Comment: Shelving 101, or, Organic Organization (with helpful vocabulary words)
I've got a lot of wonky book stuff on my mind lately: statistical trends that show the growth of independent bookstores, attractive and productive ways of doing websites, methods of forming alliances with other local institutions, and not least, figuring out the specifics of writing a bookstore business plan (more on that soon...). But the wonky bookselling topic of today is the eternal conundrum of bookstore shelf organization. We've been working on redoing some displays in the store, and I've been thinking about my own bookstore: how one would develop an organizational system from scratch. Bookseller Chick has also been addressing this lately from the perspective of the beleaguered bookseller answering the author demanding "Where are my books?", with data from her readers about how they go about finding books; check out her enlightening discussion in the June 27, 28, and 29 posts for more aspects of this issue. You've got books. Your customers want books....