The Bookstores of the Future

Will have a cover charge to get in.

I crack up every time I re-read my title and subtitle. Why have I never thought of this before? It is the perfect solution.

Even though it has been almost fourteen years since I left the book biz, my noggin still often slips into the ‘bookstore thinking’ mode. It is one of those compulsive things. I have weaved in and out of the bookstore business ever since I was twenty-one years old, almost a hundred years ago — or so it seems.

I simply cannot go into a bookstore without mentally re-designing it, re-organizing it and adding plants…. and maybe a dog. After years of working in the corporate book world, I left to dive headlong into the very risky world of owning and running a mom and pop bookstore. I got really tired of all the cookie-cutter mall bookstores with their identical design, bad lighting, and airport terminal ambience. I wanted to design and build my own bookstore. The control freak that I am, I wanted everything to be MY WAY.

The truth, for me, is that it is far more fun to build a bookstore than to operate one eight to ten hours a day, 365 days a year.

I’ve had thousands of bookstore ideas; perhaps tens of thousands. Sometimes I have to slap my hand to my forehead to make it stop.