The Country Bookshop: The Heart of Southern Pines

Bobbie Bicket had no intention of buying a bookstore, although she had been a regular customer of the 52-year-old Country Bookshop in Southern Pines, North Carolina. But when the bookstore was up for sale last year, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. "It just happened," said Bicket. "Everything worked out. I think that things that are supposed to, do. It's a wonderful place. It really is the heart of Southern Pines."

The Country Bookshop came on the market when Joan Scott, the store's owner for more than a quarter century, passed away after a long illness. Her daughter, Amy Scott, was looking to sell the bookstore, and Bicket was "looking for a business opportunity." She lived in New Orleans and often traveled to Pine Hurst, near Southern Pines, where she and her husband owned a retirement home. She had gone there to escape Hurricane Katrina. "I jumped in the car the day before the storm," she said. "There was nothing for me to do in New Orleans. So I stayed here, and the shop came on the market. I bought it in March after we had a couple of meetings and agreed on a price."

Bicket's husband is still working in New Orleans, so she spends about a quarter of her time there with him. Living part-time in New Orleans has been "very difficult," she said. "Many people perceive that a lot more rebuilding has happened than there actually has," she said. "The infrastructure is not back. There are very few schools and not a lot of businesses."

Although Bicket had never previously sold a book, she had some retail experience: her first job was at Sears & Roebuck, and she had been helping a friend with a clothing business for the past few years. To learn how to run The Country Bookshop, she has relied on the help of the store's staff of three full-timers and numerous part-timers, all of whom have stayed on since she assumed ownership. "The greatest asset of the shop is the employees," she said. "They provide customer service beyond compare." Bicket also spent a "very helpful" week at a Paz & Associates workshop.

Her first eight months of bookselling have gone well. "I love the constant change," Bicket said. "One person is looking for an esoteric short story collection, another the new James Lee Burke book, another a book suitable for a four-year-old. It's a challenge to meet the never-ending different tastes people have when they walk in the door."

The 3,000-square-foot bookstore is in downtown Southern Pines, a "walking kind of community," in a turn-of-the-last century brick building with "creaky wood floors," high ceilings, and ceiling fans. "We probably have one of the best nonfiction and current events sections in the region," said Bicket. "And we have a fabulous children's section." The store also maintains a large greeting and note cards section, along with games. "Interestingly we have a huge market for puzzles -- five hundred-, one thousand-, even two thousand-piece puzzles. People love them, at least here they do. They turn off their TVs, drag out a puzzle, and remember what it's like to have fun with each other."

Book Sense gift cards are going into the store's mix just in time for the holidays. "We have an upcoming training session with the gift cards," Bicket noted. "I can't wait. I'm excited that we can give our customers more options." She added that she will be pleased to sell the cards to customers who can send them off to relatives and to support other independent bookstores across the country.

The Country Bookshop uses an old antique table to display the Book Sense Picks. "We have a tiered stand that says 'Independent Booksellers Picks,'" she said. "We display the [fliers] as well as the books on that table. And we have [fliers] by each register."

In the past six months, Bicket's biggest change to the store was to switch the POS-system software. "We just started using Anthology instead of our previous DOS-based system. It's great -- very intuitive." Other than that, she intends on maintaining story hours, the events calendar, and inventory as they've been run for years. She has no plans to install a cafe or sell coffee. "We're surrounded in our neighborhood with coffee shops and restaurants," she explained. "We're not any good at bean grinding. But we're hell on books." --Karen Schechner