It’s “Love Your Bookshop Day”
THIS Saturday, October 8, bookstores across Australia are celebrating “Love Your Bookshop Day” and the emphasis is to encourage local communities to reflect on – and patronise – the bookstores in their area.
Dubbo serves a wide geographic region with people regularly coming into our bookstore from east of Mudgee and Orange, south to Parkes and Condobolin, west to Cobar and Bourke, and north to Enngonia and Goodooga.
With tourism relaxing through the nation since the end of Covid restrictions, we are seeing interstate visitors returning to our store too.
Talking with any of these folk we find that some have been in to shop with us on previous trips. For those of us working in the bookstore, it is a natural habit to encourage people from everywhere to “love their bookstore”.
Bookshops are continuing to serve communities. In the last 20 years a range of challenges such as Amazon, Booktopia, electronic pieces and online textbooks (particularly for tertiary level studies) has seen a dramatic shift in the challenges to bookselling. However, we are so thankful at The Book Connection for the ongoing support being received from our many loyal customers.
The experience of meeting with visitors to the bookstore is our social life, and considering there are seven days a week, this presents lots of opportunities to meet with folk having similar interests.
Humans have been writing and reading for thousands of years. Recently, I have been reading Yuval Noah Harari’s book “Sapiens – a Brief History of Humankind” and, among other issues, we can see how humans have passed on their experiences and learning to future generations.
Another book of similar text is Stephen Fry’s “Mythos – the Greek Myths Retold” in which he relates “the loves and quarrels, desires and deceivers of the Greek gods and goddesses”.
Reading in this “modern age” impacts on so many in the community, with newspapers, magazines and books being a source that people need to acquire their information – this makes bookstores one of those essential sources and those of us working here endeavour to make the choices, style and data for the reader a rewarding experience.
At The Book Connection we are well aware of the options that book buyers have. Having been booksellers for almost 40 years, we began as a retail store in a shopping mall on Dubbo’s Macquarie Street, and in 1990 took over Bill Hornadge’s mail order business where we distributed books by post all over Australia. We merged these two operations into our current location in 1990.
Making our bookstore a preferred option for shoppers to support is part of marketing. Like any friendships or connections, one has to adjust behaviour, practices and factors so that we appeal to book-buyers – so that “love your bookshop” can be a reality.
The owner of the Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kansas has written a new book “How to Resist Amazon and Why”. In it he relates how, as a local bookshop, he has met the challenges of competing against a major online bookseller.
Another challenge for Australian bookshops has been Booktopia, but its recent internal conflicts has seen its share price drop to $0.25 as indicated in the September 22 issue of The Sydney Morning Herald. Country people like stability. Bookstores around the world have survived the challenges of Covid. In Wigtown, the owner of the largest second-hand bookshop in Scotland has written his third book “Confessions of a Bookseller” – each of his titles relate experiences of contacts with customers from all over that country. He used to use Amazon as a website to help sell his own stock, but ceased when he found there was no advantage in the arrangement to him.
In our bookstore we stock close to 50,000 books and can say “yes we have that title” quite often, and the range in itself is an attraction for folk.
When we first started to consider stocking second-hand books as part of the range in our Dubbo bookstore, a customer who knew my earlier days of travelling to our machinery business in Portland, Oregon, recommended that I visit Powells Bookstore there. It is co-incidental that Portland was the city where our American business was registered. Michael Powell is my age but now retired – his knowledge provided to us has been valuable.
One reason why you can love our bookshop is the support we receive from so many regional authors. The talents these writers show is reflected in so many books and just a few of them are shown at the bottom of this column. Bookselling is an interesting occupation. Yes, we get to read many books but the social life makes it a superior venture. The four ladies who meet you in the bookstore enjoy their work – Rae has been with us for 20 years.
Books offer enjoyment, comfort, reassurance, knowledge, challenges and so much more in life. We aim to make your experience of browsing our shelves and discussing your interests with those of us offering service a personally rewarding experience – and another reason to love your bookstore, not just on the 8th of October, but every day.