Want to Open a Bookshop That is Sure to Fail?
Are you considering opening a used Bookshop, terrific? The world needs more brave souls, especially the type that thinks they can make their community a better place to live in by making available great books at a decent price. If you’re like I was in the months leading up to your opening you must be craving insight, information and tips on things to be wary of. I like to think that you’ve come to the right place. The Bookshop Blog is full of articles written by successful book dealers just like this one on Universal Truths by George of Fairs Fair Books. Take notice though, I don’t want your shop to end up like mine, closed. If you don’t want your shop to fail (– who does?) then take to heart some lessons by one who knows what it feels like to hang a sign in his window saying:
“Thanks to all those who have supported us, our shop is now Permanently Closed. Best wishes to all of you.”
There are plenty of success stories out there and I can confidently tell you that making a used bookshop work is not impossible, even during tougher times. What you don’t often hear is a story from a failed dealer explaining his mistakes. I’ve made a few and I don’t want you to do the same. First of all I want you to know that I don’t consider my bookshop to be a complete failure, only a partial one. I still own the business; it has just evolved into an Online only enterprise as this suits my present circumstances better. I also met a great number of terrific folks and built a certain reputation for myself in the community that I can take pride in. I’m often stopped in the supermarket or post office and asked (sincerely) how things are, how the baby is etc.
I have four things to talk about, things that I would love to see you do better than I did. First though, a very brief biography of our shop is in order. Zeeba Books is the name and although I never had a lifelong dream of opening a book store, I am the type that loves to work for myself, be in control of my destiny and had no fear of the challenges that this task would present. We managed to stay open for almost four years, plenty enough time to learn a thing or two about the trade. We met a lot of great folks and were quite appreciated by the few book lovers that regularly made use of our place. We were an Internet-Café-Bookshop, and I highly suggest that all bookshops add a couple Internet stations if you have the technical ability. The price of computers and Internet access has come down quite a bit but typical rates for accessing the Net from coffee shops has not. It has remained near $4.00 – $5.00 an hour. It can easily add a few hundred dollars a month to your bottom line. We often had couples come in because the wife needed Net access to check on her work email and to kill time the husband would buy a book or two. (one of many examples of crossover buying).
The real problem came down to cash flow and starting a family. When cash gets smaller while your family gets bigger it’s not a great situation. So we made the big decision to pack up ‘The Dream’ and find some gainful employment. I’m fortunate to have a background in software troubleshooting and tweaking so finding a good career (with good benefits) wasn’t too difficult.
Let’s move on to the point of this story, the mistakes I don’t want to see you making. In no particular order here are four of the things I should have done differently.
- Location, Location and Location. As eluded to earlier George wrote a nice piece about this. The decision we made was to open in a smaller than ideal location (under 1000 sq. ft) on a busy avenue that was across the street from a grocery store but had no foot traffic on our side. We assumed that starting small would minimize our risk if things should go sour. It did actually, when closing it was easy to sub-let the spot but I strongly believe that it was the main reason for our demise. We should have risked more and opened in the quaint village down the street, in as big a place as we could have found. Here’s a simple reasoning to explain the size factor. We would have ladies come in and browse our cookbook selection of about 250 books. Often they would not see anything that got their attention and walk out. If this section had 2 000 books in it I’m pretty sure that they would have made a purchase. So don’t go small, go big or go home. And you MUST have foot traffic. Hardly a soul would bother to make the harrowing journey across the street and I know. I watched hundreds of them walk in and out of that supermarket every day.
- Window Display/Signage. I had a huge window that I did not take full advantage of. It should have had ‘BOOKS’ in the largest letters that I could find. My sign, though elegant and well lit had our name ‘Zeeba’ and in smaller letters ‘livres-cafe-Internet’. No one ever noticed it. There is a lady with a shop in a neighbouring community that has a giant sign that says BOOKS!. That’s what I should have done. Skip the cute and elegant, go BIG and to the point on your signage and in your window. Scream out what people can expect to find in your shop. Never have somebody walk in and say, ‘What do you do here?’.
- This one is a little more minor but do all you can to watch cash flow. Cash needs to be coming in all the time. One tweak you can do is the trade/credit policy. We did a straight credit system. Give me $20.00 worth of books and you can spend your credit as you see fit. What I should have done is state that they could use up to 50% of their credit against any book purchase. That way I always have $$$ coming in. I had some quiet nights where I saw many books leave our store and the cash till never opened.
- This is the most important of all and probably the most difficult to admit. You absolutely have to squash your ego as the business opens. I sat on my stool by the cash looking at my beautiful, charming, well lit, cozy, well stocked, Empty store thinking about how beautiful it was. I always assumed that once a few people came in and saw what a charming place we had, what great prices and great stock that it would be inevitable that everyone that read would be eager to come by. My arrogance told me that I built a sweet store and everyone will love it, my work is done. What I needed to do was bust my behind, going door to door if I had to telling everyone about the shop. I should have stood outside and gave away pocketbooks, I should have been at the mall talking up the place, I should have been at all the local sporting events…I should have screamed to everyone within 100 miles telling them to come by for a visit. Honestly I had one lady that literally lived around the corner coming by our shop, In Our Third Year!, saying that she had no idea we existed – and she was a very avid reader. Ouch. There is a great restaurant makeover show called Kitchen Nightmares (or Ramsay’s kitchen nightmares – the original British show) where Chef Ramsay helps a floundering business get on its feet. Part of every show includes a promotion of some sort where they attend or sponsor some type of event to get the word out. You Must get the word out yourself consistently. Word of mouth is terrific and I still think it’s the best advertising for a small shop. I also still advise against spending on traditional advertising but you and your friends need to be very visible in your community. Don’t do as I did and sit on your comfy chair with your fat head thinking – let them come to me, I don’t need to beg or grovel for clients. It’s not begging it’s just part of business and it’s your business so get out there! Watch two or three episodes of Kitchen Nightmares (rent them or view online if you must) then look around your shop like Chef Ramsay might and think objectively ‘what can I do to get this ball rolling?’.
I sincerely hope this helps one or two of you. As for myself I’m quite happy in my new surroundings, happy to be working with software again and of course, thrilled to still be in the book business. In fact I am sitting in my floor to ceiling library that I use as an office writing this, it feels nice being surrounded by old friends. Please feel free to offer any comments or observations that you think may also help out new or potentially new owners.
*** I received this comment by George this morning (he wrote the post on Universal Truths mentioned above). I feel the comment ads much to this post and should be included within so that none will miss it. Here it is.
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Hi Bruce – I am devastated by your news and not only because I had been making plans to visit your shop in Montreal sometime in 2010.
I definitely feel the pain associated with your words ““Thanks to all those who have supported us, our shop is now Permanently Closed. Best wishes to all of you.”
The website you have developed is outstanding and hopefully you will continue to provide the articles providing so much valuable information to all of us in the book business – none of us will every know enough so more information is always appreciated.
Here it is just after 3:00 AM in Calgary and for no paticular reason I couldn’t sleep after closing our Mount Royal shop at 9:00 PM and your news is compounding the problem.
We have had many used books stores close in our area over the past couple of years and McNally Robinson abandoned our city in August 2008. Most of the stores complained about landlords increasing their rents exhorbitantly but that is usually the easiest thing to complain about because it is so “in your face”.
I think all of us are lured into the book business because of an unfathomable and unreasonable love of books we picked up somewhere along the way. Unfortunately, it turns out there is a HUGE component of business to the book business and most of us are ill-prepared and often oblivious to all the facets we have to learn in that area – on top of the fact we quickly learn the book business itself is so broad and has so much depth we will never learn more than a sliver of it!
In my twenty years in the business I have not met another dealer who didn’t have something to teach me – from display to signage to location to customer relations to general outlook on life. Book dealers are generally a minority in the population at large in that most of them would be considered well-read and quite studious by nature – but it is possible to make that a fatal double-edged sword if you get lost in the learning and allow very much of the dogwork required to slide.
Your points – Yes, the word BOOKS in large letters on a sign is like a magnet to book lovers – sandwich boards and window displays stop traffic.
Cash flow is a problem for almost any retail business and allowing people to just trade for other books is a hazard of the trade. I have mentioned to some customers that I still don’t know if what we are doing makes much sense – allowing a customer the option of rolling their books over in trades so that they can get a quantity of books worth a new value of $400 for books we would normally buy for $100 cash. Some book stores I have been in did not allow any trades – they just bought books for cash. I still feel there is a tipping point where the trade option – especially for books they purchased from you – tends to lock in customers over the long term.
As for getting the word out – anything you can do along that line is worthwhile. During our 2nd-5th years in business we had up to two flea market stalls sending customers to our first store – the flea markets tripled our sales the second year, doubled them again the third year and I don’t fully recall why we ever shut them down – it was probably a mistake.
Another couple of suggestions I would make to anyone who wants to go into the book business – There is little point in arriving with an outstanding work ethic, and then ramp it up a bit – work your A** off and learn to look forward to and love change because books that sell today won’t tomorrow and books that stop selling today will sometimes get hot again. Don’t turn down Gor books, Conan, Harry Potter, Dr. Seuss, Pride & Prejudice, most of the classics for that matter, Think & Grow Rich, The Magic of Thinking Big, The E-Myth and The E-myth Revisited, Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Lobsang Rampa, Freud & Jung and any books relating to them, etc., etc.
I know a Children’s and a Young Adult Section present a difficult challenge but they drag in all the parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles who have ever been touched by a book and would like to share memories of something really special in their lives.
Bruce – I still hope we can meet someday, hell I’ll only be 70 this year – my mentor was 80 when I met him, and if you keep your blog going I will be among the many in your debt.
If the internet sales aspect can keep you in the book business it will one of the few nice things I will have to say about it. I wish you well.
[...] or hope to do so in the near future and want to share your experiences, tips, past glories or even book store failures then please let me know. Here are a few details… A Few Related Posts That You May [...]
Signage is one thing I think I got right -my store used to be in a very high traffic location for all of 26 years but if you were driving past you would hardly have noticed it was a book shop and if you were walking past you might not have noticed it either. I am still amazed how many locals did not know it existed.
The store name is there but discretely. The 8ft high 16 ft wide facade screams SECONDHAND BOOKS in simple black on white.
I also have my little A frame out the front to catch people’s eye as they walk past but I still get locals saying they did not know they had a local book shop.
Though in store layout and inventory I could have done a lot better
Hi Nora and Paul,
After realizing I’ll never be able to work for anyone but me, I am exploring my passion for books and considering opening my own bookstore. Your article was a huge help! I’m scared and excited.I’m also thinking I’ll need to lean more toward technology and downloads… Thank you! Wish you were here to help me!
Tina Wells
Hi Tina and welcome to The Bookshop Blog. Bruce Hollingdrake is the one that runs this site and it is his experiences that the original article was based upon. Believe me when I say you don’t want my help with getting set up because I’m the king of procrastinators. My slogan is, “Why put of till tomorrow what you can put off till next week.”
You can however draw on a lot of years of experience through this website and I’m sure the list of categories on the right side of this page will keep you busy learning. You might want to start a blog or journal to share your experiences with others. Bruce also invites people to share their experiences, teachings and hints, tips & tricks of the trade (original writings only please) so if you find you have input for us please write to him.
I find this website to be a wonderful community and I hope you feel welcome. Keep commenting!
Hey Paul – thanks a lot for the nice words (as usual). Between the experiences of all of our wonderful writers there certainly is a wealth of experience here.
We are looking for one or two new writers, check out the link on the top about joining the team.
Wow, this site is so informative. I love to write and recently decided that my small town of about 12000 needs a book shop. We have the library, but honestly just realized there is no actual book shop…
So I talked to my husband and he told me to find out a little about it, get a plan and then we shall see.
Well this site is what I needed…now I know what to look for, how to advertise, and how to calculate certain costs of running the shop.
I am also the local henna artist and will incorporate that and a small cafe into the shop as well, very simple, coffee, juice and bitings to start, then can expand on that later as my focus is on the books at the start. I want a nice cosy corner for the kids to enjoy with their parents, an adult area for them to relax.
I want the relaxation of a library as people like to get out in this town and not sit around the house.
And the idea of an internet type of cafe, yes that is so great, as we are the gateway to a tourist site and the flow of people through this area is tremendous during the warmer months.
I can’t wait, hope my hubby likes the idea. Its not here, so cross your fingers, with all this information, I am going to approach him.
I did have a couple more questions though?
1. Where is the best place(s) to purchase the books at a good rate, where I can get a large variety?
2. Where can I learn about proper layout, or get ideas?
3. Where is a great cost efficient place to buy furniture for a book store?
Tables , chairs, sofas, soft cushions perhaps for the kids?
Thanks all of you for all of this, I love this site, and will be a regular to always learn new things.
Amazing, hats off to you all for taking this time to give this advice, inturn to help others , I believe in Karma, and you will be rewarded in plentitude.
I just want to hear your opinion on how where to put the sticker for the price? Should it go on the front, the back or the inside front cover??????
Hi Cindy – thanks for taking the time to comment – we always put on the inside of the cover.
I cringe at the word “sticker”. I hope you are referring to new books. Even so-called removable stickers dry into concrete over time. I am usually involved in removing stickers. (by the way an old cd is great for lifting stickers after application of solvent)
[...] reading the entry on how to open a bookshop that is sure to fail, for which I really appreciate the candor of Bruce Hollingdrake, I wanted to add this comment. I [...]
I’ve just read through the comments about business cards and I can’t believe that no one has mentioned bookmarks (with the store name, logo, address, phone and map). I thought this was an old standby. I opened in a flea market as a marketing exercise and started giving them away with every sale. Two years later we opened in dowtown London, Ontario, Canada. The best place to open is downtown where the people walk by. Besides that, I bought a stamp (just a smilie face – now replaced with our store logo) and stamped the back of the bookmark in front of each and every customer, and told them that they would get one stamp per visit, and ten stamps would get them a free paperback (or later, a discount on any other book in the store). When anyone redeemed a bookmark I gave them a $5.00 gift certificate. Costs, bookmarks $65.00 a year, stamp $12.00 seventeen years ago, ink $3.98 ten years ago, gift certicates $10.00 a year. Besides a $100.00 a month yellow pages (Bell, noth the others), this is extent of my advertising.
Avid readers are my bread and butter, some read 5 books a week. I want them to come to my store first. To anyone who buys more than one book at a time, I tell them we buy books, and we take books on trade. I am sure there are lots of other things that book sellers do but every book deserves a bookmark.
Hank Sommers
H. Sommers Books
436 Richmend St.
London, On., Canada
We have two “bookmarks!” One is a nice and sturdy bookmark size one for using in books and the other one is business sized for keeping in your wallet. We stick two of them in a book and ask them to give one to another booklover. Works!
Wow – what a great post. Information like this is priceless and so many of the lessons outlined here are true for any “street-front” business. I’ve personally found the first point (Location) to be so so so important to my local business.
I’m pretty much ecstatic about finding this blog. After agonizing over it, I finally decided to go into something because I love it, rather than choosing a profession that makes a lot of money. And I can’t say that I have any love greater than books. So now– my dream is to open a bookshop.
I look forward to going through here. You have some wonderful advice and I’m sure I can learn alot. <3
Thanks for a great article with lots of useful tips. After 4.5 years in my bookshop I’ve learned a lot. To start, I have to say that I have diversified quite a bit and I also stock specialist CDs, mostly world music, and I also keep a range of Pagan and Wiccan related items that are partly responsible for keeping my shop open.
One thing I learned pretty early on was the need to stock books that I wouldn’t normally want to keep. In fact, when I was just a market stall I could be more choosy. When I opened the shop I found that I needed to be more responsive to customers needs and wants. Previously I wouldn’t touch a romance with a barge pole. I didn’t have the John grisham/Wilbur Smith/Tom Clancy type books either. These days I find those books help keep the shop ticking over. I’ve also increased my range of cookery books, gardening, art and those other big heavy books that I hated when I had to unload and pack again three times week.
I also learned to specialise in certain areas in order to keep customers coming back – and I now have a very loyal and wonderful collection of return customers for mind/body/spirit-new age, crime and Australian/Aboriginal studies books – often titles that other bookshops don’t have. Being in Australia means I can also keep sections for Australian classics, and promote Australian authors. I’m sure that people in other countries can do the same for their local industry.
I do have a certain proportion of new and remaindered books as well as pre-loved. I spend a lot of time searching for the books and music that people want and offer a free searching service anc cheaper shipping for people outside of my city, sometimes below cost price. I make sure my prices are fair and reasonable and affordable but not give-away, and as a sole trader with a bit of family help, I make sure we offer the friendliest, most helpful service we can.
While income could definitely be better, I think the combination of excellent products and service, and a responsiveness to the needs of our customers, has been the two things that have kept us open and increasing our sales this year, even while on the brink of recession.
While the fact remains that a big shop may do a lot of good (for the business), I have always restricted my visits to a few crammed ones where the seller is a voracious reader himself, so as to get the right recommendations. Of course, if the same people moved into a bigger space, I would probably be just as happy as they would be. So yes, size is almost everything.
I am not sure how many people do this, but when I buy a book from one of the stores close to my place, they stamp their logo (a small one) on the blank page at the end. Now, when I lent the book to a few of my friends, they ended up going to the shop I bought the book from. While I have no idea as to the legality of this sort of marketing, I know for a fact that it worked on me…
Yes, we stamp every paperback book. Some end up at the library sales and we get new customers! And we want people to remember where they got that great book.
Great comments Robert:
Consider yourself truly blessed you have found compatible cohorts to share such a great lifestyle.
Bruce – Thanks, I do expect to see you within the next couple of years then.
May I say how interesting I found your experience, and how sad that you were unable to continue in the business.
I have now run a bookshop, together with two colleagues, here in England, for nearly twenty years now, and I would like to add a bit of our experience over this time.
Firstly, bookselling, whether new or antiquarian, rare or secondhand, is essentially retail. If you don’t like being in a shop, sitting there for hours when it’s empty, listening to the same fatuous comments from “customers” who don’t buy, being bored rigid by regulars, while at the same time maintaining a cheerful and helpful face for everybody, then you are in the wrong business. Retail is about selling stuff to people face to face; books don’t always sell themselves.
Secondly, it takes time to become established. Probably five years at a minimum for certain types of books, and depending on your location. (How many people visit the town once a week, once a month, three times a year, once a year? Will they always make that detour to visit your shop?)
Third. Probably the most important. Decide what business you’re in. Fine and rare or newish and paperbacks? specialist or generalist? Who do you expect your customers to be? Do you want to sell fifty paperbacks at two dollars each or two scarce books at fifty dollars each? You can’t be all things to all people. The more expensive the books you sell the less space you will need, but you will need to be in an area that has a well heeled client base. The more specialist you are the less you will be able to offer the general public, but you might find that people are driving 50 miles to see you because you are the only place around where they can buy books on railroads or livestock or mediaeval history. If you have an enthusiasm or knowledge of a particular subject then capitalise on it.
Fourth. Is size important: well, you have to answer number three before deciding that. You mention the ladies who can’t find a cookbook in the 250 you have on the shelves: offering them 2000 won’t make them buy, it will confuse them and spoil them for choice. And what are the overheads for stocking the 2000 in terms of rents, local taxes, heating, lighting, you name it. You can argue the opposite: if they want to buy they will buy even if the choice is small because they just want one book. Make sure you analyse your income by sales per shelf foot: it might make you think about what sells and what doesn’t.
Fifth. You’ve already said it: location, location, location. What is the footfall past the shop, and who does it consist of.
Sixth and final! If you have any like minded friends, try running it together. You can spread the load, giving you time to do other things (like sell on the net), and spread the risk. Of course the returns will be less, but you’ll at least be involved in a business you love.
Thanks for sharing your experiences: we never stop learning, no matter how long we spend in the trade!
Thanks so much for sharing your insight Robert, hopefully those that are planning to open in the near future can gain from these tips. I hadn’t considered opening with a friend as I wanted to retain full control but in hindsight it may have been a better choice. The hours I put in were crazy and if it was shared we may well still be open.
Great tips. It’s amazing to me how often I see people opening up new businesses and they don’t seem to take into consideration a lot of basic things. When I lived in Brooklyn I would see this all the time.
[...] [and see his latest post on "Want to Open a Bookshop that is sure to fail?" at the Bookshop blog ] [...]
*** This comment has been moved into the original post.
Thanks so much George. I hope to visit Calgary myself soon. If you ever do visit Montreal please let me know, I’ll give you a quick tour all my favorite bookshops.
Bruce
Hi Nora and Paul,
Great additions to the post. All those business cards is exactly what I was getting at. It’s a great suggestion, another thing that I should have done. Thanks for coming by.
To avoid the look of hokey business cards AND find a great way to get your name out is to have an art contest to design a piece of art for your business.
Specify black and white to keep costs down. Promote your contest to local schools and newspaper. Offer a gift certificate as prize. If artist submit hardcopy, display them and invite folks in to view them. Also give EVERY artist that follows the directions (no matter how inexpert) a shout out on your website, blog, or e-mail newsletter (or all 3).
You’ll get good publicity, some great designs that look nothing like stock clipart, and you’ve tapped into the local artist network.
You can also do this for other things you need art for. I have 2 beautiful painted windows that came from an art contest.
**This comment was moved to it’s own post found here.
http://bookshopblog.com/2009/01/03/bookselling-in-india-where-to-start/
I work in a printing shop and we had a customer that would buy 1 or 2 thousand business cards at a time. The cheapest ones, black ink on white card stock, but tastefully done. The cards were designed so his type of business was obvious as you say your front sign should have been.
He would go to shows and sporting events and indiscriminately hand out the cards. If there were no shows he would hand them out at supermarkets. Everywhere he went he would hand out cards and often get to talk with people. He would question and find out if they did not need his services perhaps they had a friend that did. A couple well asked questions would jog their memories of who they could give the card to.
His business was an escrow service and he said he gained one or two customer with every thousand cards. One customer would pay for the box of cards.
I wonder? If one in a thousand need an escrow service how many more would appreciate a book store.
One last thing. If you decide to print your own cards on a computer printer make sure:
a.) They don’t look hokey and look like they came from a computer printer.
b.) The price of your printer ink (and perhaps pre-perfed paper stock) does not cost more than a printing job.