Work with me
Most of what I do for a bookstore starts with something the store already owns: its sales history, what its staff knows, the systems it already pays for. Often the useful work isn’t buying something new. It’s finding out what the store already has, what isn’t working, and what a relatively small change could make possible.
Start with a 20-minute conversation →
Make your data useful
Every POS records what sold. Very few make it easy to ask what a section should hold, what it’s missing, or what has been sitting there for two years. So buying runs on memory, and memory works until the person who has it is off that day.
I turn exports into decisions a buyer can make at the shelf: a velocity score for every title, a list of what has gone missing, a list of what isn’t earning its space, and a reorder routine that doesn’t depend on one person’s recall.
Start here Inventory Intelligence Review
One section of your store, read closely.
You send me a sales export and an inventory export. Any POS that can produce both will do. I’ll also ask for an hour with whoever buys the section, because the data can’t tell me why a title is there.
You get back a workbook with every title in the section scored and flagged for review: what to keep, what to reorder, what’s worth clearing out, and where the assortment has gaps. A short memo for the owner explains what I found and what I’d do first.
The first thing I check is whether your category history can be trusted. Some systems stamp an old sale with the category the book has today, and a trend built on that is fiction.
I’ve run this on a science and nature section. Read how it went →
Make your expertise discoverable
If you didn’t put books in your front window, you’d be wasting the window. If your sections weren’t legible to someone walking through, with face-outs and staff picks and shelf-talkers doing their work, you’d be leaving sales on the floor.
The same holds online, and the street has changed. People still search for bookstores. But increasingly, they also ask search engines and AI assistants what to read, which guide to buy, or where to find a particular kind of book. The answers depend, in part, on what’s available to find: useful writing, accurate information, and pages that haven’t disappeared into an old email. A store whose expertise lives in its staff’s heads and in last month’s email isn’t in that answer.
I don’t promise to get your store recommended by AI assistants. A store shows up in those answers when the ordinary things are in order: a review archive people can search, subject guides, clean metadata, pages that say something useful, and accurate information about the store itself.
Start here Newsletter & Content Audit
A newsletter is two things: a channel that reaches people, and a body of work that grows with every issue. The audit looks at each on its own terms.
The list. Who is on it, how they got there, how many of them are real, and whether your mail is reaching them. Lists collect bots, dead addresses, and signup forms nobody has checked since the day they were set up.
The writing. What you’ve published, issue after issue, and where it goes after send day. Most stores write a review once and use it once.
You give me access to your newsletter platform, or an export from it, and your back issues. You get back a plain account of the state of the list with the fixes in order, and a plan for giving the writing a permanent home: an archive, subject pages, shelf-talkers, your web catalog.
See an archive built from eleven years of one store’s newsletter →
I also look at how a store shows up when someone asks a search engine or an AI assistant what to read and where to buy it. That isn’t a packaged review yet. If it’s your question, bring it to the conversation.
Make your technology work together
POS, web store, newsletter platform, spreadsheets, a distributor’s ordering site. Each one does its job. The cost is in the gaps between them: the title typed three times, the export only one person remembers how to run, the event page rebuilt from scratch every time.
I automate those handoffs. When the piece that would connect two systems doesn’t exist, I build it.
See one newsletter draft become the email, a printed broadsheet, and the website →
Start here Workflow Review
We pick one recurring task that crosses two or more systems: building a newsletter, updating a catalog, preparing event pages, or moving information between your POS and your website. I map how it works now, find the repeated work and points of failure, and recommend what to simplify or automate. You get a clear account of the workflow and a scoped proposal if there’s something worth building.
Coming Migration Readiness Review
This one isn’t open yet. I’m building it now.
It’s for a store that is about to change its POS or its web store, or is deciding whether to. It will cover four things: what is in your data and what shape it’s in, which daily workflows cross from one system to another, what will and won’t survive the move, and what to ask a vendor before you sign.
I’ve led large book-retail migrations for more than one business. I also hold a line: I won’t advise on a product I haven’t run myself. I can’t tell you which system to buy. I can make sure you know your own store well enough to ask the vendor hard questions.
If a move is already on your calendar, don’t wait for this to open. Start with the conversation.
How a project runs
- A 20-minute conversation. Free. We find out whether there’s a problem worth solving and whether I’m the right person to help.
- A discovery engagement. One of the reviews above, or something scoped to your question. The scope, the price, and the delivery date are all agreed before I start.
- Implementation. If the review turns up something worth building or fixing, I write it up as a defined project with its own price. You can also take the findings and do the work yourself.
- Ongoing support. Ongoing support can include data refreshes, seasonal reviews, and maintenance of what I’ve built. It’s never required.
What I don’t do
Brand and visual design. Social media and email campaigns written for you. I don’t provide general IT support, manage your store’s computers or network, or act as a hosting company. I can deploy, monitor, and maintain the systems I build.
I’m looking for partners who do the first two. If you’re a designer or a content strategist who wants bookstore clients, say hello.
Questions
- Is my store too small?
- If you have a section you’re proud of and a POS that can export, no. The reviews are sized for one section or one newsletter so that a small store can say yes.
- We’re not technical.
- You don’t need to be. Someone has to run an export once, and I can walk them through it.
- Which POS do you work with?
- Any that can export sales and inventory.
- What does it cost?
- Each review has a fixed price. I’ll give it to you after the conversation, once I understand the scope of the work. Nothing starts until you’ve agreed to it.
- What happens to our data?
- It stays yours. I use it for your project and nothing else, and I don’t publish anything about a client’s store, numbers included, without permission.