Books by Shaun

Remainders of the Day

Profile Books, 2022

Bookseller and bestselling author Shaun Bythell is back, and he has some thoughts about that Kindle you bought over lockdown.

The Bookshop in Wigtown is a bookworm’s idyll – with thousands of books across nearly a mile of shelves, a real log fire, and Captain, the bookshop cat. You’d think after twenty years, owner Shaun Bythell would be used to the customers by now.

Don’t get him wrong – there are some good ones among the antiquarian porn-hunters, die-hard Arthurians, people who confuse bookshops for libraries and the toddlers just looking for a nice cosy corner in which to wee. He’s sure there are. There must be some good ones, right?

Filled with the pernickety warmth and humour that has touched readers around the world, stuffed with literary treasures, hidden gems and incunabula, Remainders of the Day is Shaun Bythell’s latest entry in his bestselling diary series.

Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops

Profile, 2020

In twenty years behind the till in The Bookshop, Wigtown, Shaun Bythell has met pretty much every kind of customer there is – from the charming, erudite and deep-pocketed to the eccentric, flatulent and possibly larcenous.

In Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops, he distils the essence of his experience into a warm, witty and quirky taxonomy of the book-loving public. So, step inside to meet the crafty Antiquarian, the shy and retiring Erotica Browser and gormless yet strangely likeable shop assistant Student Hugo – along with much loved bookseller favourites like the passionate Sci-Fi Fan, the voracious Railway Collector and the ever-elusive Perfect Customer.

The Diary of a Bookseller

Profile, August 2017

Shaun Bythell, owner of Wigtown’s The Bookshop, charts the highs and lows of a year in the life of a man passionate and knowledgeable about books, struggling to make a living in rural Britain in the age of Amazon. He travels the country in search of rare books, strikes deals, tries to manage gloriously eccentric members of staff, deals with awkward tourists and loyal customers, and muses on the differences between bookselling now and in 1936 when George Orwell was writing his ‘Bookshop Memories’. It’s a glimpse into a life spent amongst shelves, negotiating his way between books, booklovers and customers asking where the café is…

Praise for Diary of a Bookseller

Wonderfully entertaining –Observer

Charming, darkly comic memoir…Warm, witty and laugh-out-loud funny, this gently meandering tale of British eccentricity will stay long in the memory. –Daily Mail

Bythell’s diary is one of the funniest and most honest books you’ll read this year…a real treat –Irish Times

Confessions of a Bookseller

Profile, August 2019

In his follow up to Diary of a Bookseller, Shaun Bythell documents another year in his Wigtown Bookshop.

With more than a mile of shelving, real log fires in the shop and the sea lapping nearby, the shop should be an idyll for bookworms.

Unfortunately, Shaun also has to contend with bizarre requests from people who don’t understand what a shop is, home invasions during the Wigtown Book Festival and Granny, his neurotic Italian assistant who likes digging for river mud to make poultices.

The Diary of a Bookseller (soon to be a major TV series) introduced us to the joys and frustrations of a life lived in books. Sardonic and sympathetic in equal measure, Confessions of a Bookseller will reunite readers with the characters they’ve come to know and love.

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