Wi11: Owners of Very Small Stores Share Event Management Tips

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Owners and event coordinators who attended the Winter Institute 11 education session “Event Management for the Very Small Store” took home actionable tips on managing time, resources, publicity, and budgets for in-store and off-site events.

ABA Board member Valerie Koehler, the owner of Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston, Texas, moderated the panel, which featured Daiva Chesonis, co-owner of Between the Covers Bookstore in Telluride, Colorado, and Jacqueline Kellachan, co-owner of The Golden Notebook in Woodstock, New York.

Since it can be very difficult to balance daily bookstore duties with event budgeting, planning, execution, and follow-up, Chesonis has created a checklist, which she refers to as her “second brain.” In addition to using the checklist to plan events, she uses the list after an event to see whether things went the way she wanted them to go.

To provide space for events in her 1,000-square-foot store, Chesonis uses bookcases on wheels that can be moved to create a place for events of different sizes. An added benefit, she said, is that the novel atmosphere of a rearranged store can be intriguing to customers, creating a social atmosphere that encourages people to linger and buy more, even after the event ends.

“People don’t want to leave,” Chesonis explained. “It’s a cool feeling, with this long tunnel of books created by the shelves that were moved.” Little Dixie cups of wine also help foster the feeling, she added. “Keep the register open because there are going to be residual sales from the extra hang out time that has nothing to do with the event.”

For her part, Kellachan is a big proponent of working with community partners. In Woodstock, New York, these are easily found among the town’s numerous cultural organizations and arts and music venues. Partners such as the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum and the Center for Photography at Woodstock have allowed The Golden Notebook to hold its events at their locations and have also promoted the store’s messages via their proprietary e-mail lists.

“The Center for Photography can seat up to 150 people, and, because of the relationship we have with them, I was able to use that at no cost,” said Kellachan. “It’s just partnership, partnership, partnership, because organically things just grow.”

Kellachan, whose store is 900 square feet, now hosts about 100 in-store and off-site events each year. At most of these events, she expects to sell 25 to 50 books.

“From the very beginning space was a real issue for us,” Kellachan said. “In 2012 we were able to do a renovation in our store that allowed a previously unusable space upstairs to become our event space. It seats about 25 people and we can squish in about 50 people, which made all the difference because most of our events truly only draw about a dozen people.”

When it comes to events, an important element of preparation is managing author expectations as to how many people will actually attend, Kellachan said. Part of that work includes sending an information sheet to the author that lists all of the store’s promotional plans as soon as an event is booked, she noted.

“That helps because then they don’t get upset at us,” Kellachan said. “This is a little more applicable to self-published authors rather than authors who are coming to us through publishers. We send that out, and it really makes a big difference.”

Golden Notebook’s off-site programming now includes a book fair program for the local school district. Kellachan initially presented the book fair idea to the local PTA as a “shop local” alternative to corporate book fairs.

Chesonis has been able to create an annual author event at Telluride’s Mountain Film Festival on Memorial Day weekend. Between the Covers orders and provides books by and about featured filmmakers and documentary subjects.

“Ordering books for 30 authors can be really tough, especially the big authors, and especially when we have been closed for three weeks in April during the off season,” Chesonis said. “But what has happened is that the festival has seen that we have pulled this off and now they trust us. Now, instead of me soliciting the festival’s cooperation, they call us.”

In Telluride, the bustling “festival capital of Colorado,” getting people to pay attention to anything coming up on the horizon — except at the last minute — has always been a struggle, Chesonis said. But she has learned that the best way to handle event publicity is to immediately put a “save the date” alert on Facebook; then to send press releases to the local newspaper a month in advance; and about 10 days in advance she begins plugging the event through her store’s weekly e-newsletter. Chesonis also delivers fliers to stores in outlying towns without bookstores and has been rewarded by a growing number of people who arrive for events by carpool.

Panel moderator Koehler, whose own 1,400-square-foot store, Blue Willow, is located in Houston, one of the biggest cities in the U.S., said she is able to increase the number of attendees at her events by encouraging visiting authors to connect with their fan bases.

“I think our most successful events are those where the authors who come to town have their own fans and they let their fans know,” Koehler said. “Their fans follow them on Facebook, they follow them on Twitter — they don’t follow the store — so we work hard to try to get these authors engaged. We tell them, if you want to get your fan base out here, you’ve got to tell them where you are going to be and you’ve got to tell them numerous times.”

Another strategy of Koehler’s is enlisting the help of an author’s college alumni association to promote the event within their group. This is actually simpler to do in a large city like Houston, she said, since every college is represented there.

Since both The Golden Notebook and Between the Covers are located in relatively small towns, neither store solicits events from publishers “because for [Between the Covers] to project that we would sell 100 books would be lying,” Chesonis said. The key to success, she added, is to take risks, to always say yes to every author who asks to do an event at the store — whether they are big name or small, traditionally or self published.

“You have to open your heart to the risk and you have to curate and you have to cultivate,” said Chesonis. “We haven’t said no, and it hasn’t really bitten us too badly in the butt. If anything, it’s just been camaraderie and having a beer with three people and the author.”

Koehler noted that only six kids came to Blue Willow to see one of the first events with Rick Riordan, now the bestselling author of the Percy Jackson & the Olympians, Kane Chronicles, and Heroes of Olympus series. “I say to people: You may not know who this author is now, but you are going to be sorry when I tell you they were in the store two years ago,” Koehler said.

Kellachan agreed with Chesonis and Koehler: bookstores that take risks in their programming provide valuable opportunities for readers.

“I feel like the more content we are creating in terms of always having events and always having the store out there in these different redundant ways is ultimately what has — very slowly — built up more and more people coming to our events, so instead of five or 10 people, we get more than before,” Kellachan said.