Tim Coates

As a retail book seller, executive, advocate for libraries and literacy, author, and entrepreneur, Tim Coates has devoted his four-decade career to promoting his love of books and reading.

Editor and author of 30 books, blogger, former managing director/CEO of retail book sellers Sherratt & Hughes and Waterstone's in England and of the English book chain WHSmith in Europe and proprietor of his own book store, Tim is chairman, founder and visionary for www.Bilbary.com, an e-book retail and lending site in mid-stage development.

Tim’s vision for Bilbary is to create a site exclusively for e-book lending and retail sales that is easy to navigate, accessible to any Internet-connected device and a forum for readers to discuss books and authors. Bilbary is also designed to enable libraries to have greater access to the growing number of published e-books. Conceived amid the turmoil of the rapidly changing publishing business and the rise of e-book popularity, bilbary is designed to address the changing economic needs and consumer preferences of publishers, authors, libraries and readers. A focus of Bilbary will be the digitization of the large “backlists” of published literature to create new income streams for publishers and authors and access for readers.

Best known in Britain as a successful book retailer, Tim is also an outspoken advocate of library improvement at the local and countrywide levels by urging improved book ranges, longer hours, and more welcoming buildings. As a business executive he is credited with improving the customer experience in retail book sales as the first U.K. bookseller to open an all-night bookstore with a cafe, sofas, and the comfortable style we now associate with bookstores around the world.

Tim has also been UK General Manager of YBP, the Academic library supply company which is part of book wholesaler, Baker and Taylor. In 1997, he was a leader in the opposition to the British Net Book Agreement, a price-fixing agreement between publishers and booksellers that had determined prices people paid for books since 1900.

Author of "Who's in Charge? Responsibility for the Public Library Service," Tim’s report is used in many countries to assess public-library services. As a regular commentator in the press and as a consultant he has provided guidance to local councils and to ministers and departments of government and has recently been invited to join a special task force working with the Mayor of London to improve libraries in the English capital.

Tim has published his own series of historic papers and has had two best-selling books about English history. Tim’s elder son, Sam, is Deputy Political Editor correspondent for The Times in London, and his younger son, Olly, is a cellist with an international solo career. Tim and his wife, Bridget Cave, live in London. Tim has degrees from the University of Oxford and Masters from the University of Stirling.