Thank you to all who took our B&D Spring Survey. If you haven’t had a chance here’s the link:
Our lovely survey
It was great to hear from everyone, including Members who chimed in on what is good and what can be improved etc. March is typically the slowest month in retail and although many of you did make an appearance at the shop, it was great to hear your ideas online if you didn’t make it in. What we really took from the results was that our customers have a desire to connect with other like-minded folks. One respondent suggested a weekly chat with us where we just talk about what we’re reading and writing. This simple request reminds us how much shops like ours–slaves to the capital grind as we are–still function as real community spaces.
Jason recalls that one of the first things he noticed while living in Muskoka was the lack of public space. Here he was in the Highlands of Ontario and almost ALL of the shorelines of hundreds of lakes were privately owned. There was one little spot, a public park, near Bracebridge where a slanty rock shelf knelt into the river. This is where all the townies gathered. There were dogs, families, teenagers and keen elders all doing their thing in the middle of God’s country. It was incredible, but small.
One member in the survey just wanted a night where members came and hung out. No structure. No event. Just an hour or two in the evening with pop and snacks where people with common values sit in a room and threaten to become friends. We can offer download codes or book credit or zines and these are all amazing things but at the core of it–at least for some–is the simple desire to be a part of something. This is honestly why we got in the business in the first place. Apart from being practically unemployable anywhere else, apart from having first dibs on titles (sorry), it’s moments like chatting Larry Garber up at the shop counter or seeing Jenna Rose pop in to catch us up on all things cool and political that light our days. It is a very sweet and simple value, we think. We chat with a City Councillor about how cool paper is (seriously he’s an enthusiast and expert). We hear the aspirational art plans from kids at Central High School (on their lunch break). We have become guardians of a small social space where big things can happen.
These past two years have broken a lot of these tacit spaces and the sense of safety to just appear somewhere and relate to strangers, in bookshops or arenas, or wherever you feel comfortable. Our survey revealed a longing to reclaim them and we feel that too. So, as we mentioned in our regular New Arrivals email (with a little more cheek, of course) these are the sorts of ways we indend to expand the membership. Safety still being a concern, of course, we hope to introduce more nights where members can just be their weird and lovely selves together. What shape that takes, exactly, remains to be determined. What the survey told us, though, was that it doesn’t need to be anything big. In fact, we should keep it small. Picture a little bookshop off the main drag in some provincial town where people get together and no one in the world except the people there know it is happening. There’s a dog, a pot of tea, some good beer and wine, and incandescent lights. The street is dark. Everyone else is asleep, and the bookshop dreams.
That sounds about right.
Much love,
Jason and Vanessa
