Partner Spotlight is a series designed to highlight the vendors that partner with ABA to offer discounted products, services, and business opportunities to ABA members. Each installment, we interview a different partner to learn more about their organization and why indie bookstores matter to them.
Ghostbuyers offers “The Ghostbuyers' Guide to Becoming a Great Bookstore Buyer,” a comprehensive 27-lesson online course covering everything new or prospective buyers need to know. They also provide direct consulting and inventory management services, including frontlist and backlist buying support, opening inventory builds, and strategic consultation, for stores that want an experienced hand in the mix.
Bookselling This Week met with Ghostbuyers founder Joe Foster to learn more.
Bookselling This Week: Why don’t you tell us a little about the origin of the company? Where were you before this and what prompted the start of Ghostbuyers?
Joe Foster: I was the buyer at Maria’s Bookshop in Durango, Colorado, from 2003 to 2010. In that time, I became known as a buyer who knew things, and was asked to speak and present several times, and joined various task forces. After Maria's, I joined Above the Treeline (Edelweiss) when my partner needed to move to Portland to attend grad school. I was at Edelweiss for 15 years and spent most of my time there helping booksellers, publishers, and librarians figure out how to do things better. I spoke and presented at most of the conferences up until the pandemic. After which, I trained a bunch of new folks to attend the tradeshows, getting fresh faces out there and passing the baton.
Over the last few years at Edelweiss, I saw a rather startling trend in the newer generations of booksellers. Many had not been exposed, in any fashion, to bookselling, how things work, or how to do things, and I saw them really struggling. The wild and wonderful influx of new stores in the last several years has been an amazing boon to the country and the book industry, but the lack of exposure to the nuts and bolts of bookselling is a real burden on these stores.
I thought that I would take my expertise and work towards helping as many new stores stay in business as possible. Being in that space has also meant that I’ve had various publishing-adjacent tech companies reach out to me for consultation work, which is always fun.
So, to help stores stick around, I’m consulting/coaching, remote buying, and offering a course on “How to Become a Great Bookstore Buyer,” with more courses buzzing around in my brain.
BTW: There are a few training companies out here for booksellers. What do you think sets Ghostbuyers apart?
JF: I see so many new bookstores who are struggling with buying know-how and best practices. Like most people in the biz, I really want these new folks to be successful, and the course I've built is designed specifically for them.
I like and recommend Professional Booksellers School (PBS) and Paz, of course. Awesome folks and awesome courses all around. Please, take their courses! I'm filling a gap I’ve seen in what's available for stores who are just starting out with buying, whether that's creating their opening inventory or just figuring out where and how to get books. With “The Ghostbuyers’ Guide to Becoming a Great Bookstore Buyer,” they can learn the nitty-gritty details of the art and science of buying before they create bad habits and make costly inventory mistakes.
The course is self-paced and available right now. No classrooms, no quizzes, just useful information you can dig into whenever you need it. It's also designed to stay current. As new POS options, catalog services, and information resources arise, I'll update accordingly. And once you've completed it, you keep access to the course materials, so you can refer back whenever something comes up.
BTW: Can you tell me a little more about your consultation services? What should a customer expect that process to look like if they reach out?
JF: The topics and cadence of the coaching service are really up to each customer. I usually like to start with a deep dive into who the store is and how it operates — pain points, points of pride, how they buy, their inventory philosophy (if they don't have one yet, we'll work on that together). I want to hear about their staff and how involved they are in operations and title selection, their current ordering and returns and receiving processes.
I love a tour. The way people talk about their store is so instructive.
From there it's a conversation about where they'd like to be and a plan for how to get there, building in best practices along the way. Some people want help creating their opening inventory. Others want to work through the decision-making process for frontlist buying, or get into the nuts and bolts of Edelweiss, or think through reordering and budgeting. Every store is different and has different needs.
I also do remote buying for some stores, especially frontlist. It's something I genuinely enjoy, and it can save stores hours and hours each season. (It's not as expensive as you think.)
BTW: What prompted you to partner with ABA and our members?
JF: I’ve always admired ABA, since my time as a new employee listening to Avin’s “Two Percent Solution” presentation at my first MPIBA conference. I was asked to present the first “How to be a Buyer” session at WI4 in Salt Lake City. I was part of various task forces, and once I joined Above the Treeline in 2010, I spoke at plenty of the conferences and got to know a lot of the wonderful ABA staff. I see them working hard to help booksellers succeed, which is a noble task. The ABA is where the booksellers are, so it made sense to partner up.
BTW: Is there anything else you want to share with our members? Hints at future projects?
JF: More courses are definitely coming. Not everyone is comfortable with a coaching or consultation relationship. Sometimes you just need to sit down with the information at your own pace. I'm always open to suggestions, so if there's a topic or service that would help your store, I'd love to hear about it!
Come take a look at ghostbuyers.com, and feel free to email with questions about your specific situation.
If you're a new store trying to figure out buying, or a more established store looking to sharpen things up, I’m here to help!
ABA members receive $50 off online courses.