Budding Booksellers: Ben Critchley

The ABA Educational Trust Traineeship Scheme offers financial and tutorial support to an ABA member to hire a trainee. While working for the ABA member, the trainee follows a two-year course based on a curriculum devised and monitored by the ABA Educational Trust, ensuring that they gain experience in all aspects of the trade. The aim is that, by the end of the course, the successful trainee can be considered a competent junior bookseller. We are delighted to share these experiences from three recent participants in the traineeship scheme.

At the beginning of July I was told that it was exactly three years since I started my part-time traineeship at McNaughtan’s, including working three days a week in the windows between lockdowns when the shop was legally allowed to be open. So it’s been a disjointed traineeship/apprenticeship, but in that time I’ve handled thousands of books. The traineeship syllabus is flexible enough anyway – auctions, book fairs and people selling us their books never come along in any kind of order, and although no two things are alike I recognise more and more books and make more and more connections between things.

I’ve catalogued hundreds of books now, each adding to the stock of comparisons, and I’m pleased to say that much of McNaughtan’s latest catalogue is my work. I’m very lucky to have a boss who patiently fields all my questions and who also lets me loose on some astonishing things – to get to where I am now on my own would have taken a decade and cost me a great deal of money. I still excitedly click on our catalogue when it comes through on the mailing list and look at the things I catalogued even though I know exactly what it’s going to say because I wrote it last week, and I can’t quite believe I get to do this as a career.

I’m delighted to report that at the beginning of June I started full-time hours and I know that a full-time position at McNaughtan’s would not have happened without the support of the ABA Educational Trust Traineeship. The help and encouragement I continue to receive from the rest of the trade is a joy and a wonder. To repay the trust put in me as a trainee bookseller is both a responsibility and a pleasure I look forward to in the coming years.

Find out more about the ABA Educational Trust here.