There is something quietly defiant about an independent bookshop.
You feel it the moment you step through the door. Not the whoosh of automatic sensors, not the blast of air conditioning or the glare of a marketing table stacked with whatever is currently being pushed hardest…
…but something softer. A presence. A sense that books still matter here, not just as products, but as companions.
Independent bookshops are not efficient. Thank goodness for that.
They do not always have what you went in for.
Even better.
Because what they do have is far more valuable: conversation, curiosity, and care. They recommend rather than sell. They display rather than stack. They remember your name, your tastes, your last purchase. They are, in the truest sense, custodians of stories; both those printed on the page and those lived in the community around them.
And that is precisely why they matter.
Because the modern alternative, the large, polished, corporate branch, all identical shelving and centrally dictated promotions, may look impressive, but often strips books of their individuality.
Range becomes algorithm.
Visibility becomes payment.
Discovery becomes controlled.
You walk in and everything is there… yet somehow less is found.
For authors, particularly those without a marketing machine behind them, the difference is profound.
In the independent shop, a book can breathe.
It can sit on a shelf because someone believes in it.
It can be hand-sold, spoken about, championed. In the larger chains, unless you are part of the system, you risk becoming invisible, present, but not seen.
And so we come to Norwich. To Jarrold.
For generations, that book department was more than just a place to buy a novel. It was woven into the fabric of the city itself; a space where readers wandered, where children discovered stories for the first time, where local authors were not just stocked, but supported.
I know that personally.
To walk in and see your own work there, to know it had been chosen, placed, given a chance, meant something.
It meant you were part of a community, not just a supply chain.
Jarrold understood that. It always did.
It had heritage in its bones-bookselling and printing stretching back centuries, and it carried that responsibility lightly but meaningfully.
It stocked local interest titles in a way few places ever truly commit to, giving a platform to voices that might otherwise never be heard.
Which is why its closure feels so significant.
The official reasoning is understandable enough. The world has changed. Margins are tight. Online retailers and large-scale competition have taken an enormous share of the market. Even long-established, independent retailers are forced to make difficult decisions just to survive.
But understanding something does not make it any less sad.
Because when a book department like that disappears, something else goes with it. Something less measurable. Something harder to replace.
We lose a space where books were not just transactions.
We lose a place that made room for the local voice.
We lose, in some small but real way, a piece of the cultural life of a city.
And perhaps most poignantly, we are reminded that these places do not survive on sentiment alone.
They survive when we use them.
That is the uncomfortable truth at the heart of all this. We love independent bookshops. We speak warmly of them. We mourn them when they go.
But too often, we do not buy from them.
So this is not just a lament. It is, quietly, a call.
Seek them out.
Step inside.
Take your time. Buy the book you didn’t plan to buy. Talk to the person behind the counter. Let them recommend something unexpected.
Because every independent bookshop that still stands is, in its own way, holding the line.
Holding it against uniformity. Against invisibility. Against a world where books risk becoming just another product in an endless scroll.
Jarrold’s book department is gone. That is a fact.
But the spirit it represented, the belief that books deserve care, space, and advocacy, does not have to go with it.
That part is still in our hands.
