NVNR January Owners Strategy Session Recap: SAFETY

by Nicki Leone & Candice Huber

The first NVNR Owners Strategy Session of 2025 met January 16, with about twenty store owners in attendance from both NAIBA and SIBA regions. The focus of the discussion was "Safety." Moderators Melissa Taylor of E. Shaver, Booksellers in Savannah, Georgia, and Hannah Oliver Depp of Loyalty Bookstores in Washington, DC, guided the discussion over a wide range of topics including weather and natural disasters, in-store safety strategies, and event and online security best practices. Participants shared their experiences and tips of what worked in their stores. There was a strong consensus that preparedness and good communication with your staff and your business partners, including landlords and venue space managers, is key to meeting unexpected challenges and potentially dangerous situations and coming through them safely.

Here are some of the best practices offered by attendees:

Weather/Natural Disasters

• Create a natural disaster planning checklist and emergency checklist.
• Make sure your staff can reach key contacts such as your landlord or building manager if something happens and you are unreachable for any reason.
• Know the resources in your immediate neighborhood/community. Pay attention to what’s going on in your community, not just at your store.
• Learn how your city does things – emergency routes, emergency bus lines, etc. Consider how your staff will evacuate or get home from where they are.
• Keep in constant communication with staff about what your emergency plans are and what you’re doing with it. If you partner with anyone — landlord, alternate venue space, etc, know what are their emergency plans are. Their ideas of safety may not match yours, so discuss your expectations in advance.
• Keep flashlights at every station and check batteries regularly. Do a walk-through in the dark with staff to make sure you can locate windows, exits, doors, plugs, flashlights, etc. during a power outage.
• Keep first aid kits around.
• Keep bags of salt or sand around for snow situations.

In-Store Safety

• Make sure you have both a physical and a digital safety plan.
• Have both you and your staff take deescalation training.
• Create a contact list of important emergency numbers, including local emergency services, government, mental health services, hot lines, and law enforcement.
• Create a template for what you want to say to media, customers, on social media, etc. when something happens.
• Ask for a secondary emergency contact for each of your staff, and make sure your emergency and secondary emergency contact information is easy for your staff to access.
• Role-playing possible scenarios can be helpful (even if you feel silly!).
• Know what your staff’s boundaries are and make clear to staff that their safety comes first.
• Have a code word or phrase for staff that lets coworkers know when they hear it that the authorities need to be called.
• Put panic buttons at each register/check out station that connect to local authorities.

Offsite and Online Safety

• Create and post the store code of conduct around the store and at every event, including offsite events.
• Create policies about interactions between staff and authors, and ensure that your staff knows they have your support and are comfortable with raising concerns and reporting issues. Give the publicist the store policies in advance, and let them know if their author violates the store’s code of conduct.
• Pay attention to data breaches! They can have long term consequences. There are services available that will help clean up your digital footprint. But even so, always be aware of what kind of personal information you are putting online.
• Ask staff if they want to be tagged in posts, staff recommendations, and other social media activity. Don’t assume they will be okay with it. Also, sure personal information is not available for staff on your website – be careful with bios and photos.
• Keep personal and business separated as much as you possibly can.

Resource List:

In store security systems

Camera/Panic Button systems: Blink | Reo Link | ADT

In store equipment
(stock at each station or in several key spots around the store)

• Fire extinguishers
• Flashlights (and extra batteries!)
• First aid kits
• Narcan*
  *Narcan the trade name for naxolone hydrochloride. It is an opiod antagonist. Medication can rapidly reverse an opiod overdose.

Other Resources and Downloads

• Bookseller Safety Tips SIBA Webinar
• Book Banning Best Response Strategies SIBA Webinar
• Emergency Preparedness with John Cavalier NVNR Online Session
• Sam’s Tips for Bookstores Helping Fight Against Censorship in Your Community Handout from Aaron’s Books in Liltz, Pennsylvania
• Emergency Drag Story Time Security: Best Practices, Case Studies, and Challenges, ABA Webinar, requires login
• Binc Emergency Assistance Resource Directory
• Emergency Preparedness Course offered by the Professional Booksellers School
• Sample Codes of Conduct: Loyalty Bookstores | Tubby and Coos
• “When the Bough Breaks” Operational Troubleshooting Manual Template from Loyalty Bookstores

See the schedule of future NVNR Owners Events