Monday Morning Misc. 7-27-09
Hello fellow Nashvillians. That’s right, my family and I have finally, officially moved to Nashville. We now have all the Fools in one town. As we get settled in, I should be able to once again contribute the occasional long-form blog post about books, entrepreneurship, and everything else.
For this morning, a few notes and updates:
Humankind
Our friends at Humankind, a non-profit thrift shop dedicated to providing school uniforms for refugee children in the Nashville area, had a big benefit this weekend. You can still donate to support their mission. A full blog post on Humankind is coming soon.
Alexander Heard
Vanderbilt Chancellor Emeritus Alexander Heard died this weekend. Here’s one of his quotes from the University’s press release:
“The university’s obligation is not to protect students from ideas, but rather to expose them to ideas, and to help make them capable of handling and, hopefully, having ideas,” Heard had said in 1966.
Well said. Why do we have so much trouble with this even today?
Summer Buybacks
Our summer buybacks are fast-approaching and we’ll be sharing details about them soon. As an experiment, we’re hosting 3 buybacks in the Nashville area this summer. If they go well, we will roll out to other locations next summer.
We want our students to have the most opportunities to get the most money for their books. See you soon!
Lots More Happening
Of course, that’s just the tip of the Foolish iceberg. Development continues on Bookstore Beta (“The ugliest bookstore in the Southeast!”), and we Fools will be visiting our favorite independent used bookstores this week for inspiration.
We’re also looking at prints of our new T-shirts this week and are continuing our preparation for the Tomato Art Fest on Aug. 8th.
What are you up to this week?
Sneak Peek: Bookstore Beta
Remember that new warehouse space I mentioned in this post?
In that post (and in others) I hinted at a special, super-secret surprise. Well, loyal readers, here it is: BookFool.com is opening a used bookstore in our new space.
It’s called Bookstore Beta and it will probably be the ugliest bookstore in the Southeast. The whole project is a wild experiment in location, branding, and whether East Nashville will support a used bookstore. Hence the name Beta, which denotes an experimental product released to the public before it’s completely finished.
As you can see from this old newsletter (scroll down to Book Fool Looks to Retool), opening a bookstore has long been a dream for Kris. Bookstore Beta will be a space where we can experiment with that dream and see if it has legs. All for a few hundred bucks. We already have the space, the books, and the workers. Why not throw in a couch and some shelves and see what happens?
It ain't much, but it's home!
I put up a quick site using Yola over at BookstoreBeta.com. As you’ll see, we’ve decided to keep it Foolish and be totally honest about this store’s assets and limitations. The location isn’t great, so we’re guessing that only the adventurous will find us. We’re ok with that.
We’re also aware that Bookstore Beta will not represent a premium experience in book buying. We have free coffee brewing, but we have no formal coffee shop. The shelves will be either particle board or homemade. We may not even categorize our inventory!
A used bookstore that’s rough around the edges won’t appeal to everyone, but it appeals to us. Oh, did I mention our incredible prices? Because we have no regular employees, no janitorial staff, and no coffee shop, we don’t have to mark up our inventory to cover those expenses. So we got that goin’ for us, which is nice.
We’ll also buy your used books for a fair price, lend you most any book for a few weeks, and let you hang out all day on our garage sale couches. And for students, if we have a textbook in stock, you can borrow it for use in the store.
Bookstore Beta opens officially in August. More updates to come before then.
