Serifee in Leipzig is honored as one of the best bookstore | EUROtoday

When the postman dropped off the gadgets that did not match within the mailbox on the retailer final Friday, Susann Thiel instantly observed the A4 envelope with the inscription “Federal Chancellery”. In 2020, her youngsters’s bookstore Serifee was awarded the German Bookstore Prize for the primary time; Due to corona, Monika Grütters congratulated by publish. In 2023, Claudia Roth invited individuals to the New Palace in Stuttgart. “The trip wasn’t possible in time.”

So now: “Best Bookstore”, along with Aegis in Ulm and Prinz Eisenherz in Berlin. The cowl letter is sober, the prize sum, 25,000 euros, is written on the certificates. “You don’t want to hang them in the store,” says Thiel, “when regular customers come to the checkout with just one book instead of two or three in times of skyrocketing costs.” She caught one of many included stickers subsequent to the door. “Best bookstore, that’s a label you can wear with pride.”

Actually. “For me as a Leipzig bookseller, the fair is so labor-intensive that I have hardly had time to argue with Wolfram Weimer.” Flowers would have been good. The feeling of being seen and valued. Susann Thiel would have come to the award ceremony that was carelessly squeezed between the Leipzig Book Prize and the closing of the halls every week in the past and was finally canceled by the BKM. Instead, she spends ten hours within the Haus Auensee in Leipzig: her bookstore takes care of the e-book desk for 2 sold-out Marc Uwe Kling readings. “Kangaroo Rebellion” twice, the writer speaks in entrance of 1,500 individuals twice. The flowers are then given by her husband. And from a publishing consultant.

As a bookseller, Susann Thiel, who was fourteen when the Wall got here down and discovered to be a goldsmith after graduating from highschool, is a newcomer. When the mom of two turned unemployed within the noughties, a “job creation measure” in a membership paved her method into the world of books. In autumn 2009 she opened her personal youngsters’s bookstore: Serifee, within the Feinkost cultural middle on a former manufacturing unit web site in Leipzig’s southern suburbs. She borrowed the identify from a typography e-book: “The Little Serifee” by René Siegfried, revealed by Hermann Schmidt Mainz. The serifs, the little ft on the vintage fonts, put a smile on adults’ faces, and the fairy works for youngsters.

It takes some time for the shop to maintain itself: “I worked for seven years on a very slowly rising success curve.” At some level invoices will be paid; when they’re due, publishers now not have to be requested to defer cost. What a luxurious!

You enter the shop by way of the delicatessen courtyard, and because it does not have any street-facing home windows, it’s important to discover it. The room-long desk within the center, on which image e-book treasures at the moment are stacked, is remodeled into six cellular benches throughout occasions. The bookstore canine Nani lies properly in her den beneath the steps many of the day.

In her marketing strategy, Susann Thiel described the shop as a “place for encounters” – and that is precisely what it has grow to be: “I want people to leave here as happy as possible. Quite often they are happy and grateful for the good conversation, for the good advice, for the beautiful place, the beautiful books. Whatever! And then I always get a bag of happiness with it. If in doubt, just the bag of happiness without a book.” Business consultants would in all probability throw their fingers up over their heads, however: Thiel can be good at speaking somebody out of the e-book they only discovered.

The prize cash will in all probability be used to buy new wheels for the cellular middle tables, maybe a vacuum and mop robotic? For the 2 staff – an intern who got here to remain and a long-time common buyer who now has a mini-job – there’ll, logically, be a bonus.

If Susann Thiel indicators her “Come back soon” indicators with “Serifee” and a smiley, that’s utterly effective: with out the Serifee bookstore, Leipzig can be a distinct place. Perhaps that’s what Wolfram Weimer means when he writes on his prize web site: “Especially in these times, books and literature are more indispensable than ever for a lively, democratic and free society.”