Could you tell us a bit about News From Nowhere. When did it start, and how long as it been here?
"NFN was founded in 1974 and it's been in several different locations around Liverpool. We've been in this building since 1995, slightly before I joined. At the time it was one of the many radical bookshops that sprang up around the UK in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s as well. Since the early 1980s it's been an all-women workers collective, incorporated as a workers co-op, which means that there's no owner and there's no boss as such. It was deliberately incorporated so the worker members of the co-op share ownership, and that it's non-hierarchical – all of the responsibility for the decision making is done collectively. The bookshop is also ran as a not-for-profit; the workers get their wages but all other money stays in the business. Also, the building we're in right now is owned by the bookshop. So many bookshops have folded over the years, we're really lucky to be in this city centre location on a really great street, and we're not going to be priced out by a landlord."
What's the ethos of the shop? Is there a specific political leaning that you stock the books around?
"We generally classify ourselves as a radical and community bookshop – radical in the sense that it's from the roots, grassroots social justice politics. The shop isn't aligned with any particular movement, but broadly it's left-wing and we sell books around socialism, anarchism, other left-wing politics generally – in the UK and worldwide. Feminism and LGBT books are hugely important to us and essential to us. Anti-racism of course, books on anti-capitalism, the environment – a huge range of issues that come under that broad umbrella.
"We don't sit there discussing and deciding every single book that we order, it tends to be individual judgement. Customer orders are a massive side of our business; the political side of things is an important part of the shop, but we're also a community bookshop so we will sell poetry, fiction, children's books and other things that aren't necessarily political. Unlike Waterstones which is often multi-floored with vast amounts of books, we can only fit a certain amount on the shelves so people will order through us and get to know us as the alternative to Amazon."