As tourists mill about the French Quarter outside, marveling at the vibrancy of a city that almost drowned in 2005, independent booksellers inside the Astor Crowne Plaza in New Orleans celebrate an industry that is also rebounding despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles. On Thursday, Winter Institute 7 moved from inspirational talks to the nuts-and-bolts ways that booksellers can build communities and boost sales, from Marketing Your Store as a Digital Location to Best Practices for Buying, and The Benefits of Working with Social Media.
A breakfast intended to rouse booksellers, who haven’t signed up to participate in U.S. World Book Night (April 23) and weren’t sure exactly what it is, did just that. Jane Streeter, owner of the Bookcase in Nottinghamshire, England, and president of the Booksellers Association of the U.K. and Ireland, which sponsored the world’s first book night last year, pumped up the already high energy level in the ballroom by showing a clip filmed in Trafalgar Square, London, with international celebrities from the 2011 WBN.
Carl Lennertz, head of the WBN, U.S. said that he envisions an event here that has “50 million Trafalgar Squares and the Grand Canyon.” He urged booksellers to go to www.worldbooknight.org by February 1 to become book pick-up centers and to promote WBN in their communities. “Regular customers will love you more and you’ll have new customers coming in the door,” he said. “It’s one night, but it’s year round. We’ll keep the momentum going.”
The day continued with back-to-back educational sessions sandwiched around a two-hour reps pick lunch. Panels on social media were especially popular, which was no surprise, given that 50% of all Americans use social media Web sites and Facebook boasts 800 million users, according to Dan Cullen, content officer of the ABA. Customers ordering online from books-and-mortar bookstores should have the same “warm and fuzzy experience you’d get in the bookstore,” said Kelly Justice, owner of Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Va., at Marketing Your Store as a Digital Location. Similarly, in a session on Google Analytics, Google Analytics program manager Jesse Nichols advised that “virtual bookstores should be an accurate reflection of your actual bookstore.”
Justice, who ships to international destinations, said that 10% of the Fountain's sales currently are online, with customers from all over the world, and that there was a 25% increase in orders within a week of the store setting up Paypal on its website to process sales.
"International customers, especially, don't want to use their credit cards," she said.
Author John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, who spoke to an audience of 500 people at New Orleans’s Octavia Books on Wednesday evening, urged booksellers to use Facebook, Twitter, and other social media to draw online communities into bricks-and-mortar bookstores. “It’s helpful to engage people in conversation,” he said. While he gets 20 e-mails a day, he receives 3,000-4,000 Tweets.
Other presentations were more focused on process, like one moderated by former ABA COO Len Vlahos, now head of the Book Industry Study Group, on strategic planning. At it Robert Sindelar, managing partner of Third Place Books in Lake Forest, Wash., spoke about how he turned around a second store that just wasn’t working by replacing the café and taking the advice of area restauranteurs on how to redesign the store. And Peter Makin, owner of Brilliant Books in Suttons Bay, Mich., described how he stockpiled fixtures from two closing stores and knocked on doors in downtown Traverse City to scout out a second location that opened this holiday season. Both said that they would definitely open another store.
So far the show has been earning high marks from booksellers. “I love it. I’m completely geeking out,” Stacie Williams of Boswell Book Company, in Milwaukee told PW. She praised the educational sessions for being more focused this year than in the past. “I’m on overload,” said Sue Boucher of Lake Forest Books in Lake Forest, Ill. “It’s so nice to see people are so up, thinking outside the box.”
Booksellers had a chance to relax with an evening author reception that brought 62 authors, some from across the Pond, to New Orleans. “This is a great venue to introduce these passionate booksellers to books,” said Morgan Entrekin, president and publisher of Grove Atlantic, who attends every year and brought Val McDermid, Jeanette Winterson, and Michael Thomas to the show. “With the absence of Borders, this group is more important.”
Winter Institute winds up today. Booksellers will work in small groups to assess the challenges facing a model bookstore and strategize about how to take it to the next level.
