Welcome to the Five Leaves Bookshop
One of the few independents to open in any UK city centre this century! Find us opposite Nottingham Tourism centre – see map on the right.
Located in the centre of Nottingham, we specialise in:
Cityscape and Landscape, Politics, Fiction and Poetry,
Lesbian and Gay, Counterculture, International writing, and Magazines and Journals.
We are open Monday – Saturday 10.00am – 5.30pm, Sundays 12.00 – 4.00pm
Newsflash – Five Leaves Bookshop set up a national Feminist Book Fortnight for 2018, which will include many writers, publishers and about fifty independent bookshops. The fortnight ran from 16-30 June and has its own website https://feministbookfortnight.wordpress.com/
#FBF2018
Newsflash #2 - We have been regional finalists for the British Book Awards, Independent Bookshop of the Year three times in a row, 2016, 2017 and 2018. This year Five Leaves won the national final, and is the British Book Awards Independent Bookshop of the Year!
In the wake of the award, we have had a refit, new shelving, new layout, new children’s area.
If there was any doubt that Five Leaves is a radical bookshop it was dispelled the day after the 2015 General Election when a stream of Labour voters, Greens and assorted lefties drifted into the shop seeking comfort after the storm. We found ourselves providing an open therapy group for the forlorn (as we were ourselves). We printed up some badges – Don’t Blame Me, I Voted Labour/Green/I’m an Anarchist, as well as a set carrying the Joe Hill slogan, Don’t Mourn, Organise… This happened again after the Brexit vote and again after the American Presidential election! But not after the 2017 election…
But how can a political bookshop survive on the high street? We were, in November 2013, the first independent of any description to open in a city centre this century, and there are not many radical bookshops around. Like any good independent, we prioritise customer service – we offer next day supply for most UK books and one or two weeks for most books from the USA. Overall, our stock might be different to most other independents but some months our best-sellers are those that also appear on the best-sellers lists generally. We make sure that there is enough choice for anyone coming into the shop, regardless of their views. We have one very regular customer, for example, who only buys books on Buddhism. Others head straight for our cityscape and landscape sections and quite a few other regulars never get further than poetry. Poetry is important to us, not least as it is a strong interest of one member of staff, and we regularly put on readings.
But in any case, radical books do shift – whether they be academic, polemic or historical. Many of our customers, however, come for the specialist areas of the shop – Autism, Travellers/Roma, Anarchism, Jewish interest (our best selling magazine is Jewish Socialist!), Transgender, Black History… We might not stock celebrity biographies but for some of our customers it is more important that 25% of our fiction is in translation, with its own dedicated section. And in 2017 several hundred people came to Nottingham’s first radical bookfair.
Five Leaves Bookshop works with dozens of local community groups including trade unions, the Quakers, Nottingham Irish Studies Group, Nottingham Women’s History and various departments at our two local universities. We run an events programme with at least one meeting in the shop every week. Our own mini-Festival, Bread and Roses, attracted 850 people in its first outing, with packed events for Owen Jones, Natalie Bennett (leader of the Green Party) and cult-writer Iain Sinclair. In 2017 Iain Sinclair returned, and other guests included George Monbiot, and Shami Chakrabarti. The week also included a theatre show on Paul Robeson. All in all, over 6,000 people attended our events last year.
With four full years and five Christmasses under our belt we are moving forward steadily – steadily enough have paid the staff the Living Wage since just after the shop opened. Nobody in the booktrade should earn less than the cost of a standard paperback novel.
The bookshop grew out of the longstanding Five Leaves Publications, which has been publishing literary, social history and political books since 1995. One of our staff wrote the bid for Nottingham to become a UNESCO City of Literature. We published a 5,000 print run book of commissioned stories by local writers including John Harvey, Alison Moore and Paula Rawsthorne as part of a literature development project in the city run jointly with Nottingham Writers’ Studio and Bromley House Library, in support of the bid.
If there was ever a time when independent bookshops simply waited for customers to show up we feel that is long gone. We work hard to involve and be involved with as many groups i
n the city as we can. And not just in the city – from its previous publishing base and now from the bookshop we work with the Leicester Centre for Creative Writing to run the annual States of Independence celebration of independent publishing. Five Leaves also set up the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing and, with Housmans Bookshop in London, initiated the London Radical Bookfair. In 2016 – as well as events at Lowdham Book Festival and States of Independence we ran 63 bookshop events and set up our own reading group. in 2017 there were 88 events. And this year we launch Feminist Book Fortnight nationally.
City centre rents make it difficult for any small businesses to survive. Fortunately our city has many alleyways and cut-throughs which provide spaces for “destination” shops. Five Leaves could not be more central to Nottingham. We are one minute from the city’s main square and City Council offices and happily occupy an alleyway which once included the headquarters of the Universal Suffrage Association.
Nottingham is a multi-cultural city and many of our customers are new to the city, joining those who have long been involved in the local literature or political scenes. We’ve doubled the stock since opening. We are doing fine.
Nottingham increasingly seeing itself as a “rebel city”. In literature terms we draw on the tradition of DH Lawrence, Lord Byron and Alan Sillitoe. The first radical bookshop in the city was opened in 1826 by one Susannah Wright and there were several others in our local history. Nottingham’s radical bookshop tradition lives on!
In 2017 we also published Exploring Nottinghamshire Writers and were pleased to find that our local writing history has a long history of dissent, particularly with women writers.
We also stock:
A wide variety of greetings cards and post cards, Book Tokens and our own Bookshop vouchers.
Leading up to Christmas we start selling Zapatista coffee, Palestinian oil and dates, a small selection of Radical Tea Towels, mugs, the odd set of owls and a flock of literary ducks… diaries, calanders, left wing bric-a-brac.
Events
We have many events planned in the shop over the next few months. Please check the events section for regular updates.
Services
We can order any book in print, Most books arrive within 24-48 hours. Books can be ordered in the shop, by phone or by email with payment only on collection. Orders from the USA take a few days longer.
We offer 15% discount to book groups ordering four or more of a title, collected together or individually. Such orders can be monthly or occasionally. We welcome visit buys or more regular orders from institutions.
We can provide bookstalls at conferences and events, not just in Nottingham.
Five Leaves is also a publisher – see our list at www.fiveleaves.co.uk.
Working at Five Leaves
There are currently no staff vacancies, and we do not anticipate any vacancies in the near future. Unfortunately we are not able to offer opportunities for work experience or internships.
Privacy Notice
We are Five Leaves Bookshop, 14a Long Row, Nottingham NG1 2DH, bookshop@fiveleaves.co.uk, 0115 8373097. Our data protection offficer is Jane Anger. We collect your personal data to help us order/deliver your purchases. We use your data to fulfil a contract with you or to send you information when you sign up for our mailing list or social media postings. No information is shared with outside parties. We collect customer names and contact details with your consent when we order books for you or when you sign up for our mailings. You have a right to see any information held about you, and to withdraw consent for us to hold this information by, for example, asking to unsubscribe from our mailing list.
“Five Leaves independent bookshop… is a must-visit destination” The Independent
“…the wonderful, idiosyncratic new Five Leaves Bookshop” New Walk Magazine
“Notts TUC’s bookshop of choice” Nottinghamshire Trades Union Council
“You ain’t gonna find a d-list celeb biog here. Book your ideas up. ” LeftLion
“A commie bookshop that likes poetry” – in truth this was a completely misheard comment about the shop by a customer, but we are rather fond of it