Blue Willow Brings Small-Town Service to the Big City

In the sprawling city of Houston, Texas, Valerie Koehler has created a peaceful, small-town atmosphere at her nine-year-old store, Blue Willow Bookshop. In the 1,400-square-foot store, Koehler and a committed staff offer personal attention, in-store workshops for librarians, year-round activities for kids, and help for dozens of book clubs.

All of the above is accomplished with a touch of whimsy and a lot of humor. "This is not a serious store," Koehler, a Houston native, revealed to BTW. "We are not exclusively 'literary' ... we want reading to be enjoyable. People should be able to read and have fun."

As an example, since most schools are already in session in Houston, Koehler and her staff realized that a midnight party, a la Harry Potter, would not work for the next big children's release, Eldest by Christopher Paolini (Random House), on Tuesday, August 23. Blue Willow will open early that day, at 7:00 a.m., sell the book and serve breakfast -- orange juice and kolaches (fruit-filled pastries).

A "Textbook Camouflage Bookcover."

"Worried about having a chance to read the book with classes scheduled?" poses the store's website, www.bluewillowbookshop.com. The answer is simple: Blue Willow is offering "Textbook Camouflage Bookcovers" in two designs. Cover the book with one of these, and bury your head in your book through any boring class, advises Koehler, her tongue firmly in her cheek.

Koehler actually takes teaching and teachers very seriously: She offers two workshops yearly for school librarians, where she presents titles and creative ways they can be used in the classroom, and both fill to capacity. During her frequent speaking engagements with the faculties of various schools, she also likes to talk about summer reading -- for pleasure -- not for professional development.

A strong background in retailing has helped Koehler create a successful business. "It's been my [previous] business experience, more than my love of books, that has held me in good stead over the years," she said. "I learned a lot from my father, who was in a local grocery business, about what it means to have a small, family-owned business."

Book group that came to hear Claire Cook discuss Must Love Dogs and Multiple Choice.

Koehler's connection to different types of retailing is one of the reasons she frequently checks postings in the Idea Exchange on BookWeb. "It's so interesting to hear what others are struggling with in their stores and to feel a sense of community with people all over the place," she said.

Also fostering that sense of community with far-flung booksellers has been Koehler's involvement with regional booksellers associations -- the former Mid-South Booksellers Association, of which she was president, and now the Mountain and Plains Booksellers Association (MPBA). "We [Mid-South] merged with other regionals because of the distances between stores. I'm looking forward to meeting in Denver in the fall [at the MPBA trade show on September 22 - 25)]," she said.

Koehler is also a member of ABA's Booksellers Advisory Council, which offers the association guidance on issues important to independent booksellers.

Outreach is vital to Blue Willow's business, and Koehler often attends conferences and speaks to different groups. "I find that speaking is a better way to market the store than selling books at conferences," she explained. "That involves lugging tons of books and usually having to discount them because everyone else is."

The Book Sense program has offered Koehler any number of ways to cultivate her business. "I love our BookSense.com site," she said. "We have a former librarian running it for us, and we feed her all the information.

"And I absolutely love Constant Contact. We send out our e-newsletter to about 500 people. The customers really like it, and I can see how many clicks we got and find out what's working and what we can do better. It's a really valuable tool and took a very short time to figure out.

"We keep a permanent display of Book Sense Picks. We feel that once a Pick, always a Pick. We also have a table of each book club's selections --there are 35 regular clubs. And we keep a section of Book Sense Bestsellers."

All of these techniques add up to an extremely user-friendly store, particularly for people who come from places where things are not quite as big as in Texas. Koehler said, "Because everyone in the oil business will end up in Houston at some point, there are lots of ex-pats living here from all over the world. The Europeans come to the store looking for the kinds of shops they are used to back home ... they don't ever want to go into big box stores." --Nomi Schwartz