Ever since my friend Donna at Bookbound announced that she and her hubby are opening a used bookstore (see post here )
http://booksbound.blogspot.com/2009/08/exciting-news.html (sorry everybody, I am really bad at linking :)
I have been think about my own bookstore and all the ups and downs I felt. I think Donna's post has made me a little nostalgic :) although I don't regret having bought the bookstore or selling it, I sometimes do miss the "freedom" that it gave me, although, contrary to popular belief - owning your own business does not mean you no longer have a boss (I went from having one boss when I worked in the corporate world to having hundreds and hundreds (my customers) when I opened my store! I also worked a crazy amount of hours - for the first two years, I worked over 100 hours per week as I did not have any staff and was basically open 6 days a week.
I remember how one day, I turned around and two years had already passed - and it felt as though only a few months should have passed. I think, for me, the best time were definitely the first two years.
Having said that, I was lucky enough that the bookstore was already operational when I bought it - Donna and her hubby are starting up from scratch - which is a challenge, but I think will be fun. Their bookstore will be exactly what
they want it to be.
Sometimes, I think that I should have kept the bookstore as a "side" business - even though I left it to go back into the big, bad corporate world! But, to be honest, owning a used bookstore, in my opinion is a full time gig in itself and I just did not have enough of "me" to go around to do both.
One of the big challenges, of course, was/is to find someone who can work for you - who:
a) knows books;
b) is pleasant;
c) is honest;
the hardest part I think, for me, was finding someone who was honest. As you can imagine, tracking inventory coming in and going out in a used bookstore is not quite as easy or accurate as it would be at a major bookstore. It would have been quite easy for my employee to sell a book or 10 and pocket the money and I would have no way of really knowing.
As a matter of fact, before I bought the store (a few years before actually). Marc, the owner and my friend, asked me if I could work for him on a Saturday (he and his father usually manned the store and they had not employees) because they were all going to a family wedding. As it turns out, a guy came in and bought an old book that, i am sure, had been on the shelf, buried somewhere for years - the price $35.00. I was all excited to tell Marc about it and when I did, he had no memory of what book I was talking about - in other words, had I wanted to steal from them, I could have simply pocketed the money and they would never have known.
So, all of this to say, that I never felt quite comfortable leaving the store to anyone else except my mother - who HATED working at the store, but would do it if I needed her to. Towards the beginning of the third year, a client of mine, by the name of Sharon became a good friend and I ended up giving her the Sunday shift from noon to 4:00 p.m. and that worked out well for both of us until I sold the store.
Its tough to find someone you can trust and because I am also a control freak (yeah! i bet you had never picked up on that right?) it took me a long time to trust :)
Yet, when I think back on my owning the store, I mainly remember the great things about it and I think that Donna will be thrilled with her decision.
I wish them the best of luck!!!!
