A conversation with: Rhiannon from 'The Beau Book Nook'
An interview with Rhiannon Wynne Thompson-Owen, owner of the sparkling, new bookshop 'The Beau Book Nook' in Beaumaris.
The Beau Book Nook offers a brilliant range of genres, from BookTok-famous romances to niche short story collections. Restless toddlers? There is a magical children’s area for your little ones to explore some new, exciting stories whilst you browse some books of your own! Can’t find a quiet space to write? The Beau Book Nook offers a peaceful sanctuary for any writer to sit and get their head down, whilst enjoying a hot cup of tea! Tony Roberts’ famous children’s series Alfie and the Dragon, is available to purchase at The Beau Book Nook. As well as other great books from Redstart, such as Gullivor the Hungry Seagull by Lynne Morris, and Theo Bear: A Midnight Wish by Ellie Harley- Jones.
She took a big chance.
What made you start this bookshop?
I’ve always wanted to own a bookshop. Always. And after sort of jobbing around a lot in my 20s, I ended up working in marketing, which I loved. It was great, but it was a lot of travel and really long days. I didn’t always love what I was promoting, and I found it really difficult because I’m quite a passionate person. And when I wasn’t feeling really passionate about something, it’s hard to get excited about marketing that and promoting it to other people. So, while I was pregnant, I carried on working, but was finding it harder and harder. It was taking a lot of my energy away from what was my new priority. And then after having my baby, the thought of doing that, plus the long days of travelling, just felt completely impossible. So, I worked with a few small businesses in the area, and I’ve got a really good knowledge of Beaumaris anyway from previous jobs. But I still wanted more and more and more. And this shop unit had been up for rent for a while, and I had been jokingly, not jokingly, referring to it as my bookshop. So then one day, it was the 5th of November, I came past, and I said to my husband, I’m just going to go in and look and he said, we’re opening a bookshop, aren’t we? I came here and looked on the 5th of November, I signed the contract for the units on the 14th of November and we opened doors for trading on the 29th of November.
A community bound by books.
How big is the community here? How much does that affect the environment of the bookstore?
Oh, it’s everything. Yeah, the best thing about running a bookshop is meeting the sort of people who come into bookshops. The thing that they share is this curiosity and an interest in what’s going on around them. And the response that we’ve had has just been amazing. There are book groups in the area, and they were sort of instantly in their WhatsApp groups messaging each other, like, there’s a book shop opening, and because we’d put a big paper sign in the window, apparently they were all lighting up each other’s phones. And they were just incredible when we were getting up and running. I started running creative writing sessions here. [I] got a really great local author who also teaches adult creative writing, and she brought in some people that she already knew, but also a load of other people from the area. You just keep building and building on who your core group is, which is beautiful. It’s really rewarding and it’s an area where it naturally attracts creative and curious people and it naturally encourages that in the people who are from here. So it’s really a real privilege to be a part of that and to be able to contribute to it in some way.
First make it, then make it good.
What advice would you give to someone starting their own small business or bookshop? Would you encourage them to do it all?
Yeah, just do it. That would be my advice. What I kept saying was, 'First make it, then make it good'. And I don’t know that that’s the right approach for everybody, but if you’re unsure, that would be what I would recommend to do. If you’ve got an idea, if you’ve got a passion, just do the thing. Just make it happen first, you can fine-tune and tweak and stuff afterwards. If stuff goes wrong, that’s what your accountant is for. And you know, we did this. I can’t stress enough, like, we had no safety net. Our savings had been blitzed by maternity leave, and my husband is also self-employed. It was just, it felt like a chance to really do something significant for us. And I’ve promised that, you know, if this doesn’t pay off, then yes, I will go back to working full-time, but I will do that with the knowledge that I tried this thing. I gave everything I could, and it’s okay if it goes wrong after that. It’ll hurt, like hell, but it’s okay if it happens.
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I reread it every year.
You have so many different genres of books here. If I can put you on the spot, if there’s one book in here that you’d have to choose as your all-time favourite, which one would you pick?
It’s The Lord of the Rings. No doubt. It’s The Lord of the Rings. I reread it every year. Yeah. Cover to cover, read the whole book. The Lord of the Rings is when my brain knows it’s on a break. So if I have any time off, I don’t know when that will next happen, but whenever I have time off, I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings beginning to end, and my brain goes, oh, okay, that’s great.
Things that are a little bit different.
What’s your criteria for books you stock here?
I don’t stock the bestsellers list and things like that in here. I’m happy to order them for people. But I cannot compete with Amazon, with Asda, with Tesco’s on price. And the volume of those books that come out is just immense. What I like are the ones who are, I have a lot of first-time novelists, or people who haven’t written anything in ages, and then they’ve got something that’s maybe a bit different to their previous work. I like the quieter ones. If something is the Radio 4 Book of Bedtime, that is probably going to end up on the shelf at some point. So I try and keep it so that it’s things that are a little bit different, because that’s the best thing about coming to a bookshop, isn’t it? Finding something you didn’t know you needed, I think, is unexpected. And yeah, the amount that’s being produced at the moment would make it, especially for the size of this space, completely impractical for me to try and keep up.
Rhiannon’s Book Recommendations.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
I think even as an overhyped book, it’s a bit of a dark horse. So that’s my overrated one that I would recommend.
Children Are Civilians Too by Heinrich Bӧll
It’s a collection of stories about East Germany, in the Second World War and post-Second World War. And it’s a really beautiful study of humanity and of war, of what it does to people. But also it’s really real because he was a soldier in the Second World War, and yeah, it’s quite difficult to track down now. If I manage it, it’s gonna get its own shelf because his writings just incredible. It’s absolutely amazing.
The Dance Tree by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
That is a historical novel, based on the dancing plagues in Europe in the Middle Ages. And it’s most specifically about one woman living through that time. Not an easy read by any stretch, but her writing is just incredible.
How to find The Beau Book Nook:
18 Church St, Beaumaris, LL58 8AB