Kibworth Books to move into new premises, trebling in size
Following 12 years of steady growth, Kibworth’s award-winning bookshop will be moving into larger premises in February this year, providing the business with over three times as much space. Kibworth Books was launched in December 2009 by Debbie James at 52 High Street in the attractive south Leicestershire village and now has a team of six working both on the shop floor and behind the scenes. In 2016, the shop doubled in size by taking on a second storey of the property, converting it from an apartment into two more book-lined rooms. Now the whole bookshop will move just metres down the road to ‘The Barn’ at 29 High Street.
James said “We could not be more excited about the move. We will have space to give over a whole room to children’s books, four times the size of the space we currently have for that and there will be another room just for cards, stationery and gifts too. The main part of The Barn will house over three times as many fiction and non-fiction titles as we can offer at the moment and will also function as a great space for author events, social events and bookclubs.”
Following Kibworth Books’ move to The Barn, 52 High Street will be renovated and rebranded by James and her team, where they will then launch a second bookshop, specialising in rare and collectable titles. This is due to open in the second half of 2022 and more information on this will follow.
In its twelve years of trading, Kibworth Books has set up eight bookclubs, an annual Book Festival and a Children’s Book Festival; they have hosted hundreds of events with authors including Rob Biddulph, Ann Cleeves, Lisa Jewell, Mahsuda Snaith and Nina Stibbe. Their next events in February include an evening with the poet and author Brian Bilston as part of Leicester Comedy Festival and a talk from Beth Morrey. The bookshop has won Regional Independent Bookshop of the Year, Vintage Independent Bookshop of the Year and last month appeared on The Most Brilliant Bookshops in the World list in the Financial Times. The team has also been presented with three James Patterson Awards for their work in promoting a love of books and reading to children and the Booksellers Association (BA) Diversity and Inclusion Award for their book festival programming and book stock selection. The owner and manager of the shop, Debbie James, currently sits on the BA’s Independent Booksellers Panel, Green Bookselling Task Force and Divisional Board.