Today I collect my B.A. -- I'm graduating from the University Without Walls program of the University of Massachusetts. It's thirty years since I started college. Both of my kids are heading away to college this year, and I've told them "Dad took 30 years, so, NO PRESSURE."
Several weeks have passed since my first bookstore bus tour and I suppose the fact that I haven't written about it says something. While the three riders who did come, and I, had fun...it's definitely not good business practice for only four people to spend the day riding around on a 29-seat bus. Such an outcome demands a zippy "lessons learned" approach, which I didn't before now somehow have it in me to simply conjure up.
Of course, I did begin to understand during the course of my marketing work that I'd managed to choose a weekend when everyone in this area (Five-College Region) is frantically writing term papers and studying for final exams. And since I'd assumed that the academic community itself would be a great target market for me, it was pretty stupid to think that such a crowd would be available for a fun day of bookstore hopping on such a weekend.
Which has also led me to conclude that the June 2 trip to New York is an even WORSE idea. Since the Pioneer Valley really empties out after the commencement ceremonies (that is: after this weekend).
So I'm not going to run any trips until late August. I'll put together a fall schedule and publicize this as a coherent block of activity, instead of simply publicizing one trip at a time as I did with the Boston trip on May 6.
I do want to thank Doug, Susan and Brian, the three bookstore lovers who went to Boston with me. Along with our bus-driver, Todd, they all seemed to be having a great time. I think that about half of me was having a great time too. The other half of me was feeling incredibly stupid though.
I did get some lovely video footage of three events organized by Harvard Bookstore, and presented there, and at Grolier Poetry Book Shop, and at Papercut Zine Library. When my daughter finally gets around to teaching me how to move the video from the camera to the computer, I'll post some video clips.
One thing that alarmed me was the realization that there was no WAY a real horde of booklovers could have easily gone simultaneously into some of those stores. I mean -- a successful trip with lots of riders would have required quite a bit of organized into-group-splitting -- to ensure that we didn't all go the same place at the same time. This is one thing I didn't turn out to have to worry about...
Also, I was chagrined to find that Schoenhof's is closed on Sundays. I thought I'd verified that they'd be open, and since one of the riders is a Latinist and had been looking forward to going there, this was pretty embarrassing. Maybe that was another blessing in disguise to having a small group going along on this first trip. Not as many people to see me screw up the planning.
I suppose the virtue of launching a business on your own -- without partners or staff -- without a monthly rent to pay on a storefront, or posted hours of opening -- is that you have the freedom to retreat and lick your wounds. I wouldn't say I've got any wounds, nor have I been particularly moody this past couple of weeks -- mostly I've been busy writing final papers to get this whole degree thing out of the way -- but I haven't minded simply not thinking about BiblioExpeditions. I guess this means that I did get the wind taken out of my sails.
One good thing about canceling the June 2 trip, though, is that I'll be able to simply attend Book Expo America, which I now need to do anyway at the behest of several different organizations with unrelated agendas (Eric Carle Museum; Vox Pop; Pioneer Valley Bookmarks). So, in conclusion, all's for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Night Before
Last minute preparation: I bought some videotapes for my recorder. Since I've been taking a Visual Anthropology course at UMass I feel hyperself-conscious about videotaping. Funny. I'm thinking such technical thoughts as "experience-near" and "indigenous" and "research questions" and "habitus" and "participant observation" -- I mean -- since it will be a small collection of us going, I figure that effectively we're a focus group for this company. Trying to learn what feels right -- whether the trip is too long -- whether food should definitely be built into the ticket. So that's one level of research. But -- I feel like I'm also curious about something else: a real research question. Which is something like: What happens in "browsing"? What is it about the experience of browsing in a bookstore that is unique? It seems to me that this goes to the heart of the argument against online book-shopping. I think there's an ethnographic film here. Somehow, if it were possible to depict the experience of browsing in a bookstore, in cinematic terms -- as an aesthetic, embodied social enactment (there's the anthropologico-speak...) -- well -- anyway, maybe I'll get some interesting footage tomorrow. Hope so. Will post. Here!
Saturday, April 21, 2007
First tickets sold
Last Sunday Jan Gardner wrote an article about BiblioExpeditions in the Boston Globe and over the past few days I've started getting response to this. Three people have signed up for the email newsletter (now I guess I will have to WRITE a newsletter) and two people actually bought tickets! One person bought 2 tickets for the Boston trip, and one person bought a ticket for Boston and a ticket for the June 2 trip to New York.
I've now come to the conclusion that I will need to create a jam-packed touring schedule for launch in the fall. I'll do the planning in the early summer, and start promoting a comprehensive schedule by August, and have several tours running in multiple directions every weekend, by September. I will probably focus on weekly trips in and out of New York, Boston and Amherst/Northampton.
The trick in differentiating various trips is developing those thematic elements I was wrestling with conceptually, a couple of months ago. Like: a children's bookstore tour that goes--
1)Depart Books of Wonder in New York on Saturday morning. (Alternate departure point on a similar trip: Bank Street Bookshop on the Upper West Side).
3) Arrive at Eric Carle Museum in Amherst at noon.
4) To Eight Cousins in Falmouth late afternoon.
5) Dinner and overnight in Falmouth.
6) To Martha's Vineyard for Sunday morning visiting the bookstores there (Riley's Reads, Bunch of Grapes), then leave Falmouth.
7) Arrive The Children's Bookshop in Brookline early afternoon.
8) Short hop to Curious George Goes To Wordsworth late afternoon.
8) Return to New York VERY late Sunday.
Hmmm -- maybe the trip has to start Friday to be done by Sunday night...
There are so many similar options. Makes my head spin.
Here's Jan's article:
You're either on the bus ...
With his new venture in the book world, entrepreneur Andrew Laties is betting on bus trips. Every day buses deliver dozens of customers to casinos in Connecticut. So why not hire buses to bring book lovers to the best bookstores in the Northeast? That's the idea behind BiblioExpeditions.
The inaugural bus trip leaves Amherst on May 6 to visit independent bookstores in Newton and Cambridge and to take in the Mayfair Readers Ramble, a traveling series of readings in Harvard Square. Tickets are $29. The next bus trip, on June 2, which also leaves from Amherst, will visit bookstores in Greenwich Village, N.Y. In the fall, Laties plans to offer a bus trip from Cambridge to BookMarks, a literary celebration at 10 museums in Western Massachusetts.
Needless to say, Laties, the author of "Rebel Bookseller," is bullish on his new business, though he's been bruised by the harsh realities of the marketplace. Over the years, he has founded four bookstores. One of the two survivors is the shop at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, in Amherst, which he now manages. The other -- Vox Pop, in Brooklyn, N.Y. -- is a coffeehouse and publishing company as well as a bookstore.
I've now come to the conclusion that I will need to create a jam-packed touring schedule for launch in the fall. I'll do the planning in the early summer, and start promoting a comprehensive schedule by August, and have several tours running in multiple directions every weekend, by September. I will probably focus on weekly trips in and out of New York, Boston and Amherst/Northampton.
The trick in differentiating various trips is developing those thematic elements I was wrestling with conceptually, a couple of months ago. Like: a children's bookstore tour that goes--
1)Depart Books of Wonder in New York on Saturday morning. (Alternate departure point on a similar trip: Bank Street Bookshop on the Upper West Side).
3) Arrive at Eric Carle Museum in Amherst at noon.
4) To Eight Cousins in Falmouth late afternoon.
5) Dinner and overnight in Falmouth.
6) To Martha's Vineyard for Sunday morning visiting the bookstores there (Riley's Reads, Bunch of Grapes), then leave Falmouth.
7) Arrive The Children's Bookshop in Brookline early afternoon.
8) Short hop to Curious George Goes To Wordsworth late afternoon.
8) Return to New York VERY late Sunday.
Hmmm -- maybe the trip has to start Friday to be done by Sunday night...
There are so many similar options. Makes my head spin.
Here's Jan's article:
You're either on the bus ...
With his new venture in the book world, entrepreneur Andrew Laties is betting on bus trips. Every day buses deliver dozens of customers to casinos in Connecticut. So why not hire buses to bring book lovers to the best bookstores in the Northeast? That's the idea behind BiblioExpeditions.
The inaugural bus trip leaves Amherst on May 6 to visit independent bookstores in Newton and Cambridge and to take in the Mayfair Readers Ramble, a traveling series of readings in Harvard Square. Tickets are $29. The next bus trip, on June 2, which also leaves from Amherst, will visit bookstores in Greenwich Village, N.Y. In the fall, Laties plans to offer a bus trip from Cambridge to BookMarks, a literary celebration at 10 museums in Western Massachusetts.
Needless to say, Laties, the author of "Rebel Bookseller," is bullish on his new business, though he's been bruised by the harsh realities of the marketplace. Over the years, he has founded four bookstores. One of the two survivors is the shop at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, in Amherst, which he now manages. The other -- Vox Pop, in Brooklyn, N.Y. -- is a coffeehouse and publishing company as well as a bookstore.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Amherst To Boston May 6 Press Release
BiblioExpeditions
161 Pondview Drive
Amherst, Massachusetts 01002
413-253-6689
andy@biblioexpeditions.com
www.biblioexpeditions.com
For Release April 29 - May 5 For Editorial Consideration
BIBLIOEXPEDITIONS LAUNCHES WITH MAY 6TH BOSTON BOOKSTORE TOUR
Pioneer Valley bookstore lovers can enjoy a day of Boston book-shopping Sunday, May 6, when they join BiblioExpeditions for our maiden bus-tour. Bibliophiles will stop first at New England Mobile Book Fair, featuring the Northeast's largest selection of discount titles. They'll continue on to the annual May Fair Festival in Harvard Square, to visit bookstores while sampling food, taking in author events, and enjoying live music and children's programs. Featured stores on the tour include Harvard Bookstore, Schoenhof's, Grolier Poetry Bookshop, Curious George Bookstore, Globe Corner Bookstore, and Pandemonium. The BiblioExpeditions bus departs Food For Thought Books, 106 North Pleasant Street, in Amherst, at 8am, Sunday, May 6th, returning to Food For Thought at 11pm. Bus tickets are $29 and can be purchased at Food For Thought, or on the web at www.BiblioExpeditions.com.
The first company in the nation to offer day-long outings to bookstores, BiblioExpeditions aims to support the field of independent bookselling by encouraging and assisting booklovers in bypassing the big-box chains and online retailers, and instead visiting outstanding independent bookstores. Future bookstore tours will visit New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington DC, as well as bringing booklovers from these cities to the Pioneer Valley to visit our outstanding local bookstores and literary museums. BiblioExpeditions bus tours are organized and guided by Andy Laties, manager of the Eric Carle Museum Bookshop and author of the award-winning “Rebel Bookseller: How To Improvise Your Own Indie Store And Beat Back The Chains”. For more information visit www.BiblioExpeditions.com.
Press Contact: Andy Laties, 413-253-6689
andy@biblioexpeditions.com
161 Pondview Drive
Amherst, Massachusetts 01002
413-253-6689
andy@biblioexpeditions.com
www.biblioexpeditions.com
For Release April 29 - May 5 For Editorial Consideration
BIBLIOEXPEDITIONS LAUNCHES WITH MAY 6TH BOSTON BOOKSTORE TOUR
Pioneer Valley bookstore lovers can enjoy a day of Boston book-shopping Sunday, May 6, when they join BiblioExpeditions for our maiden bus-tour. Bibliophiles will stop first at New England Mobile Book Fair, featuring the Northeast's largest selection of discount titles. They'll continue on to the annual May Fair Festival in Harvard Square, to visit bookstores while sampling food, taking in author events, and enjoying live music and children's programs. Featured stores on the tour include Harvard Bookstore, Schoenhof's, Grolier Poetry Bookshop, Curious George Bookstore, Globe Corner Bookstore, and Pandemonium. The BiblioExpeditions bus departs Food For Thought Books, 106 North Pleasant Street, in Amherst, at 8am, Sunday, May 6th, returning to Food For Thought at 11pm. Bus tickets are $29 and can be purchased at Food For Thought, or on the web at www.BiblioExpeditions.com.
The first company in the nation to offer day-long outings to bookstores, BiblioExpeditions aims to support the field of independent bookselling by encouraging and assisting booklovers in bypassing the big-box chains and online retailers, and instead visiting outstanding independent bookstores. Future bookstore tours will visit New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington DC, as well as bringing booklovers from these cities to the Pioneer Valley to visit our outstanding local bookstores and literary museums. BiblioExpeditions bus tours are organized and guided by Andy Laties, manager of the Eric Carle Museum Bookshop and author of the award-winning “Rebel Bookseller: How To Improvise Your Own Indie Store And Beat Back The Chains”. For more information visit www.BiblioExpeditions.com.
Press Contact: Andy Laties, 413-253-6689
andy@biblioexpeditions.com
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Publicity and Sales
Yesterday morning Jan Gardner of the Boston Globe's book section interviewed me about BiblioExpeditions -- I don't know when her column will run though. Then last night I had a great conversation in my University Without Walls class, at UMass, about how I ought to publicize this trip to Boston. Apparently I can with impunity post flyers in bulletin boards all over campus, and leave flyers in faculty mailboxes! What's more I can propose these tours as Continuing Education courses! However the soonest that one could be included in the published course catalog would be next Winter. One of my classmates, Marcy, said that there used to be a very popular Continuing Ed class in which an art historian took busloads of people to Boston to go to art museums, and the buses sold out as soon as they were promoted.
All of which said, I now have enough detail about itinerary and style of promotion that I'd better design the darned flyer and start selling these tickets. Else I may be going to Boston in an empty 57-seat bus.
All of which said, I now have enough detail about itinerary and style of promotion that I'd better design the darned flyer and start selling these tickets. Else I may be going to Boston in an empty 57-seat bus.
New England Mobile Book Fair
Yesterday I made an impromptu jaunt to this amazing retail/wholesale store/warehouse outside of Boston. Frank Kramer, owner of Harvard Bookstore, had recommended it as a stop for us on our visits to Boston. What a place -- certainly one of the largest bookstores in the country, with enormous depth of title-base on obscure non-fiction subjects. Much of the store is organized not by category, though, but by publisher! This makes browsing a very odd experience, but quite provocative. Half of the building is remainders and publishers overstock and hurt books -- a really astonishing selection at very low prices. For that matter, the half of building that's new books is all 20% off.
The itinerary I think -- given the previous post's info, which is that the Harvard Square literary programming begins at 5:30 -- would be:
Depart Food For Thought in Amherst at 9am
Arrive New England Mobile Book Fair at 11am
Depart NEMBF for Harvard Square at 1pm (arrive about half an hour later)
Since the Mayfair is in large part a "Taste" event, with lots of restaurants selling food to the party-goers, we'll split up on arrival and people will be on their own for late lunches/early dinners, and for finding their way to various bookstores over the next few hours.
Mayfair Readers Ramble starts at Harvard Bookstore at 5:30pm.
Ramble concludes at 8:30pm
Depart at 9pm, arrive back at Food For Thought in Amherst at 11pm.
The itinerary I think -- given the previous post's info, which is that the Harvard Square literary programming begins at 5:30 -- would be:
Depart Food For Thought in Amherst at 9am
Arrive New England Mobile Book Fair at 11am
Depart NEMBF for Harvard Square at 1pm (arrive about half an hour later)
Since the Mayfair is in large part a "Taste" event, with lots of restaurants selling food to the party-goers, we'll split up on arrival and people will be on their own for late lunches/early dinners, and for finding their way to various bookstores over the next few hours.
Mayfair Readers Ramble starts at Harvard Bookstore at 5:30pm.
Ramble concludes at 8:30pm
Depart at 9pm, arrive back at Food For Thought in Amherst at 11pm.
Mayfair Readers Ramble
The literary program for May 6th in Harvard Square is still in development, however here's the preliminary description:
Mayfair Readers� Ramble!
Celebrate the literary and cultural side of Harvard Square at the Mayfair Readers Ramble, a traveling reading series featuring five talented authors reading at five quintessentially Harvard Square locations.
Readings take place every half-hour from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Ramble organizer Harvard Book Store hosts novelist Mameve Medwed, author of How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life, the Pierre Menard Gallery hosts New Yorker staff writer Joan Acocella, author of Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints: Essays, and the famous Grolier Poetry Book Shop hosts poet Tomas O'Leary, author ofThe Devil Take a Crooked House. Additional readings will occur at the Democracy Center and the Papercut Zine Library at 45 Mount Auburn Street.
Mayfair Readers� Ramble!
Celebrate the literary and cultural side of Harvard Square at the Mayfair Readers Ramble, a traveling reading series featuring five talented authors reading at five quintessentially Harvard Square locations.
Readings take place every half-hour from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Ramble organizer Harvard Book Store hosts novelist Mameve Medwed, author of How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life, the Pierre Menard Gallery hosts New Yorker staff writer Joan Acocella, author of Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints: Essays, and the famous Grolier Poetry Book Shop hosts poet Tomas O'Leary, author ofThe Devil Take a Crooked House. Additional readings will occur at the Democracy Center and the Papercut Zine Library at 45 Mount Auburn Street.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Introductory Price for Harvard Square Tour
Well I had a conversation with Mitch Gaslin of Food For Thought Books (my tour-departure store) and decided that I am going to offer a great introductory price after all. I'm going to be depending on my first-time riders to help me understand what it is that makes a great bookstore tour, and the least I can do to compensate them for my own inexperience is to charge them a price that feels pretty low. I think that $29 does feel like a great deal, and I can cover the expense of the bus if I get a few dozen riders, which seems definitely doable at that low a price! Now I have to settle down, write some publicity material, and start the promotional work. Only six weeks till my first tour.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
New York for Book Expo
I've just booked a 29 seat bus from Amherst to New York for Saturday, June 2, which is the weekend Book Expo America will be in the city. Since there will be lots of author events around town, this seems like a great day to be running a bookstore tour. More info to come.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Special Introductory Price Level
OK now that I've got a specific tour that I need to sell tickets for, I'm wrestling with the question of what my Special Introductory Price should be. That is: I'm prepared to charge pretty much any level to ensure that this first bus is full of riders, because these 57 people will be my key word-of-mouth promoters for future trips.
Should I make this trip FREE?
Should I charge something that feels nominal, like $19.99?
Or is this approach a mistake, and should I make the introductory price for this first trip something like $49, so as to ensure that when the price does go up for future trips people don't get mad at me or something?
Should I make this trip FREE?
Should I charge something that feels nominal, like $19.99?
Or is this approach a mistake, and should I make the introductory price for this first trip something like $49, so as to ensure that when the price does go up for future trips people don't get mad at me or something?
Monday, March 19, 2007
First Trip: Mayfair In Harvard Square
Hooray! I've broken the ice, and booked a 57-seat luxury motorcoach, for Sunday, May 6th. The first BiblioExpedition!
We'll depart from Amherst, Massachusetts at about 8am and travel to Harvard Square (Cambridge, MA) for the annual Mayfair Festival. This runs from Noon to 6pm and it's a BIG party (100,000 people...) The folks at Harvard Bookstore have a variety of literary events in the works -- I'll add more info as it becomes available. Suffice to say several readings at several bookstores, with a dinner at the end of the day. We'll plan to be back in Amherst at perhaps 11pm.
We'll depart from Amherst, Massachusetts at about 8am and travel to Harvard Square (Cambridge, MA) for the annual Mayfair Festival. This runs from Noon to 6pm and it's a BIG party (100,000 people...) The folks at Harvard Bookstore have a variety of literary events in the works -- I'll add more info as it becomes available. Suffice to say several readings at several bookstores, with a dinner at the end of the day. We'll plan to be back in Amherst at perhaps 11pm.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Full of new ideas
Great trip yesterday to Chester County Book Company and then on to Politics & Prose in D.C. Joe Drabyak of CCBC has given a LOT of thought to this whole bookstore tourism racket (because Larry Portzline brought a busload of booklovers to that store two years ago). Joe pointed me to the fields of Food Tourism and Adventure Tourism, as models: he thinks a multi-day approach is a major opportunity. Also, he described a fascinating on-bus author-event approach he'd thought of that would feature non-fiction-book author/presenters whose titles related thematically and regionally to the interests of riders and the locales of tours. He warned me, "God is in the details!" adjuring that I produce high quality programs.
Down at Politics & Prose, Carla Cohen and Barbara Mead were both encouraging and cautionary. They've run quite a number of tours themselves -- to Fallingwater (the Frank Lloyd Wright house), to the Hudson Valley (Roosevelt and Vanderbilt Estates), and most recently to Mexico for ten days! I learned that I should not book bus-riders into a motel just because the price seems right...and some other hazards of dealing with 50 strong-minded customers. I was delighted that Carla has already been toying with the idea of bringing a tourgroup up my way to the Pioneer Valley, where she'd like to visit the book museums here in Amherst.
I drove back this morning, between two and nine am and I am feeling pretty woozy. But I think I did have the breakthrough I was looking for, conceptually. I have realized that the marketing approach will rely on the ongoing events schedules of the participating bookstores -- so, I will issue "hot event alerts" to my newsletter subscribers, touting upcoming events at regional bookstores, and offering transit+fun to these events' cities... AND -- the branding of the programs, at their core -- the essence -- is Among Friends. People will go on these tours in order to have a good time with other people. And, I'm thinking about the slogan: "BiblioExpeditions: Carried Away!" -- to suggest the party aspect. I can use the 18 seat specially fixtured luxury buses, for instance, and run food and drink service during the travel. Here's a page describing and picturing such a bus.
We can have poetry reading, good conversation -- conviviality -- the atmosphere of a Literary Salon.
You know, it's a very funny thing: to be developing a business concept in public like this. I would say that it violates the basic principles of business, to talk about this stuff in a manner that almost INVITES pre-emption. If I hadn't had this experience in the past, I couldn't do it now. I love the whole Open Source ethic. If anyone reading this blog gets excited about anything you read here: by all means, get into this business yourself. These kinds of specially fixtured luxury- and party-buses are in use all over the country. Why shouldn't we literary types and booklovers integrate them into our marketing campaigns?
Enough for now. I hope to have some specific products/programs ready for sale in about two weeks.
Down at Politics & Prose, Carla Cohen and Barbara Mead were both encouraging and cautionary. They've run quite a number of tours themselves -- to Fallingwater (the Frank Lloyd Wright house), to the Hudson Valley (Roosevelt and Vanderbilt Estates), and most recently to Mexico for ten days! I learned that I should not book bus-riders into a motel just because the price seems right...and some other hazards of dealing with 50 strong-minded customers. I was delighted that Carla has already been toying with the idea of bringing a tourgroup up my way to the Pioneer Valley, where she'd like to visit the book museums here in Amherst.
I drove back this morning, between two and nine am and I am feeling pretty woozy. But I think I did have the breakthrough I was looking for, conceptually. I have realized that the marketing approach will rely on the ongoing events schedules of the participating bookstores -- so, I will issue "hot event alerts" to my newsletter subscribers, touting upcoming events at regional bookstores, and offering transit+fun to these events' cities... AND -- the branding of the programs, at their core -- the essence -- is Among Friends. People will go on these tours in order to have a good time with other people. And, I'm thinking about the slogan: "BiblioExpeditions: Carried Away!" -- to suggest the party aspect. I can use the 18 seat specially fixtured luxury buses, for instance, and run food and drink service during the travel. Here's a page describing and picturing such a bus.
We can have poetry reading, good conversation -- conviviality -- the atmosphere of a Literary Salon.
You know, it's a very funny thing: to be developing a business concept in public like this. I would say that it violates the basic principles of business, to talk about this stuff in a manner that almost INVITES pre-emption. If I hadn't had this experience in the past, I couldn't do it now. I love the whole Open Source ethic. If anyone reading this blog gets excited about anything you read here: by all means, get into this business yourself. These kinds of specially fixtured luxury- and party-buses are in use all over the country. Why shouldn't we literary types and booklovers integrate them into our marketing campaigns?
Enough for now. I hope to have some specific products/programs ready for sale in about two weeks.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Harvard Bookstore, Chester County, Politics & Prose
Continuing on my fact-finding and alliance-building tour, I spent the morning at Harvard Bookstore talking with marketing director Amanda Darling and owner Frank Kramer. The exciting new ideas keep on coming. My favorite was Amanda's notion of bringing professors on the buses to do the literary talking, instead of relying (solely, at least) on authors. She pointed out that a bus from Cambridge to Amherst could stop in South Hadley, pick up a professor from Mt. Holyoke College, and this prof could give a 20 minute lecture about Emily Dickinson and the bus continued up into Amherst to land at Emily Dickinson House! I love the idea of using college professors to provide the enhanced literary travel experiences of all kinds.
Tomorrow I leave Amherst at 3am to travel to Chester County Book Company, west of Philadelphia, where I'll meet with Joe Drabyak, current prez of NAIBA and a veteran of Larry Portzline's bookstore tour program (Larry brought a group to Chester County B.C. a few years ago). Then I'll continue south to see Carla Cohen at Politics & Prose, overnight in D.C., and return to Amherst Thursday morning.
At that point, I think I'll be ready to design the first batch of programs. While I still hope to have tickets for sale by the end of March, I now doubt that I'll really be running any tours in April. I think the first will be in May.
Tomorrow I leave Amherst at 3am to travel to Chester County Book Company, west of Philadelphia, where I'll meet with Joe Drabyak, current prez of NAIBA and a veteran of Larry Portzline's bookstore tour program (Larry brought a group to Chester County B.C. a few years ago). Then I'll continue south to see Carla Cohen at Politics & Prose, overnight in D.C., and return to Amherst Thursday morning.
At that point, I think I'll be ready to design the first batch of programs. While I still hope to have tickets for sale by the end of March, I now doubt that I'll really be running any tours in April. I think the first will be in May.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Food For Thought/Bookmarks
Last Wednesday I met with the worker/owners of Food For Thought, in Amherst, who seemed quite high on the proposal that their store be the pick-up/drop-off focal point of outgoing and incoming bookstore-tours to the Pioneer Valler.
Since Suzy Staubach, who runs the trade bookstore at University of Connecticut, told me a month ago that she'd be happy to act as a departure point, this means that right now I have a network composed of 1) Strand Books in New York; 2) Northshire Bookstore in Southwest Vermont; 3) Food For Thought in Amherst; 4) UConn Co-op in Storrs; 5) Politics & Prose in D.C.
Next week I hope to talk with the folks at Harvard Bookstore, in Cambridge. And -- Joe Drabyak of Chester County Book Company, outside of Philadelphia (he's current Prez of the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Assoc) says he's very interested, too, and we'll be meeting in the next week or two.
This then clears the way for me to design some tours for April, and ideally start selling tickets later in March.
Later this year, the Amherst/Northampton area will be the center of an elaborate book-related cluster of programs. Since this promotion -- called Bookmarks -- is specifically designed to boost cultural tourism to the area, it's a natural for a BiblioExpeditions functional tie-in. I'm posting the recent press release. Perhaps it can serve as inspiration for the development of analagous programs around the country!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Museums10 to Present BookMarks: A Celebration of the Art of the Book
Barry Moser’s Artwork Official Logo of Fall/Winter Festival
March 2, 2007
Contact: Tony Maroulis
Project Coordinator
Museums10
413-687-2757
amaroulis@fivecolleges.edu
AMHERST, Mass. – Museums10*, a partnership of ten museums in the upper Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts, which is facilitated by Five Colleges, Inc., has announced plans for their second cross-cultural initiative: BookMarks: A Celebration of the Art of the Book. Artwork created by Barry Moser, nationally renowned artist and illustrator of over 250 books, will serve as the official logo of the upcoming series of exhibitions, readings, and programming that officially kicks off in September 2007 and runs through January 2008.
The mission of the three-year-old partnership is to promote the region using the museums as a magnet for cultural tourism, in turn spurring a measurable economic impact for cultural partners and businesses throughout the Valley. Based on the success of last year’s GoDutch! there is evidence that the Museums10 collaborative model works. GoDutch! exhibitions and programming corresponded with a 15% increase in aggregate attendance at the museums, bucking a downward trend in national museum attendance overall.
With a robust slate of events, and by using the Valley’s literary pedigree as inspiration, Museums10 is confident that the BookMarks initiative will bring a great deal of regional and national interest to Western Massachusetts. That confidence is shared by local Chambers of Commerce and The Greater Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau, who have pledged their support to Museums10 for this project.
The BookMarks logo by Barry Moser, an engraving created by the artist exclusively for this year’s initiative, will be the centerpiece of a comprehensive marketing plan that includes radio, print, television, and web advertising. Museums10 hopes to increase their visibility beyond the borders of Western Massachusetts and into the New York City and Boston areas to reach the market for cultural tourists. The local advertising by Museums10 will be geared to informing its local audience of the world-class museum collections in their backyards.
The collaboration is not limited to Museums10, and is intended to create ties among cultural organizations and businesses throughout the Valley. Programmatic partners such as the Amherst Cinema Arts Center and Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association – whose contributions to the collaboration will include programming related to the BookMarks theme – as well as economic partners such as restaurants, booksellers, hotels and inns will benefit from Museums10’s promotion of the project outside the region.
“The collective energy around BookMarks programming and exhibitions highlights the creative activity and economy of Western Massachusetts,” says Marianne Doezema, director of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. “The stunning logo by Barry Moser is a perfect example of the area’s rich pool of talent. The world class collections, history museums, performing arts venues, and art galleries along with the great numbers of notable artists, writers, bookmakers, and people in the literary fields throughout Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin counties are just part of the rich tapestry that makes the Pioneer Valley a great place to live, work, or visit.”
Plans for BookMarks will highlight the rich literary history and culture of the region, as well as the work of contemporary local artists. A full listing of Museums10/BookMarks exhibitions can be found at www.museums10.org. Below is a sampling of what’s ahead:
Two by Two: Lines, Rhymes, and Riddles at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum featuring the poetry and artwork of the Leithauser brothers – local prize-winning poet and Mount Holyoke professor Brad and his brother and artist Mark.
Poetic Science: Bookworks by Daniel E. Kelm at the Smith College Museum of Art. This is the first solo exhibition in New England of the Easthampton-based artist and bookbinder featuring thirty works by the artist.
Spiderwick from Page to Screen at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. The transformation of the words and pictures of Amherst residents Holly Black and Tony diTerlizzi’s Spiderwick Chronicles to the silver screen will be the focus of the Carle’s BookMarks offering.
In addition to the exhibition schedule, Museums10 is also sponsoring three themed programming weekends: The Art of the Book will be the focus of lectures, events, and programming from September 20-23; October 12-14 will feature Books Out Loud with readings at museums and independent bookstores throughout the Valley; and from November 15-18, The Book: Past and Future will look at where the book is headed in the digital age and beyond.
“The process of planning BookMarks has been an eye-opening experience. We have invited a number of key constituencies to the table – among them book sellers, librarians, and business leaders - to help us plan events around our exhibitions. The ideas have proved plentiful and exciting. We think there will be something in BookMarks for everyone,” said Doezema. “There is still plenty of time and opportunity for businesses and programmatic partners to get involved.”
There is no cost for businesses and cultural institutions to participate in this unique cross-promotional project. For more details, please contact Tony Maroulis, Museums10 project coordinator at amaroulis@fivecolleges.edu.
Museums10 is a partnership of ten outstanding museums - Amherst College Museum of Natural History, Emily Dickinson Museum: The Homestead and The Evergreens, The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Hampshire College Art Gallery, Historic Deerfield, Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, National Yiddish Book Center, Smith College Museum of Art, and University Gallery at UMass Amherst – in one gorgeous place: the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. For more information about Museums10, please visit www.museums10.org.
Since Suzy Staubach, who runs the trade bookstore at University of Connecticut, told me a month ago that she'd be happy to act as a departure point, this means that right now I have a network composed of 1) Strand Books in New York; 2) Northshire Bookstore in Southwest Vermont; 3) Food For Thought in Amherst; 4) UConn Co-op in Storrs; 5) Politics & Prose in D.C.
Next week I hope to talk with the folks at Harvard Bookstore, in Cambridge. And -- Joe Drabyak of Chester County Book Company, outside of Philadelphia (he's current Prez of the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Assoc) says he's very interested, too, and we'll be meeting in the next week or two.
This then clears the way for me to design some tours for April, and ideally start selling tickets later in March.
Later this year, the Amherst/Northampton area will be the center of an elaborate book-related cluster of programs. Since this promotion -- called Bookmarks -- is specifically designed to boost cultural tourism to the area, it's a natural for a BiblioExpeditions functional tie-in. I'm posting the recent press release. Perhaps it can serve as inspiration for the development of analagous programs around the country!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Museums10 to Present BookMarks: A Celebration of the Art of the Book
Barry Moser’s Artwork Official Logo of Fall/Winter Festival
March 2, 2007
Contact: Tony Maroulis
Project Coordinator
Museums10
413-687-2757
amaroulis@fivecolleges.edu
AMHERST, Mass. – Museums10*, a partnership of ten museums in the upper Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts, which is facilitated by Five Colleges, Inc., has announced plans for their second cross-cultural initiative: BookMarks: A Celebration of the Art of the Book. Artwork created by Barry Moser, nationally renowned artist and illustrator of over 250 books, will serve as the official logo of the upcoming series of exhibitions, readings, and programming that officially kicks off in September 2007 and runs through January 2008.
The mission of the three-year-old partnership is to promote the region using the museums as a magnet for cultural tourism, in turn spurring a measurable economic impact for cultural partners and businesses throughout the Valley. Based on the success of last year’s GoDutch! there is evidence that the Museums10 collaborative model works. GoDutch! exhibitions and programming corresponded with a 15% increase in aggregate attendance at the museums, bucking a downward trend in national museum attendance overall.
With a robust slate of events, and by using the Valley’s literary pedigree as inspiration, Museums10 is confident that the BookMarks initiative will bring a great deal of regional and national interest to Western Massachusetts. That confidence is shared by local Chambers of Commerce and The Greater Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau, who have pledged their support to Museums10 for this project.
The BookMarks logo by Barry Moser, an engraving created by the artist exclusively for this year’s initiative, will be the centerpiece of a comprehensive marketing plan that includes radio, print, television, and web advertising. Museums10 hopes to increase their visibility beyond the borders of Western Massachusetts and into the New York City and Boston areas to reach the market for cultural tourists. The local advertising by Museums10 will be geared to informing its local audience of the world-class museum collections in their backyards.
The collaboration is not limited to Museums10, and is intended to create ties among cultural organizations and businesses throughout the Valley. Programmatic partners such as the Amherst Cinema Arts Center and Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association – whose contributions to the collaboration will include programming related to the BookMarks theme – as well as economic partners such as restaurants, booksellers, hotels and inns will benefit from Museums10’s promotion of the project outside the region.
“The collective energy around BookMarks programming and exhibitions highlights the creative activity and economy of Western Massachusetts,” says Marianne Doezema, director of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. “The stunning logo by Barry Moser is a perfect example of the area’s rich pool of talent. The world class collections, history museums, performing arts venues, and art galleries along with the great numbers of notable artists, writers, bookmakers, and people in the literary fields throughout Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin counties are just part of the rich tapestry that makes the Pioneer Valley a great place to live, work, or visit.”
Plans for BookMarks will highlight the rich literary history and culture of the region, as well as the work of contemporary local artists. A full listing of Museums10/BookMarks exhibitions can be found at www.museums10.org. Below is a sampling of what’s ahead:
Two by Two: Lines, Rhymes, and Riddles at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum featuring the poetry and artwork of the Leithauser brothers – local prize-winning poet and Mount Holyoke professor Brad and his brother and artist Mark.
Poetic Science: Bookworks by Daniel E. Kelm at the Smith College Museum of Art. This is the first solo exhibition in New England of the Easthampton-based artist and bookbinder featuring thirty works by the artist.
Spiderwick from Page to Screen at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. The transformation of the words and pictures of Amherst residents Holly Black and Tony diTerlizzi’s Spiderwick Chronicles to the silver screen will be the focus of the Carle’s BookMarks offering.
In addition to the exhibition schedule, Museums10 is also sponsoring three themed programming weekends: The Art of the Book will be the focus of lectures, events, and programming from September 20-23; October 12-14 will feature Books Out Loud with readings at museums and independent bookstores throughout the Valley; and from November 15-18, The Book: Past and Future will look at where the book is headed in the digital age and beyond.
“The process of planning BookMarks has been an eye-opening experience. We have invited a number of key constituencies to the table – among them book sellers, librarians, and business leaders - to help us plan events around our exhibitions. The ideas have proved plentiful and exciting. We think there will be something in BookMarks for everyone,” said Doezema. “There is still plenty of time and opportunity for businesses and programmatic partners to get involved.”
There is no cost for businesses and cultural institutions to participate in this unique cross-promotional project. For more details, please contact Tony Maroulis, Museums10 project coordinator at amaroulis@fivecolleges.edu.
Museums10 is a partnership of ten outstanding museums - Amherst College Museum of Natural History, Emily Dickinson Museum: The Homestead and The Evergreens, The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Hampshire College Art Gallery, Historic Deerfield, Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, National Yiddish Book Center, Smith College Museum of Art, and University Gallery at UMass Amherst – in one gorgeous place: the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. For more information about Museums10, please visit www.museums10.org.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Northshire/Food For Thought
Quick update: I had a great visit to Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, VT, on Wednesday. The store expanded a few years ago and it looks really terrific. (It looked terrific last time I was there too -- but that was 19 years ago!) I met with Chris Morrow and Marie Leahy, who both had a lot of great ideas, including drawing publishers in to this whole game as sponsors and providers of author events.
(Coincidence: Marie moved from Flatbush, Brooklyn up to Vermont this past year, and she used to be a customer at Vox Pop (the store I helped launch, with Sander Hicks and Holley Anderson, and which published my book)!)
Also, there will be a big meeting of tour packagers from Europe next month: people looking to understand the destinations in Vermont that they can build into their offerings to German and British travelers. I'll definitely hit that meeting!
It was fun to see Ed and Barbara Morrow, too -- I think it's been about 15 years since I used to see them regularly at American Booksellers Association committee meetings.
I'll have a meeting with the worker-owners of Food For Thought, in Amherst, next Wednesday. I'm hopeful that they'll agree to be the pick-up and drop-off affiliate here -- this would then permit me to start operating in Amherst right when the company launches, instead of waiting for an extra month or two, as I was beginning to fear I might have to do. What's funny and fun is that because I'm currently finishing up my B.A. through the University of Massachusetts' University Without Walls program, I am going to be able to get undergraduate credit for launching BiblioExpeditions. It's an Independent Study project! And my advisor is Sara Lennox, the director of the UMass program in Social Thought. Well, Food For Thought Bookstore as it turns out was itself a group student project that emerged from this very Social Thought department, back in 1981! Pretty amazing -- an employee-owned co-op bookstore, one of the leading bookstores in the Valley -- was a student project! And now I'm (hopefully) in the process of linking yet another cooperative-type bookselling company with it -- also emerging from the Social Thought dept.
(Coincidence: Marie moved from Flatbush, Brooklyn up to Vermont this past year, and she used to be a customer at Vox Pop (the store I helped launch, with Sander Hicks and Holley Anderson, and which published my book)!)
Also, there will be a big meeting of tour packagers from Europe next month: people looking to understand the destinations in Vermont that they can build into their offerings to German and British travelers. I'll definitely hit that meeting!
It was fun to see Ed and Barbara Morrow, too -- I think it's been about 15 years since I used to see them regularly at American Booksellers Association committee meetings.
I'll have a meeting with the worker-owners of Food For Thought, in Amherst, next Wednesday. I'm hopeful that they'll agree to be the pick-up and drop-off affiliate here -- this would then permit me to start operating in Amherst right when the company launches, instead of waiting for an extra month or two, as I was beginning to fear I might have to do. What's funny and fun is that because I'm currently finishing up my B.A. through the University of Massachusetts' University Without Walls program, I am going to be able to get undergraduate credit for launching BiblioExpeditions. It's an Independent Study project! And my advisor is Sara Lennox, the director of the UMass program in Social Thought. Well, Food For Thought Bookstore as it turns out was itself a group student project that emerged from this very Social Thought department, back in 1981! Pretty amazing -- an employee-owned co-op bookstore, one of the leading bookstores in the Valley -- was a student project! And now I'm (hopefully) in the process of linking yet another cooperative-type bookselling company with it -- also emerging from the Social Thought dept.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Quality vs. Quantity
Larry Portzline told me that a typical 50-person tour coming from Harrisburg to Greenwich Village seemed to generate $2500 in purchases by the group -- or, about $50 per person, spread over all the bookstores. This would seem to imply a rather small impact on most of the bookstores. (I'll bet more than half the sales went to just five or six of the bookstores out of the 22 on the bookstore map.)
I would say that $50 in sales, per person, is quite low for people who've elected to go on a special shopping daytrip. (And I'll bet that 20% of the riders spent 80% of the $2500.)
I think that it's not really my objective to get casual book-buyers to bop from bookstore to bookstore just observing these quaint stores, without most of these customers actually seriously buying many books.
And I definitely don't want to have non-book-buying people buying my bus-tickets just because it gives them an excuse for a fun daytrip to Greenwich Village -- people who don't intend to really visit the bookstores!
I would think that two-day or multi-day programs would sort more effectively for heavy book-buyers, and would tend to reduce casual ridership.
Similarly, the most coveted customers for any bookstore are those who are willing and able to spend some serious money. This would also tend to argue for longer BiblioExpeditions programs -- which would be more expensive for the customers. That is: people who can afford to buy a higher-priced ticket for this special trip -- which would include an overnight at a Country Inn in Vermont or at the Library Hotel in NYC, plus a couple of nice meals -- are people who can afford to spend much more than $50 on books during such a special trip
Whereas the inexpensive daytrip ticket seems to cater specifically to people who regard $100 as a large amount of money for the bus-ticket, yielding a bus-ful of people who think $50 is a lot to spend on books in one day.
All of which leads me to think that I want to START this company with programs that cost several hundred dollars per ticket.
The bus then becomes not one of those 50-seaters, but rather the more posh 27-seater. The imagined riders become not your mainstream book-lover types, but rather, very serious book-buyers, collectors -- fanatics, even.
The activities en route, the extra stops, then are associated with this type of clientele (perhaps rare book dealers do presentations).
This strategy would mean better sales for the target bookstores, and would make my task the selling of a smaller number of more expensive program-tickets. (College alumni associations seem to be possible target markets??)
I'm not saying that I won't aim to develop a large-scale daytrip program for a mainstream population. Just that this "mass-market" approach shouldn't be my point of entry into this business. I think. Today.
I would say that $50 in sales, per person, is quite low for people who've elected to go on a special shopping daytrip. (And I'll bet that 20% of the riders spent 80% of the $2500.)
I think that it's not really my objective to get casual book-buyers to bop from bookstore to bookstore just observing these quaint stores, without most of these customers actually seriously buying many books.
And I definitely don't want to have non-book-buying people buying my bus-tickets just because it gives them an excuse for a fun daytrip to Greenwich Village -- people who don't intend to really visit the bookstores!
I would think that two-day or multi-day programs would sort more effectively for heavy book-buyers, and would tend to reduce casual ridership.
Similarly, the most coveted customers for any bookstore are those who are willing and able to spend some serious money. This would also tend to argue for longer BiblioExpeditions programs -- which would be more expensive for the customers. That is: people who can afford to buy a higher-priced ticket for this special trip -- which would include an overnight at a Country Inn in Vermont or at the Library Hotel in NYC, plus a couple of nice meals -- are people who can afford to spend much more than $50 on books during such a special trip
Whereas the inexpensive daytrip ticket seems to cater specifically to people who regard $100 as a large amount of money for the bus-ticket, yielding a bus-ful of people who think $50 is a lot to spend on books in one day.
All of which leads me to think that I want to START this company with programs that cost several hundred dollars per ticket.
The bus then becomes not one of those 50-seaters, but rather the more posh 27-seater. The imagined riders become not your mainstream book-lover types, but rather, very serious book-buyers, collectors -- fanatics, even.
The activities en route, the extra stops, then are associated with this type of clientele (perhaps rare book dealers do presentations).
This strategy would mean better sales for the target bookstores, and would make my task the selling of a smaller number of more expensive program-tickets. (College alumni associations seem to be possible target markets??)
I'm not saying that I won't aim to develop a large-scale daytrip program for a mainstream population. Just that this "mass-market" approach shouldn't be my point of entry into this business. I think. Today.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Great Bookstores Tour
Another realization from my conversation yesterday with Jessica Stockton was that I'm really going to have to develop two-day (Weekend Getaway) and even multi-day tour products. For instance, it would be great to be able to offer to people around Boston a product that goes 1) To New York, then 2) Onward to D.C., then 3) Back to Philadelphia, then 4) To Vermont (Northshire Bookstore), then 5) Back to Boston.
Or, for people from New York: 1) To Boston, 2) To Vermont, 3) To Philly, 4) To D.C., 5) Back to N.Y.
And, other products like this, with stops along the way at rural used bookstores or major (seasonal) library used-book sales.
A kind of Pilgrim's Progress (or Bookstore Crawl).
Offering the leading bookstores of the East Coast in a single tour, in other words, as Headliners.
Or, for people from New York: 1) To Boston, 2) To Vermont, 3) To Philly, 4) To D.C., 5) Back to N.Y.
And, other products like this, with stops along the way at rural used bookstores or major (seasonal) library used-book sales.
A kind of Pilgrim's Progress (or Bookstore Crawl).
Offering the leading bookstores of the East Coast in a single tour, in other words, as Headliners.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Writers Groups & Book Clubs
I had a great brainstorming session by phone with Jessica Stockton of McNally-Robinson Bookstore in NYC. My big realization was that I can market these tours directly to Writers Groups and Book Clubs.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Dorks and Nerds: Is There A Quorum?
As I continue trying to understand the positioning of the "vacation product" I'm creating -- and futilely browse the internet looking for references and listings -- I am finding practically nothing. Really -- it's quite stunning how little evidence there is, aside from the Bookstore-Tourism stuff that has spun off of Larry Portzline's efforts -- the various indie bookstore association trips -- how little evidence there is that anyone is traveling out of his or her way to a bookstore. Funniest is using the various Travel Search Engines. Sites like Yahoo!Travel can come up with matches for the word "bookstore" but there's certainly no sign of anybody's trips centering on such a thing. Fascinating. I think. Also scary. I mean, I'm the kind of guy who pulls the Yellow Pages out of the little bedside table in any hotel in any unfamiliar city and flips to "Bookstores" pretty much before doing anything else. Am I truly the only person who thinks that a town's bookstores are about the most significant thing there? (Did you say yes? Liar!)
I did come across this comment, written in response to one of Jessica Stockton's posts about a recent Greenwich Village Bookstore Tour that had visited her store, McNally Robinson.
"Gursky said...
Why is it that the idea of the bookstore tour sounded so exciting, but then actually seeing it happen sort of embarrassed me? Is embarrassment so easily multiplied that I can handle my own small doses of enthusiasm, but to have others' filling the air round me like so much bad perfume just makes it harder to breathe? Genre get-togethers have the same effect on me. Yes, let us be dorks and quote scripture in our dyads and trios, but please don't subject me to a room (or bus) of my terrifyingly nerdy doppelgangers. Maybe it's all just down to my fear of being "that guy". If there are few enough of us, I can pick out enough detail to convince myself that indeed, I am not this guy standing right here. But a whole indistinct mass of Dork is another thing entirely. Perhaps if I really weren't that guy it wouldn't be so frightening."
(http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2006/12/link-mad-monday-plus-book-reviews.html)
Now -- I ask you -- doesn't this sound like EXACTLY the kind of wonderfully funny self-deprecating person it would indeed be great to spend the day just hobnobbing around town going to bookstores with?
Come on. There have got to be enough of us to make a company like this work. Yahoo!Travel be damned. We do exist. (I sure hope so anyhow.)
I did come across this comment, written in response to one of Jessica Stockton's posts about a recent Greenwich Village Bookstore Tour that had visited her store, McNally Robinson.
"Gursky said...
Why is it that the idea of the bookstore tour sounded so exciting, but then actually seeing it happen sort of embarrassed me? Is embarrassment so easily multiplied that I can handle my own small doses of enthusiasm, but to have others' filling the air round me like so much bad perfume just makes it harder to breathe? Genre get-togethers have the same effect on me. Yes, let us be dorks and quote scripture in our dyads and trios, but please don't subject me to a room (or bus) of my terrifyingly nerdy doppelgangers. Maybe it's all just down to my fear of being "that guy". If there are few enough of us, I can pick out enough detail to convince myself that indeed, I am not this guy standing right here. But a whole indistinct mass of Dork is another thing entirely. Perhaps if I really weren't that guy it wouldn't be so frightening."
(http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2006/12/link-mad-monday-plus-book-reviews.html)
Now -- I ask you -- doesn't this sound like EXACTLY the kind of wonderfully funny self-deprecating person it would indeed be great to spend the day just hobnobbing around town going to bookstores with?
Come on. There have got to be enough of us to make a company like this work. Yahoo!Travel be damned. We do exist. (I sure hope so anyhow.)
Co-Branding with Sponsor Bookstores
A few days ago Carla Cohen of Politics & Prose, in D.C., told me that she thought this is a great idea and that P&P would be happy to participate. As I noted here about a week ago, Carla actually has led literary travel expeditions with her customers.
In light of my most recent post, in which I talk about using an ongoing email campaign to promote specific upcoming tours, it strikes me that, gosh, who do I know that has a good email list of potential riders? Who but the various bookstores themselves. In particular -- the ORIGINATING bookstores, not the target bookstores.
So -- for instance, if I create a fun one-day, three-day or five-day vacation to Western Massachusetts book-museums and bookstores and authors'-houses -- then it's a store like The Strand which has the email list I want to get access to. But -- this is a pretty valuable list! So, ideally, I'd be encouraging stores in places from which tours depart to become Tour Sponsors. Perhaps the name BiblioExpeditions is completely concealed from the public, even: the tour is completely branded with the identity of the Originating Bookstore (e.g. The Strand). Or -- the Originating Group Of Bookstores (e.g. Greenwich Village Bookstore Organization)
And, when I'm selling tours of Greenwich Village bookstores to people living up here in Western Massachusetts, ideally I would be marketing these tours utilizing email lists owned by bookstores and book-institutions around here. The NYC tours could be branded with the names of one or more of these local stores/museums.
"Sponsorship" by a bookstore or book-museum could include revenue sharing, at the least, with BiblioExpeditions. Principally of course it would function as a signal to customers that the bookstore is a company that is providing additional services to readers, though. That is, a tour would function as a tool binding customers more closely to the originating bookstore.
In light of my most recent post, in which I talk about using an ongoing email campaign to promote specific upcoming tours, it strikes me that, gosh, who do I know that has a good email list of potential riders? Who but the various bookstores themselves. In particular -- the ORIGINATING bookstores, not the target bookstores.
So -- for instance, if I create a fun one-day, three-day or five-day vacation to Western Massachusetts book-museums and bookstores and authors'-houses -- then it's a store like The Strand which has the email list I want to get access to. But -- this is a pretty valuable list! So, ideally, I'd be encouraging stores in places from which tours depart to become Tour Sponsors. Perhaps the name BiblioExpeditions is completely concealed from the public, even: the tour is completely branded with the identity of the Originating Bookstore (e.g. The Strand). Or -- the Originating Group Of Bookstores (e.g. Greenwich Village Bookstore Organization)
And, when I'm selling tours of Greenwich Village bookstores to people living up here in Western Massachusetts, ideally I would be marketing these tours utilizing email lists owned by bookstores and book-institutions around here. The NYC tours could be branded with the names of one or more of these local stores/museums.
"Sponsorship" by a bookstore or book-museum could include revenue sharing, at the least, with BiblioExpeditions. Principally of course it would function as a signal to customers that the bookstore is a company that is providing additional services to readers, though. That is, a tour would function as a tool binding customers more closely to the originating bookstore.
Fitting BiblioExpeditions In
BiblioExpeditions is my seventh business launch. Strangely, several of the previous ones currently are operating too, with varying levels of ongoing control by me. Most of my time goes into my current job, the shop at Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, which I moved to Amherst to put together back in September of 2002. (www.picturebookart.org/shop) I spend a bit of time and some money maintaining the sales rate of my book, "Rebel Bookseller", by running a Google Adwords campaign and keeping a website for it (www.rebelbookseller.com). I'm pretty passive with helping Sander Hicks run the Brooklyn coffeeshop/performance-space/bookstore Vox Pop (www.voxpopnet.net) -- although we're hoping to land investment to open some other Vox Pop outlets, and, I'll get much more active in running the company when that happens.
Most amazingly for me, the Year-2000 startup, PovertyFighters, is still operating. Last Fall, I gave the website away to the Brandeis University students who have for five years been supervising the annual Oxfam Collegiate Click-Drive (which is hosted on PovertyFighters). The Brandeis students completely reprogrammed the site, and moved it onto the college's servers. And there it is, seven years after the website was founded, still raising money for very poor women in Asia, Africa and Latin America to open small businesses. A few days ago, another click-drive got going -- it runs until late March. Go there, register any college to participate, and start clicking on behalf of that college: see if your college can be the one whose students generate the most funds! (www.povertyfighters.com)
Which brings me to the new business. BiblioExpeditions is the sort of company that should be able to grow and change and be very flexible. It can be busy seasonally, or regionally -- and it can shut down for the Winter in the North, or for the Summer in the collegetowns. I should be able to operate it alongside my other activity.
Part of its flexibility will be related to its web-presence. As with the other companies, it will be visible and functional in large part because it is always live on the internet. I want to generate a lot of stories from these bookstore tours, to make photos, record podcasts and videos -- so that each tour becomes a sort of marketing tool for use in selling the next one.
I think that this time, also, instead of relying exclusively on a Google Adwords campaign (though I'll use one of those too), I'm going to utilize the more pro-active web-based email marketing mechanism that the American Booksellers Association has been promoting to its membership: a company called Constant Contact. Here's a story from their website about a Tour Operator who uses this system.
Regular email newsletters promoting upcoming tours will -- if they're newsy and entertaining -- be a more efficient way of selling these tickets than just using publicity campaigns or putting brochures in partner bookstores. I think.
Most amazingly for me, the Year-2000 startup, PovertyFighters, is still operating. Last Fall, I gave the website away to the Brandeis University students who have for five years been supervising the annual Oxfam Collegiate Click-Drive (which is hosted on PovertyFighters). The Brandeis students completely reprogrammed the site, and moved it onto the college's servers. And there it is, seven years after the website was founded, still raising money for very poor women in Asia, Africa and Latin America to open small businesses. A few days ago, another click-drive got going -- it runs until late March. Go there, register any college to participate, and start clicking on behalf of that college: see if your college can be the one whose students generate the most funds! (www.povertyfighters.com)
Which brings me to the new business. BiblioExpeditions is the sort of company that should be able to grow and change and be very flexible. It can be busy seasonally, or regionally -- and it can shut down for the Winter in the North, or for the Summer in the collegetowns. I should be able to operate it alongside my other activity.
Part of its flexibility will be related to its web-presence. As with the other companies, it will be visible and functional in large part because it is always live on the internet. I want to generate a lot of stories from these bookstore tours, to make photos, record podcasts and videos -- so that each tour becomes a sort of marketing tool for use in selling the next one.
I think that this time, also, instead of relying exclusively on a Google Adwords campaign (though I'll use one of those too), I'm going to utilize the more pro-active web-based email marketing mechanism that the American Booksellers Association has been promoting to its membership: a company called Constant Contact. Here's a story from their website about a Tour Operator who uses this system.
Regular email newsletters promoting upcoming tours will -- if they're newsy and entertaining -- be a more efficient way of selling these tickets than just using publicity campaigns or putting brochures in partner bookstores. I think.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Building the BiblioExpeditions Website, Systems, and Staff
I'm happy to discover that there are hosting sites for tourbus-operators, providing pre-built web functionality. For instance: http://tbs.distinctive-systems.com/tbsus/ (You can customize the website to match your company's services and offerings.)
Also, there's a large marketplace for vehicle-dispatching software -- apparently primarily aimed at the trucking business but clearly adaptable to my needs.
One of the advantages of conducting research into these software packages is that I'm learning about the niggling details of what issues bedevil this kind of company. I think if I hadn't spent five years running The Children's Bookfair Company, in Chicago, that I might be a bit daunted. But we were renting vans and trucks and working sometimes ten school accounts simultaneously, all around the region. It was hectic, but definitely I have a feel for what it's like to be in lots of places simultaneously. In truth it all boils down to people. If you can get great staff, then all problems are being dealt with collaboratively by very smart, engaged, committed people.
So this is the key task. Developing a staffing strategy that -- as in bookselling -- taps a pool of overeducated problem-solver types. The trick may be simply to piggyback on the bookstores themselves. I wonder if I could base my hiring on the employment pools that are currently centered around the various bookstores I'll be working with. Booksellers doing in-town guiding, on-bus facilitating... And, ultimately, when I begin to acquire some vehicles, doing van- and bus-driving.
It would be great to have working booksellers operating BiblioExpeditions.
Also, there's a large marketplace for vehicle-dispatching software -- apparently primarily aimed at the trucking business but clearly adaptable to my needs.
One of the advantages of conducting research into these software packages is that I'm learning about the niggling details of what issues bedevil this kind of company. I think if I hadn't spent five years running The Children's Bookfair Company, in Chicago, that I might be a bit daunted. But we were renting vans and trucks and working sometimes ten school accounts simultaneously, all around the region. It was hectic, but definitely I have a feel for what it's like to be in lots of places simultaneously. In truth it all boils down to people. If you can get great staff, then all problems are being dealt with collaboratively by very smart, engaged, committed people.
So this is the key task. Developing a staffing strategy that -- as in bookselling -- taps a pool of overeducated problem-solver types. The trick may be simply to piggyback on the bookstores themselves. I wonder if I could base my hiring on the employment pools that are currently centered around the various bookstores I'll be working with. Booksellers doing in-town guiding, on-bus facilitating... And, ultimately, when I begin to acquire some vehicles, doing van- and bus-driving.
It would be great to have working booksellers operating BiblioExpeditions.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Positioning: Contiuing Ed?? Booking Agency??
In rapid response to my previous post (originally posted on Pub-Forum.net) I've received an email from Tordis Isselhardt, a mover/shaker with Independent Publishers of New England. Tordis updated me on IPNE's growth and ambitions, and I would say that BiblioExpeditions should certainly be able to take advantage of the existing indie publisher networks to generate a slew of public relations mechanisms.
For instance: consider Learning Annex. Why couldn't a similar, FEE-BASED Continuing Education function that relied heavily on independent publishers for programming be enacted in indie bookstores throughout the Northeast? The program fees would go toward book purchases. That is: a big disincentive for indie bookstores when it comes to booking unknown authors is the belief that not enough books will sell, because not enough customers will attend. But if these events were configured as Classes, with up-front fees -- the problem is solved. All that's needed is to sell tickets up front, and all the risk is alleviated, for both publisher and bookseller. Now, since customers are not USED to paying to attend book-events, the solution is to have a Third Party producer.
BiblioExpeditions could produce a seasonal catalog of "course offerings" to be held at bookstores thoughout the Northeast (and, on buses traveling between those stores). The catalog could be disseminated by the partnering bookstores (and other places, too). The "course fees" would include 1) Admittance, 2) One Book, 3) Refreshments (?), and, 4) optionally, Transportation intracity or intercity to the Course. Also, 5) Overnight Lodging. Heck, 6) Literary Walking Tour add-on...
Gotta go and open my store...
For instance: consider Learning Annex. Why couldn't a similar, FEE-BASED Continuing Education function that relied heavily on independent publishers for programming be enacted in indie bookstores throughout the Northeast? The program fees would go toward book purchases. That is: a big disincentive for indie bookstores when it comes to booking unknown authors is the belief that not enough books will sell, because not enough customers will attend. But if these events were configured as Classes, with up-front fees -- the problem is solved. All that's needed is to sell tickets up front, and all the risk is alleviated, for both publisher and bookseller. Now, since customers are not USED to paying to attend book-events, the solution is to have a Third Party producer.
BiblioExpeditions could produce a seasonal catalog of "course offerings" to be held at bookstores thoughout the Northeast (and, on buses traveling between those stores). The catalog could be disseminated by the partnering bookstores (and other places, too). The "course fees" would include 1) Admittance, 2) One Book, 3) Refreshments (?), and, 4) optionally, Transportation intracity or intercity to the Course. Also, 5) Overnight Lodging. Heck, 6) Literary Walking Tour add-on...
Gotta go and open my store...
Friday, February 9, 2007
Integrating The Indie Press Into BiblioExpeditions' Marketing Campaign
For about a year I participated actively on the Pub-Forum.net listserv, a freewheeling discussion among independent publishers. Nicholas Weir-Williams noticed the write-up of BiblioExpeditions on the Shelf-Awareness e-newsletter this week, and cross-posted it on Pub-Forum -- bringing my attention back to a question that first came up when I started participating on Pub-Forum. Which is: Why is it that independent bookstores don't do a good job of supporting independent publishers? Why is it so hard for indie publishers to get their books into indie bookstores?
Tonight I wrote this post, on Pub-Forum. I think that it sounds a bit grandiose -- but also, given that this problem is barely being addressed, it might just have some truth to it. I hope so anyway.
Hello all,
Apologies for not paying attention to P-F for the past couple of months. Thanks to Nick for posting that article about the launch of my new company, which launch you can track on the blog: www.biblioexpeditions.com.
I believe I've got a key structural concept figured out, which is that I'll be running what is essentially an intercity shuttlebus among the biggest indie bookstores on the East Coast. I want to run literary events on the buses, and in these desitination/host stores, and, especially, in smaller stores reachable from those biggest indies. That is: the big indies will be serving as hubs from which reader-riders will branch out to visit smaller stores. And I want to help ensure this fanning-out of readers via literary programming at the smaller, target bookstores.
This implies the possibility for a centralized programming mechanism for author events that encompasses access to quite a few bookstores -- as well as many buses with presentation opportunities. How best to integrate small presses into this picture, or, better, FOCUS on small press and indie presses. I would like this to be the long awaited moment when indie publishing and indie bookselling become congruent in the readers' minds.
Andy Laties
Tonight I wrote this post, on Pub-Forum. I think that it sounds a bit grandiose -- but also, given that this problem is barely being addressed, it might just have some truth to it. I hope so anyway.
Hello all,
Apologies for not paying attention to P-F for the past couple of months. Thanks to Nick for posting that article about the launch of my new company, which launch you can track on the blog: www.biblioexpeditions.com.
I believe I've got a key structural concept figured out, which is that I'll be running what is essentially an intercity shuttlebus among the biggest indie bookstores on the East Coast. I want to run literary events on the buses, and in these desitination/host stores, and, especially, in smaller stores reachable from those biggest indies. That is: the big indies will be serving as hubs from which reader-riders will branch out to visit smaller stores. And I want to help ensure this fanning-out of readers via literary programming at the smaller, target bookstores.
This implies the possibility for a centralized programming mechanism for author events that encompasses access to quite a few bookstores -- as well as many buses with presentation opportunities. How best to integrate small presses into this picture, or, better, FOCUS on small press and indie presses. I would like this to be the long awaited moment when indie publishing and indie bookselling become congruent in the readers' minds.
Andy Laties
Northeast Triangle Tour
Fantasizing about a shuttlebus that works the cities of the Megalopolis. (Bibliomegalopolis? Megabibliopolis?) Boston/NYC/Philly/D.C.
Then: each such hub has smaller-town spokes, which themselves triangulate.
So -- a Boston/NYC shuttle has extra vertices at Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vermont, and also in Amherst/Northampton, MA (which has multiple indies).
You can take off from New York for a restful day at Northshire, in rural Vermont, in the morning, and in the evening you move on to Harvard Bookstore, in Cambridge. Or -- stay overnight in Vermont, and...any direction you please the next day.
People could pick and choose, create their own routes...with all the transport hours somehow involving literary themes (bookclub discussions and poetry readings en route, etc.).
This will work if there are enough reader/riders to justify frequent shuttlebuses and limos (I want to do twice daily at least, to/from all major bookstore participants).
I think there will be enough such customers, if I can come up a really innovative P.R. campaign. It's all about the STORY.
Then: each such hub has smaller-town spokes, which themselves triangulate.
So -- a Boston/NYC shuttle has extra vertices at Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vermont, and also in Amherst/Northampton, MA (which has multiple indies).
You can take off from New York for a restful day at Northshire, in rural Vermont, in the morning, and in the evening you move on to Harvard Bookstore, in Cambridge. Or -- stay overnight in Vermont, and...any direction you please the next day.
People could pick and choose, create their own routes...with all the transport hours somehow involving literary themes (bookclub discussions and poetry readings en route, etc.).
This will work if there are enough reader/riders to justify frequent shuttlebuses and limos (I want to do twice daily at least, to/from all major bookstore participants).
I think there will be enough such customers, if I can come up a really innovative P.R. campaign. It's all about the STORY.
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Owners and Managers Guiding Their Customers
I'm thinking about using smaller vehicles -- 10-seater limo/vans for instance. Perhaps a bookstore that's acting as a point of origin for a tour could sell 9 seats to customers. The 10th seat would be the store owner or manager. This bookseller from home would then be accompanying their customers on the tour. Using these smaller vehicles would add a lot more flexibility to scheduling. And it would heighten the identification of customers with the specific store that sold the ticket.
Whereas if I stick to using luxury motorcoaches with 50 seats, I'd inevitably be pulling regular customers from a larger number of different favorite indie stores, and so no given originating store would strongly get the "credit" for the bookstore tour in the customer's mind.
That is: bookstore tours can be strongly felt by customers to be a fine product that's offered by a specific store.
Thus, Eric Carle Museum Store customers are likely to want to buy a ticket with me leading a trip to children's bookstores in New York. I'd lead them on a customized trip. Meanwhile, Books Of Wonder customers are likely to want to buy a ticket from New York City with Peter Glassman leading a trip to visit Eric Carle Museum in Amherst -- I'd work with Peter to design a customized trip for his customers.
I think it can be a great marketing device for a specific store to put their own best customers on tour, and for the owner or manager to go along as a guide, with those customers, to destination bookstores or literary landmarks. I know that Carla Cohen has done this, out of Politics & Prose, in D.C.; and Scott Merritt has done it from his store -- Merritt Bookstore -- in Red Hook, New York.
Whereas if I stick to using luxury motorcoaches with 50 seats, I'd inevitably be pulling regular customers from a larger number of different favorite indie stores, and so no given originating store would strongly get the "credit" for the bookstore tour in the customer's mind.
That is: bookstore tours can be strongly felt by customers to be a fine product that's offered by a specific store.
Thus, Eric Carle Museum Store customers are likely to want to buy a ticket with me leading a trip to children's bookstores in New York. I'd lead them on a customized trip. Meanwhile, Books Of Wonder customers are likely to want to buy a ticket from New York City with Peter Glassman leading a trip to visit Eric Carle Museum in Amherst -- I'd work with Peter to design a customized trip for his customers.
I think it can be a great marketing device for a specific store to put their own best customers on tour, and for the owner or manager to go along as a guide, with those customers, to destination bookstores or literary landmarks. I know that Carla Cohen has done this, out of Politics & Prose, in D.C.; and Scott Merritt has done it from his store -- Merritt Bookstore -- in Red Hook, New York.
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
"We'll go to Greenwich, where modern men itch to be free..."
I love that Gershwin tune.
Today I met with Nancy Bass at The Strand, which is celebrating its 80th Anniversary year. Wow. Founded 1927 and stronger than ever. What an inspiring independent bookstore. Her dad Fred Bass at age 78 was standing at the front counter buying used books from walk-in customers. I tell ya, this gig is going to be so much fun for me. I now have an excuse for visiting dozens and dozens and dozens of fabulous bookstores. I cannot believe my luck at having stumbled into this project.
Nancy had lots of ideas for ways to make these trips literary and rich and fun -- walking tours, overnight at the Library Hotel, lunch at the Morgan Library, tour of New York Public Library, special events at Strand specially for the riders...
I'm thinking of creating three different tiers of tour -- an Inexpensive, a Moderate, and a Fancy plan -- sort of...
I also spoke with Peter Glassman, owner of the outstanding children's store Books Of Wonder. He had his own great ideas for extensions of the visits -- and he pointed out that for author events, I could pre-sell books to the riders, at the time of their bus-ticket buying, so he could know about how many books to purchase and be sure not to run out.
Both Nancy and Peter are quite high on the idea of many more bookstore tours coming their ways, and I was delighted that each of them said they would be happy to be involved in helping sell tickets for bookstore tours from New York up to Amherst/Northampton. I asked them this because as I mentioned in a previous post, I see this sort of customer-swap as a way to solve the biggest problem I'll face, which is simply finding the customers for these bookstore tours.
Also today I got some great help from e-Booksense and from Shelf-Awareness, two industry newsletters that promoted this start-up. Industry support will be critical, and it looks like a lot of people are enthusiastic about seeing Larry Portzline's bookstore tourism ideas enacted on a broad scale. So -- I'm very hopeful and grateful.
Today I met with Nancy Bass at The Strand, which is celebrating its 80th Anniversary year. Wow. Founded 1927 and stronger than ever. What an inspiring independent bookstore. Her dad Fred Bass at age 78 was standing at the front counter buying used books from walk-in customers. I tell ya, this gig is going to be so much fun for me. I now have an excuse for visiting dozens and dozens and dozens of fabulous bookstores. I cannot believe my luck at having stumbled into this project.
Nancy had lots of ideas for ways to make these trips literary and rich and fun -- walking tours, overnight at the Library Hotel, lunch at the Morgan Library, tour of New York Public Library, special events at Strand specially for the riders...
I'm thinking of creating three different tiers of tour -- an Inexpensive, a Moderate, and a Fancy plan -- sort of...
I also spoke with Peter Glassman, owner of the outstanding children's store Books Of Wonder. He had his own great ideas for extensions of the visits -- and he pointed out that for author events, I could pre-sell books to the riders, at the time of their bus-ticket buying, so he could know about how many books to purchase and be sure not to run out.
Both Nancy and Peter are quite high on the idea of many more bookstore tours coming their ways, and I was delighted that each of them said they would be happy to be involved in helping sell tickets for bookstore tours from New York up to Amherst/Northampton. I asked them this because as I mentioned in a previous post, I see this sort of customer-swap as a way to solve the biggest problem I'll face, which is simply finding the customers for these bookstore tours.
Also today I got some great help from e-Booksense and from Shelf-Awareness, two industry newsletters that promoted this start-up. Industry support will be critical, and it looks like a lot of people are enthusiastic about seeing Larry Portzline's bookstore tourism ideas enacted on a broad scale. So -- I'm very hopeful and grateful.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Trading Places
One concern for any bookstore that acts as a point of departure for a bookstore tour is that the customers being sent away to shop elsewhere will therefore be spending LESS than they WOULD HAVE at their friendly hometown bookstore! Therefore, I wonder if it could be possible to engage in customer swaps. That is -- originate a series of bookstore tours from a region with several indie bookstores, and send their customers to a different region that also has several indie bookstores. And: vice versa. Each town sends its customers to the other town on the bus, for fun.
I'm puzzling over whether this could work with New York City and Amherst, Mass. Here in Amherst we have quite a few fine indie bookstores, as well as Emily Dickinson House, Eric Carle Museum and the National Yiddish Book Center. Across the river in Northampton there are several more indie bookstores. Perhaps the NYC bookstores to which Pioneer Valley (Country Mouse) riders go would themselves be willing to engage in a quid pro quo. Those NYC bookstores could sell tickets for bustrips taking their City Mouse customers out to us here in the country...??
I'm puzzling over whether this could work with New York City and Amherst, Mass. Here in Amherst we have quite a few fine indie bookstores, as well as Emily Dickinson House, Eric Carle Museum and the National Yiddish Book Center. Across the river in Northampton there are several more indie bookstores. Perhaps the NYC bookstores to which Pioneer Valley (Country Mouse) riders go would themselves be willing to engage in a quid pro quo. Those NYC bookstores could sell tickets for bustrips taking their City Mouse customers out to us here in the country...??
Monday, February 5, 2007
Departures and Arrivals
Well in just the last couple of days I've had conversations with three bookstores that want to be destinations for BiblioExpeditions, and two bookstores that want to be points of departure: sending their customers off to visit other stores. This is exciting.
The point-of-departure criteria are key, right now. I need to understand the market for bookstore-tour riders. The easiest and most fruitful approach at this moment may not be libraries and Friends of Libraries groups, as I'd first thought. It may be universities. I may find much higher concentrations of people who buy books there. After all, library-advocates operate in a world where books are free, or nearly free. You borrow them, or, you buy and sell them for VERY cheap prices at annual used-book sales that raise funds for library operation. But at universities, and in collegetowns, the buying of trade books at mainstream prices is a huge fact of life, and everyone is writing, too. Publish or perish. These are bookstore customers.
So I'm going to be looking at universities and colleges as initial points of departure, for, initially, Greenwich Village bookstore tours -- in particular, colleges in Connecticut and Massachusetts, since I currently live in Amherst, MA (I run the store at Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, which is on the campus of Hampshire College). I think I may be able to run the first of these within two months -- I'll try to run one every Saturday, to begin with, from a rotating set of departure points.
Depending on demand, and on what I learn from riders, I'll either proceed to develop more, different tours, to different destinations, or I'll increase the number of departures for the Village, or, I'll add more points of departure.
This week I'll be talking with Nancy Bass, owner of The Strand, in NYC, to discuss her ideas about how to make these trips to the Village as interesting and attractive as possible.
The point-of-departure criteria are key, right now. I need to understand the market for bookstore-tour riders. The easiest and most fruitful approach at this moment may not be libraries and Friends of Libraries groups, as I'd first thought. It may be universities. I may find much higher concentrations of people who buy books there. After all, library-advocates operate in a world where books are free, or nearly free. You borrow them, or, you buy and sell them for VERY cheap prices at annual used-book sales that raise funds for library operation. But at universities, and in collegetowns, the buying of trade books at mainstream prices is a huge fact of life, and everyone is writing, too. Publish or perish. These are bookstore customers.
So I'm going to be looking at universities and colleges as initial points of departure, for, initially, Greenwich Village bookstore tours -- in particular, colleges in Connecticut and Massachusetts, since I currently live in Amherst, MA (I run the store at Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, which is on the campus of Hampshire College). I think I may be able to run the first of these within two months -- I'll try to run one every Saturday, to begin with, from a rotating set of departure points.
Depending on demand, and on what I learn from riders, I'll either proceed to develop more, different tours, to different destinations, or I'll increase the number of departures for the Village, or, I'll add more points of departure.
This week I'll be talking with Nancy Bass, owner of The Strand, in NYC, to discuss her ideas about how to make these trips to the Village as interesting and attractive as possible.
Saturday, February 3, 2007
Working together
Over the past week I've had a number of email conversations with booksellers who are either interested in making their bookstores a focal element in a bookstore tour program, or in offering a program that sends their customers on tour to visit other stores. I think that the key message to customers may always be to somehow combine these two ideas: to ensure that whenever booklovers take such a bookstore-centered vacation or daytrip that they feel there are independent booksellers working together to both send them off and to receive them warmly. That booklovers feel cared for by independent booksellers working in teams.
Also, as I've tried to wrap my mind around the Bookstore Tourism ideas as a for-profit model, I keep coming back to the commercial concept that Tourism is a gigantic, and very robustly expanding industry, whereas sales at bookstores have been barely holding steady for the past couple of years, and even seem to have slightly declined this past year. This appears to be proof that bookstores are not now viewed as tourist destinations! But I do not think there is any meaning to this except that the people who run the tourism industry are by and large not book people. I think that the fact that Literary Travel as a genre of holiday-making goes back at least as far as Herodotus -- and the existence of plenty of Authors' House-Museums and Literary Walking Tours of this city or that -- proves that people who travel are often book lovers. It's the people who run the tourist industry who are missing the boat so far, not providing a sufficient variety of energetically marketed, sophisticated literary travel-packages for what is in fact a very large potential market segment of travelers.
So bookstore tourism -- constructed in a manner that earns money BOTH through bookstore-owners sharing fees with tour operators like BiblioExpeditions AND directly through bookstore book sales to the traveling booklovers -- could tap into a large nascent tourist market segment, and have a substantial impact on the financial viability of the bookstores that participate both on the sending end (marketing to customers, suggesting they go on a tour together) and the receiving end (inviting groups to come visit).
And this will be my aim with BiblioExpeditions. To have a measurable financial impact on the viability and business success of any bookstore I assist in developing this aspect of their action in the marketplace.
If we booksellers have a hard time making a profit by selling books, we've all learned that at least we can make more profit selling sidelines. But what about the possibility of making more profit taking a cut of a tour-operator's bus-ticket fee, when a tourbus brings a customer through our doors as part of an entertaining daytrip outing that includes perhaps a morning at one bookstore, a lunch at an Authors'-House Museum cafe, and a dinner in a neighboring town where there's another bookstore or two?
It should help us all to have a foot in the Tourism Market.
Also, as I've tried to wrap my mind around the Bookstore Tourism ideas as a for-profit model, I keep coming back to the commercial concept that Tourism is a gigantic, and very robustly expanding industry, whereas sales at bookstores have been barely holding steady for the past couple of years, and even seem to have slightly declined this past year. This appears to be proof that bookstores are not now viewed as tourist destinations! But I do not think there is any meaning to this except that the people who run the tourism industry are by and large not book people. I think that the fact that Literary Travel as a genre of holiday-making goes back at least as far as Herodotus -- and the existence of plenty of Authors' House-Museums and Literary Walking Tours of this city or that -- proves that people who travel are often book lovers. It's the people who run the tourist industry who are missing the boat so far, not providing a sufficient variety of energetically marketed, sophisticated literary travel-packages for what is in fact a very large potential market segment of travelers.
So bookstore tourism -- constructed in a manner that earns money BOTH through bookstore-owners sharing fees with tour operators like BiblioExpeditions AND directly through bookstore book sales to the traveling booklovers -- could tap into a large nascent tourist market segment, and have a substantial impact on the financial viability of the bookstores that participate both on the sending end (marketing to customers, suggesting they go on a tour together) and the receiving end (inviting groups to come visit).
And this will be my aim with BiblioExpeditions. To have a measurable financial impact on the viability and business success of any bookstore I assist in developing this aspect of their action in the marketplace.
If we booksellers have a hard time making a profit by selling books, we've all learned that at least we can make more profit selling sidelines. But what about the possibility of making more profit taking a cut of a tour-operator's bus-ticket fee, when a tourbus brings a customer through our doors as part of an entertaining daytrip outing that includes perhaps a morning at one bookstore, a lunch at an Authors'-House Museum cafe, and a dinner in a neighboring town where there's another bookstore or two?
It should help us all to have a foot in the Tourism Market.
Bookstore Tourism: Is There Anything To This Idea?
About two years ago I started following the work of Larry Portzline, author of the book "Bookstore Tourism". The guy was convincing booklovers to get on tourbuses -- he'd escort them to great bookstores for a day of recreational bookhunting. Not only was he dragging customers to bookstores; he was doing his best to convince the movers and shakers in the bookselling, publishing and library fields that they ought to be getting with his program. He created a complex website, www.bookstoretourism.com, and put together a killer Board for a nascent organization called The National Council For Bookstore Tourism.
What a guy! I had a couple of email exchanges with him -- but of course I was busy and couldn't really think too hard about what he was up to.
But about a month ago I got caught up in a conversation on Jessica Stockton's blog, Written Nerd -- here on Blogger (http://writtennerd.blogspot.com) -- and I said the only really exciting new way for bookstores to be roped into working together was Larry's idea of busing customers along on a tour of a group of stores. And Jessica called me on it, in public, asking when Larry and I were going to stop talking and start doing something more serious.
Well Larry seems to be all about his National Council -- he wants to get other people running Bookstore Tourism companies. So -- I'm going to try to lauch what I'm calling The First real for-profit such. It will be called BiblioExpeditions (thanks to Heidi Stemple for helping develop this name). I'm going to start with a product that exactly copies the Greenwich Village Bookstore Tours which Larry developed in 2003 for bringing booklovers from Harrisburg, PA into NYC for the day. I'm going to aim to run 100 of these per year, from sites in a three-hour driving radius of New York. I must be crazy. Yes.
Here (below) is the business overview I cooked up last week. As you'll see I've built in my favorite themes of corporate sponsorship and financial kickbacks and incentives for all. Please feel free to lob jeers and insults (or constructive comments!) my way -- and, if you feel like investing in the business, I'll accept cash, credit cards, gold -- it's all good.
Your Crazed Colleague,
Andy
BIBLIOEXPEDITIONS
OVERVIEW AND MISSION BiblioExpeditions is the nation's first “Bookstore Tourism” company. A Massachusetts-based for-profit corporation, BiblioExpeditions aims to mobilize readers to channel funds to libraries and community bookstores by gathering public, corporate, and non-profit organization support to achieve the National Endowment for the Arts' (NEA) “Big Read” mission: “To restore reading to the center of American culture.”
DEMAND AND OPPORTUNITY The landmark NEA report "Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America" (2004) documented a dramatic decline in literary reading among all age groups, ethnic groups, and education levels. BiblioExpeditions, noting that these findings correlate with a sharp decline in the number of bookstores, implements cause-related marketing campaigns that leverage booklovers' tales of journeying to great bookstores in order to create an image-enhancing value proposition for corporate sponsors. Sponsors invest in Calvert Social Investment Foundation “Community Investment Notes” (CINs) that underwrite rotating credit facilities to strengthen our partner bookstores.
STIMULATING INDUSTRY INVOLVEMENT The American Booksellers Association’s stated commitment to promoting bookstore tourism, coupled with BiblioExpeditions’ library fundraising services and publisher product-marketing opportunities, are the tools BiblioExpeditions uses to educate and incent community booksellers and publishers to work together to raise the public profile of recreational bookhunting at independent bookstores, opening new avenues of access to readers, while capturing market share from chainstores and online booksellers.
MOBILIZING SUPPLY Utilizing the Key Initiators Network Strategy of our partner Capital Missions Company, BiblioExpeditions is developing a Community Bookselling Financial Linkage Network composed of corporate executives personally committed to overcoming economic and financial barriers to the growth of community bookselling. These Thought Leaders’ companies will act as BiblioExpeditions’ major sponsors.
PUBLIC SERVICES BiblioExpeditions produces fundraising package tours that escort library patrons to shop at bookstores located within a three-hour driving radius of the host libraries.
MARKETING APPROACH Library outreach campaigns encourage librarians and library volunteers to contemplate roles for themselves in the future resurgence of community bookselling. The National Council on Bookstore Tourism's white-paper publications and seminars at regional and national library conventions will introduce BiblioExpeditions and bookstore tourism to thousands of librarians and Friends of Libraries volunteers each year.
BOOKSTORE PARTNERS BiblioExpeditions will fund the bookstores that serve as our tour destinations. Current partners are New York City's The Strand, McNally Robinson, Books Of Wonder, Housing Works Used Book Cafe, Bluestockings, Vox Pop, Skyline Books, Macondo Books, East-West Books, Lectorum Books, 12th Street Books, Alabaster Bookshop, Partners & Crime, Biography Bookshop, Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks, Three Lives & Company, Oscar Wilde Bookshop, St. Mark's Bookshop, East Village Books, Shakespeare & Company, Mercer Street Books, New York University Book Center and Booksleaves. We will add as many as 30 more bookstores by late 2008, in Boston, Philadelphia and Washington D.C.
What a guy! I had a couple of email exchanges with him -- but of course I was busy and couldn't really think too hard about what he was up to.
But about a month ago I got caught up in a conversation on Jessica Stockton's blog, Written Nerd -- here on Blogger (http://writtennerd.blogspot.com) -- and I said the only really exciting new way for bookstores to be roped into working together was Larry's idea of busing customers along on a tour of a group of stores. And Jessica called me on it, in public, asking when Larry and I were going to stop talking and start doing something more serious.
Well Larry seems to be all about his National Council -- he wants to get other people running Bookstore Tourism companies. So -- I'm going to try to lauch what I'm calling The First real for-profit such. It will be called BiblioExpeditions (thanks to Heidi Stemple for helping develop this name). I'm going to start with a product that exactly copies the Greenwich Village Bookstore Tours which Larry developed in 2003 for bringing booklovers from Harrisburg, PA into NYC for the day. I'm going to aim to run 100 of these per year, from sites in a three-hour driving radius of New York. I must be crazy. Yes.
Here (below) is the business overview I cooked up last week. As you'll see I've built in my favorite themes of corporate sponsorship and financial kickbacks and incentives for all. Please feel free to lob jeers and insults (or constructive comments!) my way -- and, if you feel like investing in the business, I'll accept cash, credit cards, gold -- it's all good.
Your Crazed Colleague,
Andy
BIBLIOEXPEDITIONS
OVERVIEW AND MISSION BiblioExpeditions is the nation's first “Bookstore Tourism” company. A Massachusetts-based for-profit corporation, BiblioExpeditions aims to mobilize readers to channel funds to libraries and community bookstores by gathering public, corporate, and non-profit organization support to achieve the National Endowment for the Arts' (NEA) “Big Read” mission: “To restore reading to the center of American culture.”
DEMAND AND OPPORTUNITY The landmark NEA report "Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America" (2004) documented a dramatic decline in literary reading among all age groups, ethnic groups, and education levels. BiblioExpeditions, noting that these findings correlate with a sharp decline in the number of bookstores, implements cause-related marketing campaigns that leverage booklovers' tales of journeying to great bookstores in order to create an image-enhancing value proposition for corporate sponsors. Sponsors invest in Calvert Social Investment Foundation “Community Investment Notes” (CINs) that underwrite rotating credit facilities to strengthen our partner bookstores.
STIMULATING INDUSTRY INVOLVEMENT The American Booksellers Association’s stated commitment to promoting bookstore tourism, coupled with BiblioExpeditions’ library fundraising services and publisher product-marketing opportunities, are the tools BiblioExpeditions uses to educate and incent community booksellers and publishers to work together to raise the public profile of recreational bookhunting at independent bookstores, opening new avenues of access to readers, while capturing market share from chainstores and online booksellers.
MOBILIZING SUPPLY Utilizing the Key Initiators Network Strategy of our partner Capital Missions Company, BiblioExpeditions is developing a Community Bookselling Financial Linkage Network composed of corporate executives personally committed to overcoming economic and financial barriers to the growth of community bookselling. These Thought Leaders’ companies will act as BiblioExpeditions’ major sponsors.
PUBLIC SERVICES BiblioExpeditions produces fundraising package tours that escort library patrons to shop at bookstores located within a three-hour driving radius of the host libraries.
MARKETING APPROACH Library outreach campaigns encourage librarians and library volunteers to contemplate roles for themselves in the future resurgence of community bookselling. The National Council on Bookstore Tourism's white-paper publications and seminars at regional and national library conventions will introduce BiblioExpeditions and bookstore tourism to thousands of librarians and Friends of Libraries volunteers each year.
BOOKSTORE PARTNERS BiblioExpeditions will fund the bookstores that serve as our tour destinations. Current partners are New York City's The Strand, McNally Robinson, Books Of Wonder, Housing Works Used Book Cafe, Bluestockings, Vox Pop, Skyline Books, Macondo Books, East-West Books, Lectorum Books, 12th Street Books, Alabaster Bookshop, Partners & Crime, Biography Bookshop, Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks, Three Lives & Company, Oscar Wilde Bookshop, St. Mark's Bookshop, East Village Books, Shakespeare & Company, Mercer Street Books, New York University Book Center and Booksleaves. We will add as many as 30 more bookstores by late 2008, in Boston, Philadelphia and Washington D.C.
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