During a meeting of the European and International Booksellers Federation at the Frankfurt Book Fair yesterday, booksellers from around the world shared best practices and lessons learned over the past year.
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| Rosamund de la Hey | |
Rosamund de la Hey, owner of the Mainstreet Trading Company in St. Boswells, Scottish Borders, and president of the Booksellers Association of U.K. and Ireland, described the creation of the Mainstreet Book Van as the best thing she did in her store last year. In a rural area with a population of less than 1,000, the van--which was 10% funded by a James Patterson grant--allows de la Hey and her colleagues to bring authors to area schools and foster connections among schoolchildren, authors and the store even at offsite events. The Mainstreet Trading Company plans these events with the local council to ensure that every child in local schools gets to meet a real author at least once. The van also serves as a mobile advertisement, though de la Hey said its drawbacks include running extremely loudly and being very cold to drive in the winter.
Though it wasn't done in the last year, de la Hey also mentioned the creation of "book burrows" in her store's children's department as a great addition. Inspired by record shop headphone booths, the repurposed storage cupboards are now cozy dens in which children can listen to audiobooks. Each burrow is also decorated around a particular theme and identity.
Betsy Burton, American Booksellers Association president and co-owner of the King's English Bookshop in Salt Lake City, Utah, discussed the Buy Your Building initiative, through which the Salt Lake City government, in conjunction with Local First Utah, provides low-interest loans to help local businesses purchase their buildings. The initiative will begin with a test program in the city's downtown. Burton said that her own decision to buy her building years ago "became an essential part of our survival." She added: "If you buy your building, it is just a huge thing for the stability of local businesses and the stability of the local economy."
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| Matthieu de Montchalin | |
, owner of L'Armitiere in Rouen and president of the French Independent Booksellers Association (Syndicat de la librairie française), discussed the importance of using his association's tools for sharing data among booksellers. With those digital tools, he can easily compare his sales data to those of other French bookstores and see if his bookshop might have "missed something" in regards to a particular title that is finding more success at other stores. He also jokingly called the French book market, with its fixed prices and some 3,000 indies, "a paradise."
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| Maria Hamrefors | |
When Maria Hamrefors, chief executive of the Swedish bookstore chain Akademibokhandeln, took the floor next, she said she would not call the Swedish market "hell," but admitted that the last few years have been very challenging. In Sweden's unregulated market, print books remain the dominant format but Internet bookstores have become the single largest bookselling channel. Amazon, however, does not have a huge share of the market in Sweden: the e-commerce growth has been driven by two Swedish companies.
Hamrefors said that the largest project her stores launched last year was a company-wide customer loyalty program, which has been extremely successful. On September 19, the program reached the million-member mark, a sizable chunk of the country's population of 9.5 million. The program gives members special discounts, invitations to special events, "VIP treatment" during annual sales and partner offerings. Hamrefors added that Akademibokhandeln's next big project is to launch an Internet shop.
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| Phillippa Duffy | |
Phillippa Duffy, the general manager of the University Book Shop at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, joked that the New Zealand market, compared to Sweden and France, was "hell," with no regulation and a loophole in which offshore suppliers--including Amazon and its Book Depository subsidiary--are exempt from paying the normal value added tax. Despite that, she said, bookselling is wonderful in New Zealand, and the 70-year-old University Book Shop is seeing growth, particularly with children's books. Duffy made a "conscious effort" to grow the store's children's section and now, she reported, it is becoming renowned as an "amazing children's destination." This year, the bookshop also created an annual residency for emerging writers called the Robert Lord Writers' Cottage Trust. Each summer, an emerging writer will spend six weeks staying in the eponymous cottage, with a stipend and office.
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| Patricia Genat | |
Patricia Genat, chief executive of ALS Library Services and former president of the Australian Booksellers Association, said that currently Australia has the same loophole as New Zealand, exempting offshore suppliers from VAT, but this will finally change in Australia as of July 1, 2017, after years of "lobbying very strongly on behalf on indie booksellers and retailers in general." Genat also shared the news that the Australian book market has experienced strong growth in children's books, with several new all-children's bookshops set to open and some existing stores seeing an "amazing increase" in sales of any books geared to those under 15. --Alex Mutter