Independent bookshops are supposedly on their knees - so what would drive a lawyer with no retail experience to open one? Introducing a regular blog on the trials and tribulations of the book trade, Nic Bottomley, proud co-proprietor of Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights, explains his decision.
Eight months ago I worked my final day as a finance lawyer in the Prague office of a large law firm. My wife, Juliette (also a disaffected lawyer), our Czech dog, Vlasska, and I moved into our new house near Bath and began plotting our new careers as independent booksellers. Joining us in our venture was Juliette's brother, Harvey (a disaffected forensic accountant), newly returned from a year of travelling in Asia.
We have no retail experience. We love books, but have never before attempted to sell them. But all three of us wanted a new challenge, to escape office life and to be motivated by our work. Most of all, we wanted to create a bookshop that focused on the pure indulgence of reading; that would be everything that everyone tells you a bookshop should be. Two weeks ago, after months of planning, we finally opened Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights on John Street in Bath.
Starting in earnest later this week, I'll be blogging for Guardian Unlimited Books on the life of a new, independent bookshop, swimming against the chain-filled stream. Before I begin, though, in order to explain where we've been so far, here are some of the questions and comments we've encountered most frequently since announcing our decision, and my thoughts on them.
"Why books?"
It was something we decided during our honeymoon, on the balcony of an Alaskan B&B. "Why don't we," I suggested, "try doing something that we're really interested in? We could create a fabulous bookshop like that one in Seattle ..."
"Well," said Juliette, "why don't we?"
And that was that.
"You'll never make a penny. Independent bookshops are a dying breed"
When we started our research it was easy to find hundreds of articles on the plight of the independent bookshop. It was trickier to find any suggesting that bookselling was a good thing to go into. But there are two things that continue to fuel my belief (on good days) that we will succeed and grow.
The first is the momentum in media and public opinion behind the pro-independent movement across all trades. Every week you will find articles on this website, and in every local and national paper, praising the personal service and quality products found in independently-owned shops.
The second is a belief that it is at least possible to avoid the most obvious pitfalls. One of the first research books we read was the Complete Guide to Starting and Running a Bookshop, published in 2003 by the Booksellers Association. Although on the whole remarkably on-point and rather useful, its chapter on stock control contains five pages on card index stock control systems. I couldn't believe my eyes. Surely any such chapter should begin "Historically, bookshops used manual stock control systems. However, to manage a profitable bookshop now, it is essential to use a computerised system"?
I don't want to come over all Darwinian, but if you spend your time grumbling about supermarkets' deep discounting, the rise of internet booksellers and the dominance of Waterstone's instead of getting on with differentiating your stock, enhancing your service and buying a computer, then you don't need bookselling experience to see that you will fail.
Having said all that, it's altogether possible that we won't make a penny. Watch this space.
"Oooh, you are brave" ( for which, read "foolish")
For me, this has always been an ambitious project. We want to build a great bookshop and one that will pay our mortgage and eventually make us a good living. That's why we ended up in the centre of Bath rather than in any of the smaller towns that we first considered when we began our research.
Ultimately, in fact, we ended up just 100m from a branch of Waterstone's - but I see that as an opportunity rather than bravery. If we are to be a genuine alternative to Waterstone's and other chain stores, then we need to be close by so that the book lovers of Bath have no excuse not to give us a try. And if those customers that profess to like independents carry on using Waterstone's, that will tell us we still have work to do to.
"How do bookshops get their books?"
I could write a book (a dull one, admittedly) on the things we've had to think about for the first time - from figuring out where you buy books, to sourcing shelves and cash registers - in the seven months since we began the real nitty gritty of setting up our business. Of course, starting from scratch, we've had moments of incredible self-doubt. The time when we wrote the words "Business Plan" on a blank word document, stared at them for five minutes and then went to make another cup of tea, for example. Or the occasion we wrote "Abbott, Edwin A., 'Flatland', 014043531X" - and realized that that left us with just 7,499 more books to choose. Or the day we stood in the empty premises we'd just leased, looking at the pink, furry, 70s wallpaper stretching up to the dado rail and the skeleton of a starling in the fireplace, and said "Right, let's get these mouldy carpets up, for starters".
We've had a handful of real lows too. We lost out on the first shop we looked at after shelling out over £800 for a survey. We were messed around by our bank, which offered us the overdraft we needed and then bizarrely tried to change its mind. And by the time our business plan had reached 60 pages and we'd been adding book titles to spreadsheets for 14 hours a day for six weeks, exhaustion and an overwhelming need for a day off (which still hasn't materialised) did begin to override the "excitement of a new challenge". But all that's behind us now, and here we are.
"Are you part of a chain?"
We opened our doors with very little fanfare on June 19, in order to give ourselves a chance to master the scariest thing about the whole project: the till. To our amazement, as soon as the doors were open, people came in, bought books and said nice things. They said they'd tell their friends, and then their friends came and told us they'd been told. They said we'd created a lovely place to browse. A retired publisher said we had a wonderful selection of books. I could have kissed him. That comment alone validated the process of painstakingly selecting every one of those books.
And yes, on day three, one customer did ask if we were part of a chain. I decided to take this as a compliment: that we'd made something professional enough to be mistaken for a chain. I'm confident that closer inspection of our claw-foot bath book display, our pot of coffee and, hopefully, our eclectic mix of books, allows our independence to shine through.
"Can you repeat that?"
We came up with the name over dinner. We'd been playing with lots of horrific pun-ridden names ("Fully Booked", for example, or - gulp - "What a Word's Worth") and just couldn't take any more. Instead, we started thinking of something far more over the top and came up with "Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights". We liked the idea of something unique, that sounded old-fashioned and ground-breaking at the same time.
And yes, I suppose I'm Mr B, although in my head he is an anonymous cane-wielding philanthropic book collector who searches the world for great books for our customers while the shop is manned by his faithful assistant the Book Monkey (the character on our logo).
Actually, I suppose that makes me the monkey.
· Mr B will begin blogging on the Culture Vulture later this week.*
Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights, 14/15 John Street, Bath, BA1 2JL, is open 9.30am-6.30pm Monday to Saturday (except for Thursdays and Fridays when it opens late until 8.30 for pre-dinner browsing). Read more about the shop and buy online from it at mrbsemporium.com from Monday July 17.
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