Starting a UK Bookstore Part 2

Laura Jenkinson (Jenks) first shared her idea in her introductory post: Bookselling, it’s in the bone

What ‘type’ of bookseller are you?

While in the process – the *slow* process might I add (to update you, I am still waiting around for the bank which, after fourteen days, hasn’t processed my Business bank account because it hasn’t even received my painstakingly completed paperwork through the post yet, meaning Royal Mail have probably ‘lost’ it, meaning I have to start again with photocopying and interminable waiting…ugh…) – of starting my bookselling venture, every person I’ve told about it has been amazingly positive. They are all convinced that what the world needs now is more small bookshops. And, in order to get a handle on what mine will be like, they immediately want to know what kind of bookseller I will be.

I’m coming from the teaching profession, and in my experience everyone thinks they know teachers having sampled a whole range of teaching personalities through their learning career at primary and secondary school, sixth form and University. To prove this point, every stand-up comedian’s show I have ever been to has featured a joke about a teacher (I am a redhead too: I don’t come off well at comedy shows in the UK where ‘gingerism’ is an accepted prejudice and, variously, art form) and everyone laughs because no matter what type of teacher being described, they have experienced it and can identify. It’s not quite the same with booksellers: sadly for the majority buying a book is now akin to visiting the supermarket, a face at a till. Even librarians have a more recognisable stereotype. When I’m explaining my venture it’s immediately obvious I’m not going to be a face at a till, nor am I a ‘crazy old cat-spinster librarian’ (let’s face it, that’s the only stereotype), so those I have spoken to have normally applied their own ‘type’ ideas in their immediate reactions to my news. I have compiled the most popular species contained in these reactions here for your pleasure and, probably, knowing smiles.

Now, those more literary-minded or who are booksellers themselves would possibly have reacted by mentioning Helen Hanff’s enterprising letter-writing Antiquarian at 84 Charing Cross Road, Sylvia Beach’s original Left-Bank Shakespeare and Co. in Paris or the ‘socialist utopia’ version of George Whitman’s, as immortalised in Jeremy Mercer’s memoir ‘Time Was Soft There’(US)/’Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs’(UK). Maybe even Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s antihero Lucas Corso from ‘The Dumas Club’, especially when remade as Polanski’s fantastic The Ninth Gate starring Jonny Depp – the Indiana Jones of Antiquarian Bookselling

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T5mhtHf8T4&feature=related

But I don’t seem to have talked to anyone like that, my friends for the most part representing the majority of people who prefer a tangible stereotype that’s been in the wider media.

(warning: there are numerous UK references in this post. I have included visual references for your education)

Option 1) The Bernard

Over here, the first type people think of is The Bernard (reaction: “Oh! You’re going to be just like Bernard!” or “Oh, like Black Books?”) You might not have Black Books over there, the excellent and cultishly popular (meaning that intelligent people like it because it’s witty) 3-series sitcom written by Graham Lineham (Father Ted? No?) and starring Dylan Moran (you’ll know him, he’s been in … films) as Bernard Black, the Irish, book-reading, wine-swilling misanthrope who doesn’t really like customers. Or selling books.  Here’s a quick guide to Bernard courtesy of YouTube:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3tFEoWNv50

Now, when faced with this reaction I always immediately counter-describe myself as ‘The Anti-Bernard’, because I am female, Irish, will probably provide better, if not actual, customer service, and will not drink on the shop floor unless it’s been a really, really bad day. This is because I would like people to think well of me, and retain their custom. However, really I idolise Bernard. He has no cares. As long as he is reading (or drinking), his life is fulfilling. He seems to have no interest in sales figures, Nielsen book data and whether he should take debit and credit cards, and neither does he practise the art of replenishing stock, selling non-book product, or even marketing, those niggly things necessary to keep afloat. And even though he’s such an unapproachable so-and-so, he still has customers and has *somehow* managed to acquire large commercial premises in the heart of Bloomsbury including storage, kitchen, toilet facilities and residential apartments above.  Currently I am still struggling with my business plan and figuring out how on earth to raise the not insubstantial amount of capital I need to put down a six-month rental deposit on a premises and buy in my first shopful of stock. If Bernard had had to do this, he would have immediately given up and gone back to the pub.

Option 2) The Evan

The other side of this, the polar opposite, is The Evan (reaction: “You’re going to be the Anti-Bernard? Yuck! Like ginger Evan?”) Evan is played by Simon Pegg in series 3 (he’s been in films too, he was Scottie in the new Star Trek, you have to have seen that one) and is the manager of Goliath Books, a horribly truthful representation of the Waterstones/Borders-type mega-chain, that opens next to the independent Black Books in order to put it out of business. Evan is prissy, pastel-clad, and sales figures-obsessed. He is, decidedly, No Fun, but he runs a tight ship and threatens to sink Black Books, poaching Bernard’s ‘hapless assistant’ Manny and attempting to turn him into a soulless replica of himself. We don’t want to be Evan, despite it making good business sense.

But Manny is really no ‘hapless assistant’ – he seems instead to actually be the medium option. Despite being a slapstickwhipping boy, Manny is chirpy, cheerful, interested in customer service and the success of the shop; over the series, he attempts to install an Information point, serve coffee, set up marketing initiatives, and run festivals of children’s and travel books. Bernard hates this of course: it requires effort. Amazingly, no one asks me if I’m going to be like Manny, despite describing myself having similar ideas: I intend to have talks and run classes in the shop after-hours, and have poetry performances and wild and wine-fuelled book groups. I’m going to have a different marketing campaign every month, with amazing window-displays, to push a different stock group to the fore and encourage sales. I’m going to have gorgeous book-themed gifts at Christmas. And yes, I will serve tea and coffee and my patented Best Brownies In The World.  But this is not the option people go for in their reaction.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtf_a3Jl4Uw&feature=related

Instead, they go for option three:

Option 3) Meg Ryan

(reaction: “Awww, like Meg Ryan in that film! That’s so romantic! I’m jealous! And she has lovely hair!”)

In You’ve Got Mail (you’ll know this one), Meg Ryan plays Kathleen Kelly, which no one ever remembers because she’s really just Meg Ryan, who runs a long-established children’s bookshop in New York called The Shop Around The Corner. She is sweet, charming, completely adorable, reads children stories in an oversized crown, decorates her oak-panelled shop with fairylights, and has a boyfriend who prefers typewriters to computers. Thus, she is in danger of being put out of business by Joe Fox (Tom Hanks), canny businessman owner of Fox Books conglomerate.

Generally, you probably wouldn’t want to be a Meg Ryan. Although she’s really nice, has a gorgeous shop with a dedicated (well, at the start of the film anyway) customer base, and does indeed have lovely hair, she’s a bit, well, twee, and in the end gives into financial pressure, however unavoidably, when she is indeed forced to close her shop. She obviously also has no luck with cash-flow forecasts. Even worse, she apparently comes to the realisation, when sadly walking through her rival’s enormous shop, that big-bucks bookselling really is the answer, despite lacking the all-important knowledge and heart her own shop and pretty much every independent has.

I personally don’t want to be a Meg Ryan. For a start, I’m not that cute, and although I’d love to have a shop like hers and do the things she does with fairylights, I can recognise, perhaps controversially, that overall it’s behind the times ,and I don’t want my bookshop to fail before the opening credits. However, her character learns some valuable lessons. The film itself isn’t really about bookselling, it’s about email, which, in the end, is an allegory of sorts for the need to change to suit the modern world. Meg Ryan ditches her typewriter-enthusiast boyfriend and instead ends up falling for her more enterprising business enemy, by email, his modern business sense represented by his modern wooing-method. And although her business ultimately fails, it has a good innings, touches the lives of many people, and allows her to move on – she becomes a childrens’ author – instead of staying tucked behind her mother’s shadow in front of the cash register. Had the film been set in 2008 instead of 1998, she probably would have set up as an online-only business with a childrens’ literature blog helping to popularise it.  These are lessons I have taken to heart.

My overall response to every reaction is this: “A bit like that, yes.” And I smile.  I sincerely hope I’m not going to become a bookselling stereotype of any of the above kind, but I’d be happy with an amalgamation of all the best bits that people like, and recognize … and talk about to their friends and relatives ensuring a widened customer base. I want to move with the times, use technology to my advantage, but keep the heart and knowledge up front. However, right now, most of all I don’t want my bookshop to remain like those stereotypes: just a fantasy, so it’s time to talk business again with the bank.

Jenks

www.blackboardfiction.co.uk