year. I believe that their first release is going be Ryan Cahill’s Of Blood and Fire. I know I can only get hold of the paperback currently, but they have a really lovely hardback special edition version coming out that we are able to order as a bookshop, and we can stock. I’m really looking forward to having that beautiful edition, but also to just seeing everything that the Broken Binding publishing house is going to release.
Matt: Where can people find you online?
Abby: Check out our website, we’ll be adding books that are in store on there in a few weeks’ time. We also have Instagram, YouTube, and all of those places. You can see more behind the scenes of the bookshop. If you want to follow the scary tale of all the renovations, you can see those as well.
Thank you so much for joining us!
Paper + Word (the bookshop) can be found at 20 Church Road, Bebington, Wirral CH63 7PH
Visit paperandword.com, or follow the store on YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok and Instagram @paperandword
(All photos by Folkstar Photography)
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