Community Involvement Important for Booksellers

Booksellers involve themselves in their communities in different ways. Last week, The Read looked at four booksellers involved in local government, community fundraising and volunteer work. Today, we look at how three different bookshops reach out to their neighbourhoods by using their store’s activities to enrich those communities.

Annemarie Florian, Storytime Whangarei
Giving back to the community

Margaret Kouvelis  , Poppies Fielding
A Flair for the Dramatic

Carole Beu, The Women’s Bookshop
Supporting her community through events

Annemarie Florian, Storytime Whangarei

If there were a model for reaching out and involving the community, the Whangarei children’s bookshop Storytime would be a leader in the field.

Right from their establishment, says owner Annemarie Florian, the store has aimed to make a difference. The philosophy is even outlined on their website.

“I think it is a different take on doing business,” say Annemarie.

“You’ve got to run your business well and make a living, but you’ve got to contribute as well – a giving and a receiving to and from your community.”

Possibly the most important of their outreach activities is their sponsorship of Books for Babies, where every baby born in Northland receives the gift of a book. It runs year round and Storytime partner in this project with associated libraries and Plunket.

More for Kids in Whangarei
NZ Post Children’s Book Awards are celebrated each year with a Storytime Character Hunt beginning at Whangarei's Central Library. Children are encouraged to dress up and join the exciting scavenger hunt.

Storytime has a Great Wall of Words regular Poetry Day event in store.

One of their other sponsorships is their Tai Tokerau Reading Association story writing competition for Year 1 – 8 Northland school pupils. Another is of a Mask Making competition as part of the local Bernina Awards.

On International Children’s Day most years, Storytime welcomes the community into the store for various activities. This year though, they’ll take a break.

Other fun contributions Storytime makes to the community include Talk Like a Pirate Day each September: children who come in dressed as pirates and talk in pirate language to the people in store get given a treasure!

With such a light hearted approach, it is no wonder that kids and parents in Whangarei think of Storytime as ‘their’ store.
 

Margaret Kouvelis  , Poppies Fielding

Poppies Feilding’s Margaret Kouvelis (pictured, right) is a powerhouse of ideas and delivery of fundraising in her community, and naturally Poppies Feilding is always closely involved.

They are big ideas, but not achieved without big effort!

Perhaps the most audacious idea began with a book, Jenny Pattrick’s historical fiction Landings set in the Whanganui river area.

Margaret persuaded mayor of the time, Michael Laws, to hold a civic reception in honour of the writer.

“What arose as a result was most unexpected. The rowing race on the river, part of real history recorded in the book, was reinvented to be a race between rowing great Mahe Drysdale, international rival Tim Maeyens and wildcard Nathan Cohen in 2009.

It was a great sports event for New Zealand and for Whanganui, and so successful it has been repeated each year (it was repeated last November).

Heartland South comes North
Another more hands on event was launching John Perriam’s Dust to Gold in the Manawatu area. “We had 300 people at the Rangitikei Club and the evening was an absolute hit. Wine and merino fashions from Bendigo Station were auctioned and we sold a lot of books, raising $4,000 for Cure Kids.”

Having an NZ rail centenary celebrated in Feilding saw Margaret's staff out in period costume, with vintages suitcases full of books to sell at the railway station when the special train pulled in… repeated with stops to sell books in the town square on the way back to Poppies!

A Piggity Wiggity promotion with author Diana Neild was more think-big. Margaret had Piggity created large in pink neon for the town’s Fantasy in Lights event (image, right), and now he goes to all the children’s events in the community.

“We love events,” says Margaret. “There’s a regular storytelling event at the Clocktower for Rural Day. I organise preschool schoolteachers to put on costumes and read, and the kids sit on hay bales!”

Food and books – a double act
Noted foodie Hester Guy (pictured, right) and Margaret used to ‘hire themselves out’ for a show called Cooking the Books for school fundraisers.

“Hester does the cooking and explains what she’s doing food wise. I join in and make cracks about her cooking and go on about what I’m reading. It’s all off the cuff, really mad and frequently hilarious.”

Another good promotion idea, but Margaret admits other booksellers might not be comfortable in this role!

Two other major events Poppies takes part in might also not be for the faint hearted. Margaret says she ‘takes the whole bookshop’ out to the charity events, in Marton and in Aokautere, just out of Palmerston North.

At the Holtby homestead in Marton, she took over three or four rooms, displaying cook books in the kitchen, and décor books in the living room. People pay for tickets to the event and Margaret also gives a share of her sales to Arohanui Hospice. (She also does a smaller version of the show for retirees at local residential apartment complexes.)

Margaret has yet another string to her promotional violin… with plenty of colourful power point slides to illustrate and anecdotes about building dilemmas, she talks about the way she set up her Poppies stores, creating attractive bookshops from drab spaces.

Her visit to Sir Miles Warren’s garden at Ohinetahi is adapted as a talk for garden clubs. Sir Miles was so delighted to hear of her efforts, he sent professional shots to supplement Margaret’s own photos.

Sadly, the Poppies store in Wanganui closes this weekend. Beautiful as it was in its historic building, there was not a sufficient clientele to support the bookshop in that city.
The silver lining is that it might free some of Margaret’s time for her other community activities with Feilding Promotions and as a recently elected Manawatu District Councillor.
 

Carole Beu, The Women’s Bookshop

Carole Beu’s energy and determination makes sure The Women’s Bookshop has a huge presence in the Auckland community despite the store’s relatively small size.
Well known is The Women’s Bookshop’s participation in the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival as half of the event’s on site bookshop, a joint venture with Unity Books Auckland.

IMAGE: Carole in her shop.

While Carole says it is a lot of work for a relatively small financial return, the presence at such a major event gives The Women’s Bookshop a high profile in the community.
Her annual Litera-Teas gather a panel of writers to speak – and are always a sell out with over 300 women attending.

But that’s just two of the promotions in her outreach schedule. There are the usual staples of a physical newsletter sent out four times a year to a mailing list of around 4,000, frequent instore author events and book launches and events arranged at bigger venues for international author visits.

Siobhan Harvey and Sue Orr will have NZ Book Month events in store on March 1 and March 3. Annie Proulx talks about her autobiography on March 16 at Epsom Girls’ Raye Freedman Centre, with Geraldine Brooks scheduled for mid-year.

Taking the bookstore to the event
The Women’s Bookshop is also the bookseller of choice for ‘all the therapy conferences’. Carole will do around six of these two day events each year, setting up a stand with the relevant specialist stock in the venue’s foyer.

“We have a really good range of therapy books, and I take the financial risk of importing books specifically for this area. Fortunately we do sell a lot of books at conferences.”

 
Relationship therapist Harville Hendrix will be here shortly and Carole and her team will have bookstalls at his Auckland events.

The Women’s Bookshop also sells tickets (at no charge to promoters) on behalf of events like the Hero Garden festival and the popular GALS choir concerts.

Carole and The Women’s Bookshop have a full-on weekend coming up: there’s a two day therapy conference – Carole will work there on the Saturday, and a staff member the next day.

On Sunday, she will be found at Point Chev’s Coyle Park, setting up a bookshop under a gazebo tent for Auckland’s Big Gay Out. “Taking books to the Big Gay Out is more of a PR exercise,” Carole says.

     IMAGE: The rainbow flag, sometimes called 'the freedom flag', a popular symbol of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) pride.

“We have to be seen there in support of our community.” So supportive in fact that Carole will give some of her space free to the Auckland Lesbian Business Association of which she is a member. (In return she will get help setting up and packing out.)

Support is also extended in other ways – the Auckland Sexual Abuse Foundation will receive a huge carton of current stock for an auction, and Carole is also donating books for a fundraiser to benefit arson victims Juliette Leigh and Lindsay Curnow.

When involved in all her outreach activities, seven day weeks can be a norm for The Women’s Bookshop owner. But time will be rationed more carefully in the future as Carole is the brand new grandmother of a very premature, but doing very well, grandson Bodhi – he is now almost two kilos! Making time for him is a priority – but it is also likely Carole will find a way of maintaining her store’s prominent profile in our industry.