'Worst day' tweet Harrogate bookshop gets 'amazing' response

An independent bookseller has been inundated with support after making a desperate plea for customers following her "worst day ever" of sales.

Georgia Duffy, owner of ImaginedThings in Harrogate, tweeted that she took only £12.34 on Monday.

Her plea for support has been clicked on more than one million times and retweeted by more than 4,000 people.

Ms Duffy said: "The response has been phenomenal. I've had people placing orders from all over the country."

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The shop became the first independent bookshop in Harrogate in nearly 20 years when it opened last July.

Ms Duffy, 28, said although there had been difficult periods since opening, the last couple of weeks had been especially hard and so she decided to tweet the message for support.

"I never expected the post to go viral and to get such a response," she said.

"So many people have been in touch with me, sending messages, people placing orders and others just giving us donations, it's been amazing.

"Before this we didn't even have Paypal set up so I spent Tuesday frantically sorting that out to accommodate all the orders we were getting."

She said compared with about the dozen sales the shop got on a normal trading day, she had sold about 70 books on Tuesday.

As well as support from the public, author and newspaper columnist Allison Pearson responded to the tweet, offering to give a reading at the store.

Ms Duffy said: "I haven't had the time to reply to her yet because of how manic it's all been but this would be fantastic and something we'd love to make happen."