Bookseller By Day, Author by… Different Day by Alwyn Hamilton
This post is written by Alwyn Hamilton, author of The Notorious Virtues
This post is written by Alwyn Hamilton, author of The Notorious Virtues and the bestselling Rebel of the Sands.
The year is 2009. I’m 21, freshly out of university, at my first job that isn’t babysitting, and a mother is storming towards me, dragging a mortified teenage daughter behind her (and a delighted looking younger brother, who has that excited look on his face that younger brothers get when they know their sibling is in trouble). As she reaches me, the mother slams her hands down on the counter behind which I’m standing.
“My daughter!” She jabs a finger at the teenager, who looks like she wishes the floor would open up and swallow her, “has read Twilight 18 times. For the LOVE OF GOD CAN YOU RECOMMEND HER SOMETHING ELSE.”
Twilight was the first time many of us had heard the term YA. Just a handful of years before, when I was a teenager, YA wasn’t yet a thing. There were definitely books for teenagers, but as someone who at 15 was reading both Harry Potter and Game of Thrones, I didn’t feel like there was a tonne being written for me. All the books about teenage girls seemed to be about real life, Jacqueline Wilson or Sweet Valley High. I was much more interested in reading about epic world saving quests than I was about the dramas of proms.
And then, just as I was about to stop being a teenage girl, suddenly fantasy books for and about us were everywhere. Twilight, the Hunger Games, The Mortal Instruments… The list goes on. To a newly ex-teenage girl it seemed novel at the time (no pun intended).
Writing now, a few weeks after Onyx Storm became the fastest selling adult book of all time (one widely read by teen girls), and a few weeks before the newest Hunger Games instalment is due to hit shelves and sure to sell in droves, it’s hard for me not to sound like the finger wagging old lady “In MY DAY young lady we didn’t have a lot of fantasy books for girls. You kids these days don’t know easy you have it.”
But as someone who recently went back to being a bookseller after almost fifteen years away, I am just so excited by how many more fantasy books I have to put into the hands of teenagers. Including my own.
The truth is I am actually a bookseller/undercover author. After being a bookseller as my first job out of university, I wrote a New York Times bestselling YA fantasy Trilogy: REBEL OF THE SANDS, TRAITOR TO THE THRONE and HERO AT THE FALL. I left my day job (no longer at a bookstore by then) to write full time. And then the pandemic hit, slowed down the process of my fourth book, and after being locked down alone for a while I realized I wanted some company, and so I begged my local Waterstones to be a Christmas Temp. Just for a few weeks while I waited for edits on my fourth Book THE NOTORIOUS VIRTUES.
That was two years ago, and I still haven’t left. Three days a week I’m a bookseller, the other four I’m an author. I simultaneously live at both ends of the life of a book. The inception, the creation of it, and the final step of putting it into the hands of readers. And the snake eats its own tail.
But occasionally my Bruce Wayne/Batman identities do get enmeshed. Last week at an author panel where I was supposed to be promoting my own book, I found myself enthusiastically recommending the picture book CAFÉ AT THE EDGE OF THE WOODS (Nominee for The Waterstones Children’s Book Prize). And two days ago, doing an author visit to a local school, several children approached me to say “Don’t I know you from Waterstones?” Yeah, even Clark Kent will tell you it’s impossible to keep your secret identity from everyone. And the only reason I try to is because I don’t want any readers to think I am there with an agenda: Undercover to try to sell my own book. When the reality is I am more likely to completely forget to recommend my own book, too busy rhapsodizing about the latest read that kept me up until 2 a.m. (My book also keeps me up until 2 a.m. but that’s because I have a deadline usually).
But now, I have a new book coming out in a matter of days! THE NOTORIOUS VIRTUES, a 1920’s New York heiresses meets Grimms’ Fairytales YA fantasy. And after excitedly supporting other authors’ books for the past 2 years, I find myself selling books at a till with a giant poster of my newest book behind me (put up my wonderful Waterstones manager). Every time a kid asks me for a murder mystery (a favourite genre among kids in our shop) I find myself thinking that in just a few weeks I’ll be able to recommend THE NOTORIOUS VIRTUES, in which our main character uncovers the dark secrets surrounding her mother’s death. Whenever my avid readers (all of whom I know by name) come in to chat to ask what’s new (I feel like I have a collection of Belles in the opening scene of Beauty and the Beast), I can’t help but remind them that in just a few weeks there’s a little something new from me… but no pressure!
I’m far from the first bookseller to ever become an author. But I don’t think I know anyone else who has gone from author to bookseller. But looking back it makes sense.
Whenever young readers have asked why I wanted to be an author my answer has always been some version of this: I loved to read as a kid, but I grew up in an English Speaking household, reading in English, but living in France. None of my classmates were reading the same books as me, so I had nowhere to put the joy and excitement I got from reading, no one to talk to about it. Writing became the place to put it. By which I mean: I think most authors will tell you they started out as young plagiarists in some form, writing fan-fiction of our favourite work, or ideas that were remarkably similar to our most recent favourite read.
And without question my favourite thing about being a bookseller is exactly the thing that got me started writing… wanting to share my favourite books that I’m excited about with readers.
At least once a day, someone gives me some version of “Wow you have read a lot of books!” With kids it’s usually “Have you read every book in the shop?” The answer to that is always a very serious faced “Yes, every single book in the shop.” It’s more effective the younger the kid. With parents it’s usually phrased as “How do you have time to read so much/How do you remember all of this?” The answer to that is a reassuring “I have a head start, I’ve been in YA for 25 years.”
I just don’t usually tell them I am WAY more in it than they realize. And that I could have read a lot MORE books if I didn’t spend so much time writing them.
And if you were wondering what book I sold in 2009 to the Twilight obsessed teenager, it was City of Bones, and I still recommend it today. Plus ça change…
The Notorious Virtues by Alwyn Hamilton publishes on 27 March 2025 (Faber).