On Thursday, October 16, Kate Layte launched an Indiegogo campaign to help finance her new indie bookstore, Papercuts, JP, which will open in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, Mass. The crowdfunding campaign, already almost 25% financed, has a goal of $30,000 and closes on November 1.
Layte is aiming to open the 500-square-foot, general-interest bookstore in the second week of November and before Thanksgiving at the latest. Should the Indiegogo campaign be a success, she plans to use the money to buy more shelving (the space has high ceilings, and she'd like to make use of all that wall space) and a library ladder, create an e-commerce website, buy an inventory database and point-of-sale system, and for other start-up costs.
Layte, who has been living in Jamaica Plain for four years, described the neighborhood as a beautiful, diverse community with something of a literary tradition--E.E. Cummings is buried in a cemetery there--but it currently has no general bookstore. Around two years ago, Layte said, she decided to open a store.
Although she has never worked in an independent bookstore, Layte did work as a frontline bookseller at Borders for five years, and has experience on the publishing side of the business: for the past four years, she's worked as an associate production editor at Little, Brown. After deciding to open the store, she did extensive research. She spent her summer visiting every independent bookstore she could find; she consulted with Tim Huggins, founder and former owner of Newtonville Books in Newton and now controller and treasurer at the Brookline Booksmith in Brookline (who helped her rework her business plan); joined her local small business association; and took online classes in marketing and accounting.
"I had to look into some things I didn't know about, because I was an English major," Layte remarked.
Given the store's small space, Layte intends to build her selection closely around her customers' needs. To that end, she's already begun polling community members about their reading habits on her store's Facebook page. And in addition to stocking a healthy amount of fiction, nonfiction and children's books, along with award winners and bestsellers, Layte looks forward to bringing in books from small publishers that might not normally get showcased.
"I'm really interested in books that are printed well," she said. "Books with different trim sizes, different bindings--things that don't translate to e-books. Small publishers do that. That's where my emphasis is personally."
Layte plans to host events as well, with smaller, more intimate events held in store and larger affairs at offsite locations. She has plans for a grand opening celebration sometime in December, but at the moment nothing is set in stone. Although she'll be the only person on staff initially, she is interested in hiring a part-time events coordinator at some point.
She signed the lease to her storefront on October 1 after discovering the location while on a long walk around her neighborhood. Another store had just moved around the corner, and vacated a small, charming space with high ceilings and wood floors. Layte decided to move in soon after. "It just felt really good," she said. --Alex Mutter
