STAFF at a Hay-on-Wye bookshop like their jobs so much they’ve bought the company.

The Hay Cinema Bookshop, one of the shops that helped establish Hay’s reputation as the first international boomtown, has been sold to a consortium of nine employees.

The deal means the staff are now the owners of the quarter of a million books stored in the giant former Castle Street cinema as well as a further 20,000 books at its shop in Charing Cross Road - one of the last remaining bookshops in what was the thriving book selling centre of London’s West End.

Greg Coombes, the managing director of the consortium, who has worked at the Hay shop for 39 years said current owner, Hay businessman Leon Morelli, arranged favourable finance for the staff to buy the business.

"The whole package was put together over about six weeks and we were able to put together a reasonable offer in the circumstances and we want to see the business carry on. Everybody who wanted to be a part of it was given the opportunity, it’s not a management buy-out it’s all the staff who wanted to be a part of it chipping in.

"There’s no guarantee of future success but it has a fighting chance and we are very enthusiastic about it.

"Given the current trend of second hand and antiquarian bookshops closing almost weekly, it’s perhaps brave if not foolhardy to buck the trend, but to quote John Ruskin ‘A book worth reading is worth buying’."

Greg, who is 62, said eight of those in the consortium work in Hay, with the full-timer from the London shop also part of the buy-out. The business employs 14 full and part-time staff at both sites.

The Hay Cinema shop specialises in second hand and antique books as well as ’end-of-run’ new books.

The London shop, Quinto, was bought when the business expanded in the 1980s when it also acquired the Francis Edwards antiquarian and fine book division. Francis Edwards was established in London in 1855 and is still used as a trading name today.

"High street retailers have perhaps never faced a more difficult time and bookshops are particularly affected by online and Kindle’s and the rest of it," said Greg.

"We still have positive feedback from customers but we have to try and maximise visitor numbers, we have to convince people it is worthwhile and and there is a benefit and pleasure to be had from visiting shops.

"That is the only way specialist shops are going to survive, through the support of customers."

The shop was built in the 1950s as a cinema while Richard Booth, the self-styled King of Hay, bought the building and opened it as a book shop in the early 1970s. It was then sold to Mr Morelli in 1982.

Greg has been working at the shop since February 1977 and said many of those who work at the shop are long-time employees. He said: "I had been working for a book-selling company in Newport and used to travel all over the country and was aware that Richard was this bibliomaniac in Hay who I used to visit. He mentioned he had a vacancy at the Cinema Bookshop, he needed someone to run the art book department so I came up to see him and have been here ever since.

"I moved to Hay, married a local person, and we have three grandchildren and six children."

The amount paid for the business, which includes the two shops which each have a Francis Edwards department, has not been disclosed and the ownership of the buildings hasn’t been transferred with the shops becoming commercial tenants.