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Many families are saving money by sharply curtailing their vacation budget, but that shouldn’t mean a summer without adventure. We spent a summer at home discovering our city through the Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne. Each book stars Jack and Annie, a sibling duo, who find a tree house that spins them to a new location and time with each book. Throughout the summer, we planned an excursion or activity that matched the subject of the book. When Jack and Annie traveled to the Cretaceous period, we went to a Natural History Museum. They met ninjas in ancient Japan; we ate sushi at a Japanese restaurant. The kids flew to old England to help Shakespeare stage a play; we attended an outdoor Shakespeare production. Revolutionary War on Wednesday perfectly compliments 4th of July celebrations.
As a bookseller, make the most of this series while helping financially strapped families enjoy local attractions. Take a moment to create a list of local excursions that could pair up with a book. Consider local museums and cultural festivals many of which offer kids programs in the summer. What better way to encourage “buy local” than to recommend a book and a family excursion in your hometown? The family will love you for helping plan the summer, the merchant will love you for recommending her venue, and you’re doing what booksellers thrive on—creating community.
No location for a theme, the Magic Tree House website has suggestions for every book, plus computer activities, perfect for the harried parent, just pass along the information. In any event, it isn’t necessary to plan something for every book, just enough to give families the idea that reading can be the source of fun for everyone. Here are some suggestions:
Dinosaurs Before Dark – Natural History Museum
Mummies in the Morning – Egyptian art in a museum
Night of the Ninjas – Shinto Temple, Japanese restaurant, Japanese grocery store
Afternoon on the Amazon – Conservatory or jungle type garden, zoo
Sunset of the Sabertooth – Natural History Museum with fossilized bones, zoo
Midnight on the Moon – any space exhibit
Dolphins at Daybreak – beach, aquarium, aquatic park
Ghost Town at Sundown – hoe down, square dancing, hay ride
Lions at Lunch Time – zoo
Polar Bears past Bedtime – zoo or aquatic park
Day of the Dragon King - Chinatown, Chinese restaurant or grocery store or cooking a Chinese recipe together
Tigers at Twilight – zoo
Revolutionary War on Wednesday – 4th of July celebrations
Stage Fright on a Summer Night – kid’s theatre production, Shakespeare production
Good Morning, Gorillas – zoo
High Tide in Hawaii – Gidget movie
Once kids start the series, they are addicted and read all 28 books. These are designed for beginning independent readers; just the age to enjoy reading alone and discovering the benefit of reading go beyond the book. The series is truly gender neutral, both boys and girls enjoy it. The books don’t have to be read in order, but there is a background story of Jack and Annie helping Morgan le Fay, King Arthur’s sister, create a library of books found throughout history. Some of the stories have accompanying Research Guides, so if a young customer loves a subject, direct her to the non-fiction companion.
Helping kids get hooked on the Magic Tree House series will sell books, encourage emerging readers by showing them that reading is more than the book, and gain the appreciation of the parents who you’ve helped to plan the summer.
Kim Allen-Niesen is co-founder of Bookstore People, a blog that reviews independent bookstores to encourage people to visit them and shop. In addition, books and various literary topics are discussed.
Most book dealers state they take books in “good” condition. Some customers have an interesting definition of “good.” Many of these arguments on “why won’t you buy this hideous book?” end up with the customer arguing “but its a good book!” and telling you all about the wonderful story and how it moved them. This is all well and good, but when the book is missing both covers and smells of cat pee, you generally don’t want it, no matter what the contents are like. If it’s a truly rare manuscript entirely valuable for its writing, then perhaps you can learn to love the smell of urine… but it never is. How hard the person argues “but it’s a good book!” is inversely proportional to how valuable it is. The person with the coverless Danielle Steel that you can smell from six feet away is the one that wants to argue about value.
Sometimes you wonder how they missed just how awful it was. If they’ve clearly tossed all the loose books in a box and you find one the dog ate, that is understandable. Or one in the box has a warped cover from coffee. Everybody misses one or two. It’s the ones that bring you an entire box that appears to have had a nest of incontinent weasels in it that you wonder about. Why are they bringing it to you? Do they really think you’ll buy it?
The boxes that smell clearly of mildew are the most perplexing. I’m not super sensitive to mildew, but have had customers come in with boxes that made my eyes water and nose clog from six feet away. How the heck did they pick it up and carry it around without noticing? How did they drive over in a car without dying of respiratory failure?
But really, this is all a lead up to showing you a picture of an awful book. I’m unsure of the original source, it’s just been all over the internet recently. No explanation of where it was found. I have nightmares that this book will arrive at the store. “But it’s a good book! It’s The Good Book!”
Bible growing mushrooms
NO, I DON’T CARE HOW “GOOD” IT IS, IT’S GROWING MUSHROOMS!!!
I have personally had people bring in books covered in visible layers of mold “fur”, but never actual mushrooms. But I’m sure a mushroom covered book will show up one day…
In the used book business it’s easy to get into a rut, especially in
buying. Like with a lot of things, if you stick with a system you’ve
developed, it often starts to seem like it’s being proved right.
For example: When we opened 6 or so years ago we tried just about every
fiction genre in the shop and online. Romance, thriller, literary,
classics, crime, etc. etc. I should add the caveat that both of us (my
brother and I run the store) have, as the Irish put it, “notions”, so we
were hardly married to the romance and thriller end of the spectrum.
After a few months the Tom Clancys, Danielle Steeles, John Grishams, and
Nora Roberts weren’t exactly running out the door, so we bagged ‘em and
concentrated on books that we knew something about.
Time passed and we were proven right! We didn’t sell any of that stuff
(though we kept a stash of a dozen or so hyper popular authors boxed in
the basement for emergencies). What’s nice about these broad decisions is
that they save a lot of time - you can stop looking at broad swathes of
categories and just put them out of your mind completely. This is
reassuring but not always any more useful than “company policy” is at a
more traditional business.
Last year we moved our shop across town (Boston is a small town so the
move amounted to a longish walk) and the new location had slightly
different tastes, so when people brought in piles of books, I was more
likely to take a longer look. So, in that mode, when a woman brought in a
few bags of vampire books - mostly what they are calling paranormal
romance - I was more inclined to look. Obviously we’ve paid some measure
of attention to Anne Rice (as she’s slowly become impossible to sell) and
the Twilight books have moved rapidly in and back out of the shop, but I
was completely unprepared for how this phenomenon still has legs. We
purchased maybe 50 of these and they have flown out the door.
Now, this phenomenon was ably profiled in this
very space, but I think it may have understated the breadth of this
category - more than just a spiking of vampire popularity, it’s staking
claim to wide swathes of romance territory. Hundreds of novels that were
once romance fiction, romance suspense, romance historical fiction, are
being absorbed under the (increasingly broad) paranormal romance category.
As near as I can tell, there are two types as represented by two general
cover designs.
The super sexualized Goth cover:
and the charmingly cartoonish:
Sometimes the publisher even has a change of heart (focus groups being
what they are) and one is swapped out for the other:
The cartoon Lynsay Sands covers are generally out of print now. Perhaps
bound to become collector’s items (I’m kidding of course, there must be
100,000 of them out there)? There’s not a big difference in saleability
as far as I can tell, just two different targeted market segments. What’s
most remarkable about these is how they sell though - online, in the
store, and even though they are often 5 years old (which is usually ages
with this sort of thing). It just goes to show that even though you might
think you know what’s going on (I’m down with Twilight, watched the True
Blood mash-up of James Lee Burke and Vampires), you can still be missing
everything beneath the surface. Some of the series just go on and on -
the Laurel Hamilton one is approaching 20 in the series.
So I’ve vowed to be more vigilant, less opinionated, but also to peer more
intently at the horizon. For I’m sure some of you are on top of this
already and have shrugged at my revelatory tone. So you count yourself
ready for the continued love affair with vampires, but are you prepared
for the next wave? What will follow Vampires in a world where Jane Austen
and Zombies is a bestseller with a movie deal?
Amorous were-wolves (it’s been done - here’s a
whole subsection of Werewolf and “Shifter” stories)? Naughty nymphs?
Lascivious Satyrs? I wouldn’t even want speculate on the narrative
possibilities of centaurs or harpies. Zombies are a tough sell,
romantically, but how about Mummies (you could just un-mummy the mummies
like the movie franchise did so famously. This worked in Twilight - what
if Vampires could go out in the daytime? What if they were unbothered by
crosses, garlic, running water, etc. What if they were exactly like
normal people only much more attractive and awesomer? Sold!). Demon
lovers are as old as the hills, and Patrick Swayze sort of put a stake (so
to speak) in ghosts, but how about lovable poltergeists or revenants.
The list could go on (goblins, golems, ginger-bread men) but whatever
happens, I’ll be ready the next time.
–
Pazzo Books
1898a Centre St.
West Roxbury, MA 02131
617-323-2919
President Obama at the White House Easter Egg roll, improving your business. Yes, YOUR business.
Less than half of children under five years of age in the US are read to everyday. That more than anything helps cement a love of reading and prepare kids for school. Even babies and toddler benefit from being read to. Studies show that two year olds that are read to everyday have larger vocabularies, more developed cognitive skills, and better language comprehension skills than those that are not read to. And that’s in kids that are only semi-verbal!
And the problems pile up over the years, resulting in kids falling farther behind with each grade. These problems persist for a lifetime and cost the government (and taxpayers) trillions of dollars. In some states they use the third grade reading proficiency scores to estimate future prison need. Why? 85% of prison inmates cannot read proficiently. Simply increasing the graduation rate by 5% would save the US $5 BILLION annually in prison related costs.
Every 26 seconds, a kid drops out of school in the US. Over their lifetime, each high school drop out costs the US government roughly$260,000. In adults, 43% of people that are not proficient readers live in poverty. Of those that are proficient readers, a mere 4% live in poverty. Over the course of their lives, those with lowest literacy rates cost the government four times as much in health care costs as the most proficient readers. Annually an additional $73 BILLION is spent on health care for those with low reading proficiency due to low literacy skills in the form of longer hospital stays, emergency room visits, more doctor visits, medication errors, and increased medication. US businesses spend $60 billion annually on remedial training, mostly on reading skills.
One in seven adults in the US can not read this post, let alone anything complicated like list of side effects on medication or the fine print on a loan application.
What does all this have to do with bookstores? The key to literacy is access to books. In low income areas, 80% of preschool and afterschool programs have NO age appropriate books for kids! In middle class neighborhoods, there’s roughly one age appropriate book per 13 kids between the library and private holdings. In low income neighborhoods, the ratios is 300 to 1.
A bookstore by its mere existence improves access to books for all people in a community. Even more than actually selling books, a used bookstore is a major book distributor to those that cannot afford to buy books. If you operate a used bookstore, you probably receive multiple calls per week about “will you just TAKE my books? I don’t want to throw them out!” A used bookstore serves as a collection and redistribution point for books of all types. Books that would never sell in the store and sell for pennies online often make it into boxes destined for prisons, schools, homeless shelters, literacy programs, and other places in desperate need of books. Even if you make faces at having a box of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books left on your doorstep, once they’re sent off to a new home at a school or prison, they can be a godsend.
Additionally, having various programs at the store can help boost literacy. Story hour helps kids learn to love reading. Even if they buy nothing that day, that can help boost literacy in your community which saves your business money (in the form of lower property taxes) in the long term and increases the market for books.
Obviously making kids books affordable and available has the biggest impact because of the ripple effect over time. Yet many used bookstores don’t accept children’s books. This is because they’re often hard to shelve, often are in terrible condition when the arrive, and often don’t fit the focus of the store. (and that totally ignores the issue of CPSIA, another major problem) Where do those books go? Some do get donated to places that need them, but even more end up thrown out. If you have a store, take them. Even if you give no credit or pay nothing for them, even if you don’t have space to put them on the shelves, many people just want to pass them on to someone. You can find them a good home with a group that truly will put them to good use… and remember your largesse. (and may be tax deductable too!)
While giving away books does not seem like it really helps your bottom line, that is because it has little to no visible impact when you focus on monthly or quarterly sales. However, over years or decades, it ensures there’s an ever growing market for your product. If you’re writing a ten year business plan, donations of books, services, or just plain money to local programs that increase the literacy rate should be part of that plan. Even if you allocate no money to it, as you are simply redistibuting overstock, simply making the committment to give away X number of books per year and hold Y number of story hours, it will make a huge difference in the long term viability of your business.
Now obviously this applies most directly to brick and mortar stores, but online only places can play their part as well. When you’re scouting books, consider buying some collections at a flat rate to take it ALL, even what you consider junk. You may well be able to get a better price by agreeing to take it ALL than picking and choosing the few volumes you want. Bundle up the rest and donate.
Schools and literacy focused programs are the obvious place to start, but adults need books too! Improving adult literacy improves the outcome for their kids too. Places like the local social services office, prisons, hospitals, rehab facilities, homeless shelters, and domestic violence shelters can all make use of these. In many cases, these are places with captive audiences that would never read for pleasure on their own (or could never afford to spend money on books)… but give them a book to read while waiting and they just may find it’s fun. Or may spend that hour in line sitting and reading to their kids.
If you’re willing to pay for postage and want to do something beyond the local area, sending books to military bases overseas is also an excellent option. A box of books can make a soldier’s day. They’ll be shared around, passed from person to person and unit to unit. Some units in low-conflict areas may also hand out children’s books to the local kids. When eventually the unit moves out, they leave the majority of the books behind. That dogeared, highlighted copy of a classic may be worth pennies stateside, but when left in a fa away land it may take an honored place in the local library’s English-language collection.
And all that eventually comes full circle. While book people consider books a neccessity, in many places they are a luxury. By providing the books necessary to build an education upon, it increases the demand overall, worldwide. Increased literacy decreases poverty… and so there’s money available to spend on books. And lower taxes from increased literacy rates means more disposable income locally to spend on books… And higher literacy rates translate to more kids learning to love to read and consider books a necessity, not a luxury… And on and on…
Make the committment to give books, money, or time to the cause of building literacy locally and worldwide and help ensure a better business climate for yourself for years and decades to come.
There is nothing more frustrating than that locally-owned business who chooses to close right before or right after you arrive, correct? It’s almost like the indie shops should do everything like the larger chain stores, including hold early and late hours.
Why should customers expect this out of privately-owned business? Well, when you think about it, we often tout that we deserve their business in order to “keep it local.” Don’t the customers deserve extended hours? Don’t they deserve everything that the chain stores can give?
This is just the thing. Indie bookshops are not corporate giants. Oftentimes, even these giants will keep late hours while not making large profits during those hours simply so that they are known as an all-hour joint. Confusing? I call it the “Wal-Mart Effect.” Anyone will shop at Wal-Mart because of their lack of exclusivity. In other words, they have, literally, an open door policy. They never shut! Psychologically, this gives the consumer confidence, knowing that this particular business does not and will not shut down.
Should the indie booksellers stay open late and arrive early? Interestingly enough, the “Wal-Mart Effect” has an antonym. All are accepted into Wal-Mart’s doors. This has hurt them in some regards, driving away elitists. It is not exclusive enough. Why do the liquidation outlets keep 3-4 day work schedules, opening only for a few hours on each of those days? They are giving off the appearance of exclusivity. The local bookshop succeeds in the same way.
My wife and I began our first store with hours that topped out at 9:30-9:00. This wore us out and we weren’t seeing great results. Customers were coming through the doors, however, so we kept the hours for quite a while. When we did finally change to closing at 6:00, our sales were honestly unaffected. Not only do people expect their friendly bookseller to go home to their family, they seem to understand that their used bookshop is worth stopping in earlier. Gottwals Books is an exclusive shop to its customers, in many ways, because of our store hours.
We are closed on Sundays not because it is a “day for family” but because it is God’s day. If we own one thousand stores, we will never be open on Sundays, even though Sunday sales are expectedly good. Worshiping Jesus Christ is far too important for us to be open. We also close early on Wednesdays so that any of our employees, including ourselves, can make it to their respective Wednesday night church services and prayer meetings. So, in our case, we hope that our hours don’t scream “Exclusive!” as much as they do “Christian!”
What are your hours?
Have you changed them as time has passed?
Do you think my analysis is hogwash?
Do you still get angry whenever you drive past the big chain stores at 10 o’clock at night? (Why can’t I have that many cars after 6:00, right?)
A Guest Post by Kim Allen-Niesen, co-founder of Bookstore People
For information on becoming a contributor click here..
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When I tell people I write a blog about independent bookstores, the discussion quickly turns to e-books. Aren’t they the death knell for bookstores? Aren’t I beating a dead horse by promoting visiting and shopping at bookstores?
Hardly.
I received a Kindle for Christmas, 2008. I read the New York Times and half a book before putting it away in my bottom drawer. My husband tried it twice. My teenage son tried it once. My son may have used it more, but it’s one thing to lose a book and quite another to lose a $399 Kindle. A Zogby poll just over a year ago showed that 82% of readers preferred a printed book to an e-book. Cuddling up to a screen isn’t inviting to many.
Literary agent Bonnie Nadell said at the LA Times Festival of Books that she prints out material sent to her electronically because reading on a screen converts everything to the same voice. I agree, for me it is a fairly flat voice. Also, I find with screen reading that my concentration level is lower. The researcher Jakob Nielsen proved my point scientifically by testing 232 people on how they read from screens. The research subjects tended to skim. In fact, Mr. Nielsen noticed an “F” pattern. People read the top, then down the side and taper off towards the middle. Just like me.
Booksellers, Allison Reid and John Evans of Diesel, described the difference in reading on a screen and from a printed page. Screen reading is for information. They foresaw a time with the reference section or travel section in bookstores disappeared. Avid booklover that I am, 99% of the words I look up are on dictionary.com. Years ago, I used to research a trip for hours in a bookstore eventually buying three or four travel books. Now I buy one overall book for the area I’m visiting and spend hours researching on the Internet. However, Allison and John said that book reading was necessary for knowledge. In their opinion, and there are studies that back this proposition, the concentration and evaluation needed to truly know a subject and build on it required reading from paper.
I’m not a Pollyanna though. People are reading books on their iPhone, and while just visualizing that gives me a headache, electronic reading is part of the future. I’ve met several people who bought the Kindle and think they would like it if only they could get it away from their kids. In part, this could be an age issue; the younger generation is more comfortable reading from electronics. Either way, e-books are here to stay.
The discussion over which reading is better is a battle booksellers need to be aware of to help direct their customers. But it doesn’t stop there, with the advent of e-publishing, there will be an avalanche of choices for readers. This is exactly where booksellers shine, taking a myriad of choices and winnowing out the best. As Bob Lewis pointed out on this blog in “The Second Renaissance-bigger, better, faster!” these are exciting times, and one of the questions is how do booksellers add value and receive compensation in the e-book world? The answer will require innovation and experimentation. What are your thoughts?
Introduction:
Kim Allen-Niesen is co-founder of Bookstore People, a blog that reviews independent bookstores to encourage people to visit them and shop. In addition, books and various literary topics are discussed.
Here is a terrific post from a new contributor to The Bookshop Blog - Roberta Nevares
If you have some time take a look at her blog The Poet In You
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I am a relative newbie in the world of book selling, my dear friend Nora who encouraged me to travel down this path is not. In fact, book selling is nearly all she has ever known save for a very short stint as a barista with a well-known coffee chain. This brief foray of hers was put to an end with an intervention by loved ones. Nora finally relented to their fervent entreaties to, “be done with this torturous career path”, an occupation that had resulted in a traumatic and recurring nightmare in which she found herself seated opposite the half-rabid coffee swilling author Balzac wagering on the ever popular card game, Piquet. In this dream Balzac could not be restrained from leaping up and shouting, “Carte Blanche!”. Nora would then be obliged to prepare yet another demitasse full of brew by manipulating a very complicated piece of 19th century machinery, glass tubes and metal parts would sputter forth a few pungent and very black drops of a full bodied dark roast for the never sated author. Ah, the stuff nightmares are made of. Intervention behind her, she shrugged off her apron and stepped back into the world of book selling.
This dear woman was my first and primary teacher, a mentor if you would have it so. We’ve lived in different cities now for more than a decade. My “tutelage” has been by phone and email. In the beginning, the only experience I had was as a customer and fan of used bookstores, their decline was a subject we spoke about often. I loved finding an out of print or hard to fine title, even one with a dedication in a flowery script would have me buzzing. As a bookseller, I had no experience. I had a barrage of questions, all of the most obvious ones: what to buy, where to buy it, how to sell it. Five years later the book related calls are fewer and the need for consolation much less. When I feel that I’ve let something get away from me I remember the signed Kerouac that she let go for a song. Now we commiserate more than anything but she is still my go to girl in times of crisis.
There are so many sources of information, the key is to be open to them and to value them especially when they come from the first hand experience of your book selling peers. I know that most booksellers don’t like to give away their hard earned lessons because those lessons, they’ve come at a price.
Book selling blogs have also been a great source of information. Sometimes I will find answers to questions that I didn’t even realize needed answering. One of the blog posts that I am most grateful for having found was right here on this site. It’s Tom Nealon’s post titled, Don’t Get Hung Up On Your Buying Mistakes - Sell And Move On. I swear, I think he wrote it just for me. After reading the article I finally started purging boxes of books. It has made a huge difference, both psychologically (I no longer have those foul books taunting me) and physically, it’s opened up a lot of shelf-space. Also, The Home-Based Bookstore: Start Your Own Business Selling Used Books
has recently made a comeback and has some pertinent posts for booksellers.
Book selling blogs have an appeal that the forums on ABE and Alibris do not. I am looking for and value constructive first hand experience, not doom and gloom.
My sources of motivation aren’t always other booksellers and they are not always online. I sometimes think of a veterinarian I once worked for who ranted when he found a box of product that was not on the shelf. “These aren’t going to sell sitting in this box in the office,” he railed. And he was right. When I see a box of books that I have yet to post I think of him in all of his annoyance. When I really need motivation I think of a Coach Bob Hurley at St. Anthony’s High School in Jersey City, NJ. He challenges his basketball players to give it their all and be their best. When my husband and I first watched this on CBS I laughed and said, “Can you imagine if I had that guy here coaching me on book selling? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING WATCHING TV????? POST THOSE BOOKS. POST ‘EM!!!!!”
In my very short history as a bookseller I have found that advice, inspiration and motivation can come from almost anywhere. If I have any advice to give it is to love what you do, do it well, and get those books out of the box and on your shelves!
This post was contributed by Jason Ramsay-Brown and Haldeman-Julius.org. Take a moment to visit their site, it’s quite nicely put together.
—— About EHJ and the Little Blue Books ——
Emanuel Julius was born in Philadelphia on July 30, 1889, the third of six children. He was an ardent advocate of socialism throughout his formative years, in time taking employment in the ranks of America’s growing left-wing media. His passions eventually brought him to Girard, Kansas, the epicenter of the nation’s socialist press, to work for the infamous “Appeal to Reason” newspaper. It was here he became romantically involved with Marcet Haldeman, granddaughter of Senator John H. Addams, and niece of Nobel Peace Prize winner, Jane Addams. The two were wed on June 1st, 1916 and mutually assumed the surname Haldeman-Julius.
wonderful little books by Emanuel and Marcet Haldeman-Julius
In 1919, Emanuel and Marcet Haldeman-Julius purchased controlling interest in the Appeal to Reason. As his first act as owner, Emanuel ordained the publication of a “University in Print” - a library of classic literature, social discourse, and political rhetoric aimed at being attractive and affordable to the average working person. These 3½ × 5 inch volumes were designed to fit in a worker’s back pocket, and printed with the cheapest materials possible in order to keep costs low. The initial booklets, known as “The Appeal’s Pocket Series” were priced at 25 cents a copy, and available only by mail order. Over the next few years, however, the series would change names several times, and as distribution escaped the restraints of mail order, prices would plunge as low as 5 cents a piece.
In 1923 the publication would become known as the Little Blue Book series, a name that would last until its final days some five decades later. Staunch left-wing tracts like #4 “Soviet Constitution” and #5 “Socialism vs. Anarchism” soon found themselves accompanied by volumes like #1013 “The Best Irish Jokes”, and #1111 “Prostitution in the Medieval World”. By 1978, when the press & warehouse were destroyed by fire, some 2000 titles would have been issued, and hundreds of millions of booklets sold.
—— About Haldeman-Julius.org ——
Haldeman-Julius.org site is devoted to the history, identification and collecting of the various 3½ × 5 inch volumes published by Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (and his son) from 1919 to 1978. These series include: The Appeal’s Pocket Series, People’s Pocket Series, Appeal Pocket Series, Ten Cent Pocket Series, Five Cent Pocket Series, Pocket Series, and the most popular and prolific series title, the Little Blue Book.
The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown’s long-anticipated follow-up to The Da Vinci Code, will be published September 15 by Knopf Doubleday. A first printing of five million copies is planned for the book. The New York Times noted that “fans and the publisher have been waiting a long time for Mr. Brown to finish the new book. It was originally scheduled for a 2005 delivery. The Lost Symbol will again feature Robert Langdon, the protagonist of The Da Vinci Code.
We’ve been waiting quite a long time for this book and I fear that with such high expectations combined with such a long wait (see: when is Dan Brown’s new book coming out? from Jan. 2008) this book is a prime candidate for a let-down. I love the langdon series and am very much looking forward to it’s release. It’s hard to imagine how Langdon’s exploits can match the last two books without him turning into a Bondesque charicature. While Dan Brown may not have the prettiest prose he sure can deliver a story.
The Bookshop Blog is looking for a few bookshop owners, book hobbyists to join our writing team.
Some of the benefits of submitting with us are:
An audience for your writing and your business, currently
approximately 12 000 ...
I recently had a return due to my error in the listing. I had it listed as a 'signed' copy and it wasn't. My error and I own up to it. What to do next...
Twitter is the bastard child of blogging, social networking, news feeds, and online forums. Stick web 2.0 in a food processor and chop it into 140 character bite sized pieces and there you go. That's Twitter. As messy as it is, it can be a great way to market your shop. It can generate sales faster than many other types of marketting and only requires an investment of your time.
We have another new contributor here at The Bookshop blog. I’m pleased to welcome Shane Gottwalls to our group of writers. Here is his first introductory post.
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Is it time to expand?
Gottwals Books has been open ...
What is a book worth?
What is the value of a book? Maybe in this instance it might be best to ask - how am I defining value.
Worth to an individual ? Absolute intrinsic value ...
The government thinks books are a danger to children and mandates destruction of millions of kids' books starting February 10th, 2009. It sounds like the plot form a science fiction novel, but new regulations are all too real.
This post in all honesty is a fishing expedition. I want to hear from you guys. We have experienced quite a tough year economically and 2009 does not look a whole lot brighter. Have you had to make any big changes to adjust to the new economic reality? Have you adjusted your trading/credit system, if not you may want to consider doing this right away. It will have a direct impact on your cash flow, loyal patrons will not mind one bit in fact the only people that would probably mind are those that were only taking advantage anyway. Click here to read a bit more on credit policies and feel free to add your own comment.
What are you expecting for the coming year and for those that have successfully gone through previous downturns do you have any advice for newer owners?
The net has been cast now lets see if any great comments get caught. As a little incentive I will post a prominent link on our sidebar for one or two of the more interesting commentators. (for a couple of weeks)
Well it finally happened. Abebooks of Victoria, BC has entered in an agreement with Amazon to be part of the Amazon family. They claim that they will continue to run as an independent company but that will not likely last too long. A sure sign of the times in which we live. Everybody buys their coffee at the same place, every goes to see the same handful of major films and now online we can all buy our books at the same place. yippee.
AbeBooks has reached an agreement to be acquired by Amazon.com, Inc. This is a major landmark in the 12-year history of AbeBooks.
AbeBooks will continue to operate as a stand-alone business with all aspects of AbeBooks’ bookseller and customer experience remaining intact. AbeBooks’ headquarters will remain in Victoria, BC, Canada, and our European offices will remain in Dusseldorf, Germany. We will continue to support both our international marketplaces and our domestic marketplace here in Canada. I will continue to lead AbeBooks. full press release here..
It’s June, season of commencements — the start of summer, the start of sunshine, and, if you are graduating from college, the start of the rest of your life. I remember when I completed my English degree, way back in the 20th century. Toward the end of the school year, employment recruiters came on campus. Many of my business major and engineering major friends knew where they would commence with their post-college careers even before graduation was at hand.
We English majors, though, we were not usually so definitive in our career plans. Editing the literary magazine or writing for the school paper was not likely to make an employer think you could be the next designer of yet another, smaller computer chip in furtherance of Moore’s Law. While an English major might do well with creative writing, he probably didn’t understand a thing about creative accounting. With a good working knowledge of Medieval Literature and fairly decent writing and analytical skills, we English majors were not really of use in the business world beyond writing advertising copy or technical manuals. No one recruited us.
Well, English majors, I’m here to tell you that although you probably won’t see us coming to recruit you at your local college campus: Antiquarian booksellers want you!
That’s right. There are simply not enough antiquarian booksellers, and antiquarian booksellers under age 40 are about as rare as Gutenberg Bible. That’s because, if you’re like me, you love books, but you simply may not know about the world of antiquarian books. Yes, I was an English major. I worked for a book store, a book publisher, and my university’s library during college, yet I was completely unaware of the existence of antiquarian books, which, let’s face it, are not often on display in publicly accessible places. If you don’t see them, you might not know they exist; or, if you know they exist but you don’t see them, you might not understand what’s so great about old books.
When you get involved with antiquarian books, you get involved with much more than a book. You learn about history, bibliography, and the importance of preserving primary sources. If you’ve seen movies like National Treasure, then you’ll already know that the occasional car chase and explosion will be a part of your career, too.
When I discovered the world of book collecting and antiquarian bookselling some years after college, I wondered why I had never known that antiquarian bookselling existed as a career.
Is antiquarian bookselling right for you? As the bibliophile John Hill Burton once said of antiquarian booksellers, “It is, as you will observe, the general ambition of the class to find value where there seems to be none, and this develops a skill and subtlety, enabling the operator, in the midst of a heap of rubbish, to put his finger on those things which have in them the latent capacity to become valuable and curios.” That description pretty much sums it up.
If you think antiquarian bookselling might be right for you, here are a few questions you might ask yourself: Do you like books? Are you especially in love with the physical beauty of old books? Do you revel in the arcane information to be found in some old tomes? Do you possess at least a few rudimentary business skills? Do you love to learn? Do you love to sell? Do you believe in yourself enough to build your own business even if no corporate recruiters came knocking at your door? Do you prefer autonomous self-direction over instructions handed down from a boss? Can you work alone, content with your books and yourself? Can you deal with the public, your customers? Can you withstand the physical injury of the occasional collapsing bookcase and numerous paper cuts without the benefit of a good workers’ comp program?
Does this describe you? If so, put down your Kindle and check out the world of antiquarian books.
Chris Lowenstein
Book Hunter’s Holiday
3182 Campus Drive #205
San Mateo, CA 94403
(415) 307-1046
Once again it is time to see if any of you are interested in contributing a post to our site. The last time we put out a little feeler like this the result was very positive. We received a lot of very interesting articles, from a Dream of Opening a Bookstore to a fantastic trip to the Pulpwood Queen’s Girlfriend Weekend.
Of course not all the posts need be so detailed. We have had nice stories on Children’s Books, on participating in Antique Fairs and much much more. If you have anything at all you’d like to share, please don’t be shy. You never know where it might lead.
The site has been averaging over 3 500 unique visitors per month, has received a Google Page Rank of 5, has over 230 subscribers. I continue to market the site vigorously and expect these numbers to continue growing; once your article and link(s) to your site are posted they remain within the site for the life of the blog.
We experimented with writing schedules for our contributors but this proved difficult to keep up. We are now going a bit more free-form and will post most good articles that are submitted, as always on books/book collecting and selling books be it online or from an open shop. Please feel free to insert links back to your site within each post and if you can include a few images.
So that’s it in a nutshell. If you like to write, we like to publish. If you need some publicity (or Google Juice), we can provide it. Again, just drop me a line: editor (at) bookshopblog.com
It’s funny - when I was packing up our 20,000 books and all of the
associated detritus that collected along with them over the past five
years, I swore that had to be the worst part of the move. Before that,
when I was pulling down pink plywood, plastering over holes, sheet rocking
and painting, I pretty much figured that was the worst part. It should
surprise no one then, given my track record, that the worst part is the
interminable unboxing and reshelving of books. Adding to the
unpleasantness is the fact that we’ve decided to rationalize (that’s a
euphemism for make some vague sense out of) our internet cataloging
system. This brings me, somewhat obliquely, to my first bits of advice:
1 - Make sure your system of arranging books that you sell online makes
sense and is scalable (not in the arranging them in the form of a ziggurat
sense, but in the functions well under large numbers sense) ; it’s going
to be a pain to fix five years down the line
(you’ll notice that much of this “advice” is of the “I climbed a water
tower and fell off and now travel high schools telling kids not to climb
water towers” variety).
2 - Don’t put a box of books in your basement unless you’re pretty sure
you want to carry them back upstairs, load them into a truck and move them
across town. Also, don’t put 200 of these in your basement.
3 - Be organized in your move - stack sections together and in the order
you’d like to use them. I actually thought of this one beforehand, but
I’m constitutionally incapable of this level of organization - if you can
do it though, your present self will owe your past self a debt of
gratitude (as a friend of mine likes to say).
All of which adds up to the fact, some may say obvious fact, that moving
something as heavy as a used bookstore should not be done without the best
of reasons. Ours were complicated - rising rents, static foot traffic
(static at a bad level - the U.S. obsession with growth has made static a
bad word when it could be lovely. Why does no one ever say statically
good?), and a commercial district that has begun to favor restaurants.
Now, I love restaurants as much as the next guy who can’t afford to go to
them very often, but a certain percentage of restaurants in a commercial
district is pretty much a death knell for traditional retail. The hours
are just too different for them to work together - it’s possible all those
mom and pop shops should just be open from 5 PM - 12 PM, who knows. I’ve
worked in too many restaurants though - those hours will really mess with
your head.
So with rents and changing dynamics, it was time to go - luckily we
actually learned a few things since our first opening.
Don’t settle for two many “this should be ok”s when choosing a space. If
you leave yourself enough time to look, you should be able to find the
right space (this goes for opening the first time as well, of course).
Our first shop was a good size but had too many strangely shaped spaces
and quirks that we were paying for - we also were about 200 feet from
where we needed to be and when those pedantic jackasses say that the three
most important concerns in retail are location, location, location,
they’re not JUST being annoying.
Try not to cut too many corners - this can be difficult when working on a
shoestring budget, but try to do things properly or not do them at all.
Half-assing a few things here and there (e.g. buying an area rug to
disguise an ugly floor instead of replacing the floor) is appropriate,
but, at least for me, these half measures get a grip on you after a while
and start being too obvious - eventually the enterprise takes on the dull
sheen of half-assedness. If you think the color of your walls is ok,
paint them the color you really want, you won’t regret it (joyfully, the
pink walls at our new store left me no half option on this one).
And oh yeah, lift with your legs.
Here’s a few pictures as order begins to emerge from the chaos:
Aisle one of internet books in the basement. We enlisted the help of
local street urchins to shelve the books.
Aisle 2. Anyone looking to purchase 500 slightly used boxes?
Street urchins are also useful for book cataloging.
Not so much for the hauling of heavy boxes as my brother apparently notices.
This last is from our moving fundraiser. This, which I must admit I was
skeptical about, turned out great. We had a bunch of silent auctions,
collected donated items from local friendly businesses (and gave them
great advertising - or tried), local urchins ran a hot dog cart, and we
had a keg of beer and a band (pictured - if you have kids at your party,
get a guy with a pink suit, they went nuts). All of our intensive studies
show that customers purchase at least 30% more when drinking.
– Pazzo Books 4268 Washington St. Roslindale, MA 02131 pazzobooks.com 617-323-2919
Signage, the bane of every retail store’s existence. It often seems like customers don’t read signs at all. A good sign can increase business and make your store easier to navigate. A bad one can just be a big waste of money. So here’s some tips for getting you sign noticed. This applies both to longer informational signs and simple section labels.
MAKE IT BIG!
If you can’t read at least part of it from 6 feet anyway, it’s too small. As people get closer, they can pick up more detail. So make the grabbing headline big and then as you offer more info, it can be in progressively smaller type as they get closer to read it all.
I suggest making the smallest type 14 point.
For large section labels, apply the 6 foot rule. For things that really only need to be read while you’re actually standing there (price labels) they can be closer to 14 point.
Don’t forget to include the ANGLE the sign is read at in the distance calculation. Signs above people’s heads or below their knees need to be bigger than ones at eye level to compensate for being read at an angle.
And this is a nonbrainer, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bookstore do this: MAKE THE SIGNS IN THE LARGE PRINT SECTION BIGGER. I’d suggest doing the same in the books on tape section too, as often they’re the same customer.
Keep it simple, stupid.
Oh, the lure of exotic typefaces… just say no to crazy scripts. Most “handwriting” scripts are difficult to read quickly. As someone walks past the sign, you only have a split second to catch their eye. If that second is wasted on them trying to recognize the basic letters in the typeface, they won’t actually read the sign. Keep it clean and easily recognizable.
Just say no to reversed text
White lettering on colored background looks cool, but its murder on the eyes. It’s fine for a headline, but don’t write any of the details in this color scheme.
Use a limited color palette
Often the best sign is a crisp black and white because it’s uncluttered. In a retail store, there’s a lot going on. The starkness of a black and white sign draws the eye. If you decide to go with color, pick ONE. Text should be black on a light colored or pastel background. If you simply must have a more colorful background to match the décor or to contrast with a large stack of black and white items, use color complements. Use a darker one for the text. Cool colors work better for text in most cases. This will make the color ‘pop’.
Complementary colors are the ones that appear across from each other on a color wheel. I’ll just list them here for ease of use. (I’ve put the cool color first)
Green & Red
Blue & Orange (gold)
Purple & Yellow
You can do more complicated splits, but there’s a reason these three appear so often, they work!
Make space for space!
A clear, concise sign is more effective than a cluttered one. Make sure there’s space so people can break the text and pictures up into easily digestible chunks. They’ll retain more info that way. If it’s one big mass of text (or too many pictures) they won’t be able to parse it as they walk past.
They aren’t looking at it straight on.
People are rarely facing a sign dead on. They’re often walking past or approaching it at an angle. Make sure the sign is recognizable (and legible) when viewed at an angle. Stick it above your head, near your waist, and to left and right of you so you can see what it looks like from various angles.
Proofread! Proofread! Proofread!
After you have designed your sign, take a break. Ideally, leave it be for at least a day. THEN proofread. All the errors will jump out you. If you do it too soon after writing it, you will see what you think you wrote, rather than what you actually wrote. (a classic example of good signs gone bad: http://www.fugly.com/pictures/16785/kids_with_gas_eat_free.html Remember, if its REALLY bad, it may take the internet by storm!)
Show it to at least two other people. They’ll pick up some more mistakes and point out spots where things are unclear. You may know what you meant, but that’s doesn’t mean you wrote it as clearly as you could!
Special note: If you are in a multiethnic area, grab someone from each of the main ethnic groups to proofread. Its embarrassing to find out what looked like a great sign uses a slang term that is either offensive, confusing, or just plain really funny to your customers. If you’re living somewhere other than your birth country make sure to double check your spelling matches the local spelling! British and American English have lots of spelling differences that can trip you up.
Make a mockup
If you are having fancy signs made that will be near permanent fixtures (such as section labels), have a friend or employee walk around the store with a mockup and hold it in various places so you can see how it will look. You may discover its not big enough, a bad color scheme, looks strange under your lights, the finish is too reflective and its unreadable, its too cluttered, etc. Nothing beats actually seeing the sign in action.
Put the sign in the right place
This should be a no brainer, but how many times have you come in and seen the “big sale!” signs clustered over the checkout? If people are standing in checkout, telling them about the great sale on something in back of the store is not going to work! Sale signs should be where people can act on it. This means either at the entrance or somewhere people can be drawn towards the sale section.
Signs at checkout should either relate to something the customer can get right now (impulse buys), can do at checkout (sign up for our e-mail list), or relates to an event in the future that they might wish to come back for (come see author X next week!).
Don’t lay it flat
Flat is great for eye level or things that are hanging and have writing on both sides. However, if at all possible, signs above most people’s heads should be tilted slightly down so they will appear at a 90 degree angle to someone’s plane of vision when they look up. Signs below the waist should be similarly tilted up slightly. Use a yard stick or long rod on your shoulder to gauge angle. Tilt it so it follows your line of vision to the sign. (if you’re exceptionally short or tall, have an average height friend do it instead)
For signs that are only meant to be seen close up, like price labels, adjust them to be visible that way. They may be invisible from farther away. Don’t worry about this. For ones that are meant to be seen from several points farther away, you’ll want them at shallower angle so they can still be read from very far away. Try several different angles before you secure the sign.
You may even want to have two sets of signs! One large sign that can be seen from across the length of the store, plus a smaller one tilted so that people standing within 3 feet of the display can easily read it.
Put it next to your face… or put a face on it
Most people prefer to look at other people’s faces over anything else. Our brains are exceptionally good at recognizing faces and we naturally turn to look at them. Even things that only vaguely parse as faces will get our attention. It’s why the Virgin Mary turns up on trees, toasts, and rust stains so often. It’s hardwired into the brain.
If you REALLY want people to see the sign, stick it next to the cashier’s head. Or get the cashier to wear it. Don’t block the view of the cashiers face, or have cashiers head in front. You want it where it’s in the sweet spot around the face so its in line of sight, but not distracting.
If it’s a sign that will be nowhere near stationary people, you can cheat and put a face on the sign. It doesn’t even have to be a particularly accurate face. WalMart, love ‘em or hate ‘em, has perfected the “look at the face” trick with use of the smiley face to draw attention to signs. A symbol that didn’t read as a face wouldn’t draw nearly as much attention.
You can try a variation on “look at the face” for large signs by sticking it next to, or in the arms of, a stuffed animal. Animal faces work almost as well as abstracted human faces. Or, if you’re really going for attention, stick a mirror there. The only thing better than someone else’s face is the customer’s own face!
No matter what you do, you’ll still have some customers that don’t read the signs, but now you have a fighting chance!
A Book Nerd’s Dream: Stories Toward Opening My Bookstore
This is the beginning of a story that (I hope) will have in it the part about me opening my own bookstore. I hope the story doesn’t end there – as you booksellers know, it’s the ongoing narrative that’s the stuff dreams are made of, not the single moment of opening the doors. I’m a bookseller too, and have been for quite a while, but I haven’t yet made it to that climactic moment of owning my own store. In hopes that it will prove interesting both for booksellers and for those with entrepreneurial ambitions, I’d like to offer my story, unspooling behind me as it unfolds ahead of me, for the Bookshop Blog.
Chapter 2. The Epiphany.
I loved working at Three Lives when I was an undergraduate. Coming into the bookstore from the hectic streets and the stress of classes was like taking a deep breath. The quiet, the smell of books and wood and candles, the green glass lampshades, the colleagues who mothered me and gossiped with me and taught me about contemporary literature (which, despite my English major, I knew nothing about) – it was like heaven. I couldn’t believe I was getting paid for it. And I was learning to be a good bookseller – it was a great shop for handselling, and it was small enough that every employee had their hands on every aspect of the store.
During my senior year, I came back from Christmas break to be told that Jill and Jenny had sold the bookstore – what?!? – to Toby Cox, that guy who had been hanging around for the last couple of months. It turned out to be the best thing that could have happened for the bookstore and for me at that point. Toby was, if possible, an even better boss than Jill and Jenny. He had come from a publisher (Crown), but before that had worked for many years at the Brown University Bookstore in Providence, and brought a lot of experience and love to bear. As he promised, he kept the feel of the store intact, but made some practical internal changes that were all for the best, and was both reasonable and generous with employees and customers – a true book person, and still one of my best mentors.
And yet, as graduation approached, I announced that I would have to leave the bookstore to find a “real job.” I was a BA now, and BA’s worked in offices, or in universities. I wasn’t ready to commit to academia, though I still imagined I’d be a professor someday, so I opted for the English major’s fallback job: editorial assistant in a publishing house. I followed up on some leads, applying to Knopf and some educational publishers. Again it’s strange to ponder what a different life I might have had if I’d gotten hired at Knopf – that might have been my dream job, but I didn’t make the cut.
I ended up working at Bedford St. Martin’s, a college textbook publisher, in the Communications department. It wasn’t trade publishing, but it was publishing – I would have my hands on making books, and a steady if small salary. I had a good feeling about the people there, which turned out to be accurate – one of my office mates became my boyfriend and, much later, my husband.
But that was the only thing I was right about. I was a terrible editorial assistant. I found I didn’t much care about the books we were publishing, and I didn’t like the busywork that was my responsibility. I was unorganized and inefficient. I hated sitting in a cubicle. I hated the office politics and the early mornings. I cried a lot, seemingly unreasonably – there was no real suffering in my job, but it just felt so wrong.
I started working some weekends at the bookstore, for a little extra cash, and despite the six-day week, looked forward to it. At the bookstore I could do things right, and make people happy, and make up for the frustrations of the rest of the week. But I knew I couldn’t do this forever.
So I started applying to graduate school. Cocky because of my 100% acceptance rate as an undergrad, I stuck to the top tier: Literature PhD programs at Stanford, NYU, Columbia. It was time to live up to my potential, I figured; I would read and teach and write brilliant exegesis on Woolf and Bishop. I wrote my essays and got my transcripts sent off and waited.
And I got rejected by every single program (except NYU, my alma mater, which offered my a master’s program with no financial aid). I cried some more, but the reasons were obvious. I hadn’t published anything since graduation; I wasn’t versed in literary theory beyond my freshman seminar; I loved books, but I was faking it as a potential academic.
One evening at my boyfriend’s house, I was crying again over my rejection and the new open-endedness of my plan for my life. That was when that long-suffering man, himself a serious book person (referred to on my blog as the ALP, for Adorably Literate Partner), offered the observation that changed my life.
“It doesn’t seem like you really wanted to be an academic, any more than you want to work in publishing,” he said. “The only job you ever really liked and were good at was working in the bookstore.”
My lightbulb came on like a dimmer – slowly, but steadily. I loved writing and talking about books, but not as a theorist – as a chatterer, a handseller. I loved the experience of being a reader among other readers, not in the rarified world of academia, or the removed and abstract one of publishing. I loved the space of the bookstore, the physical tasks, the making and maintenance of beauty and order and comfort. I was a bookseller.
I can’t remember whether I shared this epiphany with Toby, but somehow, for some reason, he offered me a full-time job at the store. I didn’t hesitate – I walked into my boss’s office at Bedford and gave two weeks notice. My first day back at Three Lives, my mom sent flowers – it was May Day, and there was reason to celebrate.
It took some more conversations to figure out that this was not only what I wanted to do now, it was what I wanted to do for life. A friend working in urban development helped me articulate the importance of bookstores in community life, and my first regional bookseller conference showed me the wider world of bookselling. But that moment in the ALP’s bedroom was the one all of us booksellers have at one point or another: the moment when we realize this isn’t just a retail job, it’s our calling. The rest was history – or at least, it will be.
Shall I compare thee…In Praise of Ex-library books
They are the ugly stepchildren of the used book business, at best forgotten, but more frequently maligned, cursed, and banned. They are ex-library books and I love them. Let’s face it, anyone can love a crisp, unblemished, jacketed copy of The Sound and the Fury or a lovely Through the Looking Glass in a Riviere binding. There’s no effort there - to truly love a book, you have to see past its faults, and if there’s one thing that ex-library books have, it’s faults: Spine labels, glued on jackets, endpapers excised by a librarian’s ragged letter opener, glue marks, doodles in felt tip marker throughout chapter 3, masking tape repairs to hinges; if you can imagine a problem, I’ve seen a library book with it - and some others.
So what’s to love? For one, the price. Will all those haters out there, nothing is less dear than an ex-library book. There’s also comparatively little competition, and the knowledge that your capacity to love the unlovable makes you a better person. Don’t forget those horrible library bindings - everyone just passes over those, and you might find a nice 1807 First American edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson inside:
So, to express my great affection for these lost and picked over detritus of the used book world, I’ve written a sonnet in their honor. You might notice that in lieu of some iambs (short long) there is the occasional trochee (long short) and maybe even a dactyl or an anapest here or there (which might account for the 11 syllable line). I would like to state, for the record, that these are all intentional and I used them to mirror the imperfections of my subject in the imperfect meter of my verse. Really.
Shall I compare thee to an unread text?
Thou art less lovely but more affordable
Rough hands withdraw them not nor their pages vex
Jackets pristine, their flaws ignorable
An unread book is like a door unope’d
No trips of fancy in its pages had
And worse yet if its pages be uncoup’d
It might as be a rock, a hole, a shad
But thy glittering jacket will not fade
Nor will you be remaindered, forgotten
But taken home by me, my dollar paid
Not treasured or packed with care in cotton
But unlocked and freed from chains academe
Unlocked again a book, a hope, a meme.
Here’s an ex-library Radices Sanscritae for the road, 1827, Berlin.
—
Post by: Tom Nealon
Pazzo Books
4268 Washington St.
Roslindale, MA 02131 pazzobooks.com
617-323-2919
There is nothing more frustrating than that locally-owned business who chooses to close right before or right after you arrive, correct? It’s almost like the indie shops should do everything like the larger chain stores, including hold early and late hours.
