A Fistful of Books: My Three Days on the Wild Frontline of Bookselling

by Len Vlahos

From December 8 to December 10, Len Vlahos, ABA's education and BookSense.com director, joined the bookselling team at Maria's Bookshop in Durango, Colorado, for a weekend stint as a frontline bookseller. This is his account of magical car rides, a charming Colorado town, and hectic holiday sales days while working at a very successful independent bookstore.

Thirty-seven thousand feet; probably somewhere over Tennessee. I'm en route to Durango, Colorado, to spend a weekend working in Maria's Bookshop. It's been a long time since anyone from the ABA staff has been to Durango, mostly because of where it is. I have to take two flights and make a four-hour drive just to get there. (I'm worried there might be a donkey ride involved, too, but that could be an unfortunate side effect of my East Coast bias talking.)

This initiative of ABA staffers working in member stores began last year when Oren Teicher, ABA COO, spent a few days working on the floor of The King's English in Salt Lake City. The benefit to the store was obvious: To this day, if they can't find something, they can just blame "that guy from ABA who was here last Christmas!"

Arriving at Maria's Bookshop as the sun goes down.

But the benefit to ABA was far more tangible. Hardly a week goes by where Oren's first-hand experience with the staff, customers, and books at Betsy Burton's legendary store doesn't enter into a conversation we're having about programs and services ABA is developing or managing for its members. His experience has helped inform what we do in ways that we simply could not have predicted. It's kind of like the space program. Someone invents microwaves to help the astronauts to communicate, only later discovering they're also great for making popcorn. As ABA's director of both BookSense.com and our education program, I'm hopeful that real-world experience in a world-class bookstore will give me both new intelligence and new perspective that will directly benefit ABA's offerings.

I do actually have a bookselling pedigree -- independent stores, college stores, and Waldenbooks -- but it's been 15 years since I've been on the sales floor. To prepare for my trip, I reviewed several recent editions of the Book Sense Picks and the Book Sense Bestseller Lists, looked through the Maria's website, read through the handout from ABA's "Handselling: Customer Service with Results" seminar, and refilled my Xanax prescription. I'm as ready as I'm going to be. Now I just need to get there.

Sunset over sagebrush and sand.

The sunset drive from Albuquerque to Durango is magical. The land is like a Mars-scape: rust and cream-colored mesas rise above the desert floor as I climb through 7,000 feet, and dry and dusty riverbeds cut a series of canals through the sagebrush and sand. After I cross the Continental Divide the desert slowly yields to the mountains. Jagged white peaks are visible through spotty pine forests. By the time I hit the Animus River Valley and Durango, I'm clearly in the Rockies.

Downtown Durango with the mountains rising in the distance.

To say Durango is charming is to do it a disservice. This town is more than charming; it's cool. Once built on the business of smelting silver and uranium ore, Durango has reinvented itself as a mountain retreat. The whole main avenue, not coincidentally called "Main Avenue," is a menagerie of independent businesses -- The Rendezvous Bakery, Southwest Sound, Carver Brewing Co. -- many of which are aimed at the tourist crowd. Maria's itself is at the heart of the activity, on Main between 9th and 10th streets.

The store is warm and inviting.

I arrive just after dark, and I'm immediately struck by the size of the store. The selling space is just under 2,000 square feet, but its size notwithstanding, it's one of the most inviting retails spaces I've had the pleasure to enter. The high ceilings, exposed brick, and natural wood take the voluminous halogen light and spread it with warmth throughout the store. The fixtures and the merchandising make browsing easy, and the decorations -- including an upside down canoe suspended from the ceiling, with a stuffed dolphin at its bow (appropriately wearing a Santa hat) -- make me smile.

I wade through a sea of browsing customers and introduce myself to the gentleman behind the register. He turns out to be Patrick Gaffey, the senior bookseller, and he's been expecting me. In fact, the entire staff has been expecting me. I'm made to feel like a visiting dignitary. I hope they know I'm here to actually work!

Owners Andrea Avantaggio and Peter Schertz.

Patrick instructs me to call Peter Schertz, who co-owns the store with his wife, Andrea Avantaggio. The couple bought the 22-year-old bookstore eight years ago (Andrea had been a bookseller at Maria's since the early '90s) and bought the building this past summer.

Peter suggests we meet for dinner, so Patrick and I connect with Peter and Joe Foster, the store's buyer, for a meal at Carver's. As I feast on my very Western "chili in a bread bowl," we get to know each other, talking about our roots, our likes and dislikes, before the conversation finally turns to business.

Maria's, I learn, is really thriving. The business has been up every year since Peter and Andrea bought the store.

But it's not just sales that are rising.

During the conversation, Joe mentions Above the Treeline. I ask if the program has proved valuable to Maria's. "Definitely," is the answer. "Inventory in our fiction section is half what it used to be, but our turns have doubled. A lot of that can be attributed to Treeline." By every conceivable measure, Maria's appears to be the model of a successful independent bookstore. I'm looking forward to seeing it in action.

Patrick has decided to come in on his day off to show me the ropes, so I'm at work early the next morning. I'm introduced to more staffers -- over the weekend I'll meet Cheri, Jan, Pat, Beth, Michael, Terra, Drea, Julie, Tina, Libby, and Jeanne -- and find myself immediately immersed in the daily inventory count.

Section by section printouts with lists of every book that sold the previous day are distributed to each staff person, who counts the actual titles on hand for each ISBN on the list. This allows the employees to reconcile inventory and to pull books from overstock when necessary.

My part in this daily ritual is slow and ponderous. I'm constantly stopping to ask where to find a particular section, and I feel I'm slowing things down. When inventory counting is finished I'm given a quick tour of BookLog (it's very easy to use), and have my responsibilities explained: straighten sections and help customers.

"When it gets to be 11:00 a.m. or so," Jan, the floor manager, tells me, "it's going to get crazy in here."

Before the onslaught hits, Jan takes time to show me her system of managing the staff schedule. Not only is there a weekly work schedule (typically done several weeks in advance), but there's a daily checklist with each employee's specific responsibilities for the current shift. Each member of the staff is responsible for checking off that each task assigned to him or her has been completed. It can be as specific as "count out the register," or as general as "answer the phones." (During busy holiday season, one person is assigned to sit in the back and answer the phone. This proves to be enormously helpful to staff on the floor, and also provides callers with top-notch customer service.) Like so much at Maria's, the entire methodology for managing the staff seems extremely efficient.

As promised, the rush hits just before midday. The combination of the lovingly selected inventory and the professional but welcoming staff means very few customers leave the store without making a purchase. My own contribution comes when I approach a customer near the history section.

"Hi, let us know if you need help with anything..."

"Actually, I'm looking for a book I heard about. It has something to do with Lincoln's cabinet?" a pleasant young woman nervously asks.

What? I think to myself. I actually know this!

I immediately put a copy of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals in the customer's hand, quickly offering to hold it at the register while she continues shopping. It was at that precise moment I felt I was actually contributing. I was a "Maria...", er, ...make that a "Mario."

While I was able to build on my success with Team of Rivals and contribute during the balance of my time in the store (being familiar with iPage helped, too), I was a pale shadow of a bookseller compared to the Maria's staff. Each person I encountered working in the store was clearly and enthusiastically dedicated to Andrea and Peter's vision for Maria's, and they were all great at their jobs. I found myself wondering what was it that made the staff so good. The answer was simple. Andrea and Peter.

Like so many independent business people (and unlike many big box corporate retailers) Andrea and Peter treat their staff with respect and admiration. The staff is given fun incentives (can you say "Tequila Party?") to increase gift card sales (Maria's will sell more Book Sense Gift Cards in December 2006 than paper gift certificates sold in all of calendar 2002, the last year they sold paper certificates); they're made aware of the store's financial health and goals; and, most importantly, they're genuinely and honestly listened to. It's a marvel to watch storeowners comfortable enough with themselves and their business to treat their employees like members of a family.

On my second day in Durango, I accompanied Peter and Andrea on a site visit for a potential second store. The Ute Indians are building a massive residential and commercial development about 15 minutes out of town, and the realtor, a tall, lanky fellow with a sheaf of papers glued to his armpit, is making a full court press to get locally-owned independent businesses to commit. Maria's was clearly at the top of his list. It's more of a fact finding mission for Peter and Andrea with no commitment to open a second store there or anywhere else ... yet.

While in Durango, I also stop in on Terry Hutchison, owner of Y.E.S.S. The Book Hutch, just around the corner from Maria's. Operating in a 600-square-foot space for the past dozen years, Terry has created a wonderful store packed with fun and interesting titles, with a heavy focus on children's and education. (While there, Terry was very proud to tell me about her dad, Hutch, who was in the 101st Airborne during WWII, and can be plainly seen in a very famous photo of General Eisenhower with the soldiers just after D-Day.)

My last morning in Durango, I sit with Andrea, Peter, and Libby Cowles, the store's events manager. In addition to events, Libby is also responsible for the store's website and soon to be launched e-newsletter. We spent nearly two hours talking about both projects, with Andrea, Peter, and Libby all eager to learn about online successes and failures at other member stores.

After saying my good-byes (and doing a lot of holiday shopping at Maria's), I make my way south, back to Albuquerque for a Monday morning flight home. On the way to the airport, I stopped by BookWorks for coffee with Nancy Rutland and her husband, Mike Harbour. (It turns Mike and I share a passion for thoroughbred horse racing. Mike once owned a horse that raced in the Kentucky Derby -- Ragtime Rebel, in 1993. I am very impressed.) The store looks great, especially for a Monday morning after a busy weekend of holiday shopping!

I thought I would be so exhausted that I planned to sleep on the plane. But I'm so energized, I'm actually fidgety. After cleaning up my notes, I settle into David Gregory Roberts' Shantaram, the Maria's staff big handsell of the season. To date, they've sold something like 800 copies. It seems an appropriate story. It's about a man who flees his native land to find peace of mind and redemption in a city far from home.

I don't know if I'll be redeemed, but I sure as heck want to go back to Durango.