The Two-Year Waitlist to Work at a Bookstore

There’s something special about bookstores — if you’re a reader, you don’t need that explained. Running one seems like the kind of calm, pleasant life you imagine when your inbox is out of control.

In a small town in Scotland, you can book that life on Airbnb. If you’re patient.

The vacation-destination bookstore is located in Wigtown, Scotland, a small village on the shore of the Irish Sea. (Here’s a map.) It is home to about 1,000 people, but also to more than a dozen bookstores. That bookstore-to-people ratio earned Wigtown its nickname: “Scotland’s National Book Town,” as seen on the sign above (via the BBC). And nestled on the tiny corner of a quiet street there is The Open Book.

The Open Book takes up just one floor of a small two-story building. The second floor, though, is where the magic begins. It’s an apartment for rent, bookable on Airbnb for a week or two at a time. And it comes with a perk — or maybe a catch, depending on your point of view: during your residency in the apartment, you’re expected to work at the bookstore below.

The store was set up in 2014 by the operators of the annual Wigtown Book Festival, a ten-day event each fall that typically draws around 13,000 visitors. The store, like the festival itself, is a nonprofit — revenue from the rentable apartment and from the books sold fund the operation of the store, with any overage going toward festival costs. And per the BBC, that overage is significant — north of £10,000 (almost $15,000) to the festival each year.

If working and living at The Open Book sounds like your dream vacation, though, there’s some bad news: the Airbnb is booked up at least through 2027. You can, however, hope to find a cancellation and land an earlier slot. In 2019, Freya Parr, a reporter for the Guardian, was able to do just that. For £400 (about $550), she and her boyfriend rented the apartment — and managed the bookstore — for a week. After some basic training, they were able to run the store “in whatever way they see fit,” assisted by volunteers. It was a magical experience, but not just for them. “We became as much of a tourist attraction for the locals as the place was for us, and the conversations we had were worlds away from those back home. Nobody cared what our jobs were – they were more interested in what had brought us here.”

And when they left, someone else took their place, bringing yet another story to the bookstore. For a week at a time, the fantasy changes hands. The keys are passed over, the bell rings, and someone new gets to live inside the daydream.

Bonus fact: Approximately 1.3 million people live in the Bronx, one of the five boroughs that make up Manhattan. And for roughly three years, the ratio of people to bookstores there was undefined. That’s right: there were no bookstores in the Bronx during that period. The last Barnes and Noble in the Bronx closed in 2016, leaving the borough without a single dedicated, permanent bookseller. In response, a local named Noëlle Santos — who worked in human resources but had no experience operating a bookstore (not even a week at The Open Book!) stepped in. As the New York Times reported, ‘“she started a crowdfunding campaign” to fund the creation of a bookstore and “quickly raised $170,000.” In 2019, The Lit. Bar, a 1,700 square foot (160 m2) store, opened, and it still operates today.

From the Archives: Why There are Still Borders in Malaysia: The defunct bookseller isn’t totally defunct.