This column grew from first-hand experience that many of the best bookselling ideas come from other booksellers. Each tip offers an inventive way to solve problems that you may not have even been aware of in your store: like making it easier for older teens and twenty-somethings to find books.
Revamping YA
First a children’s librarian suggested to Diane Van Tassell, owner of Bay Books in San Ramon, Calif., that Harry Potter shouldn’t be shelved with kids’ series. Then she was struck, when she took a 20-year-old young man to the YA area, by the thought that too many kids’ books were mixed in with older YA, and that YA had too many “girly” titles.
Van Tassell isn’t averse to changing things up. Since her store sells used books, she frequently rearranges depending on what books are in stock. But she couldn’t decide where to put Michael Grant’s Gone series or Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy. She had Sarah Dessen in YA Fiction and Gossip Girl in YA Series, so that left YA Paranormal. “We don’t classify these as paranormal, but they are not exactly normal either,” says Van Tassell, who has recently seen paranormal sales fall off.
Earlier this summer Van Tassell tried combining YA fantasy with paranormal, and she says that it works better now. She’s also added “boy books,” like novels by Walter Dean Myers, to YA Fiction so that it’s more balanced. The 4,000 sq. ft. store still separates out Girly Girl books, but only those for younger readers. That section is reserved for series like Fancy Nancy and Junie B. Jones. “The store is constantly changing,” she says.
