Barn Owl Books
November has long been synonymous with the idea of thankfulness. As an Indie author, one of the things I’m most thankful for are Indie bookstores. And the bookstore most precious to me is The Barn Owl Books and Gifts in McCall, Idaho that opened in September of 2017.
I cannot tell you how much support I’ve received from them and I’m blown away by the number of my books they’ve sold this year. So I thought, what better way to show my gratitude than by giving the spotlight to the bookstore’s owner, Amy Cooper.
When thinking about what questions I wanted to ask, I read a few interviews online and came across this sentiment: “Bookstore owners spend much of their time thinking about reading. As a result, they have some incredibly beautiful meditations on why books matter.”
After the wonderful conversation I had with Amy, I came away feeling that this was indeed, the perfect sentiment that encompasses her store and philosophy.
(Nicole:) The first question I need to ask is about the name of your store, Barn Owl Books, how did it come about?
(Amy:) My mom loved owls and when it came time to name the store, I obviously researched other companies, but when the Barn Owl came into my mind, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Three or four years before I opened the shop, I lost my folks. I was going through some of the things I inherited and found a bath towel wrapped around a carved owl, and that helped me decide. The owl sits in the store and the name is a kind of homage to my mom. Plus, I love owls and I thought ‘The Burrowing Owl’ was not clever enough and ‘Saw-whet Owl’ would be hard to spell.
Behind the cash register are shelves with a lovely collection of owls, are those all yours?
Well, I don’t like to collect anything. But I put that shelf up there with one owl, and over the years, people have just come by and spontaneously brought things in for me. I’ve really grown to love that; and I think it’s a reflection of our customers and how much they love us.
You have a limited amount of space, and I imagine you have to be very selective about how you use it. How do you go about that?By bookstore standards, we’re not large, but maybe by McCall retail standards, we’re a good size. It is all about the curation of the titles. Since we opened, I think we’ve dropped a couple of sections because there just wasn’t enough interest. But it does come down to curating. And as you probably know, the number of books in the world seems infinite, and trying to stay abreast of what’s out there with major publishers, Indie publishers, and local authors that aren’t represented by a publisher, it’s tricky.
We get book ideas, recommendations, and pitches from dozens and dozens of sources. But I think every independent bookstore, for better or worse, is a reflection to some extent of the owner and their personal taste. My job is to try to conjure up what both locals and visitors to McCall might like to read, or might not even know that they want to read but might be of interest. Then I keep an eye on sales and I see what does well. And that can be as micro as individual titles or as macro as books and sections that do well, then we just try to build on what’s working.
Of course our customers tell us what they want, but I love putting books in front of people that they may or may not have heard of; and some might not even know they wanted or needed them.
So you have a serious superpower then.
In the book world, there is no one right answer, and I love that there’s kind of a push and a pull. Discovering books that I think are fantastic, especially the ones that maybe aren’t from the big publishers, is just delightful. And when something we’re not sure would do well, but hoped it would – or when we can hand-sell Nicole Sharp’s book and people listen – then they come back in, furious for another book … That’s a wonderful day for us in the book world.
In this day and age, with places like Amazon causing bookstores to battle for survival, I imagine it takes a lot of passion, courage and some sacrifice to run an Indie bookstore.Yes, it does take a lot of passion. I think small businesses, especially small businesses in small towns, and bookstores that are small businesses in small towns, are not for the faint of heart. It is a passion, because the margins on books are not great and they’re not like other items that come with discounts.
I did a lot of research before I opened this up and at the time, seven or eight years ago, bookstores were not declining, they were ascending. We’ve had some tough years. And Amazon does not do us any favors. I want to measure my words here, but books are loss leaders for them. So you can either throw up your hands and say, ‘you win Amazon,’ or you can just say, ‘that’s one way to buy books, and this is another way.’
There is a small sign that I printed out and put up in our restroom that says: ‘People shop Indies for the experience.’ I embrace that and continue to think it’s true.
Everyone on my staff is very well read in a variety of genres and if we haven’t read a book, we’ve read the reviews or we’ve read an interview with the author. When you come into an Indie bookstore you get to talk to a real life person with a pulse and someone who loves reading and loves authors. Talking about storytelling and reading is a very different experience that you just don’t get online.
But I’m not angry with people who want to buy from Amazon. You can get your books a lot of different ways but if you shop in any bookstore, I guarantee you will have a more immersive, community focused interaction.
There are so many books out right now talking about how divisive and isolating spending a lot of time on our devices is. When you come into the store, it’s an experience. Walking around, seeing the store cat, the displays and what’s recommended … that is what has kept us and will continue to keep us in business and thriving.
I feel like there has been an uptick in support of Indie bookstores.
There is. People are becoming more educated on the harm that buying from places like Amazon does. I have had so many people tell me they shop with us because they love having our bookstore here and want us to be around next year and the year after that.
What would you say is the most difficult thing about running an Indie bookstore?I have a financial background, which is helpful because there is a tremendous amount of finance associated. I don’t think people want to read in your newsletter boring things like cash flow and cost of goods sold. I suppose one challenge is staffing in a small town. I have the best staff in McCall, hands down. I’ve been super fortunate. I have employees who treat this shop as though it’s their own, which is exactly how I want them to feel.
The hardest part comes at the end of the day or the week or the month, making all the numbers work.
When I first opened, I was at the front desk. Now I have staff there, and I’m handling the back end of things. It’s all balanced – we have a store cat that we get to take pictures of and I’m looking forward to Christmas when it’s dark outside and it’s warm and cozy inside – the good far outweighs the bad.
What’s your favorite thing about running an Indie bookstore?
Interacting with people. We say hello to every customer and we say goodbye to every customer. Some people who are visiting from more urban areas are kind of surprised when we do. But we want to know you. We want to know your story. We want to know how you’re feeling. That’s a level of sincerity that I’d like to think we offer.
My catnip is the books, the stories, the authors. And it is nice to manage in the way that feels best to me.
Was opening a bookstore always a dream?I’d like to say yes, it would sound better; but no it wasn’t always the dream. For almost 10 years I sang for a living and then for about 15 years or so, I ran an animal wildlife or domestic animal government or nonprofit facilities, and then, when we made the decision to come back to Idaho, I had to come up with career 3.0.
Around that time, McCall Drug closed and they were the bookstore. I read in the paper that they were closing and I told my husband, ‘I can’t believe it, the place that sells books is closing.’ I went home that night and started researching. And six or eight months later, I opened. I’ve always been a reader. My mom was a teacher and my folks were well read, but opening a bookstore wasn’t always the dream. But I’ve enjoyed every single stage of this.
Is your house covered in bookshelves and books?
Yes!
I mean you might say ‘hoarder.’ I might say ‘avid reader.’ My husband and I are both readers and we’ve got a ton of books and it’s a pain when you move, but you have to have that emergency book pile for when it’s sunny out and you want to read on the deck or when it’s storming out and want to get a glass of whiskey and tuck in under a heated blanket.
Do you have a book that you wish would sell better or that you love and wish was purchased more?Yes. Wallace Stegner, the Angle of Repose. It sells well, don’t get me wrong. There’s a book my mom gave to me years ago called Blind Your Ponies by Stanley Gordon West. I try to keep that on the shelf.
There are others I wish sold better; but I’ll flip the question. There are many bookstores these days that don’t have a big Classics section because there’s a sense that they don’t sell well. I love classics, and so instead of subscribing to that theory, we just made the section diverse; and by that I mean we have affordable Penguin classic paper books and then we have leather-bound classics. Those are books that I think, because we have them, love them, and have read them, those sell well. And they sell well on weekends, which is another discussion. I just love selling classics and that people are still interested.
What’s your favorite section of the store? (I know you have a lot to choose from.)
I do love historical fiction. Well-written, well-researched historical fiction, because you can enjoy it on a couple different levels. The fictionalized storyline and then the well-researched parts that really do reflect accurately on history. And I just can’t get out of that World War II jam; there are so many good books written in that.
When did you get Indie? (Indie is the cat that lives in the store.)
Almost two years now. We worked with the animal shelter over the years and have housed animals in the store and when people come in, they fall in love and go adopt them. We’ve done that for about 40 cats. Then I fell in love with Indie so she became the bookstore cat.
If you could invite any author, past or present, for a book signing, who would it be?
Nobody has ever asked me that question. That’s a good question. My first reaction is John Steinbeck. Because so much of his writing is based near Monterey and Salinas and it’s so steeped in actual people’s stories. Yeah, hands down, John Steinbeck.
I don’t want to meet any rock stars and I’m really not interested in any athletes; but dinner with an author, past or present, is just an amazing fantasy to think about.
I remember when I was in high school and I read The Pearl, then I read it as a grown woman, when I was about 50. It’s a different book as a grown woman versus someone who’s just about to launch; and I just love that about some of these books. I really think they have stood the test of time.
A huge THANK YOU to Amy, Christa, Megan, Bethany and Babe !! Keep up the good work and know how much you are appreciated.
Website:
https://thebarnowlmccall.com/