Singing Pebble Books Interview

Singing Pebble Books Interview

Laura (interviewee)

Sam (interviewee)

Tenn, Ashley (interviewer)

An interview with booksellers Laura and Sam at Singing Pebble Books in Ottawa, Ontario, lead by Ashley Tenn. This interview is a discussion about bookselling at an independent bookstore and what roadblocks they encounter. Singing Pebble Books is a “whole-body, mind and spirit” bookstore that is interested in inclusivity and diversity as part of its mission. We discuss the various ways of acquiring and discovering new and lesser-known books, especially books that might be considered controversial or boundary-pushing, and how bookselling differs between independent bookstores and large chain bookstores. We talk about how the demographics of a community sets the tone of a bookstore, including how the staff confront challenges to their inventory.

2024-07-17

mp3, 36 min 33 s

Interview

language: English

Tenn, Ashley (interviewer)

Ashley Tenn (cataloguer, 2024)

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Singing Pebble Books, 206 Main St, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

mp3, 36 min 33 s

ASHLEY:
Singing Pebble Books is a local, independent bookstore located in Ottawa, Ontario.It specializes in books on spirituality and personal growth, and boasts a large selection of children’s literature. I was joined by Sam and Laura to discuss their experiences as booksellers. If you could please introduce yourselves and tell us a little about your role and experiences as booksellers

LAURA:
I'm Laura, I've been working here at singing Pebble for the past 10 years or so. Before that, I owned my own bookstore for 18 years. So I've been in the book selling world for quite a long time. And I'm here working almost full-time hours. I handle doing the ordering of the backlist, which is the titles that maintain the regular inventory and some of the front list as well.

SAM:
Yeah, my name is Sam. I have been working here at Singing Pebble for just about a year now. And prior to that, I worked at a large chain bookstore for just about five years. Specializing in mostly the kids department at that bookstore, doing story times, trying to curate collections that were specific to the demographic that we dealt with.

ASHLEY:
Perfect. Thank you. So we'll start off: what is your focus as a bookstore? If you could tell us a little bit about your philosophy as booksellers.

LAURA:
Well Singing Pebble is like a mind-body kind of bookstore. And that's what we specialize in. And I think Sam, you can agree with me or not, but I think any good, Indie bookstore, you know, has a theme and sticks to it sort of thing. So either they’re children's book sellers, or whatever, I would say that that is the core of the store of matters of the spirit. But we also sell a huge range of bestsellers and fiction, and gifts, and all of that kind of thing. So, in this very competitive book industry you want to have all the best sellers, you want to have a great sidelines. So that's sort of the direction this store is going.

SAM:
I agree. And our children's book selection definitely reflects that. Coming from a large chain bookstore coming to Singing Pebble, I noticed a lot of the books have a focus on mindfulness well-being, diversity and inclusion emotions as well. We have a really great selection of emotional regulation books for kids. So that was something that I noticed as a difference.

ASHLEY:
Having worked at both an Indie bookstore and a big chain bookstore, could you describe to differences and approach when you're recommending books, for instance.

SAM:
There are so many differences. I think the biggest difference is the ability to take the time and really get to know the customer that you are looking after and specifically, what they're looking for. Working here at an indie bookstore, ee have the ability to look at stock at the publishers as well as other Indie bookstores in the city to see. Oh, like I know you would really like this book. However, we don't have it right now. Let's see how long it would take to order it because you need it for a gift or whatever. Whereas looking at the large chain, we could, in theory, look at another store's stock, but that's not always accurate and we could not reserve it in any way, shape or form. Sp I think the biggest difference is it's more personable here. And you have the time to really perform better customer service. Whereas at the chain it was more rushed quantity over quality of customer service. So getting through as many people as possible as quickly as possible.

ASHLEY:
Did you find that the big chains you end up with essentially faceless consumers?

SAM:
Definitely. A lot of it ends up being I just like scanning a card, for example, or you know, filling an online order. But now never actually seeing the person because then the next person takes over. It was almost like machine work, honestly, and just working on like a factory line almost, but all robots because you know, you do your one task and then it moves on to the next person who does the next task Etc. So you get less of that face-to-face time with the customers. Whereas here you do it all.


LAURA:
The things that was going through my mind, as you were saying that though? Is that here for us, books are a very personal thing. We see them as tools to transform your life and that includes kids having their lives transformed in some way whether it's because they're seen in the book or because it changes the way they think about the world, whatever, that is. And so that's how we see every book that comes in here. That's how we handle it. And the big change though. It strikes me is that these are products that they move around and the publisher has paid premium dollar for that product to placed at eye level—sort of the way they do in the grocery store with sugary cereals for children. So, these are just sugary books or toys or whatever that are placed in eye level for, you know. So it's just, it's just a different Thing. What I always say the difference is that we're here handling thoughts and ideas, our own. And we're hoping to develop that in the customers that come in and then we're even ordering books, like, not with who we hope is going to come in. Like, who we hope is going to see this book. That's a whole different thing than just moving products around in a warehouse, on a computer screen.

SAM:
Like, Displays and stuff. That was all. Pre-thought out by someone at home, office, whatever, it wasn't the staff, curating. Oh, we know we have like people coming in from this Elementary School. For example, there was an ESL School in the area. And we just felt we couldn't match up to what they needed because we didn't get the stock. We didn't get the display space to be able to provide for them really, we had no ability to order things towards the end of my time there. Whereas here it's just like I can go through the Publisher's list so I can hand-pick things. I think we do a good job of staying on top of like, you know, National blank month and things like that.

LAURA:
Yeah like curating the inventory to what? Like what we see happening in the world to each of us as booksellers in the store like what's important to one of us. And that's what we bring to the table and, like any great. Indie bookstore who go in there. You should be able to see in the books, who works there, what their passions are, you know?

SAM:
Like for right now. July is Disability Pride Month and it's a learning opportunity for our community as well because you have people that come in they're like, “Oh I didn't know it was Disability Pride Month,” and so you're not only learning from the books but you're learning from the store too and being able to curate those kind of displays. But also just have a conversation with someone And not feel like you're rushed because You know, you gotta get things down the line essentially before you're watching for shrinkage or whatever.

LAURA:
Or like, you know, there's two people working in a space, that's 40, 000 square feet. You know, this store is about 2500 square feet. There's always two of us. Sometimes three of us here.

SAM:
Yeah, there's three of us working right now. There's probably three of them working at the store that I used to work at, at the
same time.


ASHLEY:
Get the sense that a big chain is more like a standard retail and less like an actual book selling job.

SAM:
Absolutely. Yeah. It's definitely got, like, how do I say this? It's all profit based, rather than you know, benefiting the customer. It's more so about shrinkage, and performance quote-unquote than it is about getting books into the hands of people that need and want them.

ASHLEY:
Did you find there were any restrictions at the big chains?

SAM:
Where do I start? Like I mentioned earlier, we could not order anything in. So if for example somebody asked me for a recommendation and I thought, oh yeah, like this book I know you would love it. It sounds right up your alley. It sounds exactly what you're looking for. We don't have it in stock. And then that would be kind of the end of the conversation. Be like you have to order it online. And then if someone was like, “Well I don't shop online. I don't I don't know how to do that,” or “I don't have a computer at home,” etc. etc. It's like okay, well, sucks to suck. That's important for lack of a better word. It was just a lot of dead ends there. Whereas here, we try to problem solve and we try to Find things, right? Or find Solutions and take the time to do that.

ASHLEY:
Did you find there were any content restrictions to things that you're allowed to recommend or maybe implicitly restricted?

Speaker 3 11:33
Not deliberately, I would say, a latent effect of not having the ability to order things in restricts, how much you can recommend in the store level. For example, if I Had a kid that was, you know, like 12 years old and they're thinking that they might be queer. And they're asking for queer content in books, and if I didn't have anything, What do I do for that kid, right? Um, whereas here, I'm ordering my brain Center to be, to be honest. Well, that goes back to what I was saying. Knowing

LAURA:
You know, like a Bookstore were, you know, reflects the diversity of the people who are here their diversity in their own. Personal being but also in the diversity of the reading of their interests or even of their of their knowledge, you know? And, I think, uh, I think what happens sometimes in big chains is everything just gets kind of diluted and they can't uh, Evil for the staff. They don't even have the time to figure out what that parent or kid. Like in terms of children's books selling, you know, parents come in and say My kid just came out. Do you have any books? Well, you know It's you do or you don't there, whereas here, it's like we usually do and if we don't we're gonna figure that out,

ASHLEY:
You have a big chain kind of function as a general store for a broad audience and it's as broad as it could possibly be.

SAM:
Yeah.

LAURA:
Yeah.

ASHLEY:
Yeah. So we talked a lot about ordering—could you go through the purchasing process a bit more in depth? Specifically, how do you discover lesser publicized books?

LAURA:
The book selling Industry is notoriously complicated. And the reason it's complicated is because of copyright. So when somebody publishes something with a publisher, it's copyright is protected and then the distribution rights for that are protected. So that makes it complicated. So at any given time most bookstores are dealing with upwards of To 150 different suppliers. So, to know what's out? There is always the big question. Most Publishers are represented by reps who come and Present the list to you. And again, like anything, they bring their slant to it, you know, the market influences, what selling, what isn't, you know, all all of those sorts of things.

I come from a background a long time ago, where books by queer authors, even by women, by women of color, were we had to search, you know, high and low to find those offers those, that was our, you know, that was our mission. If you will to present those Authors to people because we believed in them and they weren't getting publicity anywhere else. So, that's, you know, but the nuts and bolts of it is. It's just that it's complicated in a lot of these small little Publishers, you know, that publish like indigenous kids like that old shelf that we're looking at right there. It's all indigenous kids books and those are from all these tiny little presses that are represented by one big press and, you know, so we get catalogs over on their websites. We do it by Word of Mouth. We see things on, you know, through social Media authors some sales reach out to us. So it’s very dynamic. It isn't like head office saying here's the books that you're selling and there we go.

SAM:
Yeah. You're looking at home head office. This is it.

LAURA:
Yeah. So we do everything from ordering to washing the windows to, you know.

SAM:
Yeah. Um, you mentioned social media. Yeah. And it's very Community Based. We, we're very lucky to have a really supportive and strong Community. And it's really interesting like you have regular customers that have been coming to Laura for years that ask us to get these books for them and then it's like I go “Well, what is that?” Like, I get you get to talk to people about it and you get to Learn more like, not just from like I'm the expert and I'm going to tell you, but you get to converse with people and have that feedback as well.

LAURA:
And then that's a really good point because also, I think a great Indie bookstore also reflects its great customers. So, some of our best titles, we get from our customers who have special order things, you know, and then it's like, oh, you know, when I'm ordering, oh, look at that. That looks really good. I'll order a couple from the store. And and again that's how we build these things. Somebody comes in looking for a book about a child who's grieving and we're able to say, oh, hey, We just had somebody order. These books and we ordered a couple of them as well and then there we go. That conversation unfolds that way.

Speaker 1 17:19
you notice the language of publicity change between smaller presess and bigger presses? From publishers, I know they send out sort of a marketing plan, for instance.

SAM:
Yeah.

ASHLEY:
Do you find that there's a language difference between how they are essentially selling their books, to the bookstores?

SAM:
There’s definitely a like technological difference because either you'll get a paper newsletter or you'll get a very interesting website that you don't really know how to navigate.

LAURA:
Yeah. So a lot of those little houses, they don't have the same resources. So, gosh, you know, there's some of them are using social media tools to really reach out directly to their customers. And then their customers are coming to us as they do a really good job and then others that they're just trying to keep their heads above water. They get their grants to publish their books, but that's basically as far as they can get and they're publishing these great books. So I always like to try and find the mix of those things, you know. It's really changed over time. I have to say that as well. In terms of how authors themselves even are able to reach out in a fast efficient way, like, either through a big email or through social media in some way to promote their books. And, you know, even if they're published with a pretty big house. There's so many books published that if you publish, if you buy something, you've got to be out there. Pedaling your bike as hard as you can to sell it.

SAM:
So like one of the bigger houses—Penguin Random House—they are constantly uploading things on their website called the Read Down and it will be several lists, anywhere from like kids books to like classic literature to political things, that are in the news right now and they do a great job of creating those lists. And connecting with social media. So if you really liked that new Taylor Swift album, then you're going to love all these books.

LAURA:
Totally like then we get to order what we think is going to sell for us, but also connected to those things, and it's huge. Like for us this little store to keep up with all of that is huge. Like it's, we could I think for me, I've I've let go of the idea of trying to keep up. Well, first of all, we don't have the space. Like, we barely, we barely have the space as it is. I don't know what we would do if we actually were able to keep up. But then there's always that worry for me that I've missed some great book but you know, we find them, they find us.

ASHLEY:
Shelf space is something that I've had discussions with just myself as well because I've had work published with a small press and trying to get that into Indie bookstores is actually quite difficult also for that reason shelf space is small and things get returned.

LAURA:
It is, yeah, you know, costly, right to order from, it's a gamble to order something. Yes.

SAM:
Well, so shipping costs are also a thing.

LAURA:
Totally. Paper’s expensive. Gina and I were talking about this the other day because sometimes people will say, “Oh my gosh. Books are so expensive!” And I'm sort of like “Really?” Really, like because you could read this and it could change your life and it's what 45 bucks say for a new hardcover, whatever. Like, for something that could change your life. I feel like that's a great.

SAM:
It’s an investment, right? And then you can lend it to someone. It's not like you consume it once and you're done with it, right?

LAURA:
Yeah, yeah.

SAM:
You've got it. You've got the author that writes it. You've got the editors. You've got to pay. You've got the paper. You need to pay for you. Have the binding you need to pay for you have the book sellers so we matter too.

ASHLEY:
What percentage of books that you order are from smaller Indie presses?

LAURA:
That's a tricky question to answer, because a lot of the smaller Indie presses are represented by big Distributors. So for example, a lot of small indigenous author presses are represented by the University of Toronto presss. And if we will return, and we would return them to UTP like that. Like so not an easy question to answer but what I would say is when we are trying to make decisions we're trying to prioritize, you know? So it's like Robert Munsch or some author, maybe you know that no one's ever heard of that's published some cool books with some really busy active, little kids in it that are look different sound different. We're gonna go with the latter because everybody's doing Robert Musch not to knock Robert Musch, but you know what I mean? Like, so we're trying to curate interesting books that aren't just about, you know, written by old white guys. They've had their place on the shelves.

SAM:
You're definitely not going to find all of the books here that you're not going to find them all. At those chain stores, you're not going to find them at just a regular retailer. And I think that's what makes Indie book selling special.

LAURA:
Yeah, again that, that Personal Touch. In the truth of the matter too, though it's always trying to find that balance because the difficulty is that if all you sold was small little presses and honestly, I don't think he could make a goal of it. Like, so we need those sales of those big, blockbuster books, so that we can sell that. That's my goal as a Bookseller is sell all the big's best sellers, so that we have the cash flow so that we can bring in small, interesting Publishers and authors. So it's just trying to find that balance. It's like always trying. You know you're always laughing and we have so much stock you know go yeah. Yeah. We're only trying to order what sells that's the whole idea.


ASHLEY:
So for this class we are specifically looking at banned and challenged books, as there's been, an increase in attacks that targeted at libraries and bookstores, demanding that certain books n be available to the public. If you could tell us a little bit about what difficulties you face, when ordering books in that respect? Have you had anyone come in and try to challenge?

LAURA:
Well. For me, I come from a background of books being banned, but I'm talking about 30 years ago. And, What it feels like now, is that? Our customer base. When a book has been banned and there have been a certain amount of publicity about that. Our customer base are often quite interested in that book. And I used to always say to my kids, a sign of a great book is that it's been banned. So you know, And we often do banned book displays and that kind of thing. I don't we haven't had we've certainly had conversations with people, I would say sometimes maybe people have even been uncomfortable. But no, not really. And if anything, I feel like especially now like People are so much more open-hearted than they used to be.

I remember working in a bookstore where we had like a lesbian fiction section, and there were people that came in being outright hostile, like, I mean, called the police hostile. And it could be really scary or boxes of books stuck at the border because they wouldn't let them into Canada. And they were stuck there and the legalities of everything, so we would have to abandon the order and we still had to pay for them but we couldn't get them over the border like that kind of thing. Or ordering books for other bookstores, like Glad Day in Toronto and whose books were being deliberately targeted at the border. Their boxes were being opened and their stock was being damaged, you know, and their bookstores were being firebombed. I mean, the written word is a very, very powerful thing, and people do get really threatened. The great thing about Singing Pebble Books is that, that's not an atmosphere that we work in, and I feel like our customers, even if they might be uncomfortable, have not said to us, “I'm not coming back. I don't like this” or worse, you know?


SAM:
We're, we're very fortunate to have such kind and patient clientele I would say. And I think that comes with, you know, being a mind-body-spirit based bookstore. However, we're also in a smaller community of Ottawa as well, so, we do get that patience, we do get that kindness for small business. Yes, we're on a street full of small businesses. There's that compassion there and I noticed, especially—and Laura can speak to this—but the transition between me working at a large chain bookstore to working here, you just saw me be so much more relaxed and so less tense and afraid to talk to people honestly.

LAURA:
Yeah.

ASHLEY:
Were people more willing to challenge you as a basically a minimum wage retail worker at the big chains?

SAM:
Yeah, yeah. Um, trying to put this concisely, whether it was a display or decorations or anything to do with, for example, LGBTQ+ Pride, we did have the people occasionally come in and say like, “Why don't you have straight pride? Why don't you have this? Why don't you have that? Where's the space for this?” And it's just like okay well we're celebrating this right now, right?

LAURA:
And in that, you know, and and I think if that happened here, I think that there's more of an atmosphere of support amongst us. So you first of all, in that big chain store of 40 000, somewhat square feet, you're there by yourself. Literally. Whereas here, it's smaller, it's not that there would be a few of us, maybe having that conversation, and who knows? It might not go well or it might go well, or the person might have their mind, changed, or whatever it is, or we might just to agree to disagree. That's a good thing in a way.

SAM:
Or you'll have, like another customer chime in and be like, yeah, let's go, let's go, we're done.

LAURA:
You know, the thing too, for me it's more around, how do we censor ourselves? Or how do we bring our bias where we don't order something? Because we have this mindset or we, or there's been this talk, you know about that author, and do we have their books or not, or like those kinds of things, you know, which are really, it's really important and so that and then when we've had those conversations, we might agree with each other we might not. But then when our customers ask us something about it, we have thought about it. Instead of just, oh, well, head office, drop shipped that to us or head office, didn't drop ship back to us or whatever it is. And it's kind of like, you're, you know, so it's when we're, it's just more Dynamic. That's what we want. And like, and I think you're right, Sam. When you first got here was you weren't used to being asked to be dynamic in your thinking. And now suddenly it's like, “Oh right?” Like, I can bring my ideas to it and it'll be okay. Some of us will agree, some of us won't but whatever it is.

SAM:
Yeah, it’s more of a fluid thing. Like, you can have your understanding of the world, but then you can learn things from other people. Not necessarily of each other, of course. But then you've got, the other authors, you've got the distributors that are sending certain folks who are pushing certain books. Then you have the customers as well and it challenges you to rethink things rather than just be.

LAURA:
Totally. And I would think, too that in a lot of those small Publishers that they're having the same conversations just like ours. Why did you publish that book? Why didn't you publish that book or whatever? You know? And it's the same thing that they brought that energy to it and then hopefully when we're selecting books that energy comes through in what we've curated. If that makes sense.

ASHLEY:
Curation is a big thing that keeps coming back to me in this conversation. I know some booksellers, for instance, like to read everything that they order. Is that also something that you guys do, is it too overwhelming? Was that the case at the big chains?

SAM:
So a really funny thing that I've noticed here is that we get a substantially like a substantial amount of advanced reader copies, whether that’s for adults through all genres, whether that's for kids. Fiction, non-fiction political books. Yoga everything. We get everything here, and sometimes we get multiple copies. There's what eight people that work here and we'll get like, two of each and it's all of a sudden like, okay, we'll have to get borrow that from you but I guess I'll take it. Um, And we also have Um, Advanced listening copies as well through Libro FM, which is amazing as well, because then you can actually listen to that picture book which sounds silly. But, you know, getting a taste of it before I order it in.

LAURA:
You know, it is tricky because there is just no way on Earth we could possibly read everything. We could certainly take a pretty good look at it. And there's been lots of times where we've read things and said, “Oh my gosh, I got to order a dozen more of these,” or we've read something and said, “Oh, you know what? I think we need to return the dozen we got.” And then a conversation about that might ensue. And there is no Bookseller on Earth—honestly, who's doing that really? I can't imagine, but they're giving things a good look at and also hopefully, everybody's reading in a different area, they have their specialty and then they bring that and we can work here collaboratively together as book sellers. You know, somebody's looking for kids books, I'm gonna do first Sam, that's more her. Somebody's looking for something on Buddhism? She might defer to me. That's, you know, more my area. Like that and we work collaboratively that way and we want our customers or I certainly do, I want them to feel that collaborative energy so that they feel like they could collaborate with us and recommend something.

ASHLEY:
Recommend something. Yeah, I I know a friend of mine who worked as a Bookseller for a while too. At some point they would just have like 50 something books ongoing. Just you know, new books, constantly reading like five books at once. I just thought that was Incredible but also so much to do and they were just responsible for one section of the bookstore.

LAURA:
Yeah, and that's really true because a lot of bigger stores even bigger Indie bookstores have the buyer for children's books or they have the buyer for cookbooks or whatever it is. I've never worked in a store like that. That's so big that they're separate buyers for those sections and those buyers meet with the reps and they curate it by you know and I mean that's the other thing that reps do for you. They say “Oh yeah, well this book is going to be— the author's going to be on the CBC and you know this show on that show,” like that kind of thing. So that's the nuts and bolts of it.

SAM:
I just keep laughing because I keep remembering the conversation fish sticker book that the rep recommended to us and we were a little confused but yeah, we'll take it. Sure. Enough sold right away. Yeah, the collaboration is really magical thing just across, you know reps but between each other.

LAURA:
Yeah and reps too—They read a lot. And again, they'll say I, you know, so this sometimes, they'll present the list and then and they and the Reps are often divided up as Well, so there's wraps for the Indies and Reps for the chains. So, the Indie reps are saying this is my, I love this book. This is the book. I'm selling this season. You know? And or they'll say, if you're only going to bring in one of these 50 children's books that are on the list, this is the one like that's and and it comes because of their passion. Generally, they've met the author, they've read the book, like all of that, so I think that that's coming out of this conversation is the how collaborative book selling is?

ASHLEY:
Do you find that some of them are maybe more careful around certain books of certain topics?

LAURA:
Not with us. Maybe they are with other book sellers, like maybe if you were presenting to say a Christian bookstore, you might be nervous about presenting a title or you might think it's all the more reason to present it. I think you know when you're a Bookseller—like a good Bookseller—you should try to be a little bit Fearless like don't don't like if there's gonna be pushback but that's a good thing actually even if it's a little bit uncomfortable at first. It's a way of saying well why are you worried about a book about a little person who's trying to figure out their gender like If you don't want to read it, just don't read it. Like what? But to have to think about that, you know, or even like books about death and grieving, well, you wasn't that long ago that nobody talked about that like You know, it's just now there's all kinds of books to help kids deal with their big feelings, you know. But was that long ago like kids on the Spectrum. Well, That hadn't been invented when I had kids. Like, it's just like, you know, and now that's something we think about that we acknowledge. So I think that that's really So that idea push back although it sounds like something that maybe is worrying. I don't see that as worrying. I think it's a way to open doors.

SAM:
I think with us to the Reps know, we're a little quirky and we we do specialize in a lot of non-fiction as well, so they're not afraid to bring new ideas to us, whether that be in non-fiction or fiction, based writing, I think they know that we’re eclectic is the word, right?

LAURA:
And even when we're hiring, you know, we're looking for eclectic people. That's what we want to try and bring to the table, our our, you know, experienced book sellers, who are reading, who are engaged, you know, who want to know, what's the next up and coming thing. That's what the whole industry's been doing forever. And a day is to try and figure out. You know, what's going to sound like we're we're already ordering into next January like we're, you know, Everything that's coming in the fall has already been ordered. Like we're always waiting to see what's forthcoming. And then a good bookstore always has a good mix, of brand new titles, new and exciting titles and a good solid backlist. That's that to me, that's what's supporting your store. So you always have those great, you know, you have good night Moon or whatever, kids books are sort of the, you know, that backlist that just that people are always just coming in and looking for and that Butters your bread, though. This is also about keeping the wheels on the bus room because there's no sense. If all you have are a bunch of kids books that nobody's interested in or any books in that matter.

ASHLEY:
Once again, I’d like to thank the staff at Singing Pebble Books for their time and expertise.