Guest Blogger Tom Lyons

by Sheila Connolly

Confession:  My daughter used to work at the New England Mobile Book Fair, and I have visited it regularly for years.  I'm sure I wasn't the only person in the greater Boston area who was concerned when we learned the store was for sale.  That's why I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to interview the new owner, Tom Lyons, here at Poe's Deadly Daughters.

Recently you purchased the New England Mobile Book Fair, an established bookstore in the Boston area, yet you’ve never been a bookseller before. What inspired you to do this?

My friends usually ask “What possessed me” as opposed to what inspired me to buy the Book Fair given the state of the book business.  Brick and mortar stores are constantly under attack by Amazon and electronic book purchases.  I simply thought the Book Fair needed to be saved and was very concerned that it was going out of business.

Why did you choose this particular store?

I really had no intention of buying a book store; it was the farthest thing from my mind.  I had just gotten back to Boston from a lengthy consulting project in Maryland. I decided to go over to the New England Mobile Book Fair to spend a few hours in the stacks and see what treasures I could find.  That was in June of 2011.  I knew the book store was put up for sale in November of 2010 and figured it had been sold. I mentioned it to one of the managers who informed me that it had not been sold. 

I spent the next two weeks thinking about it and finally called the business broker and spent 4 hours going over the business details with him.   I would not have even considered buying any other book store but the New England Mobile Book Fair is an ICON, at least in the northeast and has been written up in Fortune, Yankee and other publications.  I spent 6 months working on the deal because I wanted to make sure it could be saved.  

What physical and management changes have you made, and what changes are you still planning?

As you know I’m not a bookseller. I’m a business man. I have looked at this venture as a business first and book store second.  I have a great staff of knowledgeable booksellers who came with the store so to speak. They all stayed with me. So I felt I could concentrate on the business operations of the store while learning the book business as well.

For 54 plus years the Book Fair has operated pretty much as it had when it opened in the 1950’s. As everyone who has been to the Book Fair knows the books have been shelved by publisher, not by category or genre’ and there has never been an automated inventory.  The building is a warehouse and in recent years not a lot of updating or improvements have been made. 

I have replaced 300 lights inside and outside the building. It is much brighter now.

 

We are moving more than one million books from publisher to category. This has been going on since April 2012 and hopefully the majority of the moves will be done by the middle of November.  It is a logistical puzzle that is a real challenge, especially since the store is open while we are trying to move everything.   This has to be done to make it easier for the patrons to find books in the future.

It also is necessary as the foundation to create an on line inventory.  In order to run the Book Fair on a current and profitable basis an automated inventory is a must.  So we have purchased an inventory system- IBIDie,  which is a SQL based book store Point of Sale and Inventory system.  

This also required buying a new server with a RAD 5 backup system and 12 new computers including point of sale registers.

We actually went live on October 8^th with the Point of Sale portion and we are training on the ordering and receiving portions now.  We already have a number of categories completed so as soon as the system is ready to go we can begin to scan the million books we are moving.

We had a web site but it was static and non productive. We built a new web site and now offer the ability to buy books on line.  In a few weeks book store patrons will also be able to buy E-books from us.

We will be building more pages on our web site to include staff picks, corporate direct links for corporate sales, weekly updates etc.

We have been doing a weekly newsletter since January 2012. We give updates on new books, what authors will be speaking and signing at the Book Fair and staff picks as well

The Book Fair was never known for having author signings and readings.  We started doing them in the store in January and have been steadily adding dates since.  A few weeks ago we had our first internationally known author here when Tess Garretson came and spoke about her new book and signed copies.  The Boston Globe covered the event. 

We have held two community events one on ART and another on Gardening. We will be expanding these types of community involvement for the Book Fair in the future.

We put in a new phone system that is digital instead of analog that will be more efficient for customer service as we go forward

In December we will be hosting a Mystery night to rival the ones Kate’s Mystery Book Store in Cambridge used to do before she closed.  We have already had 38 mystery writers accept an invitation to join us on December 6^th.

We have been cleaning every day as we move books and adding more and better displays for the books and merchandize. 

We brought in a new General Ledger system to better control the financial side of the business along with a VP of Finance and a Manager of Accounting.

We do a lot of off-site book sales and have been doing some book fairs.  We do a lot of business with Schools and libraries.

All in all I would say we have been pretty busy for the 10 months we have been at this.

You’ve shown a particular interest in promoting mystery fiction. Why that genre?

I love mysteries!  I’m also a writer and I have started two mysteries and I “kind of” put them on hold when I bought the book store.  I’m hoping to get back to them after the holidays.  So you can understand why I have an interest in mysteries. Being a writer as well as a book store owner does have its challenges.

Doing the Mystery night on Dec 6, 2012 with all those authors is pretty exciting for me and I hope we can get a good draw and sell a lot of books.

I also love westerns.  I have written a western and even got some very positive feedback from a senior editor at a major publishing house. That is very encouraging for a writer.

What do you see as the future of the independent bookstore?

I think it’s important to note that many of the Indies have had a good year relatively speaking. I not only think that the Indies have a role to play going forward, I’m betting on it.  In general I believe that technology will have to be a standard part of the mix.  Selling on line is a must, and with the help of the ABA and other book organizations perhaps we can find a way to negate the Amazon factor if each indie gets their patrons to see the value of buying locally, even on-line. E-books are here to stay. I think they will level off and there will still be a mix of e book and physical copy for many book lovers. Managing the e book dilemma requires active participation, not being passive about it.

We as businesses are going to have to continually embrace technology and change both our pattern of selling and the mindset of our customers.

Thanks for the opportunity to chat.

 

Tom

 

 

For more information, see http://www.nebookfair.com/

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About Tom Lyons:

Tom Lyons, CIA, CISA; BS in Business from Boston University  Graduate work also done at BU

Chief Executive of three businesses, COO of a Fortune20 subsidiary, Independent Management Consultant, financial and operational controls,  Director of Global Marketing for Insurance for Oracle Corp . Extensive  Audit and Risk Management experience.

And recently an apprenticeship to booksellers.

Flown Again

by Sheila Connolly

My daughter has moved out of the family home—again. When she went off to college, I thought we had done our "empty nest" thing. Then after college she had no firm plans about her next step, so she moved in with us again (note: this is not the house or the town she grew up in). She found a job, made friends, and saved her money. But she's young (to me, under thirty seems young) and unencumbered, and I was happy to support her urge to fly. So a little over a week ago, she packed up her car (with 240,000 miles on it) and headed west for Urbana, to a new life.

And we've been dealing with the "empty nest" issue all over again. This time it feels more final, because when she was in college she was only two hours away, and we exchanged visits regularly. Urbana is about 18 hours away, so it's a little harder to drop in.

But that "empty" is relative, because when she filled up the car, there was a lot of stuff left over, and it's all sitting here where she left it.

What does one's "stuff" say about a person? If you were forensically-minded, you would look at the evidence and say: she likes clothes and books. Her taste in clothes turned out to be very classic and conservative, and I sometimes regret we are not the same size, because I'd be happy to wear some of them.

Ah, but then there are the books. Since she was working in a bookstore the books were kind of inevitable. She's also my daughter, so I'm forced to conclude that book-hoarding is hereditary.

What can you learn about someone's personality from what s/he reads? My daughter was a comparative literature major in college (which may explain why her career path is a bit muddy), and she also favored contemporary poetry. In addition, she would bring home from the bookstore a variety of ARCs and remaindered books that looked interesting, many of which I read. It's a mixed blessing: if I like the book, I feel reluctant to buy a "real" copy when it's finally issued because I already have it, albeit in a sometimes dilapidated form. And if I happen to run into the author at an event, s/he may wonder about me when I say I loved the book, when it came out only two days earlier—and also wonder why I'm not buying a signed copy direct from their very own hands. It's happened.

My daughter and I have had some spirited conversations about writing and books. She claimed that genre (e.g., romance and mysteries) are to be scorned, although I'm not sure how she would define "literature," or even a "good" book. She has never read any book I have written (that she would admit to, at least). Yet for all of that, she once texted me from New York to say she had just walked by Mary Higgins Clark on the street. What? How did she recognize her?

What we share is the inability to get rid of any book we have chosen. I know when I was her age, I reread a lot of books, partly because I couldn't afford new ones, and partly because I continued to derive something from a book each time I read it. I could do that more easily now because I manage to forget a lot about any book I read these days (my current benchmark for a good book is whether I remember it after I've put it down), but I don't do much re-reading because there are new books coming out all the time. So many books, so little time.

Someday my daughter may inherit the books I've collected, and they number in the thousands, I'm afraid. She could probably write a profile of me, based on those that I've kept: a science fiction phase; a smattering of feminist/women's fiction, mainly from the 70s; the requisite collection of classics, old and modern; and of course, a lot of mysteries, starting from the beginning.

When you visit someone's home for the first time, do you check out what books they have on their shelves? And what does that tell you?

Psst! Want a Hot Deal on a Good Book?

Sandra Parshall

You know those sidewalk peddlers who try to make you believe they're selling you a real Rolex for twenty bucks? Sometimes I think a little-known writer selling books is the literary equivalent.

Sure, you’re offering people something in exchange for their money, and you think it’s something valuable, but you have to persuade the customer to see it that way. They’ve never heard of you or your book, and some will wonder out loud whether you’re self-published. Worst case scenario is that you end up feeling as if you should be paying them to read what you’ve written.

Before I published my first novel, The Heat of the Moon, last year, I had no idea how much emotional and physical stamina a simple two-hour booksigning required. Try smiling nonstop for two hours and see if you’re not exhausted afterward. Try giving the same pitch two dozen times in two hours and see if you don’t feel like retiring to a nice quiet padded cell.

You go to every signing with high hopes, and the first thing you want to see is your table set up in a good location. Bookstore managers are busy people, and they don’t have time to totally rearrange their merchandise to create an optimal space for a visiting writer. (Why aren’t such spaces built into the store design? An unanswerable question.) So you have to count yourself lucky if you don’t end up at a table in the storeroom. Count yourself positively blessed if you’re somewhere near the front door, in the line of foot traffic. Of course, you’ll get exasperated looks from customers who see you as a hindrance on their path to the coffee bar, but if you smile and persist some people will stop, listen to your pitch, maybe ask questions, and, in the best of all possible outcomes, even buy a book.

Those who have never done a booksigning and have only attended signings by bestselling authors may wonder what I’m talking about. What pitch? Stephen King doesn’t pitch his book to every customer at signings. People come in droves and line up out the door for the privilege of buying a signed book. And if he smiles at you, wow, but he’s probably not sitting there for hours with a grin plastered on his face. He doesn’t have to. I do. Most writers do. We don’t bring in crowds, so we have to work hard at attracting the attention of passing customers and making our books sound like something they absolutely must own.

I’ve even given my pitch to a ten-year-old girl, who confessed that she loves reading about crime and watching shows like CSI (I like this kid), but her mother places onerous restrictions on her viewing and reading. I sent her to the children’s mystery section. She came back a few minutes later with a book in hand and asked if I thought it would be good. I saw that it was a Newberry winner and assured her she would enjoy it. Maybe in another ten years she’ll come to a signing and buy one of my books. I’ve also pitched my novels to people who seemed captivated and vowed to get the books from the library and read them asap. (They only came in the bookstore to buy a computer software manual. Hardcover novels are too expensive.)

Multiply all this effort three or four times and you have an idea of what it’s like for a relatively unknown writer at a big book festival. Envision a huge room filled with long rows of tables, a dozen or more writers at each. Customers drift down the aisles, sliding their gaze over the stacks of books and carefully avoiding eye contact with the smiling, hopeful writers. You can try to lure them closer by speaking to them, but the place will be so noisy that they can easily pretend not to hear. Dozens of people may pass before anyone thinks your books are worth stopping to examine. Some customers will want to talk to you, but many will ignore you as they pick up a book and read the jacket copy. If you see “the look” forming, you can forget about a sale. (“The look” resembles that open-mouthed, curled-lip thing cats do when they smell something revolting.) Your precious novel, the one you spent a year or more of your life bleeding onto the page, is hastily dropped back on the stack and the non-customer breaks a speed record in distancing herself from it.

When you first start doing booksignings, you feel the urge to be all things to all readers. Does someone want romance? Yes, yes, my book has romance! Does someone else want a lot of action? I swear my characters never have time to breathe! Whatever the customer wants, you rashly promise.

Then one day you find before you a woman in a plain cotton dress that covers her legs to the ankles, her arms to the wrists, and her torso to just below the ears. Her hair is pulled back into a tight little knot, and her face has never been altered by makeup. She sternly inquires whether your book has any “bad words” in it. Well, uh... You frantically run through your cast of characters, reviewing their language, wondering if damn and hell count, and wondering just how many times you used the more offensive four-letter words. Looking into the woman’s unforgiving face, you realize that everything will count to her, and even once will be too much. “Yes,” you admit, “my book has bad words in it.”

As you watch her turn on her heel and walk away, you feel redeemed. No sale, but you told the truth and you didn’t even smile when you did it. This feels good.

But wait, here comes another prospect. Smile! Make eye contact! Prepare to pitch!

Happy Poe's birthday from Liz in New York

I just came home to Sandy and Lonnie's announcements of our new blog on the Guppies and DorothyL e-lists after spending the evening partying with the board of Mystery Writers of America at the Black Orchid bookstore, where the warm welcome from booksellers Bonnie and Joe--to readers and writers, published and unpublished alike--brings a crowd to every event in spite of the fact that the space is so small that most of the party usually takes place on the stoop and out in the street. It was a little cold for that this evening, so there was a lot of convivial squeezing by going on in the narrow aisle between walls of lovely mysteries. Many visitors don't know that down the almost invisible spiral iron staircase is a whole basement full of used and out of print books. I found a copy of one of my all time favorites, Peter Dickinson's King and Joker, in paperback for an unbelievable $2.50. I was the only one who thought of leaving my coat down there. I made my way into the depths of the basement to lay it on a high-backed wicker armchair that looked as if it belonged in a Somerset Maugham novel. As I turned to go, I realized that perched on the back of the chair was a huge, black-feathered, ominous, and probably once living raven. Nevermore indeed! And happy birthday, Edgar Allan Poe. :)
Liz
Elizabeth Zelvin
Death Will Get You Sober coming in 2008