Homework - Strengths

All right, homework time.

One of the slides at the class I attended asked us to make an honest appraisal of our skills. There were four categories: strengths, weaknesses, talents, and skills/experience. So, here I am, starting with my strengths. If there's anything you'd like to add, please do.

• I'm level-headed. It takes a lot to faze me. I can deal with glitches and setbacks with a minimum of fuss.
  
  
• I'm realistic. Sure, you could call this whole opening a bookstore thing a big dream, but I don't have any illusions about what goes into it. It's not all the magical, inspirational hip stuff you see in the books and movies and TV shows where someone "owns a bookshop." Those characters close down and go haring off to chase after plot points whenever they feel like it. They drink trendy coffee with their friends and are wildly successful. Real booksellers don't live in posh apartments and aren't making tons of money. They work - sometimes ten, twelve hours a day. Or more. I know I can kiss vacations goodbye for a while, and that there will be bad customers along with the good. I remember the things that drove me crazy at Booksmith, and I know they'll still be there, waiting, when I open a store of my own. I'm okay with that.
  
  
• I'm a good listener. Sometimes it's less about selling someone a book and more about helping them in other ways, or getting to the root of a complaint and figuring out how to fix it.
  
  
• I'm articulate. For dealing with publishers and community relations, sometimes it's all in the presentation.
  
  
• I'm able to change with the times. I know this sounds like an odd one, but there are booksellers out there who don't have fax machines, let alone e-mail addresses or websites. Some of those who have had to close up shop have fought valiantly to keep up with the changing world of publishing and book-buying trends, but there are others who have failed because they refuse to change. What worked twenty or thirty years ago isn't necessarily going to work now. I might rail against "w00t" being added to the dictionary, but I can adapt to changes in bookselling.
  

There are a couple of other things I'm thinking of, but I would put them more under talents or skills/experience. Next up is weaknesses, but I want to mull over that one for a while.

Playing Catch-up

There are a few things I intend to post about over the next few days (I know, I've been terribly neglectful). I have been mulling over the aforementioned homework assignment in my head; it's just a matter of typing it out in some coherent form. I am taking tomorrow off and plan to get writing done on several projects I've been dithering over. That will be one of them.

In an attempt to go green at work, the reps were given Sony Readers. I am of mixed feelings about this, and it will take a full blog post to explore and explain. The short version is, great for work, not-great for anything else. But, I'll go more in-depth in the next few days.

I have some book-reviewing to do, and plenty of reading.

A brief bit of good news, so this post isn't just a list of good intentions:

Last Friday, my boss called me into her office with bonus information. I was pretty sure I wasn't getting one, or if I was, it would come in the form of a cookie and a pat on the head, with a "maybe this year will be better." 2007 wasn't a great year for my territory, and while I know there are things I could have done better (which I aim to fix this year), there are several things that were simply out of my hands. Booksellers were being more cautious last year, trying to order in smaller quantities and cut back on returns. Customers weren't buying as much (even though bookstore and retail sales did rise slightly, from reports I've seen.) There were a lot of good books out there from the competition, and the writers' strike hurt at least one of the titles we were counting on.

So, add that all together, and I figured that any bonus I got would be one that came from pity.

It turns out, this wasn't so. Our bonus plan was restructured last year, and I didn't realize just how different it was from the years before. Now, believe me, I am by no means going to be raking in the dough when this check comes in. There are not going to be any fancy dinners at, say, the Ruth's Chris Steak House around the corner, nor will I be buying myself a small tropical island.

But, I will be able to pay off my car loan a few months early. The last payment would have been due this coming November (and I drive a pretty cheap car), so it's not a huge sum, but it's not something I've been able to scratch up until now, either.

I've always been looking at that last car payment as the thing that would let me start saving for other things - the biggest of those other things being the bookstore. Since day one, the plan has been to take the money that had previously gone towards my car every month and apply some of it to other bills and some of it to savings. Now I get to do that nine months early. It's a really, really good feeling. That, along with taking the classes, makes me more able to see this bookstore dream becoming a reality.

Also, the business cards I ordered have arrived. I need to take a picture of one and upload it. They came out very nice. I feel all professional and stuff.

Look, Ma, I'm Proactive

Last night I attended the class in starting a business that was canceled in December.

For those just tuning in, The Center for Women & Enterprise runs a class on steps to starting a business as part of their program for aspiring future entrepeneurs. It was a two-hour overview of things to keep in mind - how to figure out what kind of a business you want to run, financial things you're going to have to look at, a brief look at putting together a business plan, networking, things like that.

One thing I took from the class, which was kind of a nice realization, is that I'm probably further along in the process than I had given myself credit for. Not that I've come even close to being financially ready to do it, or that I have the best sense of what needs to be done, but that I do know what I want to do, and have a fairly realistic outlook on how to get there.

There were probably eight of us in the class, and only three of us seemed to have a solid idea of what kind of business we were interested in starting. The others had kind of nebulous goals - wanting to work for themselves, maybe an idea of what industry they wanted to go into. One woman seemed reluctant to actually state what it was she wanted to do. I couldn't tell if it was because there was a man in the room (all she would say was her idea had something to do with women), or whether she was afraid someone might steal her idea.

The instructor gave us a few things to consider "homework" - questions to ask ourselves before taking the leap. I know the first set of them is probably geared towards helping people figure out what they would like to do if they haven't yet decided, but it could also help me figure out things specific to running a bookstore. She suggested that after we answer them for ourselves, we ask other people to answer them about us, too. Friends might spot things that we weren't aware of, or discounted as not-terribly-relevant, but maybe those things might be worth looking at. That will go up in the next few days.

A couple of things I hadn't really considered, but are good suggestions:

--Having business cards made. It doesn't need anything more than my name and my contact info, but I'm going to get some made up. You never do know when you're going to meet someone that might be a good contact. (I realize one of my answers for the "What are your weaknesses" questions on the homework is my shyness. It's something I need to overcome, because as much as "networking" sounds so... jargony, it is a fact of life.)

--Reading the Wall Street Journal and business sections of local papers. I'm loathe to sign up for the physical paper. We used to have the Sunday Boston Globe delivered, and I never read it. Such a waste. But I'm afraid with the online versions of the newspapers, I'll be inclined to get distracted and click away. For now, I'm going to try bookmarking them and get into the habit of checking them out.

All in all, a good overview class. I'm not going to take the second class in the series, Visioning, because from the description it really is for people who are still figuring out what they want to do. So, the next step is the financial planning class that begins in March. Until then, though...homework.

If You're Not Part of the Solution...

In an interview with the New York Times this week, Steve Jobs offers this gloomy little tidbit:

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

Now, really. Yes, I read that report, too. And from a business perspective, I can see why he'd decline to develop Sony Reader or Kindle-like applications for the iPhone or iPod.

But "people don't read anymore"? Bullshit. Yes, they do. Bookstores did okay this past holiday season. Holiday post-mortems from all over the retail world showed that buyers were watching their wallets this year. It's not a big surprise, really. However, a slump in the economy shouldn't have people - especially smart people like Mr. Jobs - ringing the deathknell for reading in America.

Mr. Jobs earned a healthy dose of my respect last year when he published an open letter to the record companies, asking them to get rid of DRM encoding.

Some of the cool points he'd earned for that have been taken away by this recent statement. Am I saying he should get out there and dedicate himself to getting people to read more? No, that's not where his business' interests lead him. (Although, if he's so inclined, and got involved in sponsoring some literacy programs, he could earn some cool points back. They can be exchanged for beer or coffee if I ever meet him. Who doesn't like one or the other of those?)

Considering that I'm not a big fan of the Kindle or the Sony Reader - give me good, old-fashioned paper and ink books any day - it doesn't really matter to me that he's not pursuing the development of an Apple reader (let me guess, iRead?). Still, such a pessimistic statement sets my teeth on edge.

All Things Do Conspire Against Me

I stayed in town late on Wednesday night, killing time at my desk before heading off to the class. Hooray for Battlestar Galactica previews on YouTube. The time came to face the cold. Went out, bought myself a cinnamon coffee, and hied on over to the CWE building.

The class was canceled. Sick instructor. Boo.

So, looks like I'll be trying again in January.

Still Alive!

I've been doing mostly non-booksellery things the last few weeks, including holiday stuff, writing, and putting in a floor in our kitchen.

However, I haven't been entirely inactive. Last Thursday, I went to an info session at the Center for Women & Enterprise to get an idea of the kinds of classes they offer. I've just signed up for another class that runs this Wednesday night, "Steps to Starting a Business."

It was described as a two-hour course that helps potential businesswomen get started, a kind of overview of things you'll need to take into consideration and what sorts of planning to be, well, planning.

I'm pretty excited about it. The instructor who led the info session seemed to know her stuff and was enthusiastic about the organization. I will most likely be signing up for other courses that they offer, which are longer sessions and spread out over multiple weeks. They run courses in semester-like cycles, so I believe there will be new classes beginning in January or February. Looks like I decided to get off my ass at the right time.

More to come...

One Small Step

I could swear I bitched about NPR's only linking to Amazon on their site somewhere around here, but I can't seem to find the post. Maybe I spent so much time composing it in my head, I never actually typed it out.

So, in a nutshell, for a long time, NPR has had links to Amazon alongside titles that have appeared on their programs. For an organization that relies so heavily on its communities, this always seemed a little off. I have NPR's books section as one of the RSS feeds on my google homepage. There are always titles mentioned that I'm curious about, but that little Amazon button has made me cringe. We've donated directly to NPR and WBUR during their fundraising weeks, so I certainly don't feel like I'm denying them support if I don't order from Amazon.

Recently, both NPR and The New York Times have added links to Booksense to their sites.

It's long overdue, but here's hoping it will catch on and other places will follow their leads.