NVNR Owner's Retreat Recap: IBD Plans

Plans for Independent Bookstore Day

The Spring New Voices New Rooms Owners Retreat met on April 11th to share ideas and plans for Independent Bookstore Day on April 27th. IBD is just around the corner, but booksellers created a list of things stores can to quickly to help make the day more fun and a success:

Things you can do quickly:

• Pull old inventory (that can’t be returned) and make up mystery book bags and bundles. Or wrap them individually as mystery books (note whether adult / kids; fiction, non fiction). Have fun with how you categorize, for example: “Mysteries with animal investigators,” etc.

• Set up in-store education to customers about Libro.fm (provide a tablet/iPad as a listening station) and Bookshop.org.  Tip: Indigo Maiden on Faire can create stickers. Put a QR code on them that leads to your Libro.fm account.

• Give away ARCs for larger purchases

• Do games:  Indie Bingo (From Brave + Kind Bookstore), Be An Independent Bookseller for the Day: have customers alphabetize ARCs, etc.

• Do tiered giveaways. Depending on what you spend, you get certain levels of swag and ARCs. Have a prize box filled with publisher swag, ARCs, etc. Give away tote bags to larger purchases.

• Involve kids with story times or scavenger or treasure hunts in the store. Hide dragons or skeletons let kids tell you how many they found.

• Involve staff to show off their talents. Let their bands play at the store, or sell their art, etc. Invite local artists to sell their wares.

• Invite a food truck to come.

• Invite other pop-up retailers to be in your store that day.

• Free tote bags (create your own fun ones) are big incentives to get people to spend more money)  Recommended vendor: Tote Bag Factory.

• Give away $5 gift cards on future purchases for sales of $100+. This will generate future sales and foot traffic.

• Have staff create personal bundles of books and merchandise for sale, that have a “vibe” that reflects the bookseller’s personality. Market as “Buy the (Insert Staffers Name)”

• Give away food!  But avoid powdered donuts and other messy items.

• Decorate with balloons. Consider a bubble machine in front of your store.

• Post your plans and “day of” experiences on social media.

Things that take a little more planning:

• Passport programs – DelMarVa does a month long program that kicks off on Independent Bookstore Day. Consumers have a month to visit 17 bookstores. Georgia’s Bookshop Hop. Chicagoland Bookstore Tour. 

• Involve other organizations, like pet adoptions/animal rescue shelters.

• Link into Earth Week, Children’s Book Week, or Readathon.

• Involve coffee shops, restaurants, breweries, wineries (or your own café) to have a literary theme, renaming items on the menus for they day, or to pair books with food or beverages.

• Create a Standee for photo ops; kissing booth with pictures of super heroes for photo ops, and they get Hershey kisses.

• Create your own merchandise that can also be used at other times of the year, such as faux leather journals (Amsterdam Printing), tshirts (Bonfire). You don’t have to rely on IBD merch to be on the map.

• Launch your customer loyalty program on IBD. Advice: determine your goal (is it to gather emails and mailing addresses, encourage repeat business, or fill in slow sales periods?) then create a program that has appropriate incentive levels. (Sample from Let’s Play Books.)

In a perfect world (an IBD wishlist):

• Bus tours that would stop at bookstores and fun destinations. 

• Better official IBD merchandise from authors and publishers that is unique to this day 

Many stores reported Independent Bookstore Day was their best non-holiday sales day of the year last year. And although balloons and bubble machines were mentioned above as fun and easy idea, the general advice was that booksellers should not feel compelled to decorate the store or overwhelm themselves with special preparations. Do enough to make the day enjoyable for the staff and the customers, but not so much it gets in the way of sales. Be mindful of your space limitations when dreaming up your IBD plans.