About Us

Hi, I’m Steph!

I’m the person behind The Scarlet Shelf, and this shop exists because I bloody love books.

Romance has always been the genre I come back to. The books I stay up far too late reading, the ones I immediately need to tell somebody about, and the ones that take over my entire personality for a month after I finish them.

After working in bookselling, I kept finding myself frustrated by how little space there seemed to be for so many incredible books, particularly indie romance.

I met brilliant indie authors with genuinely amazing books and watched them struggle to get onto physical shelves because they weren’t stocked by the “right” distributor, weren’t traditionally published, or simply didn’t fit the usual mould. At the same time, I’d walk into romance sections and see the same handful of titles again and again.

I wanted something different.

So, I created The Scarlet Shelf.

A romance bookshop where indie books sit proudly alongside traditionally published favourites. Where a book doesn’t need a huge marketing campaign behind it to deserve space on a shelf. Where you can come in looking for something really specific and talk to someone who actually understands what you mean when you say you want enemies-to-lovers, painfully slow burn, morally grey and 'I need this to emotionally destroy me.'

I’m not interested in only selling you whatever book happens to be biggest on TikTok this week. I want to help you find your next favourite book, whether that’s a bestseller everyone is talking about or an indie romance you’ve never heard of before.

And I want The Scarlet Shelf to be more than somewhere you buy books.

I want it to be somewhere authors feel genuinely supported, readers find their people, and our shelves are constantly changing because there are far too many incredible romance books out there to keep stocking the same ones forever.

This shop is basically my entire love for romance books turned into a physical place, and I cannot wait to share it with you.

Steph x