Porter Square Up and Running Well

Dale Szczeblowski, co-owner of the three-month-old Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said that during his 25-plus years of bookselling, owning his own store hadn't been a career aspiration. "My dream was never to own my own bookstore," said Szczeblowski. Dream or not, he and fellow co-owners Jane Dawson and Carol Stoltz reported that the store is "doing fine" and that they are so happy about owning and running their own bookstore, they are still "just pinching ourselves."

The long-time booksellers, who left Concord Bookshop in Concord, Massachusetts, after a managerial shake-up, opened Porter Square Books on October 1, in partnership with three other former Concord booksellers. Though Szczeblowski, Dawson, and Stoltz have over 50 years of bookselling experience among them, they didn't have experience opening a store, said Szczeblowski, and they ran into snags, including insufficient ordering and contractor-caused delays. Once opened, however, their bookselling dream team, which was comprised of many former employees of the Concord Bookshop, "made the whole thing possible," he said. "We had a staff from Day One who knew what to do. It was a huge relief. I can't imagine opening a store this size from scratch and having to train everyone. I take my hat off to people who do."

Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Though the trio wasn't familiar with the process of launching a bookstore, they chose well with their Cambridge location. Porter Square is accessible by a major subway line and commuter train lines, and the store's strip mall location has free parking, unusual in Cambridge. "I don't think we could have found a better location…. We already have over 5,000 customers signed up for our customer appreciation program, and we're only open three months. It has a lot to do with location," said Szczeblowski, who is the managing director of the new store, as well as the vice president of the New England Booksellers Association and a member of ABA's Booksellers Advisory Council.

Porter Square's Book Sense.com site, www.portersquarebooks.com, also helped to boost the store's popularity. "It's working well for us. An interesting thing that I learned is that the community we serve here is used to working on the Internet. I've seen a lot more net orders than I did in Concord. Most orders are picked up in the store." Management has grown their inventory as they determine the reading interests of the community and have 35,000 of the 50,000 titles they intend to stock. Szczeblowski expected that the inventory goal would be reached by the end of the quarter.

The 4,480-square-foot bookstore has met fall sales projections, said Szczeblowski. "The Cambridge community really does want to support independent business. A number of customers remarked how important that is to them." The neighborhood fought to keep out a Starbucks, and has repeatedly asked for Porter Square to open a café. Management is in the process of negotiating with a partner to sublet a small area of the store to open one in the spring.

Just a subway stop away from Harvard Square, Szczeblowski anticipated similar demographics, but they skewed slightly differently than expected. "We're finding the market is a lot broader than we thought. We're selling nature books, crocheting books…. We have a strong science fiction, mystery, and poetry sections. I didn't quite realize how many poets live in Cambridge. We're selling things that in an urban environment you might not expect to sell. It's very exciting for us. We're pleasantly surprised."

The difference between being the proprietor versus the manager wasn't that substantial, noted Szczeblowski. "At Concord Books I felt an ownership stake, though I had none. I tried to run it as my own. Since we have the same staff at Porter Square operating in the same roles, it feels like we've all just moved into Cambridge, although it is nice not to have to answer to anyone but ourselves. The process of making decisions is similar, except now we don't have to get approval from someone else. But the joy for me is about being around books and talking about books with customers, reps, listening to authors talking about their books. Ownership just allows me to do that." --Karen Schechner