Brick and Mortar Thoughts – Page 28

Story Time at Blarney Books, Port Fairy

October 20, 2009 by Jo Canham

Well, I’ve gone & done it. After four and a half years of kid-wrangling, something in me has decided it’s time now to offer Story Time to the children of the Port Fairy community, and any visitors who happen to catch us on the right day.

When another book store moves to town it's good news!

October 6, 2009 by Nora O'Neill

If a chain moves to town, you’ll go out of business, right?

WRONG. You may even make more money than you do now!

Chains don’t move into markets where they don’t expect to turn a profit. They moved in by you because you’ve established there IS a market for a bookstore… and they’re convinced that there’s enough demand that they can turn a profit even with another bookstore nearby. They’ll probably even turn a better profit by having you nearby.

Making your Bookstore Inviting

September 20, 2009 by Pamela Grath

When you visit a strange bookstore for the first time, what goes into your first impression? Organization is important, so you can find what you want, but isn’t that second to whether or not the shop feels inviting?

My hardbacks hit me in the face…

September 15, 2009 by Shane Gottwals

Do your customers prefer hardbacks or paperbacks? Do you even sell hardbacks?

Obviously, price is a big factor when customers make the decision. We sell both hardbacks and paperbacks at Gottwals Books (www.gottwalsbooks.com), and we often hear the question, “Isn’t that out in paperback yet?” because someone would rather not spend $15 for a new release.
hardcovers

Many of my customers, though, love the feel of a hardback. They also like how they can make them stay open while they read. A hardback also looks better on the shelves.

There is a short story called, “Seven Types of Ambiguity,” that tells of a small basement bookshop that is crowded with books and lamps (the store owner uses lamps instead of overhead lights so that he can leave unnecessary lighting off during the day). The story begins with one young, educated man perusing the classics, loving every bit of it. He particularly loves a certain green-colored book. The sad part, though, is that he doesn’t have the money it takes to buy the “good stuff.”

Well, in walks a small lady with her BIG husband. He awkwardly looks around, fumbling through pages almost as if he has never read before. He says that he wants some of the “good stuff” like Dickens because his mother read that to him when he was younger.

A re-cap of the Biblio-Art Exhibition

September 14, 2009 by Jo Canham

Ah, it’s been a busy weekend at Blarney Books & Art! The Port Fairy Ex Libris Book Fair was on, and we hosted the official welcome for authors, artists, and booksellers on the Friday night at our bookstore. There were 80-odd at this event, and everyone mingled well. I was thrilled to meet Sonya Hartnett … Read more

Slow Day at the Bookstore

September 7, 2009 by Shane Gottwals

Slow Day at the Bookstore

Shane Gottwals

Gottwals Books

www.gottwalsbooks.com

Slow days stink. There’s no two ways about it. They stink.

Slow days put me down. I can’t shake the feeling. They just do.

The only remedy (besides prayer and reading my Bible) is to hear the register ring.

This is sort of what has happened today. I spent the morning in our new store sort of moping about the fairly good traffic flow yet almost total lack of sales. You sit, look out the window, get way too enthusiastic when someone comes in, think about how nice it must be to have a job that pays per hour, find tedious tasks that don’t need to be done, scour the internet for sundry items that you can’t afford, kill the random fly that’s not bothering anyone at the window, and long for better sales days.

The more I pondered oh-man-this-store-really-isn’t-going-to-make-it thoughts, the more I realized how unstable business can be. We’ve been open at our new location (www.gottwalsbooks.com) for about two months now. I was just recently interviewed (with a TV spot that aired a week ago on our big local news CBS affiliate-check it out on our website) about the business community here in Byron, GA, and I told them that I could not be more pleased with how sales are going. But, this week has me a bit down.

Notice how I just said, “this week.” It is completely absurd to base anything on 3-4 days of sales when your 8-10 week trend has been impressive.

Here’s the heart of the matter… business will often slump, and it will slump hard. I remember managing a consumer electronics store that did two million dollars per year in business. We had (very embarrassing) days when our sales would be a couple hundred dollars. You don’t pay 30 employees with $200 per day in sales. However, I also remember those $10K+ days that made up for all of the rest.

Low cost advertising to nab pedestrians

August 29, 2009 by Nora O'Neill

Advertising doesn’t have to be expensive to be effective. A lot of in-store book sales come from walk in traffic. Even if you’re in a high traffic area getting people in the door isn’t always easy. Just because they’re there doesn’t mean they notice your store. To up the odds people do notice your store, … Read more

Up, down, & sideways- shelving your books

August 22, 2009 by Nora O'Neill

When you’re opening a bookstore, probably the last thing on your mind is how to shelve your books. You just get some cases and put them on, right? Wrong. Particularly if you’re building your own cases, you want to determine HOW you’re going to display your books first. Otherwise you’ll get stuck with a shelving system that doesn’t work for you or your customers and costs you time and money to redo.

The key part to consider is what KIND of books will you be selling. If it’s almost all paperback, you’ll want to use a different system than if you’ll be carrying only hardcovers.