Open – Page 2 – Bookbugs and Dragon Tales

Posted on September 12, 2019May 16, 2020 by Leanne — 2 Comments

Bookbugs on tour

We have been open for 3 and a half weeks and I feel like we are settling into a routine. I still feel hopelessly behind and depending when you email me, I could respond in 5 minutes or 5 days. However, a natural flow has started to emerge and I’m feeling less like I’m fighting fires. We have a shop that people come to and seem to love, an events schedule that has small but ever growing numbers, positivity and kindness in abundance. So, just as things are seemingly bedding in, Dan and I disappear to the Booksellers Association Conference and disrupt that schedule, peace, flow and serenity.

As ever Poppy and Sally stepped into the breach and as their hearts are as entwined with Bookbugs as ours, we knew that our baby was safe. Super capable surrogate big sisters. So, we left without a worry and headed off to the bright lights of Birmingham!

Dan absolutely loves his (proper) job and especially meeting booksellers and seeing their excitement as they open their doors for the first time. I have always been familiar with the names of the great and the good within the bookselling world and have seen lots of pictures and heard lots of names. But as we arrived at Birmingham, I was face to face with lots of people I felt I knew but didn’t actually. It reminded me of a time at drama school (daaahling!) when, full of excitement in the first few days, I rushed up to a girl I recognised and enthusiastically said, “Hi, I know you! You’re from Norwich, aren’t you?” To which she replied, in a thick Geordie accent, “No, I’m from Byker Grove”. I was mortified and to this day cannot be trusted to behave normally around celebs. There is a story involving Jeff Goldblum that I’ll save for another blog.

So, day 1 of the BA Conference, I was veering dangerously close to Byker Grove territory, throwing my arms enthusiastically around people I had seen photos of, like they were my oldest friends. Luckily, on the whole, booksellers are a pretty cool and tactile bunch and didn’t seem to judge me. Phew! It seems that we blog and Instagram and twitter so much that they feel like they know me too.

I was scared. For my whole life I have had the fear that I will be ‘found out’. I felt this while teaching, parenting, driving, breathing. And bookselling is no different. Frankly, I’m winging it, like I’ve winged all of those other things. However, I have been reassured countless times over the weekend that we are all winging it but that things seep into our subconsciousness that mean we find that ultimately, we do know what we are doing. Or we learn how to pretend that we do.

The first event I attended was the First-Timers drinks where all of the newbies got together and had a few glasses of wine to limber us up. Lots of asides in this blog but it’s worth noting that I very rarely drink. This is for 2 reasons – 1. I hate to be hungover. Hangovers for me last 3 days and I feel guilty and tired for the entire time. 2. I am saucy. I am saucy when sober, but I can keep it in check. When my tongue is loosened by the Devil’s Wee, I think that I am charming and cheeky and delightful and that everyone should know the most intimate secrets I hold. I think I am a social butterfly, but I am, in fact, a dirty Homer Simpson. So, I stuck to the Coke after one drink with the other First-Timers. I made it through and onto the next round – a swanky dinner with 12 authors speaking sponsored by the Independent Alliance.

We were sat VERY close to the stage and were in touching distance of all of the wonderful speakers – including but not limited to Claudia Hammond, Lenny Henry and my personal favourite Dr Peter Lovett (The Dance Cure). It all went swimmingly and we hobbed and we nobbed the night away. I Ieft Dan still at it as I went to enjoy my hotel bed, ready for a full day of skills labs, publisher talks and my own, rather terrifying, bookseller picks presentation the next day.

We awoke bright and early and headed over to the conference. I was, as is my perpetual way, late so I missed a bit of the opening speeches, but Dan assures me they were great and then we were off to be moulded into the best booksellers we could be. First up, I attended a talk on Green Bookselling. We live in a world that desperately needs to find sustainable solutions and bookselling is no different. As we are a new shop, we were keen to do all we could to meet the BA’s Green Manifesto and as such, you will find recycled and recyclable wrapping paper, plantable greeting cards that grow into wildflowers and boxes that are reused and recycled. Even our Loyalty and Gift Cards are biodegradable and reusable.

Next up – Working with Schools. This was a session I was very much looking forward to, as we hope very much to be a part of the next generation of readers and writers and are super keen to work with as many schools as possible to make this happen. It really gave me food for thought and I happily filled my lovely notepad with scribbles about how we can do this.

The last session we attended was Bookselling Essentials where experienced booksellers told us the 10 things we needed to think about as we navigate this scary world. We were thoroughly heartened to see that we had done most of them – keeping our customers at the forefront, diversifying and having a lovely loyal team. We totally nailed the last one!

After this, we all headed back to the big room and listened to publishers telling us about the exciting new books that are headed our way. These were interspersed with 50 second presentations about a special book from 10 booksellers. One of them was me. No guesses which book I chose! Here’s what I said…

“I have been a bookseller for exactly 3 weeks, 2 days and 6 hours and I would like to share with you my vast knowledge and in particular my love for the book “Kind”… I went on to talk about the importance of the book to our shop and how kindness lives in the very foundations of the building. I don’t think I was too cheesy and people seemed to like it, there was even a few laughs and cheers.

Dan said he was proud. That made me happy. He then told me that he had agreed for me to be on the Children’s Bookshop Panel at the London Book Fair. That made me want to punch him. It’ll be good for a blog though!

To round off the day, there was an author dinner sponsored by Michael Joseph where I was within spitting distance of Jojo Moyes. I didn’t spit on her, but I did get her to sign her lovely new book and she complimented me on my dress. I maintained a huge level of professionalism and refrained from telling her it was £7.50 from Sainsburys. I’m really growing as a person.

And then we were home and back to our favourite place in the whole wide world. Our Bookbugs and Dragon Tales.

What an adventure this all is!

Posted on September 6, 2019May 16, 2020 by Chloe Fridd — Leave a comment

My Parents Opened A Bookshop

My Parents Opened A Bookshop (And that’s pretty cool)
You’ve all read Dan and Leanne’s blog posts about their journey of opening a bookshop and from (one of) their daughters perspective, its pretty awesome. I’m 22 years old and have spent the last year or so worrying that I should have it all figured out, but watching my parents following their dreams at 40 has made me realise that its cool to not have your future decided yet.

I’ve watched the bookshop unfold with Dan and Leanne since the beginning, since they came home drunk one night with an idea of a bookshop, to collecting the front door keys, and then opening the doors to the public. Its been amazing seeing kids reactions to everything – from the drawings on the wall to the amazingly chosen books on the shelves – and to be fair, I feel the exact same every time I enter the shop.

Leanne wrote a post called “Dropping The Baby” and with that, I think its fair to say that the shop has become another sibling to myself and my brothers and sisters. Its our baby as well. Something we want to help grow and nourish and support as it grows. Something we want to see everyday and hold it up when things get tough for our parents – or on the odd hour that they might need a sandwich break. We were all excited for its arrival and to see everyone’s reactions to it, yet still holding our breaths that people would love it as much as we do.

Bookbugs and Dragon Tales has brought us all together. Every time I enter the shop, one of my siblings is there helping out in any way they can. Whether its making coffee or stacking books or cleaning the office, someone is there to keep an eye on the baby under the watchful eyes of our parents.

Our parents might be scared to “drop the baby”, but luckily they have 5 other babies who will always be there to help pick it up, change the nappy and support it all that we can.

You can read more from Chloe at her own blog : https://thoughtsofablogginglesbian.wordpress.com/

Posted on August 28, 2019September 6, 2019 by dfridd — 1 Comment

Project Fear

We’re now a week in, well 10 days actually, and reality has started to kick back in after a glorious 7 days of smashing our targets, meeting lots of fantastic people in the shop and just generally being in love with the place and all it represents. Then, we have the hottest August Bank Holiday

weekend since ever. Hurrah! I hear the Facebook friends exclaim, Yippee! “lets go to the beach/Park/Pub/[insert generic sunny activity here]”. Pretty much let’s do anything but go shopping. Too right! We, on the other hand, opened our doors 11-4 Sunday and Monday.

People did come, and we did hit our targets (just) and sent emails and organised the shop and read to children and did all the lovely things so what should we be complaining about? Nothing. We’re just very “Small Picture” right now and it’s allowed the doubt to creep in. We have literally nothing to compare things to but the week before and the week before we were in the papers and on the Radio and all over social media and exciting and new and somewhere to explore. So what if that was it? What if we were wrong? What if Norwich doesn’t need and want us? What if (and this is a huge one) our Business plan was just numbers plucked out of thin air and we got them all wrong.

Business plans are ridiculous. It’s ALL guess work. We didn’t know how many coffees or slices of cake we would sell, we didn’t know the electricity bill, we didn’t even know how many books we would stock. You just plug in the numbers, find they turn green and submit it to the people who can

pull them apart and tell you you are in cloud cuckoo land. They didn’t tell us that so we moved on to the next stage. Now we know, but we don’t really because we have a crazy week 1 to use as our base. Not real world stuff. It’s all a worry, I can tell Leanne is worried too. We talk about it but what can we really say? The rational things we say are:

The sun is not good for sales: If the whole city is empty of course we will be quiet. Don’t panic and get other things done. In fact, booksellers are very susceptible to weather. Heavy snow on the wrong day in December can ruin your whole year. I remember this happening a couple of years ago.
We haven’t started our events schedule yet: This is a massive part of our business. All along our aim was to fill the shop with Arty/Booky/Dramary fun. When this starts (September 1st, Schedule published) the place will transform as will the routine of each day. The Events are popular – We have had a fantastic response to the event schedule, people will come. That’s a relief! Poor Leanne went through hell compiling the email and then her phone malfunctioned and moved all the BCC addresses into CC. She was nearly in tears about this but people have been very understanding about it thankfully.
We’re not known for our Coffee and Cake yet: It’s going to take a while for people to realise we don’t just serve any old coffee and cake, we have deliberately got the best and hopefully word will get around that we don’t just sell books and we are a place you can pop into for a mid morning coffee or a lunchtime treat.
People love us, they really love us: Conceited? Deluded? Living in a bubble? Quite possibly all of those things but we’ve had such lovely, heartfelt messages and reviews both on Twitter and Facebook that I think we’ve got something right. We’ve made a thing of showing (off) the shop to anyone that hasn’t been in before. We know people will find their way around but we like doing it! I also like to make sure no one misses the fact we do coffee and grown up books. It’s a way to start a conversation and both Leanne and I love to talk!
Loyalty is working – We’ve distributed 400 Loyalty cards already. You get £5 back for every £50 and that seems to be just about right. There is very little margin on books compared to other retail sectors so to give away another 10% is a risk but it’s something we believe in. Let’s face it, Amazon is going to beat us on price sometimes, not as often as they used to and it will be much closer with our Loyalty card. Customers just need a reason to come back and sometimes good service doesn’t fill the gap

Being back in my day job is strange. It’s lucky that I am in the book industry and deal with people wanting to open bookshops a lot, because it means I get to talk about my favourite subject all the time. I really want to develop what I do at Bertrams to utilise this experience. I find myself talking for hours to prospective customers about much more than just systems now. We have always helped with opening stock but I feel I can talk with much more authority about it now. I can advise on lease negotiations, credit card machines, shelving, Batch, Pubeasy, suppliers, the whole shebang. It’s lovely to be able to give a bit more than just stock control and till knowledge. Tomorrow I will be giving my own shops stock list to a new children’s bookshop in Ireland and I am honoured that they asked. This is the industry I will always be in.

It’s hard not being at the shop but at least I am not sat in an office counting widgets or telling people to reboot. I’m in the heart of the indie booksellers world, I get to go to all the conferences, I get to talk to all the best booksellers, I get to hear about the latest and greatest books. If you’re going to supplement your Bookshop with another job,

there is no better job to do it with! I have always loved my job and, despite the distractions, I am finding I love it more now. Of course this does mean I miss out on some fun. Today, for instance, I’m being Whatsapped pictures of the great James Mayhew starting off our illustrator wall with an amazing Gaspard the Fox sketch. Apparently him and Leanne are now Besties. I, on the other hand, stayed late trying to get another bookshops receipt printer working. Glamorous stuff!

I started this by explaining some of my fears. I imagine every single business owner on the planet goes through these things, I just find it therapeutic to put it down in writing and also hope that one day I can look back on this and laugh. Or that someone else can read this and find some solace in the fact it’s totally normal to have doubts. Just remember what makes you unique is you. Your ideas, your passion, your (ridiculous over) enthusiasm for your books and everything else that makes your business yours.

I wrote this yesterday and sat on it. Today we had the most incredible day in the shop and the world is full of roses again. This roller coaster won’t stop and I don’t want it to. Tomorrow Leanne is hosting the National Writers Centre Podcast at the shop (if you know Leanne you will know she is a podcast freak so this is exciting) and I am showing one of my oldest friends and author (very boring data books, you wouldn’t want to read them, I do however know he reads my blog) and his family around the shop.

There are joyous things in every day, but this picture sums up why we really love it.

Posted on August 22, 2019September 6, 2019 by Leanne — Leave a comment

Dropping the baby

Fourteen years ago I gave birth to twins, Lily and Grace and along with the hard work, excitement, exhaustion and complete bewilderment, came the moment when I had to look after the new babies on my own. I had to try and find my own routine, remember to feed them and try not forget where I left them.

Five days ago I gave birth to a new baby, Bookbugs and Dragon Tales and yesterday Daddy’s Paternity Leave ended and I was left holding the baby once again and trying very hard not to drop it.

Dan and I are a partnership in every sense of the word. We always say that together we make one complete human adult and that has seen us through most things. We fill in the gaps in each others knowledge, personalities and housekeeping skills and know each other so well that we can pre-empt where those gaps might be and we seem to get away with it. It hasn’t been difficult to find joy in even the toughest moments of this whole process because together, I know we can do anything.

But, now he has gone back to his proper job and I’m in charge. Half a human adult running a great big bookshop. But what a bookshop it is.

The last two days have been wonderful. I have made new friends – parents, grandparents, teachers, illustrators, authors and curious passers by. It’s a new company policy that if you wrote or illustrated a book that we stock you MUST sign it. Huge thanks to Alexander Gordon Smith, Karl Newson and Matt Robertson who have all pretended not to mind.

We are feeling very cool with our new showbiz pals, press coverage and general excitement but the most amazing people I have met over the last 2 days, have been the children. I’ve held babies galore and haven’t dropped any of them, young people have told me long stories about their favourite books (and also their dinosaurs and mermaids and fortnite outfits and cars and unicorns…) and excited future booksellers have scanned their own books and taken money from their parents. They have been a delight in every way. And so polite.

My favourite thing happened yesterday. A little boy came in at 10am and his mum bought him a Rabbit and Bear Book which he had chosen (always let them choose even if you don’t agree with the choice). Off they went. At 4pm they came back. His mum explained that he had barely eaten his lunch because he was so engrossed in his book and had nearly finished it.They had returned for the next book in the series. How wonderful! I asked him if he would mind writing a review for us so we could display it on our review tree and he happily agreed. I received it last night. I was so pleased. A little boy had read almost two books in a day and written a lovely review in the Summer Holidays. That stuff is magical.

And that is how its been and long may it continue.

I know that I have made mistakes with the till and still struggle not to say ‘our adult books are downstairs’ (particularly unfortunate given the excellent headline pairing with our front page coverage in the local press) but the customers have been incredible. Patient and understanding and seemingly almost as in love with the shop as we are. It has been a joy to meet so many wonderful and interesting people who are spending on average half an hour browsing, reading and chatting. This is my job now. And I love it. Sometimes I might drop the baby but I won’t mean to and I will always kiss it better.

Posted on August 21, 2019September 6, 2019 by dfridd — 1 Comment

Opening Day

OK, the observant amongst you will know that our opening day was 5 days ago now… So guess what…We… Got… Busy!!! Who’d have thunk it? Planning and building a bookshop is hard work but it is NOTHING compared to the sheer exhaustive adrenaline rush of welcoming people through those newly opened doors and waiting for the 1st verdict. Oh my god, it was terrifying! I’m not going to lie, we both felt sick and one of us was! Naming no names but it wasn’t me.

We have literally poured our entire hearts contents into this dream. This wild and crazy dream that only crept up on us over Christmas 2018, became a gentle breeze until March, kind of blew us off balance until July… and then we got the keys… that’s when the hurricane started and did not lay off, even during our holiday, until Saturday 17th August… then, 9.32am Saturday morning, we opened the doors and then there was an eerie kind of quiet.

What you need to understand is that 3 weeks earlier I had opened a bookshop for (who I now consider) a friend in Edinburgh to queues of people… Where was our queue? Well, to be honest I wouldn’t know because at that very significant moment in my life I had my head in another mans crotch trying desperately to make him Gruffalo ready… Those of you who know me know I know a thing or two about character suits, let me tell you this for FREE… You need an engineering degree to get the Gruffalo ready to meet the public! Our grand plan for the Gruffalo to open our doors at 9.30 on the dot was replaced by 2 sweaty men getting very intimate in a small office used the previous night as an emergency dumping ground for all the toot we had to hide for our party. There was ALL kinds of hazards in that room including, randomly, a bucket of water, bottles of Prosecco, paint pots and “Helpful” teenagers.

Oh how we laughed! You know when you wish you’d tried something on you just bought before you go out in it? That.

Well, finally I made my way upstairs holding Gruffalo’s hand and gladly I did find a few expectant souls in the shop. There definitely wasn’t a queue but there were children excited about being in a Bookshop that clearly was created just for them.

I was too excited and having too many lovely chats with our new shop visitors to think about numbers but boy did we get busy! It was incredible and as the plaudits started rolling in for what we had created we started to see it again for ourselves. For so many weeks we had been under wallpaper, or paint, or sawdust, or boxes we had lost sight of what was rising from the ashes. All the time our dream was being built and it wasn’t really until that 1st child rushed into the toddler room and grabbed a book and exclaimed WOW that we really gained full sight of it again.

Needless to say we had one of the best days of our lives, leave aside the obvious births and marriage. Come 6pm, when we had finally said goodbye to our last customer/friend (I’m not sure which) Leanne and I sat at our new favourite place to sit, our coffee bar and took stock. We high fived. Of course. We kissed, we maybe shed a tear of joy. Then we started our new life. We tidied up, prepared the shop for the next day, and went home. And all that only took us all of 4 hours! We will have to get better at that.

There are a LOT of people we need to thank for getting us here and that’s what Friday night was about but for the Saturday alone we need to thank:

Julia Groves for supporting us and shouting about us to all her illustrator friends and then making our baby/toddler area a joy to be in on Saturday with her Animal Babies Series of books and her colouring skills

Macmillan Kids for sending the Gruffalo and making sure he wasn’t at all grumpy

Jai (Johnnie Jaffacake) for always supporting us in all our mad adventures and being at pretty much every one of our children’s landmark birthdays, our wedding and this.

The gangs (I didn’t know they travelled in gangs, I do now!) of Authors and illustrators who came out of curiosity and a love of bookshops and left us with such kind words

Lorraine for her terrible Face Painting! Which she undertook with 3 minutes notice but attacked with all the gusto she could muster and all the passion of Picasso!