Bookseller - Part Time & Full Time
Volunteer and Summer Intern positions are also available (please fill out the form below!)
📍 29 Walton Street, Oxford, OX2 6AA
📚 Romantasy lovers needed!
My name is Starlin and I started Bad Girl Books, and I am so excited to hire my very first employees! Bad Girl Books is a place that is community-focused and completely judgement-free. We stock anything from monster smut to dark romantasy to YA to the classics like ACOTAR! I’m looking to build a team of Romantasy-obsessed book lovers who love chatting about Romantasy books, are super proactive and like a busy and hands-on environment, and like interacting with and meeting new people all day long!
The vibe of the shop is the most important thing: I’ve worked really hard to create an environment that feels accessible, fun, bright, calm, light-hearted and has absolutely no judgement (from book taste, to race, disabilities, gender, or anything else, it’s important that everyone feels included and welcome). People can come and be themselves, ask for the craziest recs, and have a fun time shopping and yapping which is my main goal!
This is an amazing opportunity to grow with the BGB brand, explore your passions whether it’s social media, event planning, back-end website work, accounting, stock management, or publishing sales, to find what you enjoy best and grow. I’ll be here to support you whether you want to grow within BGB or use this role as a stepping stone to your dream publishing career. You’ll be joining a brand new small business at a super exciting time with so much potential to grow within different parts of the brand if you’re ambitious!
The Role
Day-to-day you might be:
- Recommending Romantasy reads to customers
- Working on the till to check customers out
- Unboxing and processing new deliveries and stock arrivals
- Designing a Canva book rec post for social media
- Helping with bookbinding in the stockroom
- Suggesting gift ideas for people who are buying for their friends or partners (it may not be Romantasy related and it may be someone random walking in off the street getting a last minute present for someone)
- Helping with upcoming author event planning
- Creating a warm, energetic and welcoming shop atmosphere
- Organising merchandise and books beautifully
- Thinking of ways to increase sales in certain areas / products
- Adjusting stock on our Shopify software and adding products to the website
- Fulfilling online orders and taking them to the post office
- Filming TikToks, Instagram stories or coming up with fun shop content ideas
- Helping run events, launches and themed evenings (you can get as involved as you like, whether that’s hosting a Romantasy pub quiz, teaching a craft you love for a class, leading a Q&A with an author, there are endless ideas and options!)
- Keeping the shop looking pretty, tidy and fully stocked!
- Taking notes of customer requests that we don’t have, and flagging them to me to order in
Looking for…
✨ A People Person
You genuinely enjoy talking to people. You’re confident, friendly and naturally bring positive energy into a room. You’ll also be able to remember key customers' names who come in again and again, remembering what books you recently sold them and being able to make specific recs for them. You’ll also be able to balance chatting with customers and being efficient in all the tasks that need doing in the shop (this is important as I know first-hand how difficult it can be getting carried away talking about Rhysand for 40 minutes)!
🧚 Romantasy Obsessed
You LOVE Romantasy books, know your tropes, you’re a fast learner when it comes to sub-genres and remembering where books should be shelved in their specific niche categories in the shop, and you read Romantasy books constantly in your free time!
💡 Proactive
You spot things that need doing and jump in without waiting to be asked, and you like to be busy! This role would be best suited for people who are energetic and keen to get involved in lots of different things within the business.
🎉 Excited By Startups
This isn’t a giant corporate retailer like Waterstones or Amazon, and this bookshop will be striving to create experiences in both our physical environment and product offering that helps people choose us over the big, cheaper competitors, when it comes to Romantasy books. I’m so proud that we’re an independent bookshop, and even more proud to be supporting a huge range of indie authors alongside big tradpub names.
📱 Social Media Friendly
You don’t need to be an influencer - but being comfortable filming or appearing in content, as well as designing social media graphics on Instagram would be a big plus. Canva experience is great!
🛍 Retail or Customer-facing Experience
It’s not super essential to have this, but experience in some sort of working environment whether that’s retail or any front-of-house role would be great. It’s best knowing you’re comfortable spending a full day chatting to people!
Important Notes
- Part-time and full-time positions available, as well as summer intern and volunteer roles
- Based in Oxford
- Weekend availability is a MUST
- Initial 3-month temporary contract on a zero-hours contract. Depending on the shop's success, I hope to be in a position to offer permanent positions in September 2026!
- Opportunity for growth to a manager position
Perks?
Besides being able to be surrounded by Romantasy books all day (the dream hehe), you’ll get lots of other fun benefits including:
- 📚 Unlimited free Romantasy books (yep, unlimited! You’ll be able to choose one book at a time, and as soon as you’ve read it, you can take another! There is no cap, and the goal is to help all our booksellers get to know as many books as possible that we offer so you can give the best recommendations to customers. We’ll have an excel spreadsheet where we’ll try to all read different books from each other and cover as much ground as possible! There will be over 2,000 books in the bookshop on our opening day - quite a lot to get through!)
- 🧢 FREE employee uniform based on how many days a week you work (cap, sweatshirt, t shirt, etc.)!
- 🏷️ Staff discount of 30% off the entire shop including books, special editions and merch
- 📖 Access to ARCs (advance reader copies of books not yet released)
- 🎉 Regular team socials including a new team welcome dinner out, holiday parties and more
- 🎟️ Access to all events at the bookshop (author signings, Q&A’s, festivals and more)
- 🎀 Being part of a friendly, fun and passionate team!
- ✨ Working closely with the owner (me!) where you can learn a LOT about the publishing industry and different aspects of a small business
SIDE NOTE: I am unfortunately a Type B personality, so I would LOVE to hire some Type A personalities to balance me out if possible. 😂 It’s important that the BGB booksellers are super tidy, organised, able to multi-task without getting distracted, and be proactive. If you have these qualities, please mention this in your application!
To Apply:
Please fill out this application form to be considered: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdvpB4KYn4D6WkEPI0DPzvwmg-HV1yI_BODbMbTKNKFEjRFBg/viewform?usp=dialog
