Loading summary
Transcript114 lines
- [00:01]
Advertiser
How does PwC take your company to the leading edge? They bring the sharpest minds in tech to your team so you can bring the ideas that will transform your business. They're passionate about your industry, so you can walk into any room with every advantage, and they're with you every step of the way so you can know you're headed in the right direction. PwC builds for what's next so you can get there. Now get started@pwc.com US Leading Edge.
- [00:36]
Kate
When you hear that catchy, catchy music and you flip your calendar to Thursday, you know it's time for the bookcase with Kate and Charlie. And I am the Kate part.
- [00:48]
Charlie
And I'm the Charlie part, the secondary part, the part that comes after. But it's nice to be here.
- [00:54]
Kate
I invite our editor to put some violin music under the. Under the wary side, his own introduction. So I know that if you are a loyal listener, you get excited about the fact that we talk to independent booksellers. We try to do it more or less at the end of most shows, but we haven't done it lately. And you also know how much I enjoy throwing my father under the bus. In fact, you can hear the sound whee. As I toss him under the bus. And why am I tossing you under the bus? Debt?
- [01:26]
Charlie
Maybe because you think it's my fault that we haven't booked enough booksellers in recent weeks and you get a little perturbed with me about that.
- [01:34]
Kate
Yes.
- [01:34]
Charlie
Is that the reason you're throwing me under the bus?
- [01:36]
Kate
You know, it could be. I booked the authors, you booked the booksellers. I've offered to book the booksellers, and you always say, no, no, no, no, no. I'll get right on top of that. But I'll forgive him because he's nice and because he does this podcast with me. As long as he occasionally lets me pick him up by the shirt tails and throw him under the big public bus, I think it's a pretty good deal.
- [01:57]
Charlie
Okay, that's it. We're done. No, we. We've had actually very nice listener response to the independent booksellers that we have talked to. I am fascinated by why they go into the business. It's not easy and it's not particularly profitable. But you do it because you love books and we do, and therefore we feel a kinship with the independent booksellers. All of which is a short way of saying that we're going to devote this entire podcast to. To two of our favorite booksellers that we've had a chance to talk to in recent weeks who I actually booked to to talk to. He did. But Janet Webster Jones is a wonderfully feisty 88 year old bookstore owner. Source Booksellers is her store in Detroit, Michigan. It's on Cass Avenue in Detroit and she has had it since the late 1980s and I just loved her. As one quick story about her, when I called her and I was giving her some of the technical details of how we would establish a hookup and a link to talk to her for the podcast, she said, honey, this isn't my first rodeo.
- [03:05]
Kate
I've always wondered about that expression. I mean, two rodeos seems like an awful small number of rodeos to be an expert at something. But she was, she was. I'd like to point out two things. One, she's older than my co host, which is saying something. Two, you get this sense that she's not the owner in name only. You get the sense that she's very involved in the day to day running of this bookstore. It is her baby and I love that. I can't imagine doing that at 88. And as a third point, I think we should point out that this isn't her first rodeo. So actually she was more familiar with the technical setup even though she was six years older than my father than I am.
- [03:44]
Charlie
Yeah, she had a better sense of the technical.
- [03:46]
Kate
Impressive.
- [03:47]
Charlie
And our second bookseller is Emily Russo. If you were listening. A couple of weeks ago we talked to Richard Russo, the wonderful author of Empire Falls and other books, who has written a new book called A series of essays called Life and Art, which is really wonderful. And I hope you get a chance to read some of the essays that he wrote. He's terrific. But we gave him a softball question. We said, what's your favorite independent bookstore? And he said, well, print in Portland, Maine. Well, of course he'd pick that because it's owned and run by his daughter Emily. She gave us a really, I thought, wonderful prescription of how you run a bookstore, what the problems with it are, et cetera, et cetera. So that'll be our second discussion today.
- [04:28]
Advertiser
Yeah.
- [04:28]
Charlie
But first off, Janet Webster Jones, 88 years old, still going strong back at the rodeo at Source Booksellers in Detroit, Michigan. Our conversation. Janet Webster, such a pleasure to have you here. How old is the Source Booksellers?
- [04:50]
Janet Webster Jones
Well, we are actually 34 years old now. I think I count 1989 as our starting date, even though I started really doing a little something a little bit in 88. But we count 1989 and the store didn't start like this. I have to start right out by saying that we grew to where we are today. And we grew sort of from the ground up. Literally from the ground up. Because for the first 10 years I was going to where people had events not popping up, but going to. I knew an event was going on and was invited to come as a vendor to sell the books. So that's what I did for until 2002, where some other women, four other women joined together in a space and we created what we called the Spiral Collective and started to work as a retail business at that point. Prior to that, I was doing vending and then retail. So altogether it's 34 years, is that right? 20, 25 and 1989.
- [05:54]
Charlie
Well, it's 36, but I'm not going to quibble. And you, you. And. And you've had the store the whole time you started it?
- [06:02]
Janet Webster Jones
Yeah, well, I never thought about a store. I never really thought. I. What happened is that I had opportunity and I used the courage that I keep with me most of the time and I just went ahead and did things and I went to where people had events and then I got another invitation to go and I did that and. And the books were in the chunk of my car and in my basement. And then I'd invite people if they wanted to, to come over to the basement and do that. And so it just grew like that. And I never. Someone was in yesterday and said to me, oh, I'm just so glad you followed your dream. I said, I did not dream this at all. It became what it became.
- [06:47]
Kate
Did they approach you and say, we have this space? Or did you know as you were doing these. These events that you were looking for a brick and mortar at some point?
- [06:56]
Janet Webster Jones
I really. I really not. I did get to a point. I retired from Detroit Public Schools as an educator in 2000. And I did sort of get to the point where I needed to do something different with a store because I have the disability of a seven year itch. So every seven years I start getting this little itch thing going on. And in about 10 years I'm good by the time I took care of the itch. So it was at that point that another person who had asked me to bring books to her art gallery for years, and I would never do that because I cannot leave my books unattended. And so she said, let's go and look at this space. Because she was quite an inventive person. She said, because I think we can do something altogether well. That was right what I needed to have at that moment. And so we did decide to share a space. And it was a large room, really, and I took a corner, somebody else took a corner, another person took kind of a middle area. And then the fourth person left real early because she didn't really have enough space in the part that she had selected. So I did that for about 10 years. And what happened is that I grew a clientele of people that were some from when I was going as a vendor to events, others who would come to the space that knew I was there or knew that the other people were there. And so we gained ground like that. And then in 2013, we moved across the street to a space in a new building that had been built, and they were looking for experienced merchants. And I said, that would be me. So we gathered up all our stuff and we got people to come with their wagons and stuff, and we came across the street.
- [08:46]
Charlie
So if you retired from Detroit public schools in 2000 without being impolite, that leads to the question, how old are you?
- [08:55]
Janet Webster Jones
I will finish 88 years at June 21, 2025. Did you do the math?
- [09:01]
Charlie
My goodness, my goodness.
- [09:03]
Janet Webster Jones
And I say finish because when the little children come in, I ask them how old they are and they give me a number. And I said, oh, well, you're already working on that number. And they like it because they feel older. You know, if you're nine, you're really ten.
- [09:17]
Kate
I gotta know your secret. Because I know a lot of folks, including my co host here, who are active at your age, but not a lot of folks that are like, I need to grow. I need to move into a bigger brick and mortar store. I need my own. Like most people are like, I'm resting on my laurels and I'm keeping active. I'm good. But you grew. I mean, what, what is the secret I gotta know.
- [09:38]
Janet Webster Jones
Well, first of all, I never felt I needed to. The second was it was opportunity and courage. And then I think I have a pretty active imagination and brain so that when things come along, I like to do problem solving. I think that we are problem solving agents living this life on the planet. And we can really think about how to do stuff based on either what we know, what we learned, and what we can find out about. So I don't think it's a secret. I think that we don't give ourselves enough credit for being able to use our intelligence. And everybody is smart. I mean, there's no over smart people. Everybody's smart. So use our Intelligence to think through whatever that is that's confronting us. You're just laughing at me.
- [10:22]
Kate
I'm not at all. No.
- [10:25]
Janet Webster Jones
I see your dad.
- [10:28]
Kate
I think he's in awe. I think, frankly, there's a little bit of awe involved in the smile.
- [10:34]
Janet Webster Jones
The other thing I think is that we bought a narrative in this civilization of the United States of America, maybe that we think that age is something like a disease. You get it, and then you have to take medicine and then you have to die. But I had the. This is going to sound a little weird, but I had the experience in my life where my youngest brother died when he was 17. And I had just finished college, and he had acute leukemia. And he was. They gave him like six months to live, and he pushed to eight because he wanted to graduate from high school. So I think these experiences in one's life will help you to know that life is not given, it's tenuous. So you can do that. Time between birth and death is that you got stuff you can do if you choose. But this idea that we bought into the belief that because people are old or getting older, we all are, if we're lucky, that we have to do something to be old. But I have a lot of models. I have Jimmy Carter, he was knocking on houses and pammering down stuff in his 90s. And then there are the old people that are in these blue zones that make sure they walk up a hill every day and stuff like that. So there are models all around for aging.
- [11:53]
Charlie
I heard you, and I love the phrase you referred to my books. I'm never going to leave my books unattended. So how can you sell your book and give them away?
- [12:04]
Janet Webster Jones
Well, I don't harbor them. But the books that I had to sell, I wouldn't leave them unattended to be perhaps not taken well care of while they're in another space. So I would not want to leave my inventory somewhere else where I wasn't. Now leave the store. Now we lock the door and go bye bye. And the books have a little. I think they do things in the night when we're not here, you know, because sometimes they're on the floor. And I thought, oh, something's been going on. So. But that's it. I don't feel like I'm controlling them. It's just that at that time, I didn't want to leave my inventory, which is money in the care of somebody else.
- [12:51]
Charlie
Janet, as I read about your store, you're not only a bookseller, but you. You have. You Feel you have a mission in the store. What? What is the mission?
- [13:02]
Janet Webster Jones
Well, on our wall we. I can't get to it now. I probably have it on my phone. Here we have our origin story because people are always asking about the business. The origin story is that we started in the way I told you. And then we have a desire to make the literary arts visible. It's on our windows when you come by the store. But that's our little motto, is to make the literary arts visible. That is, when we think of the arts, oftentimes people think of the visual arts. Sometimes they might think of dance, maybe they might think of theater, but generally it's a visual arts. So the idea there was to make the literary arts visible. And then I have a history of having been a speech pathologist. So I had a love for words and ideas and the written word and the images that written words can bring into our minds. I grew up on radio. I didn't really grow up on television. It took a long time for us to have a tv and somebody had it down the street, but that was okay. But we listened to the radio. Now, Charlie, you may be know this, but do you remember one man's family on the radio? Sure. See? And we would crouch around the radio and listen to the NBC Orchestra and all that kind of stuff. So I guess my ears have been tuned for a long time. And even now I have to knock on wood that I. My hearing is okay. And so far I don't think I have a loss. But I am aware that that's something that can happen as you age. So we pivoted to the online sales. We continued our mission to serve the community. When you asked what the mission was. So the idea is to serve the community. And who is the community? Anybody who comes in the store, anybody that I reach out with my long arm and get them off the street, into the institutions, around, into the book clubs or wherever we can reach and find people or anybody that reaches to us. So I'll give you an example. Just yesterday we got a call from someone who wants us to come to a small suburban place called Clarkston. It's about maybe an hour from here. But they want us to come and do the books at a golf club. Really? Are they playing golf? What's going on here? Of course, our response over the years has been we always say yes until we just have to say no. So we just say yes. And saying yes has gotten us a lot of traction, but it gets us in trouble because sometimes we over yes. And then we have to scramble around and get other people to help us, which we've done over the years, and then have some permanent people to help us out.
- [15:49]
Kate
But you specialize in nonfiction, and we're living in an age where people argue that there is such a thing as an alternative fact. Can you talk a little bit about what the last few years have been like as people sort of start debating what the base meaning is of truth and still maintaining your mission within that?
- [16:14]
Janet Webster Jones
Well, I have to start with one spot. Toni Morrison taught me in her writing that it's in fiction that we usually find the truth. And of course, that doesn't sound, you know, but she says, because the characters in a fictional work are letting you know how that outside world affects them. So that's one balance. The other balance is that nonfiction is fun for me. I love it. I studied history, economics, philosophy, sociology, all that stuff in college, and I love it. And I just love digging into the details of historical, cultural, economic, philosophical, psychological stuff that happens over the years. I've been stuck in the 1800s for a while, reading for my own self, and I'm just not able to get out of the 1800s. I just read enough of the. I mean, I love to read big fat books, you know, stuff like that. So I like it. And so, of course, I want to share that with other people. Now, when we get to this business about alternative facts, that's another way to say lie. Now, when I was growing up, my parents did not allow us to say the word lie because it was like a bad word. But so we would say things like, ooh, they're telling a story. We would do it in that little ditty. And so we have to discern what is true based on our best knowledge that we have. That's the key. We've got to know by consulting a variety of sources. Because if someone says that ant is green and you know it's red, you've got to say, well, let me look at all the ants in the ant book and see if we can find a green ant. Maybe not or maybe so. So we have to work on our own. They call it doing my research. I hear people say that term our own investigations, our own reading. I heard a man on C span talking one day about the loss of the middle brow. And what he was saying is that the long, large group of people who are kind of in the middle, they aren't necessarily highly educated, as we call it in higher education, or uneducated. They just have that desire to know and to learn and to understand. So I think in this age we are being required to learn to know, to understand, to bring our knowledge to a situation and not allow someone else's thought to always guide what we said. We can't let other people thought guide us. That's called reading. But we also have to write and speak and listen. Those are the big four.
- [19:05]
Kate
I wonder, before I let you go, I always want booksellers to sell us a couple of books. What books do you like putting in your customer's hands? What are some of your favorites?
- [19:16]
Janet Webster Jones
I don't do that. I don't put my favorites in their hands when they come up with that idea. A lady was here yesterday and I said, well, what do you like to read and what are you reading now? Or what do you want to know about now? And then we start a conversation and then that gives me an idea of what I might have for them at the time. So I set them on a path of discovering what they might want. This lady came in yesterday and said, I only want a book where I can just curl up and forget the world and all that. I said, really? I don't even know how that feeling is. Tell me about that. Well, she ended up going out of here with three books that were not that because I let her loose. I let her loose to discover what it was that she really wanted to do. So I don't, I don't tell now I'll tell her what I'm reading. And sometimes they're not even in the store. But I don't think, I don't. I don't believe that I can tell somebody what they're going to enjoy.
- [20:15]
Charlie
Janet Webster Jones, thank you ever so much for talking to us. You can find source booksellers on Cass Avenue in Detroit. She's been there for. Well, you moved across the street, you said, but they've been pretty close to where you are now for all those years.
- [20:30]
Janet Webster Jones
Yeah, we've been in the neighborhood for.
- [20:32]
Charlie
24 years and you are the community.
- [20:36]
Janet Webster Jones
And the community is us.
- [20:38]
Charlie
So we thank Janet ever so much. And we'll pause for a moment. When we come back, Emily Russo of the Print Store in Portland, Maine.
- [20:52]
Advertiser
Switch to Verizon business and get more from your Internet without paying more for your Internet. Get LTE Business Internet starting at $39 a month when paired with select business mobile plans. That's unlimited data and with it, unlimited possibilities. Start saving today with Verizon business ranked number one in small business. Internet Internet customer satisfaction by J.D.
- [21:13]
Charlie
Power.
- [21:13]
Advertiser
Starting price for 25 Mbps LTE Internet plan with smartphone plan savings plus taxes, fees and economic adjustment charge terms apply. For J.D. power 2024 award information, visit JD Power.com.
- [21:22]
Janet Webster Jones
Awards I think you're on mute.
- [21:25]
Advertiser
Workday starting to sound the same. I think you're on mute. Find something that sounds better for your career on LinkedIn. With LinkedIn job collections, you can browse curated collections by relevant industries and benefits like Flexpto or hybrid workplaces so you can find the right job for you. Get started@LinkedIn.com jobs finding where you fit. LinkedIn knows how vitamin water zero sugar has great taste zero BS and obviously zero sugar for those with zero room in their calendar, zero patience for slow walkers. Those who get zero hours of sleep on a Saturday night have zero filter, zero given and zero interest in grabbing a plain boring water. Grab a delicious vitamin water zero sugar today.
- [22:30]
Kate
Emily, it is so nice to have you back in the bookcase. I want to start with, you know, one of the reasons we loved Richard Russo's book, your dad's book, so much. We love essays and the essay books get a bad rap. So as a bookseller, what do you do to sell an essay, a book of essays, so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle?
- [22:49]
Advertiser
I don't think I've had too much trouble selling essay collections, but I would really approach it as just, it's such a beautiful way to talk about the human experience. I mean, they're nice and short. You can dip in and out. It's not something that you have to read all in one sitting. It can just be something that, especially with the writer that you love. And I know people love my dad, but Ann Patchett and so many other people write such wonderful essays that it can just be, it could just be a way to reach an author or to, to read an author when you only have a moment and you just want a moment of connection. So I kind of look at it that way. It's a wonderful way to connect with an author for just a moment. And you don't have to devote a whole hour to it. You can just dip in and about and just feel touched by somebody that's important to you.
- [23:42]
Charlie
When you first sat down and thought, I'd love to have a bookstore maybe, and if you had a yellow pad in front of you and you had a column of pros and cons, what would have been your list of each as you contemplated opening print?
- [23:58]
Advertiser
You know, print is very event driven. So I love, love having events. I love the buying process. I love being Able to choose what books are going to become into the store. I love customers and putting the right book into the right hands. My cons were few. Certainly the, the rising cost of, of everything, cost of living, cost of goods, that's hard to keep under. Under control.
- [24:25]
Kate
We were talking about the fact that, you know, at a hardware store, you know, you need this many screws and this many hammers and this many whatever, and, you know, you need this many of them. But bookstores, you have to start with sort of an opening philosophy of knowing what it is you're going to need. And then you sort of have to keep an eye on tastes forever and ever. I mean, what, how, what is your basic philosophy and how do you keep an eye on your market to know that you've. You. You've got the widgets that you need?
- [24:51]
Advertiser
Oh, excellent question.
- [24:52]
Kate
So we.
- [24:53]
Advertiser
There's just a program in bookselling publishing use uses called Edelweiss. And it really helps us track our sales. And if. And all. Most publishers are, you know, if a rep, the rep's job is of course, our publishing rep's job is just to sell you books. And what they often do a brilliant job of doing is letting you know what this book is like. You know, if you liked this book, this will probably also sell well for you. So you can look back at your data of those. Those previous books sold and you can kind of better gauge whether or not that book is going to also work with your, with your audience. But, but yeah, you know, those especially. I think there was a moment maybe a couple years ago where, where we missed the. The witch romances like all of a sudden for like one October or one fall season, like, everybody wanted w. And you know, we missed the boat on that one.
- [25:43]
Kate
How often do you find yourself saying during the year, who knew? Like, I mean, or are you pretty. Are you pretty lucky at this point?
- [25:50]
Advertiser
I think we're pretty lucky, but I would say at least once a year, especially around the holiday times, there's one that just like we had. We had no idea that this is the book that, that everybody was gonna want. I think when we first opened, it was the Hidden Life of Trees. That was one that we just. That we didn't expect. Oh, gosh, who would have thought.
- [26:07]
Kate
Cause that title is sexy. Sexy. Sexy.
- [26:10]
Advertiser
I know. And the Nickelodeon Sergeant McCurdy's memoir exploded. We knew we would sell it, but that just all of a sudden we just couldn't keep it in stock. And even the publisher, I think, was a little bit surprised.
- [26:20]
Kate
You know, Also part of it is you have employees that you trust. And so, you know, for instance, like, I fell in love with Niall Williams. This is happiness. And I couldn't stop talking to, to customers and managers about it. So eventually my manager was like, look, man, if you think you can sell them, get five of them. I'll give you three weeks. If you can sell five in three weeks, we'll put in an. You know, so it's also, I think that kind of a give and take as well, which is, you know, you let your employees guide you in some cases, if you know they will sell to it.
- [26:49]
Advertiser
Absolutely. And we have a wonderful staff of readers. I think it's us and it's Print and Copper Dog bookstore in Beverly, Massachusetts. I think have more. Have sold more copies of a book published by a very small imprint, scb. French writer wrote a translation of a book called Lobster. And it is the weirdest little book I've ever. I mean, truly strange, but wonderful. So we have had staff driven. Staff driven bestsellers. Absolutely. That not necessarily any other bookstore would, would think to promote. I know we sold selling a ton of copies of a book right now called Sky Daddy. I'm sure there, there are many, many others. But we, our staff has a wonderfully weird taste. So they, they really tried to look for the books that aren't necessarily getting the $300,000 publicity packages. They are really looking for the.
- [27:43]
Charlie
Wait a minute.
- [27:43]
Advertiser
To promote something that not everybody's reading.
- [27:45]
Charlie
Wait a minute. Emily Russo, owner of Print, a bookstore in Portland, Maine, is surprised that you're.
- [27:54]
Advertiser
Selling a book called Lobster Sir Charlie, I'm not. Look it up. The premise of this book is wild.
- [28:04]
Charlie
Yeah. Okay.
- [28:05]
Janet Webster Jones
Yeah.
- [28:07]
Advertiser
There's a love affair between a lobster and a human being. It is a truly bizarre, bizarre book.
- [28:12]
Charlie
How do you decide what to get rid of? We talked to Harlan Coben a couple of weeks ago and I said every bookstore needs a C section because he has so many books that you could take up an entire shelf for him. So at some point you have to weed out the Harlan Coben books or the whatever after you've had them on the shelf for a period of time. How do you approach that?
- [28:35]
Advertiser
It's. We do. Yeah. Just because you both, you can't carry everything and you can't keep everything. And it, the returns are the hardest process. But generally speaking, for us, if something hasn't sold within three to five months, unfortunately, we have to send it. We have to send it back and make space for, for something new. That being said, there are There are books that may just mean a lot to a particular bookseller or that just make us a better bookstore simply by having it in stock. And if we only sell it once a year, that's fine. I know for. When I worked for Greenlight Bookstore, it was, if I'm not mistaken, Milan Kundera's the Unbearable Loss of. I'm going to get the title wrong. But Milan Kunder's work, the Unbearable Loss of Being. Forgive me if I butchered that title. I'll have to look that up. And it just, they felt like it just made it, it made them a better bookstore to always have that book in stock, even if it only sold once a year. So you're always making those, those judgment calls between. This is something I feel truly passionate that we have, even if it's not selling a lot, and other things that are just, you know what, this isn't for our audience. So let's make room for something that is.
- [29:41]
Kate
That's another really interesting point is like, you know, you can't. When you're a small independent bookstore. And I'll, I'll take this again as somebody who used to be a bookseller. When you, when you, when you run a bookstore, you can't maybe necessarily, if it's a small independent bookstore, have a big grief section.
- [29:55]
Janet Webster Jones
Exactly.
- [29:56]
Kate
But you want to carry the two or three best books on grief because you know that somebody's going to come in that day and maybe really need it.
- [30:03]
Advertiser
Exactly.
- [30:03]
Kate
And if you only sell one that year, but you really, you know, you get to that person who really desperately needs it that day, then it's, it's worth having.
- [30:11]
Advertiser
Absolutely.
- [30:12]
Charlie
My local bookstore, just up the street, is 500 square feet. And when I walk into that bookstore, I belong. I feel comfortable. I love that little store. I, I can't tell you why, but I feel comfortable. I feel like I belong, and I can't tell you why. What's the secret sauce?
- [30:35]
Advertiser
I think, again, it comes back to personality. I think it's who you stuff in the store. I think it's a true passion and love for reading. And if a store isn't equipped, doesn't have a staff that can talk to you about books and make you feel welcome, then. Then they're just selling product, and that's, and that's no fun. So we really want to bring, we bring our whole selves to work at print and for better or worse sometimes, but we really do bring our, our, our whole personalities to work. And, and we want to put the right, the right Book into your hands. So we try to just make it a fun and enjoyable process to be, to be in our, in our store, because otherwise we're just selling the same stuff that everybody else is selling.
- [31:20]
Kate
But it's sort of a nerdy street cred. I mean, I remember when I interviewed.
- [31:23]
Advertiser
Yeah.
- [31:24]
Kate
You know, I, I remember when I interviewed to be a bookseller and you know, we talked about my this and my that and my whatever and what I was reading right now. And then at the end the manager said, sell me three books. One that I probably haven't heard of.
- [31:36]
Janet Webster Jones
Yeah.
- [31:37]
Kate
And I, and again, I think that's, that's, that's the sauce is the nerdy street cred.
- [31:42]
Advertiser
Yeah. Yeah. Everybody either wants to work at a record store or, or a bookstore. That's the. But I don't think everybody can do it. It's a hard job and it doesn't pay well. I think being a lover of books and being a big reader doesn't necessarily always mean that you can talk about books. I mean, I think there are days that I think my staff is infinitely better than I am. I think I'm an excellent buyer. I think I can not necessarily predict trends, but I can, I can buy well for, for trends. But there are days that I think that my staff is so much better about talking about books than I am.
- [32:19]
Kate
You said you were an event. Your, your bookstore relies heavily on events, and yet you're in Maine. So how do you keep so rich in events? Like, how do you get the, the, the authors that you want and need to get the, get the folks in the store?
- [32:33]
Advertiser
Two things. I, you know, I, it would be disingenuous for me to, to not acknowledge the fact that the child of Richard Russo opens a lot of doors. It just does. So I got my first job in bookselling, or at least my, my old boss, Joan says, emily, your dad got you the interview. You got yourself the job. But my first job was in events, so I got a lot of practice there. And then my second job in bookselling was at the wonderful Greenlight bookstore in Brooklyn, New York. So I got a chance to really have a lot of one on one time with, with publicists there. So they got to know me. So when I moved to Portland, I already had that, that trust in so many publicity departments. They knew that I could pull off a really good event. So I already came to. When we moved to Portland, I already came with this just kind of bank of knowledge and contacts. The other thing not to be discounted is the fact that everybody loves Portland, everybody wants to come to Portland. So we've kind of gotten lucky there too. Well, we'll just have, you know, we just had a killer event in last November with Louise Penny and she's like, I've never been to Portland before. Let's do that. You have to prove that you can pull these large scale events off. You can't just do it because you want to. You have to, you really have to be detail oriented and on your game and make sure all of those logistics are in order and cross your T's, dot your I's.
- [33:52]
Charlie
It seems to me you've outlined three things that are really important. Number one, you need to know what to order and what's going to sell. Number two, you need to know what to get rid of and what hasn't sold and should be taken off the shelves now and sent back to the publisher. And number three, you have to have events that will establish yourself in the mind of the community. Each one of those feels like a full time job and every one of those lands on your back. As the owner of Print. So it seems to me that's a whole lot harder than owning the hardware store where you just have to, you know, worry about how many screwdrivers you have.
- [34:36]
Advertiser
Well, you know, I have never had the pleasure of speaking with or knowing the owner of a hardware store, so I have no idea how hard their job actually is. So I don't want them to disparage their hard work. But you know, I am no longer the events coordinator. We have a wonderful events coordinator at Print by the name of Noah Arbor, who I trained and who is killing it. So I have been able to take a backseat to that position. You know, I still get my, get my feet wet when there is a huge, huge event. I always like to have still a little bit of control over, over those. But that might be just because I'm neurotic, but the, the bind.
- [35:09]
Kate
We love you, Noah.
- [35:10]
Advertiser
We love you, Noah. He's wonderful. He's, he's just, he's so good and he's neurotic like me. So we like, we feed off of each other and when one of us, you know, goes bonkers, the other one understands why that person has gone bonkers. It's not a competition. It really, truly is just kind of a labor of love between the two of us because we just, we think so, so much alike and we just, we have each other's back. So we know if one person didn't catch something, the other person will have caught It. But the buying is my true passion.
- [35:37]
Charlie
Well, this has been a wonderful sort of class in how to run a bookstore and print a bookstore. Very successful friends of mine in Maine say it is a wonderful, wonderful store where you immediately feel like you're among friends when you come in. Print a bookstore in Portland, Maine. Emily Russo, thank you very much.
- [36:02]
Kate
So to remind you that Source Booksellers on Cass avenue, established in 1989, that was Janet Webster Jones, a spitfire who's still very involved in the store. And the second was Print, a bookstore on Conger street in Portland, Maine, established in 2016. You know, we often say that this show, when we talk to writers, is a masterclass on writing. We feel like this was a masterclass in bookselling and how to run a bookstore and why independent booksellers are so important. If you don't think Janet Webster Jones is important and Emily Russo are important, then I'm not sure I want to know you.
- [36:39]
Charlie
Well, the nice thing is, first of all, they say we're not in the community. We are the community. Secondly, when we got talking to Emily, I began to think about the question you asked. It's not just like a clothing store or where you sell refrigerators or something where you know your stock is what it's going to be. You reorder. In the case of a bookstore, you're all the time trying to figure out what's going to sell, what's going to be popular, what do my readers and my customers want? Secondly, you have to be all the time taking books off the shelves that have not been selling, how long they stay there, who knows? You have to handle all the financial end of it, et cetera. And then you have to establish a relationship with your customers.
- [37:23]
Kate
Yeah, with your community.
- [37:24]
Charlie
Yes, with your community. So it's not an easy job, as I think was made clear by Emily.
- [37:30]
Kate
I used to work at a bookstore, and I remember the day that the manager allowed me access to the computer database so that I could order books for the shop. And that felt like a real privilege. This is, I guess, going to. You also have to have the right staff. I considered it a real privilege to get the books that I loved in stock. And I knew that that privilege also was a responsibility because if I got in five copies of this Is Happiness by Niel Williams, my goal was to sell all five of those to justify being able to order 10 more on the next one. You can push your passion. So if you love books, bookstores are not an amazing place to become Scrooge McDuck, where you can swim in your gold, but it's very satisfying.
- [38:17]
Charlie
And the other thing they'll tell us is one of the hard parts is personnel, is the people that you hire, because, I mean, it's a fact of life. You can't pay them much because it's not a high profit business. And so I'm always aware in a bookstore that the people who are working there are doing it to some extent as an act of love.
- [38:38]
Kate
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. The first question that I was asked in my interview was, okay, sell me two books. And I had to come up with two titles and I had to sell them. And I remember my manager said, okay, you sold me the first one. Next one again. It was a very particular satisfaction working at a bookstore. I loved it. Did I get rich? No. And I probably spent most of my salary at the bookstore using that employee discount.
- [39:03]
Charlie
You spend it all in the bookstore. You didn't get much of a break, I would say.
- [39:07]
Janet Webster Jones
Also, no, not really.
- [39:09]
Kate
Not really.
- [39:09]
Charlie
Anyway, support your local bookstore. That's really the purpose of all this. It's the reason that we talk to independent booksellers because we have such great admiration for them, including Janet Webster Jones and Emily Russo. Our thanks to both of them. We're going to bring you up to date as to who makes this podcast possible. And with apologies, we don't have a coda this week from either one of them, but we'll see you next week. And next week we're going to do a show on classics. We've had again, very good response to the show that we did on the Carol, as two Dickensian scholars called it the Christmas Carol that we did just before Christmas. And then on the 100th anniversary of the Great Gatsby, we talked to two Scott Fitzgerald scholars about that book. And next week we're going to feature To Kill a Mockingbird, written by the very, very interesting character Harper Lee. And we'll talk about her with two people who know Harper Lee's work very well. So thanks for being with us. We'll see you next week.
- [40:05]
Kate
See you next week.
- [40:06]
Charlie
The Bookcase with Kate and Charlie is a joint production of Good Morning America and ABC Audio. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions and our executive producer is Simone Swink. We want to make special mention of Amanda McMaster, Sabrina Kohlberg and Ariel Chester of ABC Good Morning America and Josh Cohan of ABC Audio. You can follow us and rate and review this podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like to find any of the books mentioned on this podcast. You can find them listed in the episode description.
- [40:41]
Janet Webster Jones
On June 24, Ironheart arrives on Disney Plus.
- [40:44]
Advertiser
What is going on with you?
- [40:45]
Janet Webster Jones
From Marvel Television and executive producer Ryan Coogler.
- [40:48]
Advertiser
After my internship in Wakanda out I wanted to build something undeniable. But now I'm in trouble.
- [40:53]
Janet Webster Jones
Don't miss the sixth episode of that I joined a crew of criminals and.
- [40:58]
Advertiser
Now I'm about to get killed by deranged man in a cage.
- [41:02]
Janet Webster Jones
Be the first to experience the all new series. You've bitten off a hell of a.
- [41:05]
Kate
Lot more than you can chew.
- [41:06]
Janet Webster Jones
I could chew a lot. Marvel television's iron hard streaming June 24th only on Disney plus.