News

AWigtownBook has embarked on a crowdfunding campaign where we are planning to source a building in, or near, Scotland’s National Booktown, Wigtown. Follow the link to find out more and support us. The Crowdfunder will support our most ambitious long term goal – to create rural sustainable growth and development, whilst safeguarding the Booktown for future generations. We aim to create high quality jobs in the Galloway and South Ayrshire Biosphere by establishing a South West Scotland Fibre Guild: a circular economy model of creating growth around the things most abundant in this part of the world: water, fibres and books!

The idea of crowdfunding a community owned Bookshop with research facilities and accommodation, is to bring skills and people into the region to help achieve these goals and to acknowledge the reliance and integral role the publishing industry has always played in fibre based production and recycling. The booktown itself is not immune to the challenges a remote rural location brings. There are challenges attracting younger people into the area to run bookshops or small businesses and it is difficult for bookshop owners to sell their businesses and to ensure that the next use will be relevant to a booktown. By removing the overhead of a mortgage and covenanting the building to ensure future uses relate directly to literature, books and publishing, we can start to solve the problems of succession and create new opportunities. Like the first proprietor, AWigtownBook, future tenants will be free to build their businesses – which, along with their products, they can trade freely – but they will not be able to sell or transfer the ownership of the building without a majority vote by all shareholders.