Originally published in the January 15, 1996 issue of AB Bookman's Weekly, a Magazine for the specialist book world.Chapter Three: Day-to-Day Operations
Unlike some other businesses, it's not necessary for a secondhand bookstore to be open long hours to do a good trade. And, very few secondhand bookstores are in shopping malls (the rents are simply too prohibitive) where they are forced to be open long hours. Hence, booksellers set their hours to suit themselves and the customers in their particular areas. My hours are Tuesday through Thursday, ll:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Friday to 6:00 p.m.; Saturday, 10:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; and on Monday from 12:30 to 5:30 p.m. My shop is closed on Sunday. Other stores have longer or shorter hours, but not too many open before 10:00 a.m. or remain open past 6:00 p.m. In your first year or two of business, you'll probably want to experiment somewhat with your store's hours, especially to see if it will be worthwhile for you to be open Thursday or Friday evenings, or on Sundays. It really depends on the concentration of shoppers in your area during those times. However, my advice would be to keep your opening time to 10:30 a.m. or later. Many shops now don't even open until noon. You need some time every morning for your personal scouting activities. That $10 to $20 spent each morning at thrift stores can really produce big dividends for you. Whatever opening hours you do decide on, be sure to display them prominently on your front door or window. There are few things more aggravating than arriving at someone's shop, finding it closed and seeing no posting of hours, or any clue as to when the shop will be open. This advice also applies if you have to leave your store some time during the day on a house-call or for other reasons. Always post a sign estimating your return time and apologizing for any customer inconvenience. Failure to do this is enough reason in some people's minds not to return to your store. If you find you have to be out of your store often, try and arrange to have a part-time employee keep the business open. Three or four trips to your store without gaining access during regular opening hours and many a customer will bid you farewell, their book dollars to be spent elsewhere. However, assuming that you are pricing your books in a proper manner and your stock is neatly organized, the major reason for losing customers will probably be inadequate inventory. To a certain extent, and certainly in good times, the sales will look after themselves. Your main job is to buy books, lots of books. Through your various sources, you must always keep a steady stream of books coming into your shop. This is what your customers count on. If a customer makes several trips to your store and sees no appreciable turnover of stock, and therefore very little new material to buy, that customer will come less frequently, and eventually not at all. It's not difficult to buy books. In one year, you could buy enough books to fill three or four stores to the ceilings. But you'll have limited resources and space, so you must by careful what you buy.Customer Requests
To know what to buy, you must pay particular attention to requests from your customers in your own area. Other dealers can suggest that you should concentrate on certain categories of books because they always sell well for them. However, if these dealers are way across the city or in other towns, the information is only marginally helpful. Each bookstore--partly because of the owner's personal tastes, and partly because of the store's location--takes on an identity of its own. Some books may literally fly off the shelves in your store, whereas the same titles might never sell well in any other store in town. So talk to your first customers and ask what they want to see in your store. If there's a lot of demand for cookbooks, or art books, or military history, children's books, detective fiction, or whatever, try buying as much as you can for a specified trial period and see how each category sells. Convince yourself that the sales will be there for certain books and it's not just casual interest that your customers have been expressing. You may find that some categories are requested a lot, such as photography, but when you've established such a section, very few sales result. You'll have to decide if it's really worth buying any more books for that section, or even keeping what you have. You may want to clear out a slow-selling section at half price, or trade it off to another dealer, and not bother with it. You'll go through a trial-and-error period to determine the right mix for your store and you should be consistently fine-tuning this mix. An excellent idea to help you buy books that have a high chance of selling is to keep a card file of customers' requests. Today, some booksellers have small computer systems in their store and they record all customer wants on computer for instant recall. Whether you do this or just have an alphabetized card file in a drawer of your desk, it's become very important that you pay particular attention to specific customer requests. The book trade is a service industry and the more you organize and adapt to serve customers better and faster, the larger your share of your city's book sales will be. Taking requests for specific titles or groups of books is an excellent way to make new customers. If you follow up on a request within the first month, and the customer does come in to pick up the book, you may make a lifelong customer. You can expect a certain amount of customer loyalty, but you have to work to earn that loyalty. If a particular customer is a prolific reader or collector and you quickly acquire a half dozen or more items for him or her, you've got a customer who is going to start to rely on you and perhaps prefer buying from you before anyone else. Get yourself a hundred customers like that and you've got a book business! Don't be concerned that you have never before seen a book that has been requested. Take down the information about the book and the customer anyway. These books have a way of turning up if you're on the look-out for them. Many times early in my bookselling career, I've made the mistake of not taking someone's name and phone number when they've requested a book I've never even heard of. Two or three days later the book has either come in the door, or I've seen it in another dealer's shop or in a thrift store. Many guaranteed sales were passed up before I was smart enough to take any and every request! Perhaps 50 percent of the requests I was never able to fill, but the other 50 percent have made a lot of money for me. Some books I just can't find enough of. This is especially true of children's books because that is my main specialty. Right now, for instance, I have 13 names on file for "Pookie" books, stories about a little rabbit with wings, published by Collins in England in the 1950's. For the last five or six years, I have been able to buy an average of about half a dozen a year and of course these never got on the shelves. I simply made a phone call to a customer on file and the books were sold instantly. I'm dreaming of the day when I find a whole box of Pookie books and can make all my Pookie customers happy on the same day. Meanwhile, I try to distribute the books around to keep everyone somewhat happy, until such time that I'm able to supply all nine titles of the series to each and every customer who wants them. Early in 1994, I discovered that a small publishing house in England had begun reprinting the "Pookie" books and they had three titles available. I immediately ordered 10 of each and I'm looking forward to the remainder of the series becoming available, as are my customers. The above is just one example. There are literally dozens of authors and titles that are constantly in demand and the more customers you have on file for these books the better. So regardless of how many of these books you buy and sell, you'll always have a market for them. I can't enough of Arthur Ransome's books, A.A. Milne's books. C.S. Lewis' "Narnia" series, Andrew Lang's fairy books and many, many others. In other genres, Ian Fleming first editions, along with first editions of manhy other detective fiction authors, science fiction authors and literary authors are constantly in demand and usually you won't have to make shelf space for these books since a sale will be just a phone call away. As your knowledge of collectible books increases, so should your file of requests for these books. When the books start appearing, you'll want to be prepared to turn those requests into sales. You'll find that besides the probability of making future sales to customers for whom you've filled requests, there is another important side benefit. When they come to your store to pick up books you've set aside for them, they don't always just pick up those books and go. Quite often, the customer has some time to look around, to your benefit. On many occasions, a customer has come into my store in response to a call to pick up a requested book, and although that book may only be eight or 10 dollars, the customer has left with 40- or 50-dollars worth of other books as well. In fact, customers are often so happy that you've made the effort to acquire a requested title for them, they try very hard to buy something else from you as well. This is one good reason to have a wide and varied stock at all times.Holding Books
Hand in hand with filling requests is establishing a "Hold Box" or "Hold Shelf". Once you have a requested book you must contact the customer, and if the customer still needs and wants the book, you ask him or her to come in and pick up the book. In the meantime, you must store the book. I have a large box in my back room in which I store books for this purpose. I place the book or books on hold for someone into a bag, label the bag with the customer's name and place the bag in the Hold Box. Some dealers have a shelf or two allocated for books on hold. Books fro this shelf may be bagged or a small card may be filled out with the customer's name on it and the card placed protruding from the book. If your customer hasn't picked up a book on hold in a week's time, you would be wise to give the customer a reminder call. Most people are prompt in picking up books when they say they will, but we as booksellers must sometimes acknowledge that there are other influences and happenings in peoples' lives besides books, and there is sometimes a tendency to completely forget the book on hold in favor of more urgent developments. After one reminder and the book is still not picked up in a few more days, you have the right to put the book out for general sale. On the other hand, if it is a longstanding, dependable customer who assures you that he or she will buy the book, you may want to hold the book indefinitely. It's strictly a personal call on your part. When someone comes in, selects a couple of books from the shelves, and asks if I can hold the books for a few days, I always answer "Yes, I can hold any books for you for up to 10 days." Holding books is a tool of selling. If people express an interest in certain books but you realize they don't have the monem available to buy them that day, you should offer to hold the books for up to 10 days, or even two weeks if you want that to be your policy. Now you may secretly suspect that these books will still be on the shelves in two weeks if this customer wants to return and buy them, buy by arranging to put the books on hold for the customer, you greatly increase your chances to sell those books. Once the books are on hold, the customer will feel a certain obligation to come back and buy those books-- because, he or she has "almost bought them" already. Perhaps 25 to 30 percent of such customers never return, and of those that do return, you'll find that occasionally they'll only take some of the books left on hold; but, overall, holding books for people is a profitable exercise. It's a service that most people really appreciate and many customers get into a habit of putting books on hold often, usually till they receive their next paycheck. It can be very comforting for you to gaze at your Hold Box or Hold Shelf and anticipate all the sales represented there. I never take a deposit when a customer wants to place a book on hold. Some dealers do and you'll have to decide which policy is best for you. The dealers who do require deposits feel that a deposit increases the customer's obligation and it's also good for the store's cash flow situation. Personally, I think that taking deposits complicates matters. How long are you legally required to hold a book with a deposit on it? I don't know. Legally, can you just tell a customer hat his or her deposit is forfeited if the book is not picked up within two weeks? I don't know. Do I want to argue with a lot of customers who come in and want their deposits back? I know I don't. Do I want good books occupying space in my Hold Box for several weeks because people have put deposits on them but haven't returned? I know I don't. I want the freedom of choice to put those books back into stock where they have a chance of selling. After I've given that follow-up call to a customer, or held the books for the agreed time, those books are mine to do with as I wish, without any complications. There is one situation you should be wary of. I had a good customer for a couple of years who bought a sub- stantial number of books. It was his habit to buy several books at a visit and then put five or six or more books on hold to pick up in a couple of weeks. This method of buying worked fine until that particular customer started changing his mind on books, and greater periods of time would go by before he would pick up the books. The situation worsened to the point where the customer would have perhaps 10 books on hold, then wait three to four weeks to come in and get them. Then he would go through the books on hold and set four or five of them aside, saying he'd changed his mind and didn't want to buy those titles anymore. Those books might represent 40 to a hundred dollars that I was counting on collecting upon his appearance. The result was that I didn't have the sale, and for some three or four weeks the books were off the shelves with no chance for another sale. The customer was doing the same thing at another bookstore and both the other dealer and I had to tell him that we would gladly hold any number of books for him and extend the holding period for him, but he had to unequivocally agree to buy those books. It's one thing to make concessions to good customers, but if the customer tries to take advantage of you at the expense of your business, you have to know when to draw the line. I believe that the secret of success in the bookselling business is longevity. If you can manage to operate a bookstore for 20 years, there's a good chance you can start to make a decent living from it. To attain that longevity you need two basic ingredients: a steady and substantial supply of good books, and a large, wide-ranging customer base. Therefore, the more customer wants that you place in your card file, or on your computer list, and the more effort you put into fulfilling those wants the more your business will benefit and prosper. This advice applies especially to general booksellers and they can take full advantage of the variety of books requested. However, specialist dealers have a wide range of requests as well, especially in reference to different time periods, and can benefit immensely from a large file of wants. For a general bookseller, he or she can begin referring to certain customers as "my fishing customer", "my automotive customer", "my royalty customer", or one of "my children's book collectors", and on and on. You also want to be in the position that, when you buy a box or two of books from an individual or bookscout, you can pick out several items and say to yourself, "I have a customer for this", or "I have someone who will want that". The more books which you buy that can be turned over to customers in the first week after purchase, the faster your business will grow and the more happy customers you will have. I can't stress enough that you should, firstly, make tremendous efforts to find out the wants of your customers, and, secondly, fill as many of those wants as quickly as possible. In this way, you build up a loyal following who will contribute greatly to keeping you in the business you love down through the years. It has been said that it costs six times as much to get a new customer than to keep an old one and there's certainly considerable truth in that statement. The best way to keep your regular customers happy is to always be watching for an opportunity to purchase books just for them. Make them feel special by holding the books for them to look at first and decide whether they want to buy them. If not, then you can put the books out for general resale. This is the ultimate in personal service in the book trade--buying specific books for specific people, or to put it in customer terms: buying special books for special people. I'll interject a selling technique here to keep in mind. It applies to any type of retail selling and is not a new idea but you would be wise to practice it. Whether or not you get a person's name for your wants file, get his or her name anyway and try to remember it. If you're naturally good with names, all the better. If not, learn some memory techniques to help you associate the person's name with their interests. Most people are pleased if you remember their names. It puts your relationship with them on a more personal basis and you'll find that this process goes a long way to increasing book sales.Troublesome Customers
There are, unfortunately, some people with whom you may not want to cultivate relationships. At the top of that list are the obvious alcohol and drug-abusers. If one or two people come into your store in a "high" state on a regular basis and are quiet and cause no problems, you can treat them the same as any other customer. But if someone does cause a disturbance or does something to make your other customers uncomfortable, you must tell them outright to get out of your store. Another type of customer you don't want is the customer who obviously has no love or respect for books. This person comes into your store, spends a few minutes to an hour poking around, handling all sorts of books, and either leaves the books lying on the floor or misfiles them in other sections. I don't know what goes through their minds, but I suppose they grocery shop in the same manner, poking and prodding bread and fruit and vegetables and looking for a new cereal to try because they're bored. It's up to you to get these people out of your store and back to the supermarket! You can start by asking people politely to handle the books carefully and to please try to replace them exactly where they were on the shelves. This annoys some of those people wo that they simply leave in a huff and declare that they won't be back. That's good. Others may need even more assertive handling. If you witness someone mishandling or abusing your books or just plain making a mess, and politeness doesn't work, you'll simply have to ask (or tell) these people that they're not welcome in your bookstore. Believe me, when you've discouraged all these people from coming into your store, your business will not have suffered. In fact, your store will actually be a more pleasant place for your regular customers to shop. You'll probably always be looking for new customers but you don't have to cater to everyone who comes into your store. In fact, perhaps you'll at one time be in the position of a certain French bookseller a colleague told me about. This Canadian bookseller friend was visiting France with his wife and, like on all busman's holidays, he managed to wangle some time to visit bookstores. While doing so, he heard of this one particularly good bookstore in Paris that he decided to visit. When he found the shop, he discovered an amusing sign in the front window. Loosely translated, it read: "Sorry, now new customers needed at this time". Now there's a successful bookseller! XXXXX Terry A. Stillman
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