In with the bricks

    Reading various interviews with Ann Patchett around the time her latest novel State of Wonder* was published, I noted that she had plans to open a bookshop in her home town, Nashville. Along with her business partner Karen Hayes, a former Random House rep., her idea was for a not-too-big, not-too-small independent shop that would be a focus for the community and sell the books its owners love and want to recommend.

    Parnassus Books is now taking shape, and to help with start-up costs and to build customer loyalty right from the off, they have come up with a scheme by which a 7-tiered founders' club gives members various privileges from single book discounts to a '20% off' shoppping spree, after hours buying and more. All very enterprising, and if I lived anywhere near, I'd join (I have signed up for emails as I'm interested to follow their progress).

    What makes a good bookshop, one that you want to return to again and again? The following are obvious attributes/elements, but not always present, in my experience at least, and are surely all the more crucial in these tough economic times:

- a pleasant place: light and airy, or cosy but well-lit, with places to sit down and space to browse comfortably,

- stock which looks as though it's been carefully chosen by book lovers, rather than lifted from a retail outlet which doesn't purport to be a bookshop per se,

- knowledgeable staff: people who know books and are passionate about them - and are good with customers!

    Optional extras:

- author events,

- book groups,

- coffee shop (like this one, or this).

    Anything else? What, apart from the above, might draw you in to our fantasy bookshop? Financial incentives such as a customer loyalty scheme or privileges like the Parnassus Books founders' ones? Well-chosen non-book items like stationery, 'gifts', homewares, etc.? Art exhibitions or musical evenings? Writers' groups? London's Big Green Bookshop branches out in other innovative ways, too. Food for thought ...

See also: All pace slackened to a page's turn - a post on 18 Bookshops by Anne Scott.

 

*Stop Press! Many thanks to Linda for alerting me to the fact that the Kindle version of State of Wonder is available for today only at the bargain price of £1.29.