Since 2016, you have been co-running the Guardian bookshop. How has it changed in that time?

In 2016, after an internal restructure, the Guardian Bookshop “left” the Guardian and we set up an independent company to continue to run it on the Guardian’s behalf. Since then, we’re hopeful that the only changes our customers have noticed are positive ones. We’ve made a number of improvements to how the site works, we have moved supplier to broaden the range of books we have available and the speed with which they are dispatched, and we have added in new product ranges, such as branded clothing and accessories. On the whole, however, the purpose of the Guardian Bookshop remains unchanged: to provide competitive prices on the books reviewed and featured in the Guardian and the Observer, and to provide the Guardian’s readers with a place to buy books that helps to support the journalism they love.

How long has the Guardian had a bookshop? Is it online only?

It pre-dates both of us (and we’ve been involved in running it for 13 years!), so it has a long history. From the outset it has been both an online and a telephone order service, as it continues to be until this day.

How closely do you work with Guardian Faber?

Guardian Faber is a joint publishing venture between the Guardian and Faber & Faber (as the name suggests). It provides an outlet for Guardian and Observer writers to publish books on the subjects they, and their readers, care about. We remain very closely involved in Guardian Faber and support each new publication as it is released. Very often, you will find the best available prices on Guardian Faber books at the Guardian Bookshop. Recent Guardian Faber authors include David Mitchell, John Crace, Polly Toynbee, Jay Rayner and Amelia Gentlemen.

How is the bookshop funded, and what happens to the profits?

The Guardian Bookshop is run as an independent commercial business. A proportion of each sale goes back to the Guardian to help fund its journalism.

How do you decide what we’ll sell? Do you have particular criteria in mind when you’re selecting?

We don’t really “select” books to appear on the site. We take a feed of more than 1m books from our supplier and make around 150,000 of the most popular available to our customers at any one time. We hope that people will always be able to find any book they are looking for, new or old, at the point at which they visit. That said, we do a lot of curation on the site to make sure it is easy to navigate. So, if you’re looking for the latest non-fiction books reviewed in the Guardian, for example, you can find them easily.

What types of books are most frequently sold?

There are a few genres that really stand out as popular with Guardian Bookshop customers. We sell a lot of politics and current affairs, as you might expect. In particular, books on feminism, the environment and social justice sell disproportionately well. Literary fiction is also popular, with authors such as Margaret Atwood, Hilary Mantel, Julian Barnes and Ian McEwan performing well, along with writers shortlisted for major prizes.

How does your book review process work? Who writes them?

We have no influence over the books that are reviewed or featured in the Guardian or the Observer, but we have a close relationship with our editorial colleagues and make sure the Bookshop site reflects what they are writing about. We also have customer reviews available on our site, which anyone can submit if they set up an account with us.

Can you tell us about your Shelf Improvement scheme? How does it work?

Shelf Improvement is a monthly book subscription service from the Guardian Bookshop. Packages are available for three or six months and for fiction, non-fiction or mixed books. Subscribers will receive a surprise book in the post each month. We choose books that we think will introduce recipients to new voices, new releases from established writers and new themes. It is mainly bought as a gift, but lots of people also buy Shelf Improvement for themselves as a way of discovering new authors and books.

What other products do you sell?

We have recently added a number of new lines to the shop. You can now buy branded clothing, homewares and items from our Feast range alongside high quality art prints. So, there are now even more products you can buy from us, all of which help support the Guardian.

What projects have you got coming up?

Our main focus this year is to continue to roll out improvements to the website, making it faster, easier to browse and as reflective of the Guardian editorial coverage as it can be. There are some great new books coming out this year, including Polly Toynbee and David Walker’s The Lost Decade and Hilary Mantel’s conclusion to the Wolf Hall trilogy, The Mirror & The Light, which will both be big for us. We will also be curating collections for Women’s History Month in March and Pride Month in June, and focusing on the climate crisis later in the year. Finally, we’ll be adding lots more Guardian-branded non-book products to the site over the course of the year, so please do let us know if there is anything in particular you would like to see added to the range.

• To buy items from the Guardian Bookshop, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 020 3176 3837