{"id":30873,"date":"2019-09-13T07:00:53","date_gmt":"2019-09-13T11:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=30873"},"modified":"2019-09-13T07:00:53","modified_gmt":"2019-09-13T11:00:53","slug":"the-surprisingly-small-world-of-bookselling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=30873","title":{"rendered":"The (Surprisingly) Small World of Bookselling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div id=\"attachment_30878\" style=\"width: 336px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Unicorn-Aprons-1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-30878\" class=\"wp-image-30878\" src=\"http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Unicorn-Aprons-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"326\" height=\"245\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-30878\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Recently modeling some newly-arrived (toddler sized) unicorn aprons with Elizabeth (left) and Eugenia Vela (center).<\/p><\/div><br \/>\nBookPeople\u2019s CEO, Elizabeth Jordan, recently announced her move back to her hometown of San Antonio to become general manager of author Jenny Lawson\u2019s highly anticipated Nowhere Bookshop. It\u2019s obviously bittersweet news for me personally because, while I know this will be a fantastic fit for Elizabeth, I\u2019m going to miss her. Elizabeth has a long history with BookPeople, originally starting as a bookseller before becoming a sales floor manager. Shortly after I started at BookPeople in 2005 and became the children\u2019s book buyer, Elizabeth became the adult book buyer (the grown-up yin to my childlike yang?), then eventually general manager, and then CEO last year. Over the last 14 years, we\u2019ve shared a fair number of hotel rooms at conferences, many a bottle of wine, and a lot of really challenging and productive brainstorms. Long story short, we\u2019ve spent a lot of time slinging books together. Honestly, she is one of the smartest people I know, and Nowhere Bookshop is lucky to have her.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Do you know who this is?  It\u2019s Elizabeth Jordan, the new general manager of <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NowhereBookshop?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@NowhereBookshop<\/a>!  <\/p>\n<p>Elizabeth comes to us from always fantastic <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BookPeople?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@BookPeople<\/a> where she was CEO.   <\/p>\n<p>Welcome to Nowhere, Elizabeth! <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/mfnbxlhn8z\">pic.twitter.com\/mfnbxlhn8z<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; NowhereBookshop (@NowhereBookshop) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NowhereBookshop\/status\/1171484442356924417?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 10, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\nNo, this isn\u2019t going to segue into an embarrassing <em>Wind Beneath My Wings <\/em>karaoke jam. Because, as hard as it is to watch someone like Elizabeth leave the store, I\u2019m also excited she\u2019s joining the network of bookselling friends that I love seeing at industry events and upon whom I rely to share ideas and report on new experiments. Like so many other booksellers, I\u2019ve gotten countless numbers of \u201cmy\u201d best ideas from things I\u2019ve heard at trade shows or conferences\u2014sometimes from official programming, but so many times just from hallway chats with friends. Not all the ideas I\u2019ve brought home over the years have stuck, but some have grown into core parts of what we do.<br \/>\nSometimes we bring back ideas that turn out to be big, like outfitting a warehouse to grow an offsite bookfair business. And sometimes the ideas are small but rewarding. At my very first BEA circa 2006, at an ABA panel about loyalty programs, I heard someone on the panel talk about sending out coupons on members\u2019 birthdays, and although we didn\u2019t (and don\u2019t) have a membership program, I thought it was the perfect idea for building relationships with kids. To this day, 13 years later, it\u2019s the most popular, most redeemed coupon we offer, with hundreds of kids on the list and a festive collection box that gets so much wear and tear that we have to keep re-making it.<br \/>\nAnd it\u2019s not just in the world of bookselling. The whole book world feels small in the best way. I still see good friends from my time at publishing houses in New York several times a year, both at official publisher dinners and post-conference catch-ups. In fact, as I\u2019m writing this, I\u2019m chatting with a former BookPeople colleague who also owns CBAY books (distributed by IPG) about grabbing lunch while she\u2019s in town this weekend to drop off books for an event.<br \/>\nSo while we\u2019re in the process of saying goodbye to Elizabeth, I know we\u2019ll be seeing her soon. In the meantime, we\u2019ll always have the memories.<br \/>\n(Gearing up for a day of sales at last year&#8217;s Texas Book Festival below. After all, this wouldn&#8217;t be a proper goodbye post without an embarrassing video!)<br \/>\n<div style=\"width: 360px;\" class=\"wp-video\"><video class=\"wp-video-shortcode\" id=\"video-30873-1\" width=\"360\" height=\"640\" preload=\"metadata\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"video\/mp4\" src=\"http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/9673886F-44EC-4FD8-B649-5F78544806E2-1.mp4?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/9673886F-44EC-4FD8-B649-5F78544806E2-1.mp4\">http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/9673886F-44EC-4FD8-B649-5F78544806E2-1.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A bookseller says goodbye to a colleague and reflects on the ways industry relationships come back around. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}