Digital Reporter Sam Quine heads to Halewood Books in Preston after it has been remarked for its 'Harry Potter-like' aesthetic.
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00:00Hi, my name is Sam Quine, Digital Reporter for the Lancashire Post and I'm heading to
00:05Hailwood and Sons, a fascinating and quirky bookstore located in Friargate,
00:10Preston. So come with me as I go to check out what books they have on offer.
00:21So the layout of the store is kind of unlike anything I've ever seen, how did
00:26you kind of come to design it like that? Well it sort of evolved over a period
00:31and Hailwood and Sons has been going since 1867 and hence we've accumulated
00:37so many books over the years with two shops in Preston and the set out has
00:41evolved over time really with the different varieties of books we keep
00:46getting offered, all sorts of subjects, all sorts of materials and they keep
00:51finding us so consequently people walk in the shop and they think they've gone
00:55into a scene in Harry Potter, you know, that's the common response, assuming
01:00oh my goodness what an amazing place and it is a real bibliophiles paradise.
01:08You've got to love books. I was gonna say, I guess it's one, it's a unique drawing point
01:13but two, it's also good to keep the amount of books that you have. Well yes, I
01:17just basically have grown up in a bookshop, I'm the fifth generation of a
01:21family of booksellers and I just love books as you can tell so I'm, people
01:26think I'm reading them all day long, I'm not, I'm sorting them, I'm going out
01:29looking at them and viewing them and buying them, attending auction sales and
01:33book fairs all over and I would love to be just sitting down reading some of
01:38them. I do occasionally get chance but not all the time. So how hard is it as a
01:44kind of independent book business to kind of compete with the likes of you
01:47near your Waterstones, the W.E. Smiths? Very hard and we couldn't do it, we
01:51wouldn't want to compete with the Waterstones. We specialise in our niche
01:55category which is out of print and older, rarer books, books people have been
02:00looking for, of people that are tracing family ancestors, want a family pedigree
02:05or trace a family history, they're looking for local history books, things
02:09like that. We cater for people who've got wants lists, libraries who've got wants
02:15lists and collectors who are trying to fill gaps in their collections. That's
02:20what we specialise in, we don't do new books like Waterstones and so on, we
02:23couldn't compete with them. Do you feel like you have a core kind of set of
02:28regular customers as well? We do, we could always do with new customers, a lot of
02:34customers get older and their shelves are full like mine and they can't take
02:39too many more so we always want new generations coming through. We've had a young
02:42boy in this morning while you've been waiting who's buying an Enid Blyton
02:47Far Away Tree book and that'll start him off. Hopefully my son started reading
02:51with Harry Potter and went on to Lord of the Rings in no time and beyond that
02:55there's no end to your reading. So yeah we need more younger readers coming
02:59through all the time but we've got a core of regulars who look for different
03:04things, amazing what some people collect. I guess on a final note, do you ever kind
03:08of struggle to find that book in the midst of all the chaos? Yes, people are amazed that I know if I've got the book. Very often I know I've got it but just putting my hand on it isn't easy
03:17because besides what you see here there's a lot more as well so yeah but
03:22it's fun, it's enjoyable and I just love books at the end of the day.