The New Voices New Rooms Owners Strategy session on April 17th represented a departure from previous meetings in that it had no over all theme or topic. Instead, store owners were invited to bring any business issues that were currently top of mind for their stores. Booksellers then came together in breakout rooms to share information about the issues most important to them.
The NVNR Owners Strategy Sessions are never recorded, so that attendees will feel more free to share information and opinions. NVNR does have note takers at each event to take down a general summary of the discussion along with any specific tips and suggestions:
Using Batch for Books
As more publishers sign on with Batch for Books, the integrated invoice management and payment platform, more bookstores are signing on to the service. Bookstores who use Batch swear by it, and note that the hardest part is getting signed up and moving over your accounts. Here are a few tips for new users:
- Use a bill-paying app to schedule payments to Batch. (Melio was suggested as an example.)
- Integrate Batch with QuickBooks to help with budgeting and save time.
- Take advantage of Batch’s excellent on boarding process.
Access to capital for store expansion and projects.
Booksellers agreed that finding capital to finance business is difficult for business that operate at such a low profit margin, and tend to carry a lot of inventory. Being for profit entities, bookstores are also ineligible for a lot of grant funding.
Ideas:
- Look for hyper-local "main street" type grants in the immediate community.
- Crowdfunding via Kickstarter, GoFundMe, or other crowdfunding platforms is still a solid way to raise money.
- Check the Community Investment Program (CIP) through the FDIC.gov for discounted advances.
- Visit SCORE for resources and advice.
- Accounting platforms such as QuickBooks and Square have merchant loan programs.
- Some credit cards “loans” operate more like cash advances with low fees, which are deductible since they are classified as a fee, not an interest rate.
- Creating a nonprofit arm for your bookstore, although involved, is a good way to become eligible to apply for grants.
Employee training, reviews and support
None of the owners at the meeting hold annual reviews of their employees, but they all agreed that regular meetings, consistent expectations, and openness to feedback are all key to creating a successful workplace. It is always a good idea to check in with staff periodically outside any official review process. Owners also discussed how to address the issue of employees who prioritized tasks such as shelving, over customer service and sales.
Ideas:
- Hold regular one-on-one meetings with each employee to give an receive feedback.
- Ask good questions: create a list of general questions to ask staff regularly
- Allow staff to add items to the agenda at staff meetings, and leave space in the agenda for the issues they want to discuss.
- Participate in training together: Watch education videos from the American Booksellers Association and/or your regional association, and discuss them together.
- Make a point to work a shift with each employee so you can assess their work.
Under the heading of managing staff time and priorities without micro-managing, the following suggestions were offered:
- Model the kind of customer service you want staff to provide in your own behavior.
- Have a frank conversation about the relationship between sales and payroll. Give a (reality-based) number of how many books need to be sold to pay for the staff on the floor that day.
- Post a daily task list and prioritize items, including customer service.
- Encourage interaction as a form of security. Greeting each customer shows that they are seen, and you are mutually aware of each other.
- Give sales targets and encourage upselling and using others’ staff picks as a way to talk to customers about books they haven’t read themselves.
- Model the excellent customer service you want your staff to adopt.
- Encourage upselling and give sales targets: Encourage staff to use staff picks to cover areas outside their reading preferences (because you don’t have to read them all to recommend to customers).
Cool idea: Most stores offer employee discounts on their own products. Main Street Reads in Summerville, SC arranges "reciprocal employee discounts" with other merchants. The other store’s staff receive a 10% discount at the bookstore, and the bookstore staff receives a discount at the other business. Approach your local retail or downtown business organization about creating a similar program.
Safety and Mental Health
The final topic of the session was so important to everyone at the meeting they decided not to try to break it down to smaller topics. Employee safety and mental health is a serious concern and high priority for bookstore owners, especially in our increasingly divided and divisive society. Booksellers agreed that empowering staff and establishing good community relationships were vital to fostering security for the business and its employees:
Suggestions:
- Be in your community: Talk to neighboring merchants about covering for each other in case of a security concern.
- Empower staff to do whatever they need to do to feel safe, including removing customers, calling for help, closing the shop, or leaving the premises for a more secure location.
- Take deescalation training for yourself and your staff.
- Reach out to the American Booksellers Association or your regional association for resources on security and safety.
- Prioritize staff mental health by allowing flexible scheduling for when they need time off for mental health reasons — therapy or recovery.
- Normalize mental health priorities in the store by being open as much as possible and leading by example.
The next NVNR Owners meeting will be the in-person retreat on August 6 at the 2025 New Voices New Rooms conference in Atlanta, Georgia.