Welcome to
The Book Nook
Our Mission is to provide an inclusive and cosy space that is welcoming and valuable to the Stirling community and its visitors.
Our Mission is to provide an inclusive and cosy space that is welcoming and valuable to the Stirling community and its visitors.
When we first opened in the autumn of 2020, the story that we gave of the shop’s inception was this: We (the owners, Leanne and Jasmine) went for lunch at City Walls, had a few too many drinks, started bemoaning our career prospects, and (at this point having moved to a pub after spending the whole day discussing how great it would be to open up a bookshop) ran to Waterstones at 7.50pm to buy a book on how to start a business. There was only one book and it was literally called ‘How to Start A Business’. We bought it, we stumbled home. A lot of people have evenings like that. It was the number one thing people said to us in the early days – ‘Me and my friend also chatted about opening a bookshop!!’
It’s a familiar dream to anyone who loves books. We weren’t the first to come up with the idea and we certainly won’t be the last. That was in 2018, I’m writing this now in 2023, and the shop just had its third birthday. It took two years to write a business plan that was good enough to secure us funding. We had never owned a business before. Our work history consisted of hospitality and low-level admin jobs. We had no personal money or assets at all, and honestly didn’t have even a basic understanding of how to go about things. Our google history from back then is hilarious. We lost out on two other properties in Stirling that we wanted (with hindsight they wouldn’t have worked but we were gutted regardless!) When we first looked at our current shop it was an empty shell with horrible lighting and blue carpets and magnolia walls. We still laugh at the funny looks we got from friends and family when we proudly showed it to them in its empty state, but we were convinced we could make it amazing anyway and signed the lease.
We got the keys in March 2020. I picked them up on March 24th, and had to do so via a little box that was shoved through the estate agent’s letterbox while the receptionist waved at me from behind the glass in a face mask and carrying a bottle of disinfectant. The UK had gone into lockdown literally the day before. It all felt very anticlimactic, and we stayed inside for two full months before even opening the front door of the shop again. The two of us (plus Jasmine’s 4-month-old baby) started hanging out in the shop, sitting on the floor and drinking cups of tea or cans of coke. We were joined by an ever-revolving door of visitors who came to help us visualise things or babysit, and eventually build furniture and paint. Looking back at it now, the summer of 2020 was probably simultaneously the happiest and most stressed we’ve ever been. It’s been officially romanticised in our heads now, despite how exhausted we probably were. We have very selective memories and it works out great for us!
We opened our doors on the 14th September 2020 with the two of us, Jasmine’s (now) husband Craig and Leanne’s brother Graeme. I feel like I could continue talking about our journey for ages, so if you’ve made it to this point, thank you! I’ll finish with this: Opening the shop has been the best experience, and we love going into work. We now have a wonderful team of eight, and every member of staff is a major contributing factor to our success!