Big Bad Bookstore Q&A: Vroman's (Pasadena, CA)

Vroman's Bookstore, Southern California's oldest and largest independent bookstore and Publishers Weekly Bookseller of the Year in 2008, is a literary institution. Vroman's webmaster Patrick Brown answered the seven questions in our indie bookstore Q&A, touching on—among other things—how altering the returns system would effect Vroman's buys and how they plan to get in the ebook game. (Image via.)

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What’s the hottest genre in your store right now? Any surprise best sellers?

Our best-selling sections are typically kids and young adult, as well as literary fiction and non-fiction. I think the biggest surprise best seller this year has been Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. When I first heard the idea, I thought it sounded fun, but I had no idea how big it would be. For a few weeks, it was almost impossible to keep it on the shelves.

What’s the most successful or creative store event you remember hosting? What do you look for in an author or book when setting up an event?

The most creative event that I’ve been a part of is our summer music and author series, where we pair an author with a local band. The author reads and then the band plays on our outdoor stage. It’s a great, low-key event. Perfect for a Saturday afternoon. I think the best one we did was a pairing of Paula Yoo and the Listing Ship. Paula plays violin, so not only did she read, but she also sat in for a few songs with the band. I’m also very excited for this Young Adult event we have coming up called LAYAPalooza. It’s a huge event, with about twenty YA authors. There’s going to be food and a sort of trivia game show for YA fans.  It should be a lot of fun.

When I think about successful author events, they usually are something more than just a reading. That’s not to say that a straight-up reading can’t be a great time, but rather that the events that stand out in my memory are often more than that. In the end, if the author has a captivating personality, the event will work. If the author doesn’t enjoy giving readings or talks, or isn’t happy about something about the event, it’s likely the event will fail. Audiences will usually take their cue from the speakers.  I also love events with multiple authors.  As a bookseller, it’s a great way to sell more books. People show up to hear one author and frequently end up enjoying both or all of the authors. It introduces readers to new writers, which is why we’re in business.

Do you ever bring self-published books into your store? If so, how often and under what circumstances?

We do bring some self-published books into the store. Obviously these books are in the minority, but it does happen on a pretty regular basis. In terms of what we would carry, well, that depends on a lot of subjects.  Books with local subject matter or books that are about Pasadena or Southern California will always get a long look from our buyers, as we’re committed to supporting our local literary community and our customers have tremendous pride in the region. We will seriously consider any book if it is well-written, well-designed, and we think it would interest our customers.

What are the benefits of physical distribution when so much is available cheaply on Amazon and other online retailers? Do you see the recent popularity of ebooks or the economic downturn significantly affecting your store?

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I think I’ll tackle this question in two parts. The benefits of physical distribution are several, I think.  For one thing, instant gratification is very important.  We carry a huge inventory of books, and if you come to our store, you can get any of them immediately, rather than waiting a week or four days or whatever for a book to come from Amazon. Another important factor is providing an environment to browse. People greatly underestimate how important browsing is for physical purchases, largely, I think, because it’s lacking in the online world. People come to an ecommerce site already knowing what they want to buy (for the most part). This isn’t so in our store, where people frequently come in for one book and end up leaving with a book that caught their eye on the way to the section or waiting in line at the register. The other thing we provide that I think is invaluable is a physical place for literary culture to happen. We have a coffeeshop in our store that’s always full of people writing or talking about books. We host hundreds of events every year, including readings, performances, panel discussions, workshops, etc. I would argue that we’re the single most important part of Pasadena’s literary culture.

The economic downturn has hurt every business in our area, large or small, corporate or independent. We’re no different. We’re seeing fewer sales and when people are shopping with us, they’re spending a little bit less per transaction than they were just a year ago. Obviously, these are difficult times, certainly the most difficult retail year since I’ve been in the business, but Vroman’s has been around since 1894, so I’m confident we’ll make it through. Books are definitely more recession-proof than other forms of entertainment. A paperback book  costs $12.95 and provides hours, even days or weeks of entertainment. That’s a pretty great deal, when you think about it.

As for ebooks, well, how long do you have? I happen to be intensely interested in ebooks. I’ve read quite a few on my iPhone, and I really enjoy the experience. I’m sort of notoriously bullish on the future of ebooks, and I think the moment for them is happening right now. In two year’s time, I think we’ll see major technological advances, consolidation around a single format (hopefully epub), and huge, huge sales growth of ebooks. They simply make too much sense for too many people NOT to take off. I wouldn’t be surprised to see ebooks take 10% of the book market in two years, and even more in the years after that. I also think we’ll see real advances in enhanced ebooks, ebooks with embedded audio and video, with hyperlinks and interactivity, and even community-authored ebooks. There’s real potential to change how stories are told and consumed . . . but that’s down the road.

The coming ebook boom effects us in several ways. Firstly, we remain committed to providing our customers with the books they want in the formats they want. We carry hardcover, paperback, audio books, and we will have ebooks, too (this summer will see a major rollout on our ecommerce system). It seems logical to me that the entire market for ebooks will exist online, rather than in a brick-and-mortar store. As such, we’re constantly re-evaluating our ecommerce setup, looking for ways to improve experience and profitability online. We hope to be a place to buy ebooks for those among our customers who want them. We also hope to be THE community resource for all technological or curatorial questions regarding ebooks. That means educating ourselves on all the latest technology, helping people find the books they want online, and helping them select the ereader that’s right for them. I really see this as extension of what we already do for our customers with print books.

If you feature staff picks, how are these selected? Does the staff have complete freedom to give face-out placement to any book they like?

We do feature staff picks. Lots of them. In fact, we have a whole wall of them, many pages of our website dedicated to them (sorted both by category and by bookseller), and we’re starting a revolving “Get to know your bookseller” display, featuring picks by a different bookseller each week. With staff picks, booksellers are completely free to choose whatever they like to recommend (provided it’s a book we can easily get). I can’t imagine a store that would do it any other way, to be honest. When we decide to feature a book (meaning put it on the cover of our newsletter, have multiple displays all over the store, etc.), then we will try to give it to as many different kinds of readers as we have on staff. If the overwhelming majority like the book, we will champion it. We’ve done this with David Benioff’s City of Thieves and Any Bitter Thing, by Monica Wood.

If all books were sold on a non-returnable basis, how would this affect your buying? What if all books were printed without a retail price so you could set the price as you saw fit?

Clearly, the current system of returns isn’t working. That being said, I’m not sure I know how to fix it. We would certainly buy fewer books if we couldn’t return any (and I have no idea how we would host events, where often books are left unsold), but I’m not sure how exactly that would play out. My suspicion is that we’d simply buy less unproven books by debut authors. This would be a bad thing.  So while I’m in favor of fixing the currently broken cycle of big buys and big returns, I’m not really sure how this would play out.

As for pricing, I don’t see this as being that big of a deal. In fact, if there were no price printed on the book, that might actually hurt us. As it is right now, we’re selling the books for the price the publisher set for them. If there were no perceived price, we’d simply be the guys charging more for the book. Where I think there is room for improvement, however, is with ebook pricing. It doesn’t make any sense that an ebook of something like City of Thieves, which is already out in paperback, still costs $24.95. I would love it if the publishers would lower the price of the ebook so we could compete more fully on that front.

What’s the most embarrassing book in your personal collection?

I try not to read anything I would be embarrassed to own, so this is kind of a tough question for me. For a while, I was reviewing sports books for Publishers Weekly, so I got every nutty book about baseball, basketball, offshore betting, the Duke lacrosse rape scandal, etc. You name it, I reviewed it. A few of those books are pretty embarrassing to own. I’m not going to single anyone out, because I would hate to someday write a book, even a book about, say, offshore gambling, and then have someone say they were embarrassed to own it.  Even if it were about offshore gambling.

Vroman's is all over the web: Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, and their own excellent blog.