Posted by admin on 10 Jun 2010 under books, business
Lisa Sliwa
If you are an avid reader who is passionate about books, why not open a bookshop? If you’ve ever thought that owning a book store is something you would like to do, this may be the right time to begin to explore just what it would take to run a successful bookstore business.
The details may seem a little overwhelming at first. You’ll need to write a business plan, including a mission statement, which will serve as the skeleton of your new venture. It will keep you focused on where you are headed as you flesh out each step and will help to turn your dream into a reality. You will also need a business plan if you will be applying for outside financing.
Whether you’re online or bricks-and-mortar, you’ll need to set up a merchant account with a reputable company for credit card processing services. Merchant Account Guide is a great starting place.
Along the way, you’ll have lots of choices to make. You’ll need to decide on a location, and you’ll need to determine what kind of bookstore to open. If you are looking to open a bookshop in an area already served by one of the mega-bookstores like Barnes and Noble, you may want to target a sector of the market that is often overlooked, such as the rare or used book market, or possibly set up a specialty store like a Christian book store or a store specializing in mystery novels.
You’ll need to find inventory, and you’ll want to choose fixtures and furnishings that reflect the atmosphere you’ve chosen for your shop. You also may want to consider how you can best become a valued part of the community; through offering special programs like book clubs, poetry readings, creative writing classes, guest artists and speakers, and of course, providing story tellers and special events for children, your shop may become a favorite neighborhood destination! This could be a crucial factor to the success of your business, for the more people who visit your shop, the more books you are likely to sell and the more repeat customers you are likely to gain.
If starting a bookstore business is something you are just beginning to look into, you may find it useful to consider pointers from someone who has already profitably accomplished this. For more tips and some great first hand advice about how to open a bookstore, Why Not Open A Bookshop is a wonderful resource which can point you in the right direction for success.
Article Source: Starting a Bookstore – Initial Steps For Success
Posted by admin on 15 Mar 2010 under books, business
Frank Florence
Books are said to be man’s best friend as they impart knowledge. The type of content in the book ranges over many a categories, it may be a sci-fi or plain fiction, romantic or travel books. Most of the book readers like to own them. However, what happens after you buy these knowledge treasures. Well you just read them once or twice and they then get added on to your book shelf pile. They might get referred back if you remember that it has important information. Still most of the books you buy just lie around in your homes.
Now comes to you a better option to deal with these over-stuffed books in your closets. You can actually sell them off to some one who might just be searching for them. If your books are in a good state they might just get the correct price. This is a new trend that has evolved on the internet and that is selling and buying books through an online used bookstore. If you look back in times possibly doing something of this sort was impossible, but now it is all easy and accessible. This could help any one make some more money out of this.
There’s a special type of merchant account designed for online business that may be the best choice for you. Be sure to weigh the technical considerations versus the benefits before deciding who should handle your credit card processing.
However, how can you achieve the selling of books using the net? There are some steps that you can follow to build your own shop cart to sell your books online. Or else you can decide to sell your used books collection on Amazon or eBay. To sell your books on the Amazon or eBay all you have to do is register online as a used bookseller by simply following their steps. On these websites, you need to submit some of your information like your name, your address and other contact details like phone number, valid email ID, along with user name and password.
Once your registration is done then you need to create a list of the books you would be selling.
To list on the online used bookstore you might even have to add the estimated price of the books, the condition they are in, the type of payment you would like receive and how are you going to be shipping them to the buyer. You also have to guarantee that the books are in a very good state, with neat covers and in a readable state.
Well you have to keep you shop running, so you will have to create an inventory for your online bookstore. To do that you will have to collect such used books possibly from garage sales or buy them from your friends and neighbors. Remember one thing when you are creating an inventory for your store that buy books at a lower cost.
To learn more about online bookselling, please visit: http://www.CreativeBookSourcing.com
Article Source: Online Used Bookstore – Renewal of the Book’s Life
Posted by admin on 18 Feb 2010 under books, business
Penny C. Sansevieri
Most of us meander into a bookstore, maybe grabbing a latte from the nearby coffee vendor and sauntering up and down the aisles looking for our desired title. Bookstores are great and I’ve always said if I were ever to get locked in a store overnight, let it be a bookstore (preferably one with a handy Starbucks inside). But bookstores are so much more than that.
For the savvy author, a bookstore is a great way to not only get to know your market, but to research your competition and get a better understanding of the sales space. This is one of the best and least expensive ways to do your market research. Making your bookstore your research laboratory is a fantastic way to position yourself for success, regardless of how you are published.
Know Your Market
First off, if you’ve written a book for which there is no market (read: there are no books that cater to this audience), you may have a problem. Unless you are already a brand, meaning that you’re a published author with a significant following, it’s unlikely that you will be able to create much momentum for a yet unserved market that a publisher will consider you. If it hasn’t been written there is likely a reason why. Now there are always exceptions of course, my other book: Red Hot Internet Publicity is not a title that I would have published in 1976, mostly because there was no Internet back then.
So yes, new markets are developing all the time but it’s key to wait till those markets emerge, otherwise you’re selling to an audience that doesn’t exist. This also goes to creating a new genre for your book. You should fit into an existing genre and find the best one for your market. This is also important since sometimes books can straddle different markets. A change in title can take your book for women wanting to succeed in business and move it from the business category into self-help and/or spirituality. Be clear on where your book belongs. Remember, a confused mind won’t make a choice so if you confuse your reader, you’re likely to lose a sale.
Who Else is Sharing Your Shelf Space?
Understanding what your market is and who else is sharing your shelf space is key. What are their books like and have you read them? This is all part of your market research: know your competition and know who shares your space. This is not just important to know other competing titles, but for marketing and media positioning this is critical. Also, you should take note of all other recent titles in your category and go visit their websites. If you’re really eager to watch your competition, you could also get Google Alerts on their name or book title to see how much traction they are getting. I will usually do this for any major author in my market as well as all their book titles. Not only can you keep an eye on their hit rate, but these sites and media targets could be good for you as well.
Every Book Tells a Story
Each book in your genre will tell you a little something about the author and publisher. Now I’m not talking about the contents of the book itself, I’m talking about things like the cover, book jacket, book size (both dimensions and page count), as well as endorsements, back cover copy, etc. Getting bookstore shelf space isn’t easy. Generally bookstores won’t keep books on their shelves that aren’t selling, so getting to know books that are doing well in stores can really benefit your title as well. Learning from books that are out there is a great way to position yourself for success.
Books that make it into and onto a shelf in a bookstore need to “look” the part. Yes, your book may be the best out there but if it doesn’t meet the needs of the genre, it simply won’t get put on a shelf. In order to play in the publishing sandbox you must play by the rules. While it’s nice to be a maverick and to hear stories about authors who “bent the rules” and claimed success, if you read the backstory to any success, you’ll find that following the rules and playing to the market is vital to success. There are 1,500 books published each day. Yes, you want to stand out, but you also want to look the part.
Bookstore checklist
Here’s a checklist to get you started in your bookstore research. You’ll want to expand on this as you find more titles or more ideas to research. I suggest for example adding in URL’s from the book jacket so you can research the author’s website, etc.
- What genre does your book fall into?
- Is there a sub-genre and if so, what is it? (for example, my books fall into reference/writing, writing being the sub-genre)
- List the top five titles and authors in that market:
- Key points each book has in common? (for example, all cookbooks you noted had nutritional analysis on each page)
Penny C. Sansevieri, CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a best-selling author and internationally recognized book marketing and media relations expert. Her company is one of the leaders in the publishing industry and has developed some of the most cutting-edge book marketing campaigns. She is the author of five books, including Red Hot Internet Publicity. Penny is also an instructor at NYU. AME is the first marketing and publicity firm to use Internet promotion to its full impact through The Virtual Author Tour™, which strategically works with social networking sites, blogs, Twitter, ezines, video sites, and relevant sites to push an authors message into the virtual community and connect with sites related to the book’s topic, positioning the author in his or her market. In the past 15 months their creative marketing strategies have helped land 10 books on the New York Times Bestseller list. To learn more about Penny’s books or her promotional services, you can visit her website at http://www.amarketingexpert.com.
Article Source: Marketing Secrets of a Bookstore
Posted by admin on 04 Feb 2010 under books, business
Lisa Sliwa
Are you thinking about opening a bookstore? Have you been searching for the perfect plan to guide you in this quest? You may have already thought of a name, happened across a superb location, and chosen a great niche in which to sell books, but without a solid action plan, it can be confusing and difficult to turn your dream into a reality.
It can be a long, lonely road from start up to success when you want to take action but don’t know what to do first. If you are looking for guidance in opening a bookstore, here are 3 simple steps you can take NOW to get pointed in the right direction to open the bookshop of your dreams!
1. Look into local business license laws and building codes. Find out what the local authorities require from someone opening a bookstore. This information may be available online, or may require a quick visit to your town’s city hall, but usually, the information is free. Knowing what the authorities will require of you ahead of time will keep you from expensive missteps and wasted time and money as you move forward.
2. Visit lots of bookstores. Make a note of what you like and don’t like about each. If you are serious about opening a bookstore, do more than simply check out the books! Approach this task as a critic would. Check out the neighborhood, the curb appeal of the shop, parking, lighting and the interior fixtures and floor plan. Most importantly, notice who is shopping there, and when. As you fine tune your ideas about your dream bookshop, incorporate what you’ve gleaned from your field study.
3. Find a mentor. Talk to bookshop owners and find out what does and doesn’t work in real life and what the pitfalls are when opening a bookstore business. Learning from someone else’s experience may keep you from making costly mistakes, or even better, give you some great insight that you never would have known on your own.
It can take MONTHS to gather enough information to know if opening a bookstore is a good move for you. Here’s a quick way to jump start your dream without relying on your competition (and hoping they don’t mislead you) to help you learn the in’s and out’s of bookshop ownership. Check out http://openabookshop.info for great tips from a successful independent bookshop owner. You CAN successfully open a bookshop!
Article Source: Opening a Bookstore – 3 Simple Steps to Take Now to Achieve Your Dream