A struggling bookstore owner tweeted that business was so slow she couldn't pay her bills. Within days, followers came together to keep her afloat.

• An independent bookstore owner asked Twitter for help as she couldn't afford to pay her bills.

• Users responded by sharing her tweet and ordering books en masse online.

• She told Insider she "never in a million years" expected #BookTwitter to show so much support.

An independent bookstore owner said she's now able to pay her bills thanks to a surge in customers after she tweeted about her struggles keeping the business afloat.

On February 25, 29-year-old bookstore owner Sapphire Bates shared a tweet that began with the hashtag #BookTwitter and read, "we need your help!" Bates wrote that she ran an independent bookshop in Ramsgate, England, called "Book Bodega" but they were struggling to pay bills due to a lack of customers. "Winter is killing us, it's soo quiet," she wrote, adding they needed to make ￡800 ($956) in two days.

The tweet included a photo of the store, which opened in June 2022, that featured shelves and a center table full of books, but not a single customer in sight.

The tweet came about because Bates was sitting in her bookshop at 2:30 p.m. on a Saturday and "it was completely empty, it was only two days until the bills were due and I just felt I had nothing to lose," she told Insider in an email exchange.

Bates said she "didn't really expect anything to come from it" but thought it was worth a try in case a few people wanted to buy a book. "That was in my head, the best-case scenario — never in a million years would I have guessed it would be seen by 6.1 million people," she told Insider.

The tweet also received over 800 quote-tweets as users helped spread the word of Bates' struggle. "Instead of buying books from Amazon, let's buy from an indy book store and keep the economy more local! Here's a book shop that needs support!" one user wrote. "No better time or place to order your next book," Tim Burgess, lead singer of the rock band "The Charlatans" wrote in a tweet liked 127 times.

Comments also responded directly to Bates' original tweet, to offer support and share the books they had purchased from the store online. "Your shop looks beautiful! And this post gave me the perfect excuse to order a book from you for my sister," author Hazel Gaynor wrote.

"Good luck! Your shop looks amazing and you all clearly have brilliant taste in books. We need you!" film producer Paul Fischer responded, alongside an image that showed he had placed four books in his online shopping basket, which amounted to an order total of ￡37.96 ($45.52).

A Twitter user who goes by Jamil Qureshi also offered to pay the full amount Bates needed to keep the shop going. After Bates responded to say it was "incredibly kind but too much" they reached an agreement over email where Qureshi would donate ￡1,000 ($1,119) instead to create a fund for customers who wanted to shop but couldn't afford the books. "I didn't want to just accept charity," Bates told Insider, saying around 1/3 of the money would be profit for the store, and the rest would go towards the manufacturers.

On February 28, Bates shared a tweet that once again addressed #BookTwitter, which read, "I just paid our bills that were due thank you SO much for your support, this has given me faith that we can do this."

Bates told Insider she isn't quite sure yet how many books they've sold since the tweet, or how much money they've made as a result, "but we had enough come through to pay this month's bills and we've now had another busy few days in the shop" so she is confident the store will make enough money to pay the bills next month too.

She said she was "beyond grateful" to everyone who helped and wanted to thank them from "the bottom of my heart for your kindness and support," and urged customers to shop locally if they could.

"Please continue to support independents when you can, they will definitely appreciate it," she said.

For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider's Digital Culture team here. 

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