Though the pop-up shop was tremendous fun, Tee still had to work the other six days in the week to keep going. Five of those were spent in a call center, but one day a week they worked for McNaughtans, Scotland's oldest antiquarian bookshop. Established in 1957, Major McNaughtan and his wife occupied number 3a Haddington place, furnishing the shop with various bits of 19th century shelving bought from other bookshops that were closing down at the time. The Major died soon after, but his wife Marjorie continued to run the shop with her assistand, Elizabeth Strong. Elizabeth bought the shop, and subsequently bought the shop next door, number 4a. After knocking through an archway between the two premises she used it for a number of purposes before eventually settling on creating an art gallery, which it remained until it was bought by Derek Walker and Anna Fomicheva. Derek and Anna kept the gallery for a couple of years, but when they realised Tee was looking for their own premises they offered to rent out the gallery space. The deal was struck - Tee would stick to new books, McNaughtans would stick to old books, and between the two of them create a bibliographical offering unique in Edinburgh!

When the shop first opened the back part was curtained off as we still couldn't afford enough books to fill all the shelves! For the first year Tee worked every shift, with the shop open 11am-9pm Tuesday-Sunday. On Mondays Tee could often be spotted nipping into the closed bookshop to take in deliveries/do cleaning and suchlike.

The shop began to grow, as more and more folk found out about us and our comunity expanded. Eventually we got to the point at which we could afford to hire more staff, and McNaughtans were at that stage too! We advertised a position working for both shops, and one applicant stood out from the start. Elsa presented us with an origami elephant they'd made (the most difficult of the Typewronger origami) and a CV typed up on a typewriter they'd bought from the shop a few months previously. With Elsa on staff the shop was finally able to open every day and Tee could take a full two days off a week (in theory!) Not only that, it was finaly time to bring down the curtains to open up more room for our poetry and zine sections (which were already beginning to take over the rest of the shop!)

In 2020 there was a global pandemic. The world shut down, and during lockdown Elsa was furloughed and Tee grabbed the shop's computer, the plants, and most essentially the shop gong (an open mic essential) and ran the shop from their bedroom across town. Our wholesaler was able to send out book orders on our behalf, we ran online open mic nights through our YouTube channel, and fielded Skype calls from our regular customers who missed coming in for a chat. Tee would bike across to the shop once a week to write things on the windows and sweep the steps so that passers by knew we were still in business. Eventually we were able to start opperating a pickup service from the shop, and Tee moved the desk and computer into the doorway. Occasionally we made an outdoor shop on the steps outside where customers could browse safetly, and it was around this time we started working with Farr Out, a local cycle courier, sending books all over Edinburgh. We still use them to this day and offer free Edinburgh delivery on any order of £8.99 or above. Eventually we were able to reopen, masked up and limiting numbers coming in to the shop. Around this time a student called Viv took to swinging by. She sold so many books chatting to customers that of course we had to hire her, and she's still working in the shop to this day.