Interview: Broadway Books Co-Owner, Roberta Dyer

In part one of Reading Local’s interview with Broadway Books, co-owner and original founder Roberta Dyer was gracious enough to sit down with me to discuss the origins of the store, beating back “the chain” down the street, their recent migration to the web, and much more. Part two of the interview (to come tomorrow), will include a few questions with the newest addition to the ownership team, Sally McPherson. [This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity]

Reading Local) How did Broadway Books come about?

Roberta Dyer) I have been in the book business for 38 years, having gone in to it right out of college.  I worked for other bookstores, wholesalers, and publishers, and over that time period it became clear to me that I really wanted my own store.  To run it the way I wanted, it was just sort of a pipe dream for me.  So, 17 years ago I thought to myself if I’m not going to do it now, when am I ever going to? I lived here in the neighborhood, and felt like we needed a bookstore in this neighborhood and that I should be the one to do it.  I had a good friend that I had worked with at the Catbird Seat Bookstore, and she and I got together and we raised the money and found this space.  We were lucky in that the gentleman who owns this space was just a prince, and wanted a bookstore here, and so he made it available to us at a reasonable rate.

RL) Is he still the landlord today?

RD) He is still the landlord, but he is retired now and turned the business over to his children.  They seem to be as nice about everything as he was, and I’m hoping that will continue.  Because if you don’t own the building you are at the mercy of your landlord, which is the reason many bookstores have gone out of business.

RL) You said that you lived in the area, was that what led you to choose this location?

RD) I took the bus into town everyday, and I would look around and think “somewhere around here there needs to be a bookstore, and someone is going to open it, and if it’s not me I’m going to be really upset, it means I’m going to have to ride the bus everyday going by somebody else’s bookstore.”  So that really motivated me.

RL) Just jump off the cliff and do it?

RD) Yeah, and it was scary because as soon as we signed the lease, we were told that there was a Barnes & Noble store opening down the street.  Someone came to me and told me “don’t sign the lease, don’t sign the lease, there is a B&N opening up”, but I had just signed the lease. And I am glad I didn’t know, because if I hadn’t just signed the lease I would have been too afraid to do it. As it turns out the B&N did open up about a year after we did, but we like to say ‘we drove them off the street and into the mall where they belong.”

RL) What’s the best part about being in Sullivan’s Gulch?

RD) It’s definitely the customer base.  I’ve lived in the neighborhood for 30 years, and raised my son here, so I know all of the schools and that stuff.  But when you open a business people come in that you didn’t know before.  So in a very short time my base of customers was great, but also my base of friends tripled. Because all of these people came in that I didn’t know before, and they’re part of the neighborhood like I am. Many, many customers have become good friends, as well as friends becoming customers.  That’s definitely the best part about it.

RL) We talked a little bit about the chain down the road, would you say that’s your biggest competitor or the internet?

RD) Probably more the Internet now, although I wish the chain would go away as well. But they’re having trouble in this economy also. I noticed that Amazon posted a huge increase this last year, so they aren’t hurting. We can’t compete with that, and I know we lose business to it.  But what we can do is what we do best, that they don’t do.  And that is to be local, provide a welcoming space for people to come and be and meet up, and be social and talk about books.  You can do some of that on the Internet, but it’s not the same.

RL) It seems that with a store this size your customers can have more direct access to you, so your store can start to reflect what your customers are looking for.

RD) We get a lot of customers who say that they want a smaller store, because a larger store is just too overwhelming, it takes too long to find things, its just too massive to find something.  So they appreciate a store this size because after shopping here for a while they can trust us to make choices.  They may know that we only have a certain number of novels for instance, but they know we won’t have any bad ones. They could go to a huge store and buy a novel that could turn out to be awful, so they come here because we have weeded some stuff out.  My opinion about a store this size has always been that you need to have a point of view, a personality.  Customers figure that out, and if they like my point of view, if they like my taste they will find me and they will come back.  After a while that becomes a symbiotic relationship, because the customers will influence my point of view and my taste, they will tell me what they like by special ordering things that I don’t carry. It all starts to feed off of each other, and that’s a good thing.

RL) If the “burrito story” hadn’t happened would we still be here?

RD) It’s hard to say.  I tend to be a worrier, and project out and think the worst.  So it really is hard to say.  I would like to think that we would still be here, and I believe we would.  But we wouldn’t be in as good as shape as we are right now.  We were able to pay all of our bills in December, and have a little cushion against the times when it’s going to be bad again.  Everyone keeps saying that the economy hasn’t hit bottom yet, and it’s nice to have a little cushion to weather those times.  The burrito thing, reminded people of the importance of shopping locally.  That it makes a difference where you shop, and I’m hoping that is something they carry through when they are going out to eat, or buying clothing, or using a mom and pop pharmacy, there are still a few of those around.  I realize we can’t do everything local, there are huge chains that we can’t avoid, but as much as we can we should.

RL) Wasn’t there a small turnout when your son went to give out the burritos, so in the end it really did end up being about shopping locally?

RD) It did end up not being about the burrito at all.  We had about 40 people show up, but they were mostly our friends and his friends.  My son gave away about 25 burritos.  A lot of people who came refused a free burrito and bought their own.  A few people stuffed money in his pocket to pay for the burritos he was buying, which was very, very sweet.  The leftovers he took to the Portland Rescue Mission.

RL) The whole story was just really endearing.

RD) I don’t know if you heard the best part, but he got promoted at work as a result of the burrito story, and he just started his new job and is really enjoying it.

RL) Now, you have started a blog yourself as well right?

RD) Sally started it, and she updates it at least once a day. She just was out of town for a few days, and she lined it all up so in her absence there would be new blogs.  She made me do one!  Our website is up now too.  It’s all new for us, and that’s all Sally.  She works really hard. She has been my business partner and co-owner of the store for two years now, and her goal last year was to get us a blog and get us a website, and she made it happen.

RL) Have you found that it has allowed you to connect with your customers more?

RD) One thing that the burrito story taught us was that you can use the Internet for something very specific and local.  So it doesn’t always have to be the enemy.  There are ways that you can twitter and blog and really rally people around your cause.  So we need to get the word out about our blog and website, that’s been our major push to get people to come look at it.  We’re on Facebook now, you too can be a fan of Broadway Books.  So were learning, were doing!

RL) And, you have a newsletter also?

RD) Our newsletter goes out almost once a month.  There is usually a coupon in it for 20% off any one book of your choice, which has been a very good marketing piece for us.  You can contact us or go to the site, and we will add you to the list.

RL) What do you think is the role of an independent bookstore within it’s community?

RD) I think there is no substitute for human contact, for actual face-to-face conversations with someone.  And we’re really good at that.  An independent bookseller has to be, and wants to be which is why they’re in the business. Recommending books, or helping people figure out what they want to read, or helping with book groups. I think it’s just the personal service.

RL) I noticed you have a really strong collection of items that concerns Jewish affairs, is that from your original business partner Gloria?

RD) It is.  I must say that our Judaica section is not as big as it used to be.  We analyzed it very carefully about a year ago, and realized what we were selling and what we weren’t, and we got rid of stuff that we weren’t selling.  So the section is a little bit smaller than it used to be, but it’s much more active and the books in it are better, I think.  We have a lot of Jewish customers.  Originally that was because of Gloria and her connections to the Jewish community, but we have maintained those customers.  There aren’t that many places in town where you can buy Hanukkah candles for instance, and we are one of them.  We enjoy being that.

RL) I read on your site that the graphic novel collection you have is through another employee kind of culling that selection a little bit.

RD) Yeah, Jennie Chamberlin is our graphic literature specialist.  She reads a lot of it.  We all read some, but Jennie is a little younger and she has really good taste.  I was talking to a publisher of Top Shelf Productions, a publisher of graphic literature here in town, and he was looking over our section and I said “oh we have a small selection,” and he said “yes you do have a small selection, but it’s tasty.”  Which made us feel pretty good.

RL) Speaking of our local literary scene, it is very abundant, what are ways you try to take advantage of that scene?

RD) We have readings on a regular basis, and often they are local, which we like.  We get some national authors as well, but a store our size doesn’t get offered nearly as much as a big store.  So we’re a little off the radar, and I know when I get a call from a national publisher about an author that they’re sending on tour that I’m not the first one they’ve called. Sometimes we get a real gem, but we get all the local gems.  From Molly Gloss, to Craig Lesley, to Willy Vlautin.  We love having them read here, and our customers love it too.  We also do local readings, which are always open to the public and always free, several times throughout the year for a local high school literature department wants to do a reading, which we have done many of.  Literary Arts has their Writers in The Schools program that we are patrons of, and usually Benson High or Grant High will have readings here.  Although their readings are starting to be too big for us, which is good because they are graduating into bigger things.  Sometimes a local writing group will want to be able to read in public, so we love doing that because they bring their friends and families, and get to read their work out loud in a group that gives them a whole new feeling for the way something sounds and the way it works.  We also always in December choose a local public school to do a book drive for.  This last December we joined with our customers and did a book drive for Sitton Elementary in St. Johns, and were able to give them over $800 in books, which is one of the most satisfying things we do.

RL) What are some of the favorite books that you have read in the past year, or maybe beyond that?

RD) I’m a fan of personal memoir, and I have to say one of my favorites that I’ve read in the past several years is J.R. Moehringer’s book The Tender Bar, which is a memoir about his boyhood.  He’s a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, so he really knows how to write, it’s a very wonderful memoir.  Another favorite of mine is Anne Fadiman’s book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, which is a story about Hmong immigrants to California and a certain family that has an epileptic daughter.  It’s about what happens when they come up against Western culture and medicine, these two very different cultures colliding. She manages to tell the story without blaming anyone, you can see where things go wrong and why, and why it’s nobody’s fault.  My favorite recent novel is The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, which is really popular and a huge big fat story.  It’s a prairie novel, but it’s also a re-telling of Hamlet and in the re-telling some of the characters from The Hamlet story are dogs.

RL) Lastly, I asked this over at Annie Bloom’s as well, have you ever thought about writing yourself?

RD) Nahh. There have been some good bookseller memoirs.  The woman who owns a bookstore in Utah called The Kings English has recently written a memoir about her store.  Fred Cody who was one of the grandest old men of bookselling ever, had a bookstore in Berkeley called Cody’s and he wrote the story of his life in bookselling.  There have been some really great ones.

I would like to thank Roberta for being so gracious with her time. You can see my review of Broadway Book’s here, and look for part two tomorrow.