Letters from Literati: A storewide reorganization...
A bookstore moves. A bookstore ebbs and flows. A bookstore is alive.
This past Labor Day, several of us Book Ninjas spent the day laboring over a store overhaul. We reorganized and let certain sections expand and breathe (fiction, science fiction, essays... enjoy the fresh air). In fiction, instead of one table display, there are two. The end of the alphabet (T-Z) has their own cases. Poetry moved to the middle of the main floor, next to staff picks. Middle reader and YA are found on shorter cases for still-growing book browsers.
Our basement was also reorganized. Memoir, drama, and writing moved downstairs. Other sections found new homes, like film and music, sports, humor, travel. Nearly every section (except for cooking) was moved, relocated, reanalyzed, and curated.
We also changed our main floor infrastructure setup. We noticed book browsers crammed near the end of fiction, especially during the holidays. So, we flip-flopped our main floor structures. Now, fiction is browsable and the main floor is more navigable.
There's more on the horizon. We're conjuring new signage and apparel items for our coffee shop, Literati Coffee. We've got fantastic events coming up, with authors like Celeste Ng, Robin Sloan, John U. Bacon, Jeffrey Eugendes,
David Lagercrantz (new author of the popular Lisbeth Salander series), and the creators of Welcome to Night Vale. (And more.)
But this store reorganization has been a priority, and our Inventory Team did an outstanding job (Jeanne Joesten and Kelsey Lapping, in particular). And while the store may not seem that different, to us, considering we've only ever moved around main floor sections once or twice before, it's a large change.
Books are lively creatures. They have told us they wanted to stretch their arms, get some elbow room, see some new neighbors. So we let them.
We hope you'll like the changes.
Thank you, as always, for your support, and for keeping a bookstore alive.
-Mike, Hilary, and the Literati Book Ninjas
