Petersfield Bookshop blown away by Twitter boost

An independent bookshop has been inundated with customers after revealing on Twitter that it had not welcomed one paying customer on Tuesday this week.

Fantasy and science fiction author Neil Gaiman retweeted the post to his millions of followers and, hey presto, £1,000+ worth of orders came flooding in.

The Petersfield Bookshop is situated in Hampshire and specialises in antiquarian publications, maps and secondhand books. “The response was really touching,” said Robert Sansom, who has worked at the shop for 13 years.

“People have been so kind. This will really make a difference. There are slow days, but it was a really unusual day for us to have not sold any books – no one wanted to come out because of Storm Brendan.”

Shop owner John Westwood commented: “It blows me away. I don’t understand social media because I’m old-fashioned, but when Rob called me and told me the figures, I was gobsmacked.”

As of this morning, the original message had been retweeted over 8,000 times and received 16,000+ likes.

Petersfield Bookshop subsequently put out a more upbeat tweet: “What a night! We have been completely overwhelmed in a good way. We have 1,100 new followers. We have loads of online book orders. We have over 300 messages, many asking after books. We will answer all as soon as we can, please bear with us. Thank you all so much!”