'' ' LONDON'S FLOATING BOOKSTORE ' ''
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THE TWO MEN who run London's only floating bookstore,...................... *Word on the Water*, are living proof that there really is something you can do in life with an English Lit degree, other than teach English Literature.
The store - a 50-foot long canalboat stuffed to its bulkheads and overflowing onto the towpath with books -has a permanent berth on the Regent's Canal, around the corner from the British Library.
This comes after years of its owners staying one step ahead of eviction from the canals, by relocating every two weeks.
It is doing so well that Paddy Screech, 51, an Oxford-educated Cornishman with a close- trimmed beard and a softspoken manner, and Jonathan Privett, 52, a gaptoothed Yorkshireman who has trouble staying still for long [except with a book], finally took their dream vacations this year.
Mr. Screech who describes himself as ''Buddhist'' went to Laos. Mr. Privett, once nicknamed the sidewalk Professor, went to Paris and New York in part to check out the streetbookstall scene.
The store's prosperity probably has been helped by a book business that has been doing remarkably well in Britain. Sales of physical books increased 8 percent last year, while e-books continued a significant decline. By........ comparison, book sales in America have remained flat for years now.
''Books have been considered on the verge of obsolete, and so have canals,'' Mr. Screech said. ''But these are things people always liked. The canals survived because of that, and so will books and bookstores.''
The men got the idea for the store from a book, of course, '' Children of Ol' Man River,'' in which Billy Bryant recounts how his British immigrant family arrived on the Mississippi River, homeless, living on a floating board. They created a theater that culminates in the showboat craze of the late 1800s.
When Mr. Screech met him, Mr. Privett was living on canal boat, part of a subculture of boat dwellers who berth on London canals for free, as long as they keep moving periodically.
Mr. Screech had been working with homeless people and drug addicts while caring for an alcoholic mother at home. ''Overnight, she stopped drinking and turned into a little old lady who only drank tea,'' he said.
He realized then, he said, that he was done with metal work. He went for a walk, stumbled on a canal and met Mr. Privett. The two cooked up the idea of the store.
Mr. Privett had the book-business experience. Before settling on his canalboat, he had at times been a homeless squatter who supported himself selling used books from street stalls.
A French friend, Stephane Chaudat, provided a boat big enough to be a store, a 1920s era Dutch barge. He remains their partner.
Mr. Privett had a stock of used books. Mr. Screech borrowed 2,000 pounds, or $3,000 at the time, from his mother as the capital, and their business was born in early 2010.
A few weeks earlier, on Christmas Eve 2009, Borders had closed all of its British stores, and the future of bookstores looked grim everywhere. ''I said to Jon, 'Aren't we enthusiastically entering a dying medium? ,' '' Mr. Screech said.
''He said, ''Well, if all the bookstores close, we'll still be here.' ''
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