All Quiet on the Bookshop Front

Simon

There are some days when you don't think much is happening, and then you realise that that you've actually achieved loads. Today's been one of those days. I took back 'how to open your own shop' and 'business plans in a week' to the library (I would have bought them if there was a bookshop in Wood green, but.....), and then decided to send a few e-mails.

Tim and I, as we've mentioned before, are letting the residents of Wood Green decide what to call the shop, in a competition. We've sent out the forms to all the local schools now, and Tim got in touch with the local paper today. We wanted to persuade them to put the competition in there as well, and realised that, as next week was National Children's Book Week (i wonder if the chains have any plans for advertising this), we could combine the two things. So we got together a pitch where local residents and people interested our quest would let us know what their favourite kid's book was, and why. The paper loved the idea, so i've started to contact a few people that have a Wood Green connection, and I also asked our 'facebook' group to respond .(Please feel free to contribute to this). I'm still waiting for a reply from Gerry J, but so far, so good and we'll be putting the list on the blog as well. It may also become one of our first in-store promotions.

I've also been getting in touch with a number of publicity departments and literary agents to see what they could do for us (and what we could do for them), and i've had a fantastic response from that too.

We had a call from the bank this morning, and although we don't want to count our egg producing domestic fowl, things look pretty good. We should have some confirmation very soon. The leaseholder of the shop has gone AWOL, which is delaying things a bit, but, all in all, it's been a very productive day.