Kate Whouley Hopes to Give Booksellers a Whole New Perspective

At this year's BookExpo America, to be held from June 2 - 5 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City, author and bookstore consultant Kate Whouley is hoping to help booksellers put a finger on what has always been an elusive, yet crucial, retail element: ambience -- that certain something that keeps customers coming back to the store. On June 2, as part of ABA's "Day of Education," Whouley will be presenting the special extended session, "Improving Ambience, Improving Sales," from 2:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Whouley first presented the educational workshop at the 2004 New England Booksellers Association (NEBA) Trade Show, where it earned rave reviews from attendees. And she stressed to BTW that NEBA deserves the credit for the idea. "NEBA recommended that it was time to do something for bookstores that talked about the look and feel of a bookstore," she said. "Especially, if a book is just a click away, you need to give your customers a reason to come in."

"Improving Ambience, Improving Sales," which was developed by Whouley, focuses on the case studies of five NEBA member bookstores that were chosen from 30 applicants: Bear Pond Books in Montpelier and Norwich Bookstore in Norwich, Vermont; Kate's Mystery Books in Cambridge and Titcomb's Bookshop in East Sandwich, Massachusetts; and The Toadstool Bookshop in Keene, New Hampshire. "We tried to get a cross-section of stores.... We were looking for stores that were [successful] but who also acknowledged that they could have better ambience," Whouley reported.

Whouley and Anne Williams Sweeney of Sweeney Media Arts visited each store in August 2004 to talk ambience -- ways in which the booksellers wanted to improve it or those aspects of the store's design that worked well.

"Anne photographed each store and we came back and spent hours and hours sifting through the images," Whouley said. "But we felt that ... it was better to talk about lighting, color, or any kind of design from the point of view of a bookstore and put it into the context of a case study -- formulated into a tour of the bookstore."

Based on her experience traveling to each store and developing the case studies, Whouley noted that oftentimes it simply helps to have someone unfamiliar with the store come in, because it allows the bookseller to "see the store with different eyes. Say the fiction section is hard to find ... you're used to it, but the customer is not."

Whouley also stressed that BEA attendees should not assume her educational workshop is a "makeover" seminar, since that implies making huge changes to the store when, many times, a small tweaking can dramatically enhance a store's look and feel. "We look at it from many different levels, not only design, but functionality," she explained. "It is important in my mind that people come to the workshop even if they are going to make small changes. It doesn't have to be large scale" to make a significant impact on ambience. --David Grogan