The top photo shows how the shop looked on Saturday just before Cat, Andrew and Malcolm got busy with the painbrushes and the bottom one shows how it looked this morning just before the carpet fitters arrived.  All coming on rather well as I’m sure you’ll agree.

Poor old Malcolm is fixing bookshelves in place this evening all by himself – although he’s taken the dog so he has some company – and tomorrow the electrician will be putting the last few lights up and we have to run computer cables etc to where we need them.  On Thursday we move the books, the computers, the till, the counter and all the enormous amounts of sundry stuff and I think it will be a late night getting the place looking absolutely perfect for the re-opening (9.30am on Friday – did I mention that?).  But it’s all coming on rather well don’t you think?

Here was the shop at the weekend before Malcolm, Andrew and Cat started painting and again this morning, painted and ready for the carpet-fitters.

Our builders have worked at the most amazing speed and the plasterer was due in today to get the new plasterboard that you can see in the picture plastered (as plasterers do).  Tomorrow the electrician’s back to fit plug sockets and the joiners will do the fiddly bits of finishing before starting on moving the hatch into the basement – you can see it in the picture beneath Andrew’s feet.  Bookshelves are planned to go on top of it so we have to make a new one about 5 feet away.

By the middle of the week we can start decorating then all being well the carpet-fitters will be in next Monday and then we can start getting the bookshelves in place and all the books will move on Thursday 2nd September before we re-open on the 3rd.  That’s going to be a late one I think so we’ll be calling on friends with a good command of the alphabet to come and join us or at least bring fish suppers and beer!

But it’s all coming on apace – exciting times.

Seeing the shop empty on Saturday was really hard and I actually got a bit teary – we’ve worked so hard over the last three years to turn it into a great children’s bookshop and to see it empty and forlorn was – completely irrationally – depressing.  However, by the end of the first day was ok; like seeing new beginnings and possibilities stretching ahead of us.

It’s going to be good.

]]> http://www.fidrabooks.co.uk/blog/?feed=rss2&p=843 3 http://www.fidrabooks.co.uk/blog/?p=831 http://www.fidrabooks.co.uk/blog/?p=831#comments Tue, 17 Aug 2010 20:53:55 +0000 Becky http://www.fidrabooks.co.uk/blog/?p=831 So, last week was astonishing in many ways. On Wednesday, we hosted legendary actor Simon Callow, who was both interesting and utterly charming. He spoke about his new book, My Life in Pieces, which is partly about his life in the theatre, and partly pieces he has written along his theatrical journey. He was also extremely funny, and I was going to recount a couple of the anecdotes here, but I fear I don’t have the delivery (or the vocabulary: in the first page of the book he uses the word logorrhea, which I had to look up…). Suffice to say, projectile vomit and stage collapse has rarely been so amusing.

Simon Callow and lovely local author Vivian French, who was interviewing him

The next evening we had an event with Robin Ince. I say “an event” because it started out, organisationally speaking, with him going to talk about his new book Robin Ince’s Bad Book Club, about the worst (or perhaps the best?) books ever written. (My favourite was The Secrets of Picking Up Sexy Girls, which features a Chapter One entitled: ‘What is a girl?’) However, the evening ended up…somewhat differently. Robin did talk about the book for a while, but then some of his friends – mostly other comedians – came on to read from a couple of the worst/best books he had written about. Specifically, a series about Giant Killer Crabs. He then had someone doing interpretative dance about crabs, then a tap dancer being the crab, then other instruments. I can’t really explain, so here are a few pictures (click on them to make them bigger):

You'll have to take word for it, but Jo on the left is tap dancing whilst Robin is reading

Comedian Stewart Lee reading. I think this bit was filthy.

Comedians on instruments on the right and interpretative dance on the left

I can genuinely say that I haven’t laughed so much in a long time.

Anyway, I promised to tell you what we’re planning to do.

A month or two ago I was sitting in the office, which is on a mezzanine at the back of The Children’s Bookshop (storage and kitchen space below as not enough headroom to use it for retail space), doing the accounts and noticing (for the umpteenth time) just how many costs were duplicated by having two shop – instead of two phone lines I have four, two lots of business rates, two lots of broadband, two lots of water and electricity standing charges…. you get the picture.  And then there’s the admin time that’s duplicated – dealing with returns, checking invoices, staffing… just, you know, STUFF!

“What we need” I muttered to myself “is a bigger unit where we can combine both shops.”

And then it struck me (yeah, yeah, you saw this ages ago – I can be a bit slow on the uptake at times), that I was actually sitting in a bigger unit.  Or at least I was, assuming we did some building work such as taking the mezzanine out and moving the hatch into the basement.  So we all did measuring and pacing out and then Malcolm did more precise calculations and we counted how many bookcases we have now and how many we could fit in and found that the difference was small and so we fiddled around with the layout and discovered that, with some building work, we can fit the stock of both shops into what is now The Children’s Bookshop.

Opening The Edinburgh Bookshop in its own space was a good idea as it meant that it could establish its own identity, and we could find out whether the south side of Edinburgh (although increasingly it seems that our customers come from a much wider area) could and would support an independent bookshop.  And both shops are doing fine individually but rationalising is a good move and protects us to as great a degree as possible from further problems in the wider economy as well as giving me that precious day off each week – I’m already really looking forward to that!

So, from the beginning of September, Bruntsfield will just have the one bookshop but it will be bigger and brighter and have just as good a range of stock as the two shops do now.  The staff will be the same and as always we’ll be trying to provide the highest standards of customer service, we’ll be hunting out the most interesting books and we’ll still be running really interesting events – it will just all be in one place.

This weekend we start the endless process of emptying one shop, moving stock, trips to the tip, trips to our storage facility, setting up a temporary office at home, organising builders, electricians, carpet fitters and decorators, returning old stock, ordering new titles for the reopening, merging the websites… and of course, with our usual amazing planing, all of this is happening at the same time as Malcolm and I are planning to put our own house up for sale!  It’s a good job that the book festival starts in a week or so – we’ll be able to flop in Charlotte Square with someting fortifying after a long day of organising and hefting boxes.

Tomorrow, I’ll be back with details of timescales etc….

So, if I had a message it would be ’shop local’.  In most cases, your local butcher, baker, fishmonger are just as good value as Tescobury’s.  Okay, so the butcher up the street might not be able to sell you a chicken for £3, but is that poor little ill-treated, unhealthy, water-injected bird really what you want to be eating?

And your local bookshop offers you so much more than Amazon or big chains even if we can’t compete with the cheap-chicken merchants – we can find you the novel that can change your life or the perfect present…  I’ve written about that more here – a blog post which I’m told caused some people to get a bit teary, which was a bit of a surprise.  Okay, I’m not going to be able to flog you Dan Brown or Katie Price’s latest output as cheap as Tesco or Amazon but that’s partly because we don’t bother stocking them – we don’t have room for all the books we love so why bother stocking tripe?

But if you want your high street to have a future that includes businesses other than huge conglomerates, that keeps jobs and investment and profits in your community then that’s in your own hands.  Because voting in the election for the party you think might keep the country afloat is only part of it.  We have another (sadly neglected at the moment) blog where we write about the trade side of bookselling and you can read about the latest shop local campaign being imported from the USA by the Booksellers Association here.

Anyway, this is an interim post – a mere digression – tomorrow I’ll be back with details of our changes and developments.

So, in September 2009, The Edinburgh Bookshop opened just up the road from The Children’s Bookshop and after a slow-but-steady start – well, we did have a builders’ portakabin parked outside it for the first two months and a particularly unsightly team of builders therein – we had a cracking Christmas and we’ve had a steady and growing 2010.  We have three thriving book groups, we were shortlisted for Independent Bookshop of the Year and are building a good reputation with publishers as people who can put a good event together.

However, we’ve had a stressful few months with admin issues at Companies House, Edinburgh City Council jacking up our business rates so that we now spend £8.5k (well someone’s got to pay for the trams) on rates for the two shops (and we pay extra for water and rubbish collection – it isn’t like the council tax), and being a tenant is much more stressful than owning the property (roof falls in?  Our problem.  Basement floods?  Our problem too.  Buildings insurance?  Yep, that’s down to us).  And however much the new government tells us that they want to support small businesses (and my new Lib Dem MP certainly seems like a decent chap), the cuts in public spending etc mean that we suspect that this recession might get worse again before it gets better.

So, what to do to enable us to continue to build a thriving business whilst at the same time protecting us from potential downsides?  And organising ourselves so that Malcolm and I might even get the odd day off (although what do people do with days off?  Will I need to take up a hobby or something?  Or do housework?  Perish the thought!) or have time to work on some of the other projects we have on the go.  Well, it seems the answer was staring us in the face all along…

Pop back tomorrow and all will be revealed about the forthcoming changes at The Children’s Bookshop and The Edinburgh Bookshop…

I love being a bookseller but I never expected unsolicited approaches to stock self-published books to become the bane of my life and I feel inclined to issue some suggestions based on my own experiences. Vanessa has blogged about self publishing previously here: http://www.stateofindependents.co.uk/2010/03/self-published-authors-before-you-send-me-your-book-bear-this-in-mind/

But as it has become the one aspect of my working life I look forward to the least I really do feel the need to add in my tuppenceworth. I love reading new titles and taking a chance on something that, in my gut, feels like a winner. However, you are guaranteed to put me right off if you call in on a busy Saturday and expect me to drop everything (including a queue of customers buying literally piles of books) just to race upstairs and give you back the self published copy of your book you are hoping I will sell. Stomping off in a huff when I don’t will not endear me either. You see I’m not only interested in whether you’ve written something good I can sell but also whether you have the potential to win over children at book events – a vital ingredient in the birth of a successful book. If you can’t be pleasant and patient with me then how on earth are you going to cope with a hall full of children? Top tip number one – be nice to booksellers. You may have the next Carnegie Medal winner but if you are unpleasant about it I’ll refuse it on principle.

Children’s Bookselling was only ever meant to be a stop gap job but I’ve discovered something very magical about it. I’m good at it. Really good in fact. That’s not a boast, that’s an affirmation that comes from grateful customers over the years and the money I’ve made for book shops. Finally I have a reason for my ability to speed read too! I like to sell honestly and with passion so naturally I read the stock. If I don’t enjoy a book I will tell you but I will also have researched it to find out what others think and acknowledge that tastes can be very, very different. Alas there are books that should never, ever see a bookshop shelf regardless of taste differences.

Books of course come in all shapes and sizes. Some are brilliantly written or illustrated and others not so. Some make you think the author should sack their editor and yet despite some dodgy writing, you can as a seller understand what a publishing house sees in terms of marketing when they take certain books on. With children’s books, whilst I think it is important that they read as much well written prose as possible, there’s no harm in reading the occasional badly put together story as long as there is some level of enchantment that has their imagination soaring with possibilities. A well balanced book diet never hurt anyone and good booksellers really do get the balance right. So I like to think I have an open mind when it comes to book marketing and selling. However, if even your front cover gives me the heebeegeebees then all the open minds in the world will not put your book on my shelves.

It initially surprised me as a bookseller the important, yet somewhat unappreciated part I would come to play in making the difference between a book doing well or not. So when the first author approached me to ask if I would consider stocking their book I was taken aback. Thankfully, as I worked for a chain at that point all I had to do was send them to Head Office and the decision was taken out of my hands! Then Head Office started encouraging “local buying”. This was great for the most part because of course you want to support your local community. Then word got out and the authors started descending. I now have a lot more experience in handling requests to sell books and I’m sad to say that 9.9 times out of ten, if you approach me and utter the dreaded words “self published” I will likely turn you down.

Two types of authors generally approach me for help. The first have a publishing house behind them but realise that to get word out faster and more effectively they have to do some leg work. Developing relationships with booksellers, schools and communities can make a vast difference to a books success. I like when authors realise this. The second type of author is the self published author. There are two things I do straight away. I check the book font. If it’s published in Comic Sans I don’t want it. No discussions. It has to be the most unpleasant font known to man. Secondly, I’ll ask why the author is self published. It tells me a lot about where our relationship is likely to go. If you answer, “I’m scared of rejection” then you’re in the wrong career. Recycle your book and move on. Another response is “I got tired of rejection letters.” So do many writers but at what point do you give up and accept you’ve not written the next best seller? The response I dread the most is “I just wrote it for – insert family members here- and everyone said I should sell it” *deep sigh*.

So here goes. My top tips for writers considering self publishing:

1. Don’t self publish!
2. Printers who dabble in “publishing” generally don’t understand good design, they’re just happy to take your money. Having designed for three years, and consequently worked with printers I know this. I really do.
3. You may appreciate your friend/family member illustrating your book but if they don’t understand white space and using pictures to promote context then hire a trained illustrator. Please.
4. Print your book in a standard picture book or paperback size. We have to try and promote your weirdly shaped book on our bookshelves. I know one author who should be published and there is interest from publishing houses but for his insistence on the size of his books.
5. Don’t use clip art. Ever.
6. Never, ever, ever, ever use Comic Sans font. It should be renamed Fugly Font.
7. Don’t just call in or write and tell us you’ve written a book and can we stock it. Give us a copy to consider.
8. Never think you have the next bestseller because your family and friends tell you so. They love you and therefore have the best intentions but best intentions don’t make your book a work of art or a stroke of genius. Ask some booksellers and publishers what they think before you go spending money on printing.
9. Don’t tell the journalist who is writing a local interest piece on you that I’m stocking your book when I’ve said no.
10. Feel the fear and do it any way. Send your manuscript off. If it’s meant to be published it will be. Ask for feedback if you get rejection letters and work through any suggestions you get. Successful writers create their books for readers not for themselves.
11. Be nice to booksellers. We are the unsung heroes of the book world and our contribution to making or breaking a book should never be underestimated.

“We’re refurbishing our library and wondered if you could tell us how to divide up the books and what to call the sections”

Admittedly, I’m feeling fairly snarky today but even so …

On the one hand, fine but on the other: you’re a library manager – surely you should know this stuff?  Or be able to visit some of your local bookshops in the south-east of England?  Or maybe I should be charging a consultancy fee?

Sections we’re thinking of including next time we have a reorganise include “Diggers and Trucks”, “Vampires and The Like”, “Books for Very-Advanced-For-Their-Age Children” and “Orphans and Sundry Other Depressing Plots”.  Any other suggestions?

* although as it’s stand-alone title rather than part of a series, I do worry that Walker Books, whilst generally lovely, won’t put quite as much effort into promoting Wasted as they could.  Seriously, I’ve ploughed my way through most of this year’s Carnegie list and Wasted deserves to be up there next year.  And I’m not just saying that because otherwise Nicky will come round and stamp on my feet with her terrifyingly pointy-heeled boots.  As most people know, I don’t say nice things because I should or to curry favour.