A Fort Greene bookstore in store?
Bookstores are my temples. From Mugwumps, a funky, early-80s-era shop in Little Rock, to Foyles in London (where, before its renovation and retrofitting, browsing the aisles meant risking burial by a tower of books, precariously crammed from any available surface to the ceiling), I enter and immediately feel more at peace and unable to leave with my hands empty. Which is why it’s deeply odd for me to live in a highly literate New York neighborhood without a local large general-interest bookstore.
Jessica Stockton Bagnulo may be set to finally change that. The keen mind behind The Written Nerd, one of the best blogs on books and bookselling you’ll read, Jessica has also just won the Brooklyn Public Library’s PowerUp! business plan competition. Local residents immediately began lobbying Jessica to open up shop here, so Fort Greene/Clinton Hill isn’t about to lose out to Windsor Terrace or Prospect Heights without a fight. Still, $15K is just the start of the funding that Jessica will need to pull it off, and there’s still the pesky matter of securing a suitable space at a reasonable price.
I have no doubt, though, that Jessica will realize her dream: Not only is her enthusiasm infectious, but she also has worked methodically for the better part of a decade to learn the ins and outs of the business. Find out why she’s bullish on independent bookselling and hear her ideas about the bookstore that could soon be on a Fort Greene/Clinton Hill corner after the jump.
You’ve kindly shared your business plan with me, and I have to say, it’s fantastic. Not only is it a model of how any business plan should be written — you’ve really done your homework — but it’s also an inspiring document for any bookstore lover. How long did it take to pull it together?
Wow, thanks for the compliments! There are probably two answers to that question. On one hand, it took me all 7 years I’ve worked in independent bookstores to slowly pull together my ideas of the kind of bookstore I wanted, and where, and how it would work, and what would work and what wouldn’t. Then when it came to writing, it probably took only a few months. The PowerUp! competition through the Brooklyn Public Library had its orientation last April, and the plan was due in September; I got married in June, so that took some time out, but having the structure of those couple of months helped me to put it all on paper fairly quickly.
You present a very clear vision for the organization of the store; you’ve posted your ideal set-up on your blog. What three elements would you consider your have-to-haves, and what three elements are things you could let go of (however reluctantly) to make it happen?
I’ve been thinking lately more in terms of what must be there on day 1, and what I’d be willing to add later on as I’m able. I think space for author events is absolutely necessary — but the wine bar part of things might be phased in later. I think enough space for a good variety of books in many categories is necessary — but if the space is less than 2,000 square feet, I can maybe expand later. I think having children’s books will be totally necessary, but the ideal layout of the space I described in the blog might not be feasible right away.
You seem a bit uncertain of whether or not to sell used books in your blog post, and you don’t really mention them in your business plan. Why is that?
The simple answer is that I’m just not particularly interested in the used book market. I think there are a number of options for Brooklynites to get used books (including each other’s front stoops!), and I’d rather offer a place for the wealth of books being currently published, so I don’t include used books in my plan. However, if there’s an outpouring of requests for used books (buying and/or selling), I’d certainly be willing to consider adding that to the bookstore as a service to the community.
Your business plan calls for opening hours of 10am to 11pm daily. So few independent stores in Brooklyn keep those kinds of hours; why do you think it’s worthwhile to try to pull it off? To accommodate events? To cater to as many people — from stay-at-home moms to post-workday commuter traffic — as possible?
Yes, both, and other reasons. In the store where I work now, we hold events at 7pm and it’s necessary to be open until 10 to accommodate all of the overflow and cleanup from that — and we’re in a very nonresidential neighborhood. I feel that in Brooklyn, people in the neighborhood are probably already near home, so they’re likely to stay out later, and I want to make sure there’s plenty of time for folks to browse after work. But also, I want to stretch the initial opening hours as wide as possible so that I can get a sense for when folks are actually coming in to the store — if I find that the store is dead after a certain time, or no one comes in before noon, I may modify the hours, but I’ll need those long hours at first to get the information on people’s habits.
In yet another dead-on blog post a few days ago, you broke down the bookselling Henny Pennys, pointing out that when there are restaurant closings, people don’t immediately jump to proclaiming it a dead industry. Do you think there’s something about books in particular — a 1,400-year-old technology — that provokes so much hand-wringing?
I think there are a number of reasons for the hand-wringing about the book industry. One is that every leap in technology leads to worries that previous technologies will disappear (books, radio, TV, film, Internet, in that order). Another is that being a reader is often very tied to people’s sense of self, and sometimes it’s attractive to think of oneself as part of a beleaguered minority. But I think perhaps the primary reason that people assume the indie bookstore industry is dying is that many — especially in the media — internalized the story of the 1990s, when chain bookstores were at their height and big box stores came to prominence, and many indie bookstores did close because of them. It’s hard to imagine that’s not the end of the story, but it wasn’t: The indie stores that survived learned to be competitive, and now savvy new stores are opening fast and furious and becoming successful in the new retail environment. And there’s actually a lot of movement toward buying local and independent in the culture that is benefiting indie bookstores. I think a lot of people just haven’t caught up with that story yet.
You’ve also addressed the question of “Why Brooklyn?” on your blog; in your business plan, you’ve identified Fort Greene/Clinton Hill, Prospect Heights, and South Park Slope/Windsor Terrace as your target areas. You seem especially psyched to do it in Fort Greene/Clinton Hill — why?
Partly it’s because I’ve had so many people emailing me to say they would love to have a bookstore in Fort Greene/Clinton Hill! But I’ve been drawn to the neighborhood for a long time, as sort of the ideal of the neighborhood I’d imagined: One with a population affluent enough to buy books, but also very diverse and not so wealthy and set in its ways that rents were astronomical, or that there wasn’t room for doing some funky, less staid kinds of stuff. And I have the sense that Fort Greene is a particularly literary neighborhood: Johnny Temple of Akashic Books talked about that a bit on my blog, and there’s the Fort Green Park Literary Festival, and BAM, and all of these great cultural institutions. It’s actually amazing to me that there isn’t a general bookstore there already, and I hope I get to be the one to bring it to the neighborhood! But if not, Brooklyn is a big place, and I think there are other neighborhoods that could also use and support a new bookstore.
Last year I spoke with Jenn Brissett, owner of Indigo Books, and her perspective on the viability of a bookstore in the neighborhood was a little less optimistic. You are particularly buoyed by indicators that suggest that people are reading more books, profitable independent bookstores are thriving, and the threat of Amazon is not as huge as frequently believed. In a nutshell, how do you plan to capitalize on these trends in this neighborhood?
I feel like I’ve developed a great network of book people, both those who work in the industry and those who are just book lovers, and getting their support for this venture will be a great way to have an initial customer base. I’m also fortunate in that the award from the PowerUp! competition included services from a marketing firm, local papers, and the Chamber of Commerce, so I plan to use those resources to get the word out about this venture when it happens. And, perhaps most importantly, I want everyone who comes into my store to have a great experience — aesthetically, in terms of service, in the events we run, and in the books they find here. I believe people, especially in Brooklyn, would rather patronize an independent store, all things being equal, so I plan to make it easy for them to make the decision by offering the best bookstore experience you can get!
The events piece of your plan is substantial, which figures since you are the events coordinator at McNally Robinson. Have you thought about the kinds of things you’ll stage that appeal uniquely to the very diverse Fort Greene/Clinton Hill community?
Obviously there’s a great community of writers, both in Fort Greene and in the larger Brooklyn community, and I know that they support each other because I see them at each other’s readings in McNally Robinson! If I can quote Johnny Temple again, “I have no problem with Manhattan, but you’ll go to a literary event in Manhattan with fifty people, and forty of them are from Brooklyn. Why not save the subway fare and the time, and promote public events in Brooklyn?” I’ve learned a lot in my position as events coordinator about what kinds of author events are exciting and attractive, and they’re often those that involve conversations rather than just an author standing there reading. I think there’s even more potential for that kind of thing in the slightly more casual atmosphere of Brooklyn. And I think I may also be able to pull off some more non-author events: a marathon reading of Leaves of Grass for Whitman’s birthday, or a scary story slam for Halloween, that kind of stuff that involves people in the community. And I think it will make sense to have more children’s authors and events because of the population here, which I don’t do much of now. I can’t wait to get it going and see what we can do!
What kind of specific support have you been offered so far to bring the store to Fort Greene/Clinton Hill?
In addition to the PowerUp! prize money, which is no strings attached, I’ve met with the retail committee of the Fort Greene Association, which has been very generous in offering to help me look for funding to get to my startup goals. I have also talked to the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership, which offers matching funds for signage and storefront design — an exciting impetus to retail development in that area.
What more would be helpful to you, as you pull together resources and identify funding sources, including investors?
Wow, that’s another big question. I’m in the market for a good lawyer and accountant to help me make some of these decisions, so if anyone knows a great, cheap, community-minded professional, let me know! I’m looking for funding sources that will still allow me to retain as much autonomy as possible in the store, because I feel my experience justifies it — if I work with an investor, I’ll be willing to share the profits but not much of the decision making, so I’m looking for ways to structure that and investors or loaners who would be interested in such a setup. And I’m still gathering as much information as possible about rents, traffic patterns, and other neighborhood factors that can make or break a business. And eventually I’ll need referrals for contractors and builders. So information, professional referrals, and no-strings investing — that’s not too much to ask, is it? [smiling]
Feel free to get in touch with Jessica via email at booknerdnyc at earthlink dot net or check out her blog, The Written Nerd, to see how it all shakes out.