The Easy Behind the Scenes Guide to Opening an Independent Bookstore.
With just two weeks to go before our Grand Opening, Erick, Josh, and Lynn aren’t sure what they’ve gotten themselves into!
I once taught geology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, and AP physics. Today, that seems like another life. And somewhere in there, I took a break and built an independent used book store from scratch. Crazy?
Yep. And yet, here are two quotes that guided me on my way.
“Control your own destiny or someone else will.”
“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”
Lynn puzzles over what’s next? How are we going to organize all these books?
Face it, if you want to, you can do anything you set your mind to. I’ve seen the concept work for real people thousands of times.
“But I’m not really interested in starting a business,” you say. “And if I was, it wouldn’t be a freaking bookstore. Aren’t they a dying breed?”
While ebooks are hot sellers, people still love filling their shelves and bedside tables with paperbacks and hardbacks. Along the way, it’s okay to fill a few urgent needs by mail order. But who doesn’t love shopping in a pleasant environment where they can sit and sample a book before laying out a few hard-earned dollars?
We’ve built most of the shelves. Now what? Is this place ever going to look inviting?
Also, because bookstore customers are dedicated — probably lifetime — readers, they are almost always pleasant and on the upper slopes of the intelligence curve. Day to day, you will enjoy conversing with them. In fact, your busy days will fly by without feeling like work.
Then again, the calling isn’t for the faint of heart. Can you memorize the genre and book preferences of every customer who enters your store? Can you maintain an efficient mind palace representing every book in inventory? Can you stand dealing with all the pesky bureaucrats who manage licenses and taxes? Are you willing to buy, clean, categorize, move, shelve, and re-shelve several hundred books a day?
This place has tons of room, and this is even before we doubled the store’s size by breaking through the north wall.
I called my store “Applegarth Books.” As I said, I was a science teacher. One semester, after watching me perform yet another awe-inspiring physics demonstration, a student called me “The Great and Powerful Wizard of Az.” And the name stuck.
That is, I made sure the name stuck.
I mean, how many high school science teachers can open portals to other dimensions?
Just me.
So why Applegarth?
When the wizard Merlin left King Arthur on his own for a while, he retired to his tower. And that tower was in an apple orchard. Old Norse apaldr ‘apple tree’ + gar{dh}r ‘enclosure’ = Applegarth. At least, that’s what Merlin called his temporary residence. Which was, at all time, totally filled with books.
Our pylon sign … we were lucky to be able to move in next to a Starbucks!
Okay, now that you’re convinced, what else is there to think about?
Is your budget flexible enough to launch this project?
Should you start an LLC, as we did?
How will you get your start-up inventory? As we ramped up, we jumped on eBay and bought as many book “lots” as we could in every genre. Most of the books were in excellent condition, but we had to trash quite a few as well. Along the way, we also bought marvelous books from the library’s donation shelves, Goodwill, and a few private collections.
Will you build or buy your shelves? I wanted to build ours, but I was still teaching and didn’t have that kind of time. We did some research and wound up buying over 200 oak-veneer bookcases from Brodart. This gave the store a nice, uniform look and established the size of our six-foot by six-foot reading nooks.
We had to have someone design our window and door signs. Our street pylon and façade signs came next.
We then gathered extra furniture: tables, chairs, stools, carpets, a checkout counter …
We built a website.
We set up a merchant account, so people could use credit cards.
General supplies included bags, cleaning gear, cash registers, calculators, a stereo system, a neon open sign, rolling carts, computer/printer/fax …
Then came business licenses, tax IDs, resale certificates, inspections, insurance, and special bank accounts.
Okay, so I wanted a sign that astronauts could see from the Moon!
We completed a major commercial leasing & location assessment.
And wound up next door to a Starbucks. (Hooray! I didn’t have to make coffee for our customers. Not only that, our excellent customers were always supremely careful not to spill on the merchandise.)
Applegarth Books was on a main street with plenty of storefront visibility.
The store was relatively large at 20 x 80 feet (1600 square feet). And we doubled that size when we expanded after our first year.
We had ample parking.
The utilities were easy to set up, and we inherited an alarm system that I was mostly afraid to use.
We had two bathrooms, a staff office, a storage room, and an area set aside for stocking books.
Oh, and don’t forget to bolt each cubby hole’s shelves to the wall to prevent the dreaded shelving domino effect!
The Children’s section (the most challenging area to maintain in any store) ended up being three times the size of most other sections.
I always kept horror books and true crime in the back areas, where it might be a little darker than the rest of the store.
Natalie and Heather get the children’s section up to speed!
A store’s book buyer must be confident, knowledgeable, and fast.
During a hot run, with people bringing in bags, boxes, or collections, I probably evaluated and bought nearly a thousand books an hour. Which is another reason to know the store’s complete inventory. You can’t afford to have more than a couple copies of any title in stock unless the book is a massive hot-seller.
Did I really have to know each customer? Did I really have to know the entire store’s inventory? You bet. Stock turnover was too fast to manage with inventory software. Oh, and it was a thrill each time I handed a customer this or that special treasure as they entered the store.
Our customers offered everything from perfect books to those swarming with cockroaches or drenched in cat urine. In all cases, we had to be careful not to upset anyone.
What to buy? That’s easy. Some books are always in demand. This includes science fiction, history (especially civil war), cookbooks, paranormal romance, audiobooks, children’s books, science books, and hobbies.
So, what might you wish to avoid? Diet books, political books, most biographies, older self-help, textbooks, home-school books, ex-library books, and encyclopedias.)
About once a week, we donated books and boxes of overstock to charity.
We encouraged customer requests and special orders.
We bought and discounted new books for English teachers & homeschoolers. Schools were thrilled to share their reading lists, and this worked well. We were often able to offer teachers big discounts if they bought in volume.
When someone wishes to sell a book, I judge condition by look, feel, and smell. Water damage delivers an immediate “No, thank you.” Weird smells and missing pages also put me off. Fortunately, most customers pulled this or that treasure from their shelves and routinely delivered some really delightful books.
Our “New Arrivals” section with its spin racks … new books arriving every day!
Pricing: lower is always better.
This lets the stock change rapidly and keeps customers returning to see what’s new. For non-collectible hardbacks, I sold each for an even $6.00. That means I would pay $3.00 store credit or $1.50 cash for each book. We sold paperbacks for one-half cover price. So a $7.99 paperback would go for $4, with the store paying $2 credit or $1 cash. Credit helped us maintain inventory turnover, but many people were thrilled to get cash. (Very few bookstores are willing to return cash, and you’ll have to make your decision about that.) These easy-to-remember pricing policies also meant that we didn’t have to devote time to pricing or labeling many books.
When visiting someone’s home or evaluating a private collection, I often made an offer on the best books that I wanted and a higher offer on the entire collection. More than once, I begged the seller not to part with certain collectible treasures, and even turned away a few with brief lessons on how to sell valuable books elsewhere.
So, what makes a book collectible? For example, I collect science fiction books and look for:
Award-winning titles.
Author’s first books.
Hardback, first editions, and other rare books.
An original dust jacket in perfect condition.
And I love signed books!
In all cases, book condition must be mint or fine. Fine means no noticeable flaws. And yet, I sometimes buy books in “Good” condition if they represent a hard-to-find title. “Good” means that the book may show some shelf wear or even very light foxing.
We had a lot of fun looking for special furniture, and these big stools were fan favorites!
Staffing
I love hiring new people! Our first employee helped build our first shelves and became our top manager. I once found a young woman straightening our messy children’s books section and hired her on the spot. Almost everyone who worked with us gradually became store managers and top-grade book buyers in their own right.
You will want to assign each employee to their own specialty sections and book genres. Based on their reading habits, our employees often had a preference and became experts at maintaining inventory and the look and character of each assigned section. Our biggest area rapidly became science fiction, and it wound up taking about an eighth of our entire floor space.
Our operations manual kept everyone consistent with opening and closing procedures, as well as cash register guidelines, refund policies, and filling out gift certificates.
With everyone working as a team, we maintained perfect store cleanliness, customer service, and made sure every book was as like-new as possible.
Dora buys books!
Special Events
Book signings. We loved working with local authors. This meant letting them use the store for their events when we were closed, and sponsoring club giveaways. Author events were a thrill, and we had a special featured items bookcase set aside for local authors and their signed books.
Parties! Every time a new Harry Potter movie came out, for example, we let the staff and a few select customers watch videos and enjoy a slumber party.
After just a few weeks, Erick is standing in the same place he was in this article’s first picture. Quite the change!
