Booksellers Touring Bookstores: 'A New Perspective'

Shelf Awareness

"Visiting another bookstore and seeing the way they do things can be a great way for booksellers to learn, appreciate, and see their own store differently," wrote Mark LaFramboise of Politics & Prose, Washington D.C., in a piece featured in this week's e-newsletter from the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association.

Recently, some P&P staff members asked whether, instead of attending BEA, they might tour bookstores in Manhattan, Brooklyn and northern New Jersey. "They didn't want to see the stores like a customer would, though," LaFramboise noted. "They wanted to talk with booksellers, ask questions, see receiving rooms, points of sale, any aspect of the business their hosts were willing to share."

Four staff members visited the Strand, McNally Jackson and Book Culture in Manhattan; Brooklyn's Greenlight Bookstore and WORD, as well as WORD's new location in Jersey City. Hannah Depp, a P&P manager, recalled: "We all gained greater personal knowledge of the broader world of bookselling and were certainly reinvigorated! Every store had its bits of inspiration for each of us. The ideas for infrastructure and growth we learned from each manager, owner and department head that opened their doors to us paved the way for our meeting changes, management changes, and helped us cement our goals for the next year."