What we hope to achieve

Hi – I’m Mark, the other half of Mostly Books. What I hope to achieve with this blog is:

• Try to understand what makes a successful bookshop, and;
• Share with others what we learn

It’s worth making the point that both Nicki and I have almost no retail experience, so trying to open a small, independent bookshop in this day and age (furious competition, high street in decline, long-hours, competition with Amazon, eBay, Borders, AbeBooks, etc.) might seem a tad foolhardy. So we’re going to need all the help we can get. By trying to share how we’re doing I’m hoping that others may share some ideas of where we might be going wrong. This post came from an idea whilst attending the Oxford Literary Festival (currently running in, er, Oxford). I was listening to Melvyn Bragg talking about his new book “12 books that changed the world”. This got me thinking – if I were to ask them (and assuming they could grasp the concept of blogging) what would some of history’s greatest writers have to say on how to succeed in starting a bookshop. So – in full-on “standing on the shoulders of giants” mode – here goes. Any venture must start with belief. A challenging goal must be backed by an almost religious faith that you will – eventually – succeed. Apparently St Augustine (in about 400AD) said “believe so that you may understand”. Belief precedes knowledge (which is why, I guess, people with bags of self confidence always seem to do so well when they are starting up a new venture?). So we need to “keep the faith”. We need to keep feeling that what we are doing is worth it, and that we will – eventually – succeed, despite all the problems that may come our way. OK – we’ve got our faith. Now we need some advice on how to “understand” what makes a successful bookshop. When asked how he had worked out the theories of gravity, Newton gave this profound answer: “by thinking on it continuously” (thanks to Melvyn for this bit). Apparently it took Newton 20 years, working 20-hour days, and by all accounts he was a bit of a loner. We’re hoping that through this blog – with other people thinking along with us – we might understand a bit quicker than this (the bank will insist we pay the loan back in a slightly accelerated timeframe unfortunately). Next stop, Napoleon Hill. He studied the fundamentals of success for 20 years, and the result was “Think and Grow Rich”, one of the world’s biggest selling books on how to succeed. He reckoned that “thoughts are things” – and I take this to mean that once you start to “think” and visualise something, it begins to take on a life of its own. By my reckoning, the more people thinking about the success of our bookshop, the better our chance of success. Nicki and I now have some great pictures in our head of the wonderful experience our customers will have coming into our shop – so now it’s time to make them happen. And (despite my best efforts to find an alternative to this one) the final bit of advice seems to be: get on with it. Steven Covey states “Action” as one of his 7 habits of highly effective people (“all is dust without it” apparently). Richard Bach (he of “Jonathon Livingstone Seagull” fame) wrote “You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however." There are plenty of things that still need doing before our self-imposed Summer opening date – so we’d best get cracking…