New Business Models

“We are a cultural institution disguised as a retailer,” said Jeff Deutsch, director of the Seminary Co-op Bookstores. “Our cultural work of creating an unparalleled browsing experience and a hub for community...needs no further utility to justify its existence.”

At this session on subscription boxes, booksellers learned about best practices for marketing, inventory control, options for special services, how to select categories, fulfillment management, and order tracking.

BrocheAroe Fabian, owner of River Dog Book Co., discussed bookselling, bookmobiles, and book clubs with Bookselling This Week. 

Biblio-Tech Café opens; Split Rock Books owners talk about the experience of opening a bookstore; Carmichael’s expands; Riffraff’s bookstore/bar business model featured; DIESEL co-owner shares summer reading picks with All Things Considered; The Book Stall launches comedy series

Bookseller panelists at Winter Institute offered some food for thought to booksellers considering starting a bookmobile or adding a mobile aspect to their store.

Veronica Brooks-Sigler is putting a new spin on the bookmobile while she saves up for a bricks-and-mortar store in her home state of Connecticut.

Omaha, Nebraska, couple Ted and Nicole Wheeler have launched the Dundee Book Company, a mobile bookstore selling titles by local authors, books from indie presses, and the best new literary writing.

Bookmarks literary nonprofit opens bookstore; Bookie’s relocates, creates events space; Raven Book Store changes hands; BookStacks, Blue Ridge Books mark anniversaries; Kepler’s launches nonprofit literary foundation; Watermark Books teams with police to deliver books

Emma Ramadan and Tom Roberge will open Riffraff, a bookstore/bar, in Providence, Rhode Island’s artsy West Side neighborhood later this year.

In her final letter as ABA president, Betsy Burton reflects on years of constructive communication between ABA and individual publishers.

Candlewick Press is launching CHIRP Evergreen, an initiative that provides indie bookstores with a unique opportunity to reintroduce titles from Candlewick’s award-winning backlist to their customers.

John Horgan and Jim Ingalls are the co-founders of The First Chapter, a nonprofit bookstore in Leominster, Massachusetts, that employs people with disabilities to teach them vocational skills.

At the Digital Book World panel “Will Bars Save Bookstores?” representatives of the bookselling and publishing industries discussed strategies that are helping bookstores not only survive but also thrive.