struggled with the number of suppliers.
He and Foulsham plan to add a coffee bar,
which they consider an essential part of
a good bookstore. But even without
coffee as a draw, the store was up 15% in
2015 over the previous year. Contributing
to its success were local bestsellers, such
as Megan Mayhew Bergman’s story collection Almost Famous Women and Kimalie
Wassick’s self-published Basil and Prune
series of stories for children. Books by
Vermonters Archer Mayer and Howard
Frank Mosher were also strong sellers.
Best of Books
Edmond, Okla.
Purchased October 2014
For Joe Hight, buying the bookstore
with his wife, Nancy, and daughter,
Elena, marked a coming home. (The
couple are Oklahoma natives, but she
had spent two years teaching in
Honduras, and he had been serving as
editor of the Colorado Springs Gazette.)
“What I could bring to the table is a
knowledge of technology, social media,
and websites,” Hight said. “My wife has
a retail background; my daughter has a
knowledge of business.” Hight replaced
the store’s website and rebranded the
store with the acronym BOB to attract a
younger audience. He also partnered
with other indies—Brace Books & More
in Ponca City and Full Circle Bookstore
in Oklahoma City—to launch an
Oklahoma bestsellers list. “We’ve
learned a lot in the last year and a half,”
Hight said. “The hardest thing is to
anticipate what people want,” he noted,
explaining that this is the case for both
books and events. He continues to experiment with the latter and said that he is
willing to try “anything.” Above all, he
believes learning is key. “If we as bookstore owners are always learning, we can
move forward,” he said.
The Book Stall at
Chestnut Court
Winnetka, Ill.
Purchased June 2013
Although she worked in the store for
months before buying it from long-time
owner Roberta Rubin, Stephanie
Hochschild still considers herself a
newbie. In part, that’s because she has to
keep up with a “very vibrant store,”
which was PW’s 2012 Bookstore of the
Year. “We’re trying to follow in Roberta’s
tradition,” Hochschild said. The Book
Stall maintains an extensive events
schedule, with frequent book club meet-
ings, and has a robust presence on
Facebook and Twitter. Hochschild may
feel like she’s juggling at times, but
whatever she’s doing is working. “Sales
are very good, and we continue to be up,”
Hochschild said. To continue to expand,
she is looking at getting more aggressive
about B2B, especially given the number
of corporate campuses in the area. She is
also looking to increase online sales.
“People would like to support indepen-
dents online,” Hochschild said. She
acknowledged that it’s hard competing
with Amazon, but the bookstore has
already built up interest in its auto-
graphed books on its website and is
upgrading to the latest version of Drupal.
That Bookstore in
Blytheville
Blytheville, Ark.
Purchased December 2013
When Chris Crawley moved back to
Arkansas, from Los Angeles, he thought
he was coming home to die. The former
talent and literary manager suffered three
strokes as a result of black mold in the
apartment where he had been living in
California. Since relocating, his health
has rebounded. And as the new owner of
his childhood bookstore, Crawley has
made some changes. He has shifted the
store’s focus and begun carrying deeper
inventory in middle grade, general fiction and nonfiction, and bestsellers; he’s
also started encouraging special orders.
Under his ownership, TBIB experienced
20% growth in 2014 over the previous
year, and 25% growth in 2015. “Despite
the spike I’ve been able to generate,”
Crawley said, “it’s a challenge for me.” In
order to turn a profit, he said, he has to
sell additional lines of products and services; without these, he said, “the book-
New Booksellers
Retailing
Aresurgence in independent book- selling has led to an influx of new booksellers. And not only has the
rebounding sector seen more independent
bookstores but it’s also seen new people
taking over existing stores. In the past
three years, 58 independent bookstores
have come under new ownership.
According to Mark Kaufman, a partner in
the Bookstore Training Group of Paz &
Associates, “interest in owning a book-
store has never been higher.” Why? He
credits a strong economy, growing appre-
ciation for the shop local movement, the
shuttering of big-box stores, and “some
pushback to Amazon’s dominance.”
To see how some of those 58 new book-
sellers are faring, we checked in with six
stores around the country that have
recently changed hands. Some new
owners, such as Stephanie Hochschild at
the Book Stall in Illinois, have tried to
continue the practices and accomplish-
ments of their predecessors. For others,
such as Joe Hight at Oklahoma’s Best of
Books, the past few years have been
focused on rebranding and starting fresh.
Bennington Bookshop
Bennington, Vt.
Purchased March 2015
It’s been a year since Phil Lewis and
Linda Foulsham purchased the store,
which is located near Bennington College
and Southern Vermont College. The
couple, who had been living in Australia,
spent two years looking to start a new
store in Boone, N.C., before deciding to
purchase this Vermont shop. “We
thought if we start from scratch, we’re
going to put a load of money in before
we open,” Lewis explained. Instead they
put in “sweat equity” by working nine-hour days, six days a week. For Lewis,
though, the hardest thing hasn’t been the
hours, it’s been the paperwork—taxes,
purchase orders, and invoices. He’s also
