2013 © Rob Walters
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Version 17
Fancy a visit to a bookshop that has a pub in its backroom? Rob Walters, Oxford based author and guide, has opened his own boozy bookshop on the Web. In the shop you can browse Rob’s writing (short pieces are available for free), buy books, or visit the backroom.
Rob has started his bookshop partly for fun, but also as a means of publishing works that are difficult to get into print in today’s cluttered market.
“I have had a number of books published so far: two of them based on Oxford,” Rob
explains. “But I have other writing that I would really like to put before the public.
For example I have now written four novels. I think that they are good enough to
publish; one of them recently won a prize for its first chapter. But publishers’
in-
Of course, the idea of a web-
“I think of the blog as the sort of conversation I might have with customers if the bookshop and the pub were real,” he said. “I write about the bookshop itself and the books I’m currently reading myself.”
The usual problem with this sort of venture is attracting people to visit the bookshop. Rob has two solutions to this. He is a city guide and through this meets a lot of people from all over the world. Many of them are interested in his writing, so now he gives them a card that steers them to his bookshop. The other solution is to make the bookshop fun – hence the backroom in which there is constantly updated literary news, a word of the day from the Oxford English Dictionary and Rob’s current favourite crossword clue. The backroom is also the door to the pub. But why include a pub at all?
“I love pubs,” Rob explains. “Especially those with real ale. Pubs are one of the
few places that you can meet and converse with complete strangers. I get many ideas
from these encounters. Pubs are the source of many good jokes so I’ve included a
joke-
