Think like a bookseller

Leilah Skelton, Waterstones Doncaster

@Leilah_Makes My experience

I’ve been bookselling at Waterstones in Doncaster, South Yorkshire for over 10 years. I’m a retail assistant in a northern, working-class, price sensitive town. I believe that books improve us, and I want improve my town. I was asked just last week by a manager why I don’t just move down to London and work in publishing. It has always been my view that it’s easier to prick at the bubble by remaining outside of it. I’ll give you a little of my background to show where I’m standing:

I was lucky to have Cathy Rentzenbrink working in head office when I started on the shop floor. She actively encouraged me to reach up, to bother her, and to bother publishing houses for help with promoting books. I craft displays and wrap books and generally enthuse through visuals. I find that the best way to encourage a reader to take a chance on a book is to show how much it is loved. I’ve hand-stitched baby shoes for fictional twins, made rotating displays with tiny clay birds, made edible meteorites and tiny jars of peanut butter. My favourite has been dolls house scale copies of The Miniaturist. ‘Free Miniature Miniaturist with every purchase’ combines crafting and punning, which is my kind of bookselling heaven. Gift wrapping copies of a book gives the customer the ease of having to not wrap a present, or just a tangible experience of treating themselves. We also notice a higher uptake of multiple copy sales per customer.

A bookseller’s job

A bookseller’s day is long, and hard. Often, as I’m sure is true in all corners of the book world, involves many more hours than are paid. It really is a vocation for many of us. Booksellers sell books, of course, but are also cleaners and baristas and children’s entertainers. Our days include shelving, returning, changing offers, report checking, packing and unpacking, creating displays on our tables and in our windows, and events planning. We must be always alert and reactive to prize- wins, daytime couch appearances, and the weathervane of public interest. We are, like many people in this room today, big book geeks and passionate enthusiasts. We get our buzz from putting the right book into hands, and from making readers. I think it's important for the industry to consider that time a bookseller gives to reading, reviewing, blogging, vlogging, ‘liking’ and tweeting is given voluntarily, and carved out of our free time. I fit mine around full time employment.

My customers

My customers shop to suit their need. A physical bookseller provides what can’t be fulfilled by an algorithm. A good proportion of my customers are not tech savvy, or simply prefer face-to-face guidance. To my customers I’m a bookseller, but also a counsellor, a present-finder, a literary guru, an oracle of forthcoming publishing dates, and the sympathetic face when they ask when it’s due in paperback. I’m the psychic who can guess who was on a mid-morning TV slot from a few vague clues, and the wizard who can name it in one when confronted with rough size mimes and a colour. Most of my customers have limited funds so wants the right book the first time. They judge value against what they have access to, which in many areas up near me are Amazon and a supermarket chart. Indies increasingly only survive in towns with customers affluent enough to support them. The poorer the town, the more narrow the access to books, and the more skewed those books are towards deep discounting. We must always keep our customers in mind when tailoring our offers, but it’s also important to remember that they don’t always fit our expectations based on class and location. Doncaster should not be out-performing the rest of the UK on hardback literary debuts, but it’s happened more than once. There’s an enthusiasm transfer that starts with you, is picked up by booksellers, and can even pass between the customers themselves. Bubble thinking

From my perspective, the bubble is mostly geographic, but also about diversity, class and education. As a northern, working-class, shop assistant standing up and telling you this, I can assure you that my impostor syndrome is strong.

Here’s some sweeping generalisations based on my experience. Things that I find remarkable about London include – Bookshops. Lots of them. Within striding distance of one another. Even the charity shops have incredible book sections. You have access to events, signings, shows, plays, and opportunities for tangible interaction with culture. You have book adverts everywhere on the underground. You also have an awful lot of prosecco.

Considering the bubble from the inside out is much trickier. We commute, but a lot less by rail, which impacts effectiveness of trackside ads, print reviews, and general time given over to reading for pleasure. A London book event that starts at 6.30pm can only really attract attendees within a 1- hour commute radius, and that excludes a lot of us. Maybe think about starting events later, or consider if some elements can be streamed. Apply the same thinking to publisher events that go on tour. Everywhere takes a bit longer to reach because we do not have the immediacy of London convenience. Don’t be afraid to mix up that author tour map, too. It’s convenient to stick to tried and tested routes, but it’s saddening to live in a town that feels like the culturally poor relation. My main point here is to reach as wide as you can. There are book-lovers everywhere, and, going back to my senior manager’s comment, they shouldn’t have to move into London to be an asset to this industry. This industry should strive to grow outwards, and be an asset in every town.

Top tips

(From someone who knows books, but doesn’t know a lot about publishing or marketing):

· Go and spend time in a bookshop. Spend time in as many different varieties of bookshop as possible, from Indies to clearance stores, and observe how people shop and interact. Go to places that vary both geographically and economically. Even if you come from a bookselling background, go back and see the changes.

· There are voracious readers at every class level. Fifty Shades was roundly sneered at, but after much milking of the genre, it didn’t feel that there was a lasting attempt to engage with those hungry, working class readers. Consider advertising approaches, the power of word-of-mouth, backlist support and signing tour locations.

· Publishing is a fantastically old and well-respected industry, but still has little traditions that make no sense, and they are so ingrained that we rarely question them. Customers do though. For example, why are we providing a list of an author’s books in series order, printed helpfully at the front of a book, and excluding the one we’re holding? If you have to triangulate books to get a clear picture, you’re making it unnecessarily hard for the reader.

· If we’re giving most of our promotional energy to a title at HB publication, and we really want to encourage reading for all, why are we not co-releasing formats?

· Finally, if a shop or an individual wants to support a book and pro-actively approaches you with an idea, then it’s great to be met with openness and engagement. Building relationships with booksellers, bloggers, vloggers, social media posters, teachers, and librarians is worth your time. Find the passionate voices and feed them. Not just with proofs and press releases, but with encouragement.