Fair Day!

Well that time of year has come around again already! It's Bo'ness Fair Day on Friday as evidenced by the amazing arches being built all over town. As last year, the shop will be closed on Friday (along with most of the other shops in town) so we can all enjoy the day, but we'll be back as usual on Saturday!

And speaking of the fair, we're pleased to say we've sold out of our initial batch of Fair Day DVDs... but another batch will be along on Saturday though so don't despair, just make sure you reserve your copy before this lot is gone too!

Have a wonderful Fair day!

Busy, busy, busy!

As I'm sure you can tell by the distinct lack of activity on all things online and electronic-y recently the shop has been a liiiiittle bit busy. We've had the popular annual Victorian Street Fair in town, lots of ticket sales for the Barony Theatre's hilarious production of The Holy Terror, and the brilliant charity Abba night, and of course our new-for-2009 selection of Bo'ness Fair Day cards arriving in the shop, as well as a whole raft of new books to love! Whew!

First, to the books...

New in this month we're loving the new book from local publishers, Pocket Mountains: Stirling, 40 Town and Country Walks. The latest in the series, this book includes walks round Bo'ness and Kinneil, the Antonine Wall and Muiravonside, as well as some lovely routes out as far afield as Bridge of Allan, Loch Katrine, Callander, Dunblane and all points in between. A great little pocket reference if you feel like a wander on a lovely sunny afternoon. (PS. We also have the Edinburgh book in stock too if you fancy a potter around the East coast's finest walks.)

Another couple of recent arrivals are the first two in a great new detective series for kids from Tanya Landman: Monday's are Murder, and Dead Funny. Both feature eleven-year-old detective Poppy Fields and are billed as '"Miss Marple" for the younger reader'. Having quickly finished the first book where Poppy solves a series of murders at an activity centre on a remote Scottish island, I'm interested to see how she gets on in Dead Funny when she tries to solve the mysterious death of ageing starlet Baby Sugarcandy whilst on holiday in the US. (Though by all accounts, Poppy is a very capable pre-teen, so I'm sure she'll manage to wrap it all up nicely!)

Finally on the books front, I'm currently racing through the Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England by Brock Clarke which arrived in paperback a few weeks ago. A proper(ish) review will follow once I've finished, but from what I've read so far (up to page 106...) I can recommend it to anyone as a great read - wry observant humour, a well developed main character, and a carefully plotted story that unfolds new turns at just the right moments... all pulled together with a brilliant balance of wit and weirdness... my personal favourites. Thumbs up so far, and I've high hopes for the ending.


And next to the Fair...

This year we're stocking Fair Day cards which can either be bought plain, or can be personalised with your child's name / role. The cards we currently stock are Queen, Flower Girl, Fairy, Lady in Waiting, Queen's Herald, and a few general Thank You and Happy Fair Day cards. Our full range can be seen in the window, and judging on the success we've had already we'll definitely bring these back next year, albeit with an expanded selection to include more named roles as well as themed cards for each school's presentees.

Continuing with the Fair theme, copies of the much anticipated Fair Day DVD (as mentioned in the Bo'ness Journal last week) are due to arrive in the shop this weekend. If you've already let me know of your interest in it then I'll be phoning you as soon as the delivery arrives in the shop, and if not, what are you waiting for? They should be here this weekend so stop by and get your copy and have a wander down memory lane.

And finally (as if all that weren't enough!)...
To top off a busy few weeks, the programmes for the Edinburgh International Book Festival have just arrived in the shop. If you want to find out who's appearing this year then check out the website here or pop into the shop to pick up a copy of the programme for yourself. (You can book tickets from June 22nd onwards).

I've found a wonderful book...

OK, being a bookseller I find great books all the time but I've realised that hardly any of these amazing books ever get any blog time here - a fact I'd pledged to rectify in the shop's resolutions list this year. So here's the first of many wonderful books I've found (more to follow soon!) ...


This first book is called Black's Sketchbooks 'Edinburgh' 1912 by Gordon Home, and it's a wonderful little hardback containing 15 beautiful pencil sketches of Edinburgh. The sketches show the city as it was in 1912 and feature various locations such as Princes Street, the Castle, John Knox's House etc. as well as the Forth Bridges at South Queensferry, and (have I said this before?) they are just beautiful. They show Edinburgh in all its majesty and contain a level of detail that makes you just want to pack up and go!

The book (available at the bargain price of just £6.99) is part of a series which includes books on London, Cambridge, Stratford Upon Avon, Bath and Wells, and Canterbury, and if any of those places are special to you or someone you know, this would make a wonderful purchase. (Now if only there was one on Bo'ness!)

Movie Magic in Bo'ness...

Look at the lovely movie window!

Isn't it pretty? It's all in aid of the opening of the Bo'ness Hippodrome this week. It's a beautifully restored old cinema, just down the road from the shop that's lain unused for far too long. But now it's been all spruced up and is ready to open it's doors. It will be a wonderful new addition to the visitor attractions in the town and I'm looking forward to seeing my first film in there! It will be open for the first screenings for the public at the end of the week, and the programme of what's going to be on there can be seen here. It even made the news here... and here! (Of course, if you pop along to the cinema, don't forget to visit us here afterwards!)

Yep, the movie window is pretty cool... as is the Easter window over the other side... OK, so my drawings of chicks and lambs aren't going to win me any prizes, but you get the picture and it helps make the place look a little more spring like! Lovely!

In brief...

In an attempt to get back to blogging slightly more regularly, here's a bit of a brief housekeeping post to keep you updated on a couple of things really quickly...

* March's enewsletter has finally been sent out (yeay!) if you didn't get one and would like one, you can sign up for it here and I'll email it out to you asap.
* I've updated the website again to include this month's new books, and whilst I was there I tweaked it a bit and added the odd extra page here and there. If you want a nosey round it you can get there by clicking here.
* We now have more copies of Hard as Nails back in the shop (it completely sold out last week!) so pop in and pick up yours before it goes again!
* We still have copies of the children's World Book Day books available. Just bring in your yellow voucher to get yours, or purchase them with actual cash-money for the princely sum of ...£1 each.

That's about all for now... a slightly more rambling post to follow soon!

Whoops!

After logging on to check a few other blogs (see the small but perfectly formed list on the right), and reading Vanessa's spot on remarks about leaving blogs hanging, I suddenly realised how long it's been since this one was updated! So for this I apologise profusely, and now offer a bit of a swiftish run down of what's happened this year so far in an attempt to catch up...

January: The first month into 2009 went pretty well... quite a few people came to the shop and spent, spent, spent on books they wanted but didn't get for Christmas. Excellent! More new books arrived and quite a few books were sold; the remaining shop plants clung on throught the freezing cold with barely a grumle; we took books out on the road, and even managed to squeeze in a blog post!

February: Though February was quieter in the shop, with slightly less people coming in, the ones who did bought books none the less. Great! Along with Pebbles and The Bo'ness Toyshop we embarked on a bit of a marketing drive ('hello' to all the new folks!), and I visited a fab new independent bookshop in Glasgow (more on that below). The massive yellow dumpbin for World Book Day arrived in the shop and I stupidly built it up in the cupboard straight away rather than leaving it till the time it could be put out in the shop. This of course meant that I ended up spending the last few weeks twisting and turning to get past it whenever I wanted to make a cup of tea.

March: well, since we're only on day 3, there's not a lot to report yet, but I'm happy to say that the yellow dumpbin is now on the shop floor, leaving me room to get to the kettle (yeay!) and all the World Book Day books are now available for the princely sum of £1 (or one of those lovely yellow World Book Day book tokens!). And I'll be getting back writing up the old enewsletter too (which also had a bit of a break these last few months) - March issue to be sent sometime in the next few days.

Now for a bit more on my visit to another indy bookshop: Lost in Fiction. If you're in Glasgow's West End at any point, do make the trip and pop in to see it. Eileen has a beautiful little shop, well stocked and with a wonderful feel to it. She's been doing brilliant things with book groups (shhh... I might nick a few of her ideas in the next few months!) and it was just lovely to talk to someone else who's still fairly new to the whole bookshop lark. Her shop is definitely worth a visit, and I hope to return the favour soon and have her pop through to Bo'ness to see my little shop!

Right, enough bloging, time to get back to shop work - those window displays won't change themselves, and since I've just sold the last of the Katy Morag books, there's a spot of ordering to be done too!

My First Bookselling Christmas... (Part 2: A look back at 2008)

Well, we made it through the first Christmas with only minor scrapes and bruises! Yeay! All of our worries about orders not arriving etc. proved unfounded, and everyone seemed to leave happy with their purchases which is the whole object of the business! Now to analyze the year as a whole...

Books: By a mile, our bestsellers proved to be the local books. Bo'ness folk have oodles of pride in the town and so books such as Bo'ness: A Glimpse of the Past; Bo'ness Speed Hill Climb; Forth at War, and the newly launched Sons O' Brass pretty much flew off the shelves. Truth be told, over Christmas we struggled to keep some of them in stock, but thankfully we were able to get copies to everyone who wanted them at the end of the day. In contrast, the big celebrity biographies are now languishing on the sale shelves...

Busy-ness: As for how busy we were, over the year we've had our busy days and quiet days, and we've definitely spotted a few seasonal trends to work with for next year. Certainly we noticed people began to mutter about Christmas presents right from the start of November, and from then on the shop got steadily busier week after week, with Christmas Eve being our busiest day since opening! (Yep, there still are some last minute buyers out there... thankfully I'm not the only one!)

Opening Hours: Sunday opening proved much more popular in December than in the rest of the year so we've decided to take advantage of this to have a few months without Sunday opening in order to get other things done around the place - organise some better storage in the office, put up some blinds, move a few things around, do a few leaflet drops etc. etc. etc. but Sunday opening will return later in the year (and of course we're happy to open the shop by appointment on a Sunday if that's the only time someone is able to make it... just give us a shout).

What we did well: Not to blow our own trumpet or anything but essentially, we've established a new bookshop in a town that's not had one for decades in the middle of the worst economic recession in living memory. Even if we gave it all up now that's still quite a feat! But looking back there's been a few milestones along the way that are worth recognising:

• We've had our first ever day trading... and subsequently our first run-in with tax, VAT and account-y type spreadsheets
• We've built up a fantastic customer base of wonderful book browsers and buyers in the shop, and a brilliant list of enewsletter readers
• We've established and maintained book supply accounts with local schools, community groups and businesses
• We've got a pretty nifty website up and running (...with absolutely no website experience!)
• We've successfully processed hundreds of customer orders
• We've been shortlisted for an award
• We've held our first book launch
• We've visited book groups, community groups, churches and schools
• We've started a fledgling ticket sales project
• We've survived our first Christmas season
• We've been a part of local events such as the Victorian Street Fair, Children's Fair Festival, Christmas lights switch on
• We've trialled Sunday opening & Late Night opening
• We've forged relationships with other businesses and groups in the community
• We've kept the blog going (...even if it's been a little sporadic)
• We've successfully killed one laptop and three Boston Ferns... erm
• We've learned a lot about: people, business, politics, supply & demand, accounts, economics, window dressing, the merits of blu-tac & post-it notes, and generally about how to get things done
• and much, much more...

Improvements for 2009: We hope to start building up a bigger stock of complementary products in the shop over the coming year. We already have some journals, address books, reading glasses etc. as well as a small selection of greetings cards, but we think this all can be expanded to include more pocket money picks for the kids, a greater selection of stationery, gift wrap, book related gifts and a lot more besides. But don't panic... we're still fundamentally a bookshop through and through, and we don't intend to sacrifice our the books for unrelated cheap tat - everything we bring in will be book related.

To Do: So thinking ahead, I've prepared a Top 10 to-do list for this year in the shop (in truth, most of this is not new, but rather stuff we've always planned but which we've not had a chance to get started on till now!):

1. To expand on the non-book stock we have available, adding new lines as the year progresses
2. To better organise our own system of shop gift vouchers to go alongside the National Book Tokens we offer
3. To let more people know about the shop (through more, and better targeted marketing)
4. To further build up our established enewsletter list, and to expand our existing website - and update it more often!
5. To find time to set up more of the services we planned to offer right from the start
6. To organise behind the counter better so things can be found more quickly
7. To sort out the paper and computerised filing systems so paperwork takes half the time it currently does (... this one might just be a dream!)
8. To do more book reviews, in the shop, on the blog, the enewsletter and the website
9. To establish regular offers in the shop
10. To keep doing everything we've already been doing... but better!

It's by no means an exhaustive list but those are the main points for now (though they could change at any minute!) so this time next year I can look back and see if everything has been achieved! Well, you've got to have a plan right?

So all in all, I think we've had a successful first year - there's been highs and lows, and a ridiculous learning curve to climb (which I've really only just started) but it's been an enjoyable, scary, happy, worrying, brilliant, silly, amazing, stressful, fantastic journey... So here's to the next part - bring on 2009!