Bookshops offer so much more than books – so why aren’t they valued like pubs?

This summer, our independent bookshop in the heart of Bath, Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights, turns 20. Two decades of joyful engagement with customers about books coincide perfectly with the National Year of Reading – a timely call to weave reading into everything we are passionate about.

Everything we do at Mr B’s is geared towards the personal recommendation of books – from the constant shop-floor chatter that makes our place a playground rather than a temple, to our tailored reading subscriptions and Reading Spa gifts.

Much of that recommendation is directed towards customers who already read as much as we do. But the real buzz comes when someone asks for the book “that will get me back into reading”, or when you share your nerdy excitement about stories and worlds with a youngster yet to fully commit to being a reader.

This is what good bookshops bring to their high streets every day. We stand alongside educators and librarians, placing the right book into a reader’s hands – the one that offers escapism, knowledge, excitement, fear or laughter at exactly the moment it’s needed.

But bookshops are more than places to buy books. They are spaces of community, connection and solace. They host authors and book clubs and are, invariably, among any high street’s most active and creative collaborators with charities, cultural organisations, schools and more.

Creating and sustaining these spaces takes work. During our busiest times of year, I need to be talking to customers, ordering stock and handling the myriad essential tasks that steer us through months that must account for more than a quarter of our annual footfall and turnover.

The last thing I want to be doing in late November is livestreaming the Budget.

Yet even as Mr B’s is beloved and supported – selling as many, if not more, books than ever – the greatest threat to our long-term sustainability lies in uncontrollable costs. Which is why, on 26 November 2025, I found myself watching Rachel Reeves deliver long-overdue proposals to reform the broken business rates system.

At first, there was promise. A £5m investment in school libraries, aligned with the National Year of Reading.

Then came business rates, and talk of “permanently lower tax rates for over 750,000 retail, hospitality and leisure properties – the lowest rates since 1991”. Promising again.

But as the details emerged and I did the maths, the optimism faded.

“Rates”, it turned out, referred to the “multiplier” used to calculate the final bill. In most cases, that figure had indeed fallen.

But two other elements mattered. First, the rateable value being multiplied – which, in our case, had rocketed far beyond reality.

Second, the disappearance of discounts designed to compensate for a system that everyone accepts is broken. During the pandemic, discounts reached 100 per cent to sustain empty high streets. That support tapered to 40 per cent – and then vanished altogether.

The result? These supposedly “lowest rates” translated into a 70 per cent increase in our costs. Other booksellers reported even steeper rises. Pub landlords across the country found themselves in the same position.

Transitional relief will soften the blow for a couple of years, but it is temporary and insufficient – and an implicit admission that the new system is no more realistic than the last.

The Booksellers Association’s managing director, Meryl Halls, was right to argue this week that any U-turn on business rates for pubs must extend to bookshops. During the National Year of Reading, bookshops will once again roll up their sleeves to champion reading for pleasure – in shops, in schools and across their communities, during opening hours and long after closing time.

As Halls put it, bookshops “cannot continue to withstand an ever-growing imbalance in which they are consistently required to step up while government policy fails to step up for them. Pubs are protected because of the value they bring to their communities; bookshops deserve their place alongside them in a fair and equal business rates system.”

As we enter our 20th year under the banner of the National Year of Reading, all we are asking for is a fair tax system – one that recognises high street realities and the vital role bookshops play in their communities.