Red Lion Books

Thank you to our customers who have shown patience, support and understanding during the lockdown. We miss seeing you face-to-face but we look forward to seeing you again. In the meantime, we can take orders via email us@redlionbooks.co.uk and deliver nationally.

We are using a 48hr TRACKED postal service provided by the Royal Mail. They are experiencing unprecedented demands (with less staff)…so there may be delays. Delivery is FREE for orders over £20 otherwise there is a £1.50 delivery fee. Payment requests can be sent by text or email using iZettle or PayPal and we are able to accept National Book Tokens and Red Lion Books vouchers during this period.

Home delivery orders placed before 2 pm on Thursday 9th April: We will endeavour to get them out to you between Saturday and Wednesday

All orders placed after this time will still be fulfilled if the item is in stock, but will not be delivered until Wednesday-Friday next week.

Update: Monday, 6th April

• We can place SINGLE BOOK ORDERS with our warehouse for delivery to any address nationally
• This means we can only deliver one book, per parcel.  
• You may order books in quantity but they will be sent individually with a £1.50 charge per book.
• Delivery will use a 48hr tracked service.  A 24 hr service can be requested at an additional cost
• FREE DELIVERY for single books over £20

Picking and packing single book orders allows a skeleton warehouse staff to work well within the permitted social distancing, keeping everybody safe.  

We appreciate this isn’t very green but the service uses Royal Mail so deliveries are using routes which are already established.  

We are still here to advise and will be making regular posts on social media with our recommendations.

We prefer seeing our customers but needs must so until we can meet again, we would like to offer this service and look forward to hearing from you.

To order

• Please email us@redlionbooks.co.uk with the title and author (and ISBN if you have it!) of the book or books you are interested in.
• We will let you know availability and price.
• At that point, you can confirm your order with your postal address and a request for payment will be sent via PayPal.  You do not need to have a Paypal account to make payment.
• The range of books that are available through this arrangement is not as great as our normal special order service and stock may be more patchy than usual

Thank you for your patience to date.   

We endeavoured to get books to you, initially on a bicycle but after isolation we relied on our suppliers to send books to you directly.  They faced their own challenges and deliveries were sometimes slower than we had hoped; last week they temporarily suspended orders but have now regrouped and can recommence with a limited but well-considered service which protects the health of their staff.

We will continue to select our monthly, mystery book (known as Underwraps) as well as running our book clubs via the online application ZOOM

We hope you and your families are well and safe.

From all of us at Red Lion Books

Temporary suspension of all orders

Today we received news which will impact heavily upon Red Lion Books. 

Our trusted main supplier has temporarily suspended the delivery of all books and so, it is with great sadness, that we have taken the difficult decision not to accept any new orders – with immediate effect.  

We were not given any notice of our supplier’s warehouse closing but we respect how fast changing the world is at the moment and that the safety and well-being of their workforce is paramount.

We will be working hard to clear all outstanding orders over the coming days so that any existing orders should be processed (or refunded).  If you have made payment for a subscription package of books due to arrive in May or June we will contact you separately and make relevant refunds.

We have continued over the past few weeks to do our very best to provide our usual high quality of service, reacting to challenges as we received them, with good humour, hard work and a dash of creative thinking  – but this current news is a challenge we are unable to overcome.  We will keep you updated as and when new opportunities arise which might allow us to satisfy your orders once again.

Thank you for the support you have shown to us and other independent bookshops. It has really kept us motivated.  Your enormous enthusiasm and loyalty to the shop have moved us and for that, we are extremely grateful.

• We are still taking orders
• WE CAN DELIVERY NATIONALLY
• Email is the only way to contact us at present us@redlionbooks.co.uk
• We can accept the National Book Tokens
• Delivery is £1.50 or free for orders over £20
• We are introducing an online shop – please be patient with us
• We are looking at ways to host online book clubs
• We are setting up monthly subscription packages
• We are using social media, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter

22nd March 2020

Dear Customers

We look forward to seeing you all again post coronavirus

Every day the situation has been changing and we have been constantly reviewing how Red Lion Books should react. Now, due to the accelerating spread of coronavirus, from Monday 23rd March we will be closing the shop.

We love to see our shop full and we know how much visiting the shop to browse and buy means to our customers. Your support over the last couple of weeks has been exceptional. But the shop is a small enclosed space and it is impossible to practise appropriate social distancing. So, for the health and safety of our staff, customers and the wider community our doors will be closed until the situation eases.

If you have an order with us, please email us@redlionbooks.co.uk or ring us on 01206 578584 to arrange a convenient time for you to collect or for us to deliver.

We are planning to maintain our customer order service and working to find the best ways for us to supply books to you while the shop is closed as well as online book clubs.

We are also setting up monthly subscription packages, please email us to let us know if this is of interest using reference SUBSCRIPTION

We aim to keep in touch through social media with updates and with news of new releases. Please email us with any requests you have to us@redlionbooks.co.uk

We thank you for your overwhelming support to date and send you our very best and heartfelt wishes.  Keep safe.