An Alternative for Ex-Amazon Affiliates

     After 10 years of establishing Grace’s Books & Records in Leesburg, FL, we’ve decided (due to age & health) to advertise our store for sale. We’re not in a hurry to accomplish this change but we’re hoping within the next year that we can attract either an experienced book person who is relocating to Central Florida or someone interested in acquiring a book store.

    Grace’s is located in Historic Downtown Leesburg and features an inventory of some 40,000 antiquarian books (in addition to softbacks, comics, and health & business-related tomes), 50,000 LP Albums (now one of Florida’s largest collections), original New Orleans art, and an array of collectables. We have a large number of first editions and most books are Brodart covered.

   Our store now has a customer base that is made up of local, state and national readers and collectors, as well as large numbers of international tourists.

   The 1,740 sf. store consistently generates a significant profit to investment (and has for the past 10 years as well as the current period).  This will be a turn-key sale (does not include the building).    The store offers someone with book store experience and computer skills an opportunity to significantly increase sales.  Leesburg, a city of about 22,000, is one of Florida’s more progressive cities with a visionary Business Association that is involved in staging several annual events, a Saturday morning farmer’s market, and a number of special events that draw numbers of shoppers to the downtown area.  

   Hopefully, a Florida or nearby state resident or a retiring northern bookseller who is moving to Central Florida might be looking to continue his/her book involement.

   Serious inquiries should be directed to Sue or Frank Grace at: bkrecgrace@cs.com

Here are some numbers that caught my attention during the education seminars held at the Spring Book Show:

$2500 – the average cost per stop for a New York-based publisher to send an author on a book tour.

20% – 25% - the average percent of people in the audience who will actually purchase a book at an off site author reading.

7 - the number of times a person has to hear the same information before it sinks in

235 – the number of authors currently registered for the Southern Traveling Authors Registration Service

50% of retail – If the total amount of debt your store owes is more than 50% of the retail value of the total amount of your inventory, you are carrying too much debt.

Thanks to Kelly Justice (Fountain Bookstore), Elisabeth Grant-Gibson (Windows a bookshop), Karin Wilson (Page & Palette), Sally Brewster (Park Road Books) and Janet Bollum (The Muse Book Shop) for being such a wealth of good information and advice to bookstores at the show.

Nicki Leone
nicki@sibaweb.com
803.730.8291

About the SIBA Book Award:

Each year, hundreds of booksellers across the South vote on their favorite hand-sell books of the year. These are the Southern books they have most enjoyed selling to customers; the ones that they couldn’t stop talking about; the ones most often pushed into a customer’s hands with the words “You have got to read this!” The SIBA Book Award was created to recognize great books of Southern origin, as determined by people whose business it is to know great books—the independent booksellers of the South.

Books are nominated in six categories, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, cooking young adult and children’s. For a book to be eligible, it must be set in the South, and it must have been originally published within the 2008 calendar year. Only SIBA-member booksellers can submit nominations and vote on the selection of finalists. Winners will be chosen from the list of finalists by a jury of SIBA booksellers.

Congratulations to Priscilla Smith, customer of Fiction Addiction, in Greenville SC.  She won the $100 Book Gift Card in the Survey Drawing.

Holiday Survey Results 2008 – we had 570 consumers respond to the survey

72% (up 2% from last year) of consumers say that the make a distinction between local retailers and corporate chains when making buying decisions.

42% (up 1% from last year) of consumers knew that local retailers contributed up to three times more revenue to their communities than corporate chains.

A whopping 91% (up 2% from last year) claimed that knowing that local retailers contributed more to their communities would influence their buying decisions.  Nearly 20% of the consumers who claimed to make no distinction between local retailers and corporate chains then indicated that the information that local retailers contribute up to three times more revenue than their corporate counterparts would indeed influence their buying decisions. 

Just over 13% (up 5% from last year) had visited the Authors ‘Round The South site, 80% (same as last year) of consumers indicated they would visit the ARTS site in the future…