Locally Sourced Romance is a new feature that puts the spotlight on fabulous bookstores supporting the romance community! To nominate or suggest a bookstore, please shoot us an email. For a crowd sourced map of bookstores that carry romance, feel free to consult and/or add to our Smart Bitches Buy Romance map! Though be forewarned, it’s undergoing a renovation.
Today, we’re featuring the Saratoga Springs, NY location of Northshire Bookstore. We discovered Northshire Bookstore after receiving this tweet of a pretty awesome romance display. Please meet the woman in charge of building the store’s romance section, Rachel Person, Events and Community Outreach Coordinator!
Tell us a bit about the bookstore and its awesome inception.
Rachel: I’m the event coordinator for Northshire Bookstore in Saratoga Springs, New York. We’re the second (of two!) Northshire Bookstores. The original Northshire is a beloved indie that was founded in Manchester Center, Vermont in the 1970s by Ed and Barbara Morrow. The “little sister” store, here in Saratoga, opened in the summer of 2013, and is owned and operated by the Morrow family.
A community petition, circulated by a local resident was the first impetus for the Morrows to consider opening a second store in the town. By the time it was sent to Vermont in July 2012, the petition ran to four pages, with dozens of local signatures. Chris Morrow, (Ed and Barbara’s son) who handles the day-to-day operations of the store then reached out further to the local community to gauge interest in a new bookstore. He gathered together a group of nearly forty local investors, who provided significant community funding to open and support the new store.
We opened our doors in the summer of 2013, and the local reception has been amazing. People are really excited to have a bookstore in the heart of our walkable city again.
Though I’m sure you have a great selection in general, we’d love to hear about your romance section.
Rachel: We are a general interest bookstore, and romance has not, traditionally, been a strong seller for us. The adult book buyer for both stores is not particularly a romance reader, so since coming on board with the opening of the new store, I’ve been feeding him my personal suggestions, and any suggestions I get from members of our local RWA chapters. It’s my ongoing fun project to grow the section – it started out quite small, and rather hidden away. It just moved to a more prime piece of in store real estate, which is really exciting for me.
As for the selection, we start out with our buyer’s picks – at any given time that’s a decent range of the most popular authors and titles, pretty evenly spread across the romance genres. But adding in my personal selections skews things – I read a lot of historicals, and I also have a soft spot for contemporaries with particularly smart dialogue, and for any author who can make me laugh. I, personally don’t read a ton of suspense (unless it has Suzanne Brockmann’s name on the cover) or paranormal – so I look to other romance readers (including Smart Bitches reviews!) for suggestions for those.
Was it a no-brainer to carry romance?
Rachel: Our store is big – 9,000 square feet and on any given day we have about 40,000-50,000 titles in stock. We strive to be a complete general-interest bookstore, so yes, carrying romance is a no-brainer. That said, increasing the size and scope of the section really is a labor of love (no pun intended!) I read very widely across genres, and as a feminist I’ve always been annoyed by the ways in which the literary community treats romance differently – with less respect – than other genre fiction. I see building this section’s prominence in our store as the one small thing I can do about that.
My long-term goal – and we’re not there yet – is to make the store a destination for romance readers in our area. I see our events calendar as the biggest way to do that. We were lucky enough to host the amazing Susan Elizabeth Phillips in the store last summer, and have had some great local romance authors here since then. I hope to keep offering events with romance authors in the store, and to use those events to build a sense of community for local romance readers and romance authors. Eventually – in my not-so-abundant spare time – I’d love to start offering a romance book club and a monthly romance staff pick subscription service.
In terms of your stock, how do you determine what to carry? Are some authors automatically stocked? What piques your interest when it comes to what you buy to put on the shelves?
Rachel: As I said, it’s something of a team effort. Our adult book buyer, Stan, has years and years of experience in the bookselling world, and he’s really great at following the numbers – he knows what authors have sold well in the past, what authors are perennially popular, what genres are having a surge in popularity. His selections are the framework of the section. Then my additions are quite personal – it’s whatever I love. I try to make sure that a strong rotating assortment of my favorite romance authors are stocked, and marked with my “staff pick” reviews – Loretta Chase, Julie James, Anne Gracie, Tessa Dare, Lauren Willig, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Eloisa James, Victoria Dahl, Sarah MacLean, Donna Kauffman, Suzanne Brockmann…
Lastly, tell us what you’re reading now. What latest books have blown you away?
Rachel: One of the perils (and pleasures) of my job is that I tend to be reading a lot of books at once.
In terms of romance, I’m about to finish both Victoria Alexander’s The Shocking Secret of a Guest at the Wedding ( A | K | G | AB | Au | Scribd ) and Eloisa James’ Four Nights With the Duke ( A | K | G | AB | Au ).
I’m a mom, so I also read a lot of kids books – the parent-child reading group I lead is reading The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer Holm ( A | K | G | AB | Au ) (which is awesome) and my daughter and I are almost done with the Super ( A | K | G | AB | Au ) – the second book in Matthew Cody’s terrific Powerless series. Next up in kids books I think will be Naomi Novik’s Uprooted ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) which is due out in June. I adore her Temeraire series ( A | BN | K | G | AB | Au ) (fantasy, written for adults – think Jane Austen crossed with Horatio Hornblower, but with dragons) – so I’m really excited to see what she can do in kids books.
Then I’m also (I did say it was a lot!) reading Megan Mahew Bergman’s Almost Famous Women (literary fiction, short stories) ( A | BN | K | G | AB | Au | Scribd ), and two histories: Erik Larson’s Dead Wake ( A | K | G | AB | Au ) and Karen Abbott’s Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy ( A | BN | K | G | AB | Au ).
The last book that I was utterly and completely blown away by was a children’s book. Cece Bell’s El Deafo – a graphic novel memoir – made my year.
You can visit Northshire Bookstore-Saratoga at their website, or, if you’re in the area, they are located at 424 Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866.
Yay for Saratoga Springs! It’s near my hometown. Upstate New York is awesome.
No Courtney Milan, though?
My family used to vacation in Manchester, and Northshire was always a favorite destination for us! I have fond memories of discovering The Flight of Gemma Hardy (Jane Eyre adaptation set in mid-twentieth century) there, as well as the script for Noises Off (just after seeing a hilarious production elsewhere in Vermont), plus this amazing flowy reversible wrap skirt. And once, in their used section, I found a copy of The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig. So, yeah, I adore the Vermont Northshire but had no idea there was a new location. Saratoga Springs is even closer to my parents’ house, so I’d love to check this out, especially with this fabulous romance section. Thanks for the profile, Amanda and Rachel!
This is Northshire’s Rachel commenting – I personally ADORE Courtney Milan – but I didn’t mention her in the interview because we haven’t been carrying her books here at the store recently. The price point of her physical books is enough higher than typical mass market paperbacks, that even with my personal rave review they just weren’t selling. I’ve recommended her books to friends and customers over and over again, but I eventually had to (regretfully) give up on trying to sell them at Northshire – when I get talking about her, I just suggest that people buy the e-books.
Where in town are you located? I’m hoping to come up for my (mumbledy) Skidmore Class Reunion this summer, and I’d like to stop by! Nice to have a new bookstore along with the venerable Lyrical Ballad.
I love how the store is using author events to build interest in the romance section. That’s so cool! I’ve heard similarly about romance with my local indie, and thankfully it just takes one champion on the inside to urge that forward. I think events is a great way to bring recognition to a genre, and the authors and readers win too 🙂
EC Spurlock we’re at 424 Broadway – between Division Street and Caroline Street, right in the center of town.
And thanks, Stephanie Scott! The romance events I’ve hosted before have been so much fun for me – so I’m thrilled to get to keep doing them.