Bookstore Profiles

Is your shop profiled here? Send us a blurb or two and some photos or a video, we’d love to give you some free exposure.

Between Friends, the Joy of a Bookselling Mentor

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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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From The Book of Hours

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.

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When is it a Good Time to Expand Your Bookstore?

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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 for nearly 2 years. My wife and I started this venture after realizing that a business degree and an English degree work well together for sorting and selling used books. The passion was there, my retail management background surely helped, and the finances were working at the time.

Our shop opened with what seemed like quite a load of books. We started off fairly successfully with an opening day that promised great things. As time passed and the initial shock of a nice-looking used bookstore (in an area in sore need) went away, the sales remained consistent, yet stagnant.

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Since that era of low sales (we actually had one day where we sold $4… total!), our business has increased month by month. One way that the Lord has blessed us is in the fact that the store has always paid for itself… even in the slow days. We never went into the red, although our personal finances weren’t great for quite some time.

Recently, an opportunity opened up in an older, long-established shopping center about twenty minutes from our current location. There have been two or three successful stores in the center (they closed for personal and chain-wide reasons), and the people of Byron, GA are ready for another place to buy quality used books.

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Want to Open a Bookshop That is Sure to Fail?

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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.