About Bookselling

This article is part of a series on the Guerrilla Marketing Web site and is reprinted here with the permission of Jay Conrad Levinson, author of the bestselling series Guerrilla Marketing and co-founder of Guerrilla Marketing International, Inc.

By Debra Kahn Schofield

The last full-week workshop of 2004 for prospective booksellers, sponsored by the Paz & Associates Bookstore Training & Consulting Group in conjunction with the American Booksellers Association, will be held from Monday, September 13, through Friday, September 17, at The Reserve at Cherry Creek in Denver, Colorado.

The number-one goal of ABA's strategic plan is to "provide independent professional booksellers with access to the education, information, and business services they need to succeed in a changing world." With this in mind, the ABA Board of Directors and staff are embarking on a program to grow ABA's educational offerings and are seeking bookseller input through the "ABA Education 2005 Survey." This week, a link to the survey was sent to ABA members via e-mail.

On Saturday, June 5, at BookExpo America, ABA CEO Avin Mark Domnitz conducted the two-hour session "The 2% Solution," a comprehensive seminar that suggested ways in which operators of bookstores could address issues related to lack of profitability. "The thrust of the session is to try to go from a negative profitability to a positive," Domnitz said in his opening remarks. "This used to be called a two percent industry…. The thing that struck me about it, is that it is doable."

While the Ides of March didn't turn out so great for Julius Caesar, this past March 15 did augur well for seasoned bookseller Lyle Starkloff, who opened Query Booksellers, a new gay and lesbian bookstore in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Starkloff has already seen considerable increase in traffic and business from the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered (GLBT) community in the Twin Cities, as well as from the straight-but-not-narrow contingent, particularly since Query carries many categories outside gay and lesbian literature.

Friday, June 4 -- Day 2 of BookExpo America -- was the occasion of two joyous celebrations of the spirit of independent booksellers -- the Book Sense Book and Author Lunch and ABA's Celebration of Bookselling, where the 2004 Book Sense Book of the Year Award winners were announced. It was also opening day of the trade show floor and a day for ABA to take care of business at its Town Hall and Annual Membership meetings.

And the Winners Are…

The New York International Gift Fair, for which approximately 45,000 visitors came to the Jacob Javits Convention Center between January 31 and February 5, is the place to find out what's hot and what's not.

Any retailer who carries stationery, greeting cards, watches, pens, and all manner of personal accessories would have found almost 3,000 exhibitors happy to demonstrate what will unquestionably sell out in the coming seasons.

Each new season brings changes in hemlines, baby names, and books being published … and shoplifted. Many New England booksellers are finding that blockbuster bestsellers are very high on the lists of books most stolen from independent stores. The problem of shoplifting is a constant one for retailers, but some New England Booksellers Association (NEBA) members have recently noticed changes in the quantity and types of books stolen from their stores.

Few marketing experts would argue with the notion that all businesses, regardless of size, should have a presence on the Internet. However, an issue that does cause debate among Internet experts is exactly how to turn a Web site into a profit center. On May 29, at BookExpo America in Los Angeles, BookSense.com Director Len Vlahos tackled this key question with the help of panelist Luanne Kreutzer of St. Helens Bookshop in St. Helens, Oregon.

Kim Dickie, the new owner of Hobbit Hall Children's Bookstore in Roswell, Georgia, sees plenty of room for growth in an arena small booksellers have largely left to others -- school book fairs. When Dickie took over the reins of the 12-year-old bookstore from Anne Ginkle in March 2003, the school book fair division was a growing component of the store.

In late April, it was announced that Howard Frank Mosher's The True Account: A Novel of the Lewis & Clark & Kinneson Expeditions (Houghton, $24, 0618197214, June) was a Top Ten selection of the May/June Book Sense 76. Jean Matthews, of Chapter One Book Store, Hamilton, Montana, wrote about the novel, "Full of flamboyant characters and outrageous deeds, The True Account honors Cervantes and Twain in spirit and style, minting a fresh folk hero from the vein that produced Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill."

As part of its continuing coverage of succession planning issues, Bookselling This Week spoke to six bookstore owners who recently and successfully purchased independent bookstores. Last week, BTW covered "Succession II," a session from BookExpo America moderated by Ivan Barkhorn, a consultant to ABA on strategic matters, and provided a link to Barkhorn's PowerPoint presentation.

A "perfect fit" is how John Cross, co-owner of Foul Play Mystery Bookshop in Westerville, Ohio, described the store's sponsorship of Mystery! on WOSU, the local PBS station. "People have always come in looking for the books on Mystery!" he explained.