From kitchens to speed-dating: Business models for booksellers

Successful bookselling is obviously not a simple matter of putting books on a shelf and opening the shop’s doors to passersby. There are many innovative and interesting forms of business models for bookshops, with many novel ideas found in New Zealand. In fact, I introduced a number of ideas from New Zealand in an open forum on business models in session of the American Booksellers Association Winter Institute in San Jose recently.

One which got a lot of interest was Cook the Books now in Ponsonby Road, Auckland, (www.cookthebooks.co.nz) with its kitchen for visiting chef authors out the back and the vegetable and herb garden out the front.

And of course there are many others where books are combined with music, with coffee, or there is a specialist angle on the stock with some bookshops around the country known as the place where special interest books might be bought.

But how about a bookshop that organises summer literary camps for kids.  Steve Bercu of BookPeople in Austin Texas (www.bookpeople.com) has been developing this idea for some years.

Steve spoke at the Wi5 session on business models and outlined the many years of hard work to develop what is now a thriving business in its own right and a great promotional tool for his shops.

BookPeople's literary day camps for teens and pre-teens are offered year round. These camps are designed to engage readers in their favourite literary worlds; seeking adventure from both within and outside of books. Activities range from historical re-enactment to fantasy retelling. Each camp and session offers new experiences and friends centred around specific stories and author series.

Bookselling is a competitive business, but it was interesting to see how open the booksellers at this session were about sharing their ideas for selling more books and making more money.

Roxanne Coady of R.J.Julia Booksellers (www.rjjulia.com) has developed strong websales of high value gift cards (pictured left), which are marketed on her website through the United States.

Certainly website marketing among the booksellers attending the conference is a fast developing sales activity and many stores are looking to extend their online sales efforts into e-books, often bundling them with a traditional hard cover book of the same title.

However, despite all the talk of different business models in America, the Scots have come up with a king hit: organised speed-dating in the book shop.

This from The Edinburgh Bookshop -

“Single? Want to meet someone lovely but are fed up with meeting blokes who just want to tell you about their dull job and brag about their New Town flat and BMW? Or being set up with girls who want you to be interested in handbags or how they nearly sat next to Brad Pitt on a plane?  Wouldn’t it be nice to meet someone and talk about books? Then you’d really know whether you had anything in common before you went on that first date, and on that date, if conversation dried up a little, you’d know that you could talk about books a bit more, wouldn’t you?  If only someone would organise something that meant you could meet that sort of person.

Well, wish no more single people of Edinburgh because The Edinburgh Bookshop is riding to the rescue with the city’s – and quite possibly Scotland’s – first literary speed dating evening.  Instead of trying to chat in nightclubs or resorting to on-line dating agencies, why not come along to the incredibly stylish The One Below at The Rutland Hotel and see what happens? We’ve got the whole bar to ourselves for the evening so there’s room for lots of people.”