I would warn that you likely need to find a niche market in order to do well. If you concentrate on one area that there is a demand for, you can compete with the big guys (I have a friend, cavalorn, who recently sold his Manchester occult bookshop, which was quite successful for many years). There is a great independent sci-fi bookshop in B'ham and I've heard of crime, language, business, and cookery shops all working well down in London. But a generalist bookshop is probably not going to be able to compete in most towns with Blackwells, Borders or even Tescos.
Also you may wish to get into a bit of bookselling by post first, so that you an do mail-order bookselling before (and continuing with) having your own shop (perhaps through www.abebooks.co.uk and definitely by building up your own database of catalogue customers, perhaps including other businesses). I know one member of this community who did this for many years in Texas (and has now gone catalogue-only; no more brick-and-mortar shop).
There are some towns where this won't work. Reading's only independent bookstore has just shrunk by half; they don't seem to be doing well at all. The other store was bought out by a chain ages ago. But if your town has a sufficient number of educated & fairly affluent people with a mix of students & a steady, year-round population, you have a shot at it.
Read The Bookseller magazine as much as possible and where you can, attend the trade & industry gatherings that are promoted there. Get on a lot of mailing lists. And keep in mind the actual business end of bookselling is not something that you get a lot of exposure to early on if you work for one of the chains instead of an indie. You need to ask a lot of questions to find out how things really work up in the cash office. The margins are really, really, really tight in bookselling. :/
Oh, and when you do have a shop, don't let customers order in specialty books without paying for them in advance. Seems to me about 4/5 of the time they simply won't pick them up otherwise.
Also you may wish to get into a bit of bookselling by post first, so that you an do mail-order bookselling before (and continuing with) having your own shop (perhaps through www.abebooks.co.uk and definitely by building up your own database of catalogue customers, perhaps including other businesses). I know one member of this community who did this for many years in Texas (and has now gone catalogue-only; no more brick-and-mortar shop).
There are some towns where this won't work. Reading's only independent bookstore has just shrunk by half; they don't seem to be doing well at all. The other store was bought out by a chain ages ago. But if your town has a sufficient number of educated & fairly affluent people with a mix of students & a steady, year-round population, you have a shot at it.
Read The Bookseller magazine as much as possible and where you can, attend the trade & industry gatherings that are promoted there. Get on a lot of mailing lists. And keep in mind the actual business end of bookselling is not something that you get a lot of exposure to early on if you work for one of the chains instead of an indie. You need to ask a lot of questions to find out how things really work up in the cash office. The margins are really, really, really tight in bookselling. :/
Oh, and when you do have a shop, don't let customers order in specialty books without paying for them in advance. Seems to me about 4/5 of the time they simply won't pick them up otherwise.
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