would you use an independent book shop?

[ThatVikRinA22]

shameless canvassing of opinions....DH is talking of opening an independent book shop and coffee shop...do you think there is a market in this day and age? or has amazon killed the independent book seller?

i could really see him doing this but am scared it wont work...

1. Location -crucial
2. USP -why are you different? Range -specialisms -events (cafes are not generally a usp anymore -good income stream though and big name authors may grace London independents with their presence but they probably live around the corner)
3. Price -margins will be tight - the High st shops are struggling (chains and a lot of independents - the online book sector is growing every year -Amazon ,the bookdepository etc etc)
4. don't even try to compete on the Harry Potter type books - maybe cut bestsellers to the bone to get people in the store for impulse purchases
5. Wholesalers -most independents use people like Gardners as they are a one stop shop -establishing credit with one supplier is much better than dealing with a multitude of publishers (fact of life -chains and large online stores will always negotiate better discounts than independents -you cannot compete on price)
6. Supermarkets are all increasing the space given to booksales -and they are demanding v high discounts which they will get
7. Schools and account business - sell your 'local' service. A lot of bookshops survive on this business
8. Know your market -returning books costs money -while they sit on your shelf and when you have to post them back

Random thoughts from a former bookseller turned publisher

And an e-book presence. From selling print titles online via ebay/amazon market place/own website and actual ebooks - relatively small market at the moment(but growing in the 00's of percent each year) and ereaders are coming down in price and there are over 30 different devices on the market -plus iphones/smart phones all have e-reading apps. Difficult to break into this market but worth considering. Third party vendors provide ebook solutions for retailers who cannot afford the set up fees (until recently even Waterstones did not do their own e-commerce or ebook fulfilment).

Yes from here. Love the idea someone mentioned of running book clubs and poetry clubs from it. Yes, fantastic, please open it in my corner of London in November.

Amazon is great but it's like Ikea -- I always ending up buying a load of stuff I don't need. And you can't have a flick through.

A bookshop is a nice place to go to have a gander. You can meet people there too if there's a coffee place. He could have a noticeboard for baby yoga and NCT and all that crap.

He will need a double door and a ramp for prams and buggies to get the nappy crowd. And if you have connections with schools, stock everything on their reading lists, that sort of thing.. sounds great to me.

I know nothing about the financing, maybe I live in fairyland, but I think it's got loads of pluses.

Hi, have been lurking with interest. I love the idea of independent bookshops but think it needs to be in an affluent area where people aren't going to be bothered so much at buying the same books cheaper online. I think you shouldn't even consider Scarborough and Hull as there is just not a lot of money around in those towns IMHO and the quality shops there have really stuggled/closed down . Also the independent retailers in the market towns all throughout your area have had a tough time lately. There is a lovely bookshop in Pocklington you could look at in your 'research' trips.
I really hope you find a good location - then let us know and we'll all come and buy coffee and cakes and books !

I would use one and have done. However, I live in an affluent area and two here have failed recently. One was a beautiful childrens bookshop with play area, cafe author visits and story time. It was wonderful but no one went there. Very sad indeed.

i do use them locally but overall order online for best price.so purely on cost i buy online majority of time

isnt book selling v competitive.borders folded

imho,not such good timing in a recession

BTW the rent here is very high which didn't help and I think others are right in that the food/drink needs to carry the rest in terms of profit.

I love an independant bookshop, there are a couple round my way - neither do coffee though - and they are quite different from each other. I do buy a lot of books from amazon but these tend to be books that I already know I want iyswim. I went into local(ish) bookshop last month and came out with 3 books I hadn't planned to buy because they were beautiful.

It's really all about location though isn't it?

I am an author.

I owe a lot of my early success to my local independent bookshop. They have just been nominated Independent Bookshop of the Year. They've already won many awards.

They work extremely hard: I have had emails from them at all times of the week: late on Sunday night, before breakfast on weekdays, etc. They run a lot of events.

One of the things they have to compete with is the browsing-in-shops-but-buying-at-Amazon customer. Please buy books from your indie, too, don't just browse.

Please, also, don't buy 'new' books from Amazon Marketplace. There are lots of reasons for this. The new books on offer here are often the review copies that authors' publicists send out in the hope that the books might receive some column inches in the few remaining print review sections. If you buy a new book from there (second-hand is a whole other subject for another post) the author won't receive a single penny for their work. So they haven't got a review and they've lost a sale.

If my books hadn't been on display on shelves I wouldn't be slowly building a readership.

Publishing is a hard, hard business for the indies and the chains and for authors. I can only survive as an author if new copies of my books are available in shops. I take my hat off to the good indies: they are helping to keep some authors in business.

Perhaps it would be no loss to literature if I packed up my writing. But enough of us give up and take on well-paid jobs elsewhere there will be no replacements for the big names ten years down the line. Authors earn very little on average: around £7000 would be considered good.

I use my independent bookshop all the time. It is round the corner, lovely to browse in; I don't use Amazon at all.

The bookshop can get almost anything in 24 hours (so actually quicker than Amazon by post, plus I don't end up queuing at the sorting office). Usually the cost is not that different on the books I buy, once you factor in the postage, because the biggest Amazon/supermarket discounts are on mass market paperbacks, and round here, at least, people buying those aren't shopping in an small indie bookshop anyway. My bookshop even got a v. obscure book of Japanese poetry translations, out of print and last published in the US, in just a week!

I agree with all those others posters who say how important browsing around is in choosing to buy books which you didn't know you wanted. My shop has a reading group, art exhibitions, a loyalty scheme, discounts at some times of the year.

I have been in two wonderful independent book shops quite by chance recently - Bath and Winchester. What made them nicer than Waterstones was that they had a wider range of hard backs and NON bestsellers. There was a timelessness to the books, rather than - "Newly Published/Just in" screaming from the shelves. I've been surprised at how quickly Waterstones stops stocking books only a few years after they're published. They'll happily order them for you, if you want, but they won't be on the shelves to pick up by chance. I think an independent book shop has got to do things that Waterstones doesn't. Also, Waterstones can be very limited on their special interest books - loads and loads of celebrity chefs and cook books, but when did you last see a decent range on say, classical music?

Location is critical. Where I live there is NO bookshop - there's a couple aisles of WHSmith, and a rather good BHF second-hand bookshop, and that's in on the longest high street in Britain (Streatham)! There's also demand for good, friendly, comfortable cafes for the baby-boom mums to hang out in - although the cafes with no sofas and no pricelist are going to the wall.

So a cafe-bookshop might work and get reasonable rates given how many vacant shops there are, especially if it put up flyers for community events etc. Nearest competitors would be an independent cafe and a indie second-hand bookshop in Balham, and a indie bookshop in Crystal Palace, both a few miles away. If the latter was nearer me, I'd be spending lots of money there. I wonder if Oxfam/BHF etc would pay someone to run an experimental bookshop/cafe for them to see if it made money?

Our local independent bookshop is about to close down.

I can tell you where they went wrong. They are in a fabulous location, with lots of the kind of local people who would want to support them over Amazon (even by paying a premium, for many, I think). But the staff were surly, uninterested when I mentioned about our local book group, they never have events/ signings/ readings, they don't have a loyalty card, they don't promote their ordering service, they are bossy about mobile phones in the shop, the shop is cramped with no seating or coffee, hard to navigate, certainly no room for buggies etc. etc. None of these things are good omens. I will miss them though.

I really support what other posters have said about you needing to offer more than just books. Readings, coffee, book groups etc. all vital.

BTW Kneazle, are you thinking of Tales on Moon Lane in Primrose Hill?

They had the loveliest looking shop but the staff were really miserable, always eating their lunch behind the counter and kept buggering up orders really annoyingly!

I was a bookseller for ten years, gave it up in 1998, now I sell gifts (mainly online).

There is noooo way I'd start up a bookshop now. Very competitive, very difficult indeed. People adore independent bookshops, especially ones with a cafe/teashop. They love to browse, and will spend a long, long time doing so, but they don't actually spend much. They have a lovely time, then go home and order titles online.

I do it myself. That is my experience, both as a book-buyer and a bookseller.

abride makes some important points.

However, most people can't/won't afford to pay the extra on individual items just to support the independents. It's the same throughout retail, and many superb small shops will fade away over the next few years.

It's bleak, it really is, but I'm afraid the vast majority of us are part of it.

thanks for all the input here, we are digesting it all.