A perfect, late-spring Monday afternoon seemed like an ideal time to interview Diane Kudisch, owner and manager of the San Francisco Mystery Bookstore—a time when the cozy store on 24th Street in San Francisco's Noe Valley neighborhood should have been quiet. But as customers kept interrupting the conversation, Kudisch, who has owned the 28-year-old store since 2001, deftly demonstrated how to run a small bookstore in a competitive market: by dispensing advice, delivering service and offering unusual titles.
"Do you have the latest Henning Mankell?" asked one woman who walked in and immediately gravitated to the new books shelved in the front of the store. Kudisch has sold out every copy of Mankell's new stand-alone mystery, Return of the Dancing Master (New Press), and has already ordered more. She took the customer's name and phone number, and then recommended Olen Steinhauer's debut novel, The Bridge of Sighs (St. Martin's Minotaur), and one of Barbara Nadel's mysteries set in Istanbul. The customer happily bought both.
"We realize we can't compete with the chain stores and the Internet," Kudisch said, sitting back down in a small rocking chair next to a wall of hardcover first editions and signed books. "So we do things they can't do. We know our customers and serve them well, and we stock stuff that is difficult to get anywhere else." The Nadel title is a good example: it's a British import (only one of her novels has been published in the States) that Kudisch gets from a Canadian distributor. In fact, a large shelf in the new book section of the roughly 1,000 square feet of store space is devoted to international mysteries, many of them imported titles. "Graham Hurley, Marjorie Eccles, Nadel and others—we can't keep them on the shelves," she said. In all, the store stocks about 3,000 titles, about 40% of which are used.
A woman wandered in with her dog, looking for a Mother's Day present but with no clear idea of what kind of book her mom might enjoy. Three short questions later, she walked out with two hardcovers. It's another successful example of handselling and a demonstration of one of the most important elements of Kudisch's approach to service: matching books to customers. Which in turn demonstrates one of the key benefits of focusing on a particular genre: a bookseller who knows and loves the field can provide guidance that a clerk in a superstore or a computer matching program can never replicate. Kudisch comes to the business as a fan of mysteries; indeed, her devotion to the genre led her to make a career change—from the insurance industry to owning and running a bookstore—when Bruce Taylor, the store's founder, wanted to retire in 2001.
"Owning a bookstore was just a kind of dream I had, something you think about in passing," she told PW. "I got involved with the store because I loved mysteries." In fact, she had volunteered to help Bruce out at the annual Bouchercon annual mystery convention and struck up a friendship with the man who opened what is believed to be the second-oldest mystery bookstore in the country (Murder Ink in New York City opened in 1972). "When Bruce decided to retire, I decided to buy it," she said.
Easier said than done; it's very difficult to finance a small store through banks, Kudisch noted, and she raised start-up capital from her family and from her own retirement account—and kept her "day" job as long as she could.
A third browser poked around, and announced, "I didn't know this place was here, but I'm sure I'll buy something someday." She asked Kudisch, "What's the best book in the store?" After only the slightest hesitation, the bookseller recommended Peter Robinson's In a Dry Season (Avon), a store favorite, "We are constantly selling that book," she said. The "we" refers to Kudisch and her sole employee, Gary MacDonald, who has worked at the shop for two decades. "Gary's knowledge is priceless to me," Kudisch said. "I have learned over the years to take his advice because he knows the business, knows books and knows our customers."
Like most small retailers these days, the San Francisco Mystery Bookstore store expands its reach through its Web site (www.sfmysterybooks.com), which lists author events and collectible titles (and includes a funny list of wisdom Kudisch has acquired from owning the store—for example: "If you write a mystery set in Venice, it will sell"). Kudisch noted that she likes events, and hosts as many as 25 a year, but added, "Our store is small, and we don't order a lot of copies of books, so we don't get as many authors in as we would like."
That points to one of the issues of running a small store: less clout and slower service from the publishers. Indeed, Kudisch believes stores like Barnes & Noble and Costco get their books much faster than she does; the newest Michael Connelly novel (The Narrows, Little, Brown), for example, didn't arrive on the May 3 drop date, as expected, she said. "Of course many people are going to buy that title discounted somewhere else," she said. "But we will sell some, and customers expect us to have it."
The Web and store events aren't the driving force behind her success. The San Francisco Mystery Bookstore is clearly a neighborhood store, and it's Kudisch's devotion to customers and knowledge of the genre that keep it thriving. Kudisch is optimistic about her future and insists she's making a go of it. "You're not going to get rich with a store like this," she said. "But you can make a living. And it's more fun to get up in the morning to come here than it ever was to go to my old job."
