Best Practices

Amy Thomas, owner of Pegasus Books in California, has been visiting the London Book Fair since she purchased the bookstores in 1995 in order to bring back an annual customer favorite: British remainders.

While stores may vary in the way they approach cash flow, it’s important to make time to plan ahead for the proper management of income and expenses to best maintain the inflow and outflow of bookstore funds. Here’s a look at some of the cash flow practices employed by three stores of different sizes.

In case you missed our report last Saturday from the Winter Institute, here is a look at highlights from the Opening Plenary featuring author Dan Heath, the Thursday breakfast with the Seattle7Writers, and more.

In the fourth in a series of key insights and tips from Decisive, Dan Heath explains how, in order to boost our decision-making success, we need to be humble enough to prepare to be wrong and anticipate and plan for bad outcomes as well as good ones.

Winter Institute 2014 opening plenary speaker Dan Heath, the co-author with his brother, Chip, of the bestselling business book Decisive, shares strategies for attaining some distance before making crucial business decisions.

Dan Heath, the co-author with his brother, Chip, of the bestselling business book Decisive, will be the opening plenary speaker at Winter Institute 2014. Here, he offers booksellers facing decisions a few tips for overcoming “confirmation bias” — the tendency to seek out information that confirms our existing beliefs or preferences.

Dan Heath, co-author with his brother, Chip, of  the bestselling business book Decisive, will be the opening plenary speaker for Winter Institute 2014. Here, Heath offers some key insights and tips from Decisive, in anticipation of a talk that will do much to answer the question of how booksellers can make better choices in life and work.

Want to start 2014 off on the right foot? Here, from the BTW archive, is a look at how some indie booksellers rang in New Year’s Day 2013 with a significant boost in sales and in-store traffic, while simultaneously clearing out leftover holiday merchandise and giving customers a reason to celebrate.

Here is a list of Edelweiss best practices for book buyers, complied by Robert Sindelar of Third Place Books and annotated with links by Above the Treeline’s Joe Foster.

Looking to increase revenue and bring in new customers on top of their regular, in-store business, a number of indie booksellers are turning toward business-to-business sales — large-quantity book sales to companies and organizations.

Six panelists joined moderator Richard Buthod of Turtleback Books for the session “Common Core: Insight From Industry Touchpoints” at BEA: Melissa Jacobs-Israel from the New York City public school system; Cheryl Dickemper of The Booksource; Kenny Brechner of Devaney Doak & Garrett; Phoebe Yeh, then of HarperCollins Children’s Books; Becky Anderson of Anderson’s Bookshops; and Victoria Stapleton of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

At ABA’s education session “How to Plan for a Second Location” at BEA, a panel of experienced booksellers shared their experiences of starting a new venture, including determining when to expand, arranging startup capital, finding a location, coordinating staff, managing inventory, and handling POS and store logistics. 

With BEA less than two weeks away, now’s a good time to revisit a checklist of recommendations from booksellers who are masters at navigating the trade show and accomplishing key business goals while grabbing galleys, attending educational events, and making new connections.

Shipping can be one of the most complicated — and costly — activities for any small business, but there are ways to reduce your shipping costs, including developing an inbound shipping management program, consolidating shipments, using the correct shipping mode and service level, and getting the best discounts.

At Winter Institute 8, veteran booksellers Barbara Theroux of Fact & Fiction and Bill Cusumano of Nicola’s Books joined Other Press Associate Publisher Paul Kozlowski and BEA Event Director Steve Rosato to give actionable advice on the best strategies for tackling BookExpo America.