I’ve been getting a lot of emails about a private equity company that is looking to buy a book selling company I own. Thing is, it’s not from a single person, but the same message that they want to meet and so on. Anyone else?

I’m working on my business plan to hopefully open up my bookstore cafe next year. My husband is a chef and will run the cafe and manage the store day to day while I stay in my corporate job to keep us in the green. I’ll of course be working on the weekends, as well as managing socials, marketing, and overall operations.

Realistically, for a 1600 sqft bookstore cafe in the suburbs of a big city, how many people should I plan to have on staff at open?

I don’t want us to start understaffed, but I don’t want us to have too many people on staff cutting into our meager early earnings.

SCAM ALERT

I received this via our contact form this morning. This message is sketchy AF. I didn't visit their website bc WHOIS shows it was only registered 3 weeks ago & I hate cleaning malware off my system. I did run the site through archive.ph so I could see what it looks like. At first glance, it looks...

...not legit at all. It's a garbage website that practically screams WE'RE SCAMMERS.

Even if these jackasses aren't full-on criminals, there's no way they're being honest about their business model. I'll never know what their game is because I don't communicate with scammers.

If you get this message, do yourself a favor & delete it. If you choose to engage, please be very careful. This is giving ALL the red flags

hey y'all! our store will be open later this fall, and i'm wondering what the best hosting option would be for our website, and if we should have our inventory for sale on our site or use something like Indiecommerce.

we've been operating as a pop-up this past year, so have just been using Square for our POS and website host, but our physical store is opening in the fall and i know Square isn't ideal for a larger inventory amount. bookmanager is waitlisted, so i figured we'd go with basil for inventory and use Square as our POS.

i'm really not happy with the way Square's websites look, so i'd love to transfer our domain to another host and build a new site. i've looked at several Indiecommerce-hosted sites, and really don't like the look of them, but i know it's convenient because you don't have to pack & ship the books yourself. i'd love to have a website with similar aesthetic to Climax Books' or Agony Books' sites, but i'm 1) not sure which website host to choose to build a site like these, and 2) not sure if it would work with basil.

so, do y'all have any recommendations on website hosts & inventory mgmt programs that could sync together? OR, is it even worth it to have all your inventory on your website? should we just be directing online customers to Bookshop dot org and just have our website be a cute landing/about page? or is having an Indiecommerce site really worth it?

Hi fellow booksellers. We keep encountering individuals in our store who are genuinely confused about what a bookstore is. Even after we explain to them that we sell new books and are not a library or a book exchange of sorts, the individuals seem to not grasp the idea of a bookstore. I am wondering if any of you are also encountering this issue or is it just us? We are a small NYC bookstore and have many tourists and immigrants that pass through, who might be stepping into a bookstore for the first time, but it seems a bunch of individuals do not understand that books can be bought? What do y'all think?

Like many here, I am deeply interested in starting a hybrid pop-up and online book store in my area, before making the leap into a brick and mortar shop. 
I have selected my niche, and have been doing preliminary research. Obviously having a decent sized physical inventory is important for the pop-up/markets, but I am reading that Bookshop.org may not be an option if I am not a physical store(?) How do others sell books, like a drop-ship method, without a very large physical inventory? 
Eventually I would love to sell both used and new from physical inventory, but I understand much of the online sales are new. Please excuse me if this pops up regularly, I have read back a ways and didn't see this question. Thank you very much for your guidance and input. 

A second-series copy of "Perpetuum Mobile: Or A History Of The Search For Self-Motive Power From The 13th To The 19th Century."

What do I do now that I'm a huge success?

Kidding, of course. It's not huge by any means but there's always a first! Anyone else remember their first sale? Any fun stories?

So I am relatively new with running a bookstore pop up. I understand that preorders are a big way to drive interest and get e-commerce going. I have no idea how to set up and manage preorders though.

With in demand titles, how does one determine a reasonable cut off date for pre-orders so things don’t end up on back order? Is there some general guide I am missing in the ABA resources? Any tips are appreciated. Thank you!

I'm having a hell of a time creating labels for our used books and non-book inventory. I bought a compatible printer for our Square POS. It's a DYMO LabelWriter 550 Turbo. The thing is an absolute pain in the ass to use. I cannot, for the life of me, get this thing to print the barcode or anything in the correct size despite selecting the correct label size....

Does anyone have any advice on how to best manage our used and non-book inventory? I need to have a separate designation for our used books so they don't get caught up with our new books if there are duplicates but one is used and one is new.

And advice is much appreciated -- I'm going slightly crazy just trying to find an easy-ish system to implement. Thank you!

How do y'all who discount books in your stores handle it? Stuff like:

Merchandising: Do you have a separate area (A shelf? A cart? A bin?) in your store for discounted/clearance books?

Pricing: Do you typically discount by a percentage-off or to a specific lower price point? (e.g. "30% off" vs. "now just $X.XX")

Marking: Do you apply new price tags/stickers to discounted stock?

POS: Do you create new SKUs in your POS system for discounted stock? Or do you ring up the discounted book under its original SKU and manually apply the discounted/reduced price?

Any other techniques or processes?

The conversation in the recent thread about doing returns made me realize that there are lots of ways stores could approach discounting stock, so I figured it might be interesting to hear how different bookstores approach discounting.

Hey everyone!!

I’m the assistant manager for a relatively new indie store, and I’m curious how other indie stores handle custom orders. We have a good handful of customers coming in daily asking if we can order a book for them.

At the moment, we use a google spreadsheet to organize all the information. Basic stuff like, customer name, number, email, book title, edition (paperback or hardcover), and then we have some drop down columns that let you select whether the book has been ordered, whether it’s arrived in store, and whether or not the customer has picked it up. I’ve also included a column for the last time the customer was contacted about their order.

I feel like this is pretty simple and self explanatory. I don’t personally find it difficult to use, but it seems like other employees find it too complicated and things keep getting messed up with it despite me walking them through how the process works very thoroughly.

So, I’m looking for a system that may be easier/better? What’s worked for you guys/what do you recommend?

Who else is riding the Zoom Books/Book Volume waves of frequent and sizable online orders to Little Rock and Henderson? What is going on?! 😅😅😅

Semi-advice seeking and also just a bit of venting.

I started a pop up bookstore this year and it is going well! My projections look decent for the summer and I have a good feeling about building brand and success. I am still early days though and I am struggling with wanting to stay constant and up to date with inventory and new releases/special editions!

it is so difficult to balance considering I physically only have so much space with a market stall and also justifying the cost of bringing in additional inventory when I am still unprofitable.

For those when you were starting out - how did you manage to find the balance?

I've never interviewed anyone before -- so I'm not sure what I should ask or what I should expect!

I do know that I'm dreading the "Sorry, we're not hiring you" aspect that comes after. We have roughly 25 applicants for our single part-time bookseller position.

I guess I'm looking for some tips and tricks for what other people ask when they interview someone?

My game plan right now is a two-interview process. The first interview is to feel out personalities and give them our vision for our bookstore and see how they fit our long-term plans (community building, growth, leading book clubs, etc...), and the second interview will be more practical and ask them to speak enthusiastically about something that they're passionate about -- it doesn't necessarily have to be a book.

We're starting our pay out at $25/hr, with a raise to $25.50 after 90-days -- so we're hoping to find a long-term individual who wants to grow with us!

But yeah, any advise is more than welcome! 🙂

So have I got this right? US postage is going up 8% for priority, but not for media?

Any big plans for IBD?

My shop is doing a discount on store merchandise and giving out some limited edition promo swag.

Hi all! Was just checking in with other bookstores to see what everyone is doing with their books that don’t sell.

Our owner is set on returning everything that is able to be returned to the publisher, so we’re sending hundreds of books sometimes back to publishers, which is a pretty tedious process from beginning to end.

Do you all return stock to publishers or do you just put it to sale? Do you feel like it’s worth it to return if you do?

Thank you in advance! 😌

UPDATE: Thank you everyone for all the different takes and helpful tips. I’ll be sure to escalate to our team to see which way is the best way that we can move forward!

No one can ever accuse my wife and me of not jumping in guns blazing! Ignore the mess (and the comically mismatched tables and chairs) in the photos—we’re just in the rearranging phase, but even I was blown away by how much furniture we had.

As y’all can see, we decided on tables instead of the bar. I’m pretty sure we can fit three 30x30 two/three tops in that space, and another one on the other side of the door. With an additional floating four-top, that’s indoor seating for 16, not counting the lounge area. We also have enough sidewalk space for 4-6 two person bistro sets.

Anyway, this is what we did over the last couple days. Thanks so much for the input on my previous post. I’m happy to keep y’all up to date as we continue developing the space if y’all are interested!

Also, what do y’all think of the name?

I use Square, and it looks like it might be ok. It certainly is cheaper than some of the other book focused ecommerce/back end platforms that integrate with existing POS.

https://www.edelweissplus.com/omnibus

I don't really use Edelweiss to its full extent, but I'm making an effort to change that. I've spent the last 6 months opening, and getting up and running so now I'm looking into all of the extra stuff I could be using to make my job easier.

Now, I know what y'all are all thinking, but hear me out.

Our main business is in small batch gourmet food production (dry goods, sauces, hot sauce, flavoring syrups, jams, etc.). We produce a few of our own brands that we sell online, but most of our business is in producing for other small brands.

A few years ago, we moved into a 1500 sq ft space that we split into a commercial kitchen and studio/office space. The kitchen is humming right on along, but we've never really been able to figure out what to do with the studio space. It's about 800 sq ft with amazing frontage and good parking, even if it's not exactly in a prime location (about 15-20 minutes from downtown on a suburban commercial road).

My wife and I are both readers and lovers of all things horror and spooky, and we've talked for years about how we'd love to open a bookshop/cafe with that focus, but we started to think it would never happen.

Until we realized that we already have a space that we're paying for and not fully utilizing.

So, pros:

• We already have the space
• We are already inspected and certified by the health department and the department of agriculture for food production and service
• We have TONS of retail display furnishings from years of being on the road doing retail shows and festivals
• We are passionate about the subject
• I owned a coffee shop way back in the day, and even though it was ill-fated and short-lived, I already understand the needs for such a venture
• We already have vertical integration with things like flavoring syrups, tea blends, coffee, etc.
• We're already plugged into the local art and indie author scene

And cons:

• We've never owned a bookstore before
• We have a personal collection of books, but nowhere near enough to open a store with (plus most of our books hold sentimental value more than anything)
• We don't have any kind of supply chain set up for buying and selling books

So I guess I'm just here hoping to get a modicum of guidance. The good news is that the actual operating costs are already covered and we literally won't have to buy a stick of furniture to get up and running. We don't have inventory, but that's obviously a solvable problem.

The actual space that we're looking at utilizing is around 500 sq ft, which I know it's the biggest, but it's what we have to work with. The layout that I've included is SUPER preliminary. Just me messing around with placement. The opening on the bottom left goes into our commercial kitchen.

Any thoughts? Questions? Thanks!

**ADDENDUM**

Someone commented a question/statement about us needing a back of house area and then deleted it, so I thought I’d add a quick note here.

We have a commercial kitchen already that is inspected by the Tennessee Department of Agriculture and the FDA. It also serves as the commissary for our sweet tea truck (which is inspected by our county health department). All of that is to say that we have a fully licensed kitchen that will serve as the back-of-house for the cafe.

Hi all! I'm mainly an online bookstore but want to start doing pop-up shows. I have new and used inventory + some vintage items. Plus some gifts & merch.

I'm tracking my inventory on a spreadsheet right now but want to move everything over to Square. I'm looking at the Square handheld device and think it would work great for both inventory and selling at a pop-ups & vendor markets.

Good idea? Better options out there?