PW's Bookseller of the Year:
Carla Cohen &Barbara Meade
Politics and Prose, Washington, D.C.

If two people's energy and their open way of communicating with one another can be major factors in a store's success, Politics &Prose proves the point.

THE GREAT APPROXIMATORS: Barbara Meade (l.) and Carla Cohen know thier customers as well as their books.

The Washington, D.C., store's owners and founders, Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade, engage in a kind of give and take and open debate with each other and staff that, while occasionally time-consuming, energizes people and helps the store define itself and its mission, and better address the many challenges of running an independent bookstore in today's demanding book retailing climate.

Consider one example of the pair's manner of discussing a key matter, the focus of the store. In trying to describe Politics &Prose, Cohen, referring to bookstore consultant Stephen Cogil, says, "Stephen identified us as a frontlist bookstore."

Pensively Meade responds, "I don't agree that we're a frontlist store."

"But think of nonfiction," Cohen urges.

Meade considers a moment and says, "I don't agree completely."

Attacking the disagreement from another angle, the two try for a while to define frontlist.

When Cohen comes up with the formulation, "We mostly sell this year's books," Meade finally accepts her description of the store.

Politics, Prose &Purpose

Thus, Politics &Prose takes the high road on what sometimes passes for politics in the nation's capital. While some might think that Monica's Story by Andrew Morton (St. Martin's) would have been a natural for the store, Politics &Prose did not play up the book in any special way. In fact, Cohen and Meade joked about possibly making the store a "Monica-free zone."

Instead, the store recently was promoting such nonfiction titles as Alexander Hamilton: American by National Review editor Richard Brookhiser (Free Press), All Too Human by former top Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos (Little, Brown) and The Times of My Life and My Life with the Times by New York Times veteran Max Frankel (Random), all of whose authors appeared at events sponsored by Politics &Prose at the end of last month.

Reflecting the store's literary emphasis, its March events included appearances by Laura Zigman, author of Animal Husbandry (Delta); Carolyn See, author of The Handyman; and Mark Jacobs, a career Foreign Service officer who wrote The Liberation of Little Heaven (Soho).

Work in Progress

JOINT IS JUMPING: Politics and Prose boasts at least one event per day.

From its beginning with 5000 titles and 1400 square feet of space in 1984, the store's growth has been slow but steady, a kind of work in progress. Politics &Prose has relocated once and expanded several times, adding a coffeehouse and programs. Now the nearly 15-year-old store boasts:

• one of the largest reading group programs in the country, with more than 200 groups, most of which meet outside the store;
  

• an unusually active events program that includes readings and signings almost every night by a mix of national and local authors;
  

• an off-site sales program that did nearly a quarter of a million dollars in sales last year at conferences, people's homes, schools, synagogues and community centers;
  

• a Web site that sells books and is updated almost daily;
  

• e-mail mailing lists intended to broaden the reach of the store;
  

• a lively monthly newsletter;
  

• a bustling coffeeshop that was recently remodeled;
  

• a connection with C-Span (which regularly tapes events at the store) that has helped achieve national recognition for Politics &Prose; and
  

• a newly created advisory board, which includes customers, to help provide the store with perspective.

Politics, Prose &Profitability

Perhaps the most important and most challenging part of the unwritten grand plan for Politics &Prose has been attaining profitability, an issue that Meade says is particularly relevant to the generation of booksellers who grew up in the 1960s and '70s, when the concepts of capital and profit were widely condemned. And following years of steady sales growth but erratic net gains -- and some net losses -- the matter became crucial.

With the aid of Cohen's son, Aaron, who was a student at the school at the time, a group at the Columbia Business School did an analysis of the store and made a presentation two years ago. "Some of the professors were intrigued by our case," Cohen says. "One said we'd be out of business in two years. The consensus was that we would not survive."

Cohen was the more resistant of the two owners to the implications of the study. But eventually she saw that if the store didn't make money, it couldn't serve the community and "provide a decent living for bright young booksellers."

The study recommended that the store focus on "financial reporting, budgeting and the business aspect of things," Meade says.

Among the first moves Cohen and Meade made was to get a new accountant. The previous one had had a heart attack, and out of compassion, the pair had let his job stay open. Cohen comments: "The kind of people who go into bookselling have a hard time being ruthless."

In the same way, Lianna Loh, who had done internal consulting at J.P. Morgan, spent some time at the store and, as Meade puts it, "introduced the concept of accountability. We were known as a place that kept people-quick to hire, slow to fire." Cohen and Meade began to put more of an emphasis on performance, which meant, Meade notes with a little amusement, that the owners and staff "needed to know tasks. We had to write job descriptions."

"We are trying to professionalize," Cohen says.

Cohen notes that the two may have had difficulty managing the store in part because they are members of "a generation of women who weren't expected to run things outside the home," Cohen says.

In addition, because the store was relatively small for a while, the two were able to manage most aspects of it. As the store grew, this proved untenable.Meade calls it "chutzpah that we thought we could run so many things on our own. One of the wisest things we've learned is to hire people who know how to do certain things better than we could."

Cohen's husband, David, calls Meade and Cohen "the great approximators," Meade says. "We approximate on how to do things," she explains. "We're not perfect. But we've gotten better. We're hiring people who aren't approximators."

Among the key non-approximators are general manager Michael Corbin and the two floor managers, Mark LaFramboise and Daniel Tepfer.

Corbin says that the store has to take "the best aspects of the Mom-and-Pop store sensibilities in terms of management and employee relations" while professionalizing many aspects of it.

LaFramboise, who used to work at Stone Lion Bookstore, Ft. Collins, Colo., met Cohen and Meade at a recent BEA show after he had decided to move from Stone Lion. The three hit it off, and Cohen and Meade invited him to work at Politics &Prose.

He notes that Stone Lion and Politics &Prose are "not so different. Both stores are serving the community, and Politics &Prose is serving a community within the larger metropolis.

"What I especially like about the store is that it never sits on its success," he continues. "Politics &Prose is always trying to improve itself."

Like LaFramboise, Daniel Tepfer, the other floor manager, is an alumnus of a sterling independent. He worked at Books &Co., Dayton, Ohio, whose onetime co-owner, Annye Camara, was renowned for providing excellent employee training. Appropriately, Tepfer is also the chief trainer at Politics &Prose, which is in the process of codifying a manual.

Advise and Consent

Another recent innovation is the creation of an advisory board, which has eight members and has met twice since its founding last year.

The board comprises customers and people the pair have known for a long time. Some of them run organizations, one is a financial analyst, another is a lawyer specializing in labor-management relations -- in other words, they bring a variety of helpful perspectives to running a traditionally difficult type of retail business.

At the first meeting last July, managers made presentations to the board about changes planned for the fall, including installation of a security system, a new phone system, a new computer system and an expansion of space. The board thought this was too much for the store to deal. "It thought we would be in danger of collapsing," Meade says. As a result, the store postponed the installation of the new computer system. At first, staff members were angry at the postponement of a project they were looking forward to, but when there were problems in the other projects, they understood the board's wisdom.

At the second meeting of the board earlier this year, it advised that Politics &Prose do more market research, particularly into what its customer base wants from it as well as into noncustomers and their reasons for not shopping at Politics &Prose.

The store will use Peter Hart, the well-known White House pollster and longtime Politics &Prose customer, to do a survey. (Like members of the board, he will be paid in discounts on books.)

One board member sees the market research as a way to "combat online buying," Meade says. "She feels strongly that we can't be all things to all people. So we have to find out what we do well and what makes us irreplaceable to customers."

Markets New and Old

Recently, Cohen and Meade attended the San Francisco Gift Show, because they are looking to carry more of the kinds of things "you can't get at superstores," says Cohen. About 5% of Politics &Prose's stock is sidelines, including blank books and greeting cards ("just the right ones") generally products where "our taste and selection can make a difference," Cohen says. "The product has to be tied into the business of the store. We can't go far afield. Every time we do, it's a big mistake."

Meade notes, too, that in the evenings, couples often come into the store. "In a great deal of cases," she says, "one person is a book person and the other is tagging along. We need to have something for the other person while the book person is browsing."

The store is also considering offering gift baskets for customers to give people in the hospital, for Mother's Day or any other special occasion. The gift baskets would probably contain books, coffee, hand lotion, candy and book-related items.

Politics &Prose has good relationships with other local independents, Meade says. In addition, it has a strong connection with Brian Weese, an ABA board member who owns Bibelot in Baltimore. "Brian and I constantly visit each other's stores and get ideas," she said.

While other independent booksellers are hurting or closing because of fierce superstore and online competition, Politics &Prose has been lucky, Cohen says, because when it opened in 1984, the local area was saturated with Crown Book outlets. (The headquarters of the company, currently operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, is in nearby Landover, Md.) "We tried to be different from the beginning," Cohen says. She and Meade knew the "value of having a carefully and interestingly chosen stock," for example. "If you know who you are and provide what others can't, you'll survive."

That's not to say the store hasn't been affected by the sea changes in U.S. book retailing this decade. "Our worst experience was the year Borders opened in White Flint, Md.," Cohen says. This was in 1990 and it was Borders's first store in the Washington metropolitan area. It was not close "by bookstore standards," Cohen says, but it drew many of the store's Maryland customers. Many drifted back after the novelty wore off, but the store has lost some permanently.

And last November Borders opened a store nearby that may have depressed sales slightly.

Independents need to "fight every step of the way," Meade says. For example, in its newsletter Politics &Prose regularly discusses the importance of independent bookstores.

Unlike some booksellers who react to new competition by cutting staff and reducing services, Politics &Prose has reacted "offensively, not defensively," Meade says. "Our response has been to beef up staff and find new markets."

Politics &Prose g s to extremes to please customers. "We have a problem-solving approach," Cohen says. If a customer complains that he ordered a book six weeks earlier and hasn't heard about it, a staff member will apologize, track it down and view the exchange as an opportunity "to find a problem in the system."

The two obviously have thought a lot about what the store is and should be. "It's a leisure thing to shop at Politics &Prose," Cohen says. "People enjoy the sense of going into a nice place -- it's the same reason people like to go to Neiman-Marcus for the shopping experience and to talk to the salesperson at the makeup counter. They enjoyed the shopping experience at Politics &Prose because it's combined with intellectual expression. There's something virtuous about it."

One of the questions that will be asked in Hart's customer survey is what percentage of customers are Web users. "We have no feeling for that," Meade comments.

The sense of the owners is, however, that people who buy from Amazon.com are "younger customers" who have bought other products online before.

Events

At a time when some booksellers complain about "event burnout," Politics &Prose continues to put on an amazing schedule of events, at least one most night and occasionally as many as three events, including book group meetings. The "stress factor," as Jana Kollias, events coordinator for four years, puts it, is the main limitation.

In many cases, the store has its pick of authors (with eight to nine requests a day), but sometimes it has to compete. In addition, because so many writers live in the area and are customers, Politics &Prose likes to oblige them by having events for them. Thus, the schedule is often a mix of local and national authors. The more difficult author to book is a "midlist touring author with no Washington connection, but who has an interesting topic," Kollias says.

Attendance of 30 to 40 is considered "on the low side." Many events draw several hundred people. Authors are encouraged -- sometimes even required -- to drum up business by supplying mailing labels for announcements, printed at Politics &Prose's expense, to be sent to everyone from the author's dentist to babysitter.

Cohen, Meade and Kollias introduce many of the authors. Cohen says the store is considering having two author events a day, but will wait for now because those events are very labor-intensive.

It is difficult to measure the success of many events, Meade notes, but most have "after effects"-introducing customers to the store and drawing them back.

C-Span comes twice a month on average to film events at Politics &Prose, which has been "wonderful for us," Meade says. In addition, C-Span has twice taped Meade and Steve Wasserman, editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review, discussing the fall list Many out-of-towners visiting Washington make a special trip to the store because they've become familiar with it from C-Span.

Sometimes the store d s an event just for the cultural fun of it. For example, when the movie based on Mrs. Dalloway appeared, the store invited people to watch on their own at a local theater and then join a teacher, Roberta Rubinstein, at the store for an hour-long lecture about the title. "Even though it was a Saturday night, there were 100 people here," Cohen says.

The store is also expanding its outside sales efforts. Betsy Brown, who has worked at the store for more than three years and, among other duties, coordinates many off-site sales, notes that the store d s as many as three off-site events a day, ranging from private signing parties to selling books at Cato Institute events and at the National Press Club or selling books at events involving out-of-town groups that are meeting in Washington. In many cases, the effort is "more than just selling books," Cohen says. "We're proposing speakers and subjects."

"We like to be in the business of providing context and content for forums around town," Meade says.

One example was a fall 1997 series of author talks on the subject of race. Entitled "Let's Talk About Race," the series featured Jonathan Coleman, author of Long Way to Go (Atlantic Monthly); David Shipler, author of Country of Strangers (Random); Randall Kennedy, author of Race, Crime and the Law (Pantheon); Jerome Miller, author of Search and Destroy (Cambridge); Terry Kay, author of the novel The Runaway (Morrow); Jim Sleeper, author of Liberal Racism (Viking); and Michael Eric Dyson, author of Race Rules (Vintage).

Among the points raised by the series, as Cohen wrote at the time in the store newsletter: "What would a true multiracial society look like in our universities, neighborhoods and workplaces? Is compensation required for previous racism? Can whites truly accept equality? Can blacks give up their claim to victimization? The books do share one common theme: Americans have important work to do before we can move forward as a united nation."

Brown says that the off-site business has built up slowly but steadily. Groups usually approach the store, and after their first experience, they return. The store is developing strategies for seeking out more of this business.Among the more difficult of Brown's tasks is scheduling store employees to go out and handle off-site sales. One solution is to use freelancers, people who aren't on the store staff but like to manage such sales. At all such gatherings, the Politics &Prose representative takes newsletters and calendars to introduce the store to participants who don't already know about it.

"Our culture, including the book business, is personality driven," Meade notes. "Part of our mission is to try to address the gap between personalities and issues and give issues the attention they deserve."

Politics &Prose is also discussing how to create an "organized corporate sales" effort. "We've never gone after corporate sales in a targeted way," Cohen says.

Reading Groups

While the store sponsors a handful of reading groups, including two specializing in fiction, it has registered more than 200 whose members can buy titles at a discount at Politics &Prose. The store has an e-mail mailing list for reading groups, on which it sends out information about new titles in paperback, news about book groups, as well as notice of local appearances by authors who meet with reading groups. The store sponsors a book group night, held every six to eight months, at which staff members talk about titles that have worked well. The store's own book groups meet monthly, with such themes as Spirituality, Women's Literature, Fascinating History and Classics.

In a continuing effort to expose readers to new and different work, Cohen tries, she says, "to get book groups to read something that's not what everyone else is reading." For one of its fiction reading groups, the store tried to "mix it up," as Cohen says, adding A Passage to India to the list. As a result, the title "started to sell like crazy in the store. It can reawaken people's interest."

Politics &Prose staff members who conduct the official store reading groups get $25 plus a free copy of the book being read. One of the store groups is called Public Affairs, a topic suggested by customers, that is led by Michael Corbin. C-Span has already filmed the Public Affairs book group meetings twice.

"In-store book groups have done a tremendous amount to add to the intellectual cachet of the store," Meade says.

In a related endeavor, Politics &Prose sponsors courses in the store. Most classes are taught by Chris Griffith, who has focused on Yeats, Ulysses and Romeo and Juliet. The courses are held once a week for four weeks.The store is also seeking to expand its school sales. With a new employee, Mary Alice Garber, dedicated to the task, the store will emphasize that teachers should know "more about new and interesting books we have for them," Cohen says.

Technology

Politics &Prose, which started out 15 years ago using 3"x5" cards for keeping inventory, aims to take advantage of new technology, no matter how difficult it may be.

"It's so hard to take care of business and keep up with technology, which is changing so fast," Meade says. "But unless you're open to change and willing to learn new technical skills that allow you to change, you can't compete in this world."

In fact, she continues, "Our willingness to learn new technology has been crucial to our success."

Politics &Prose has had a Web site for two years, which is updated daily. "It constantly needs input and updating to make it worthwhile," Cohen says.

The site uses the BookSite database. Its sales "aren't much," Meade says. "But many people visit the site. Many of them learned from the site that we are Bookseller of the Year."

Cohen adds that many customers will look at the site and find titles there, but still come into the store to get them.

Oddly, Meade notes, "So many people say they didn't know we had a site."

For two years, Politics &Prose has sent out e-mail announcements to anyone who signs up. There are about 3000 subscribers now, who receive a reminder of events, talks, the book of the week, announcements about sales outside the store and news from the store. "It's been great," Cohen says, adding that the e-mail newsletter has increased attendance at events.

Staff Matters

The store divides its employees into hourly and salaried employees, with wages starting at $6.50 an hour and salaries starting in the $20,000 range with three weeks vacation. Staff members also receive bonuses.

Employees have health insurance after three months, discounts on books and food from the coffeehouse, a matching payment on health club memberships and free coffee and tea. In 1999, Politics &Prose plans to establish a pension plan for long-term employees.

Borrowing an idea from the Boulder Bookstore, Boulder, Colo., Politics &Prose has a staff party at restaurants. The store also will be sending eight people to BEA and regularly sends employees to the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association show.

Because of the store's long hours, there are two shifts a day. Friday and Saturday shifts are roughly 8 a.m.-4 p.m. and 4 p.m.-midnight, while the rest of the week they run 8 a.m.-4 p.m. and 3.-11 p.m. No one works a fixed schedule to make sure, as Meade says, "it's not like two ships passing in the night."

Shift meetings take place at 4 p.m. Staff members and managers discuss tasks, make announcements ranging from who won the National Book Critics' Circle awards to letting people know a customer lost her keys somewhere in the store. "It's a good communication tool," Cohen says.

Both Cohen and Meade believe that booksellers need to read daily newspapers regularly, and lament that many young booksellers tend not to read them.Hiring is done by the managers. "Many people recommended that we get out of the immediate supervision of staff," Cohen says.

In a tweak at certain other booksellers, Cohen notes, "We have never stressed a test. We learned long ago that the best booksellers are people interested in other people. They're empathetic and cheerful, which are qualities you can't teach. You can teach them about books, however."

Among other good qualities booksellers should have: "bounce and an ability to pay attention," which includes "listening to customers' questions, paying attention to what others are doing."

Politics &Prose prefers not to hire people to work less than three days a week because "we feel they can't stay in touch with the store." The few exceptions are people who have worked at the store before and thus are familiar with how it operates. Meade and Cohen also want employees to "know the customers as well as the books," Meade says. "Good, long-term customers like to be recognized as such."

Cohen and Meade discuss the store history, orientation and philosophy with new staff. They both emphasize the importance of all employees -- including themselves- -- pending as much time as possible on the floor. Only the bookkeeper is exempted. "There is no one who d sn't think working on the floor is the main thing," Kollias says. "The staff wants to minimize time off the floor. It's so important to be close to the customers."

Meade and Cohen believe that their presence on the store is important to customers, and that some other booksellers spend too much time off the floor. "There's a tendency to allow off-floor functions to rob the floor of its best people," Meade says.

In addition, they are constantly talking about books, recommending titles to one another and others.

Discounts

"Our market is people who value service over price," Meade says. "If they want the best price, there are better places to go."

Still, the store decided to do some discounting "to show people they weren't getting ripped off," Cohen says.

The store discounts selectively -- on the titles "we feel are of value," Meade says. All titles highlighted in the newsletter calendar are discounted.

In addition, the Book of the Week, a title recommended in the store and in the newsletter and e-mail, is discounted 20%. (Typically, the Book of the Week program, just two months old, was suggested by a customer who said it was hard to focus when first coming into the store.)

The store also has a membership program that costs $15 a year to join and rewards customers with such things as sales four times a year during which all titles are discounted by 20%. Book group discounts are 20% if the groups are registered with Politics &Prose.

Future Moves

To create more office and storage space for stocking titles for book fairs and off-site events, the store will soon be renting more space-"3000 square feet," says Meade; "2500," Cohen quickly corrects -- three doors down in its strip mall.

In addition, the store is affiliating with Jewel Stoddard of the Cheshire Cat, the nearby children's bookstore that is closing this month. Stoddard will take over the Politics &Prose children's department. The store hopes to absorb most if not all of the Cheshire Cat staff.