Clare's reflections - what a week
This blog describes Clare’s reflections over the previous week at October Books, looking at the business as a whole. A rather overly busy week this last week, in a good way, but I do need to have some extra downtime this coming week.
On Monday we welcomed Naomi Austin to the October Books team. Naomi is a familiar face around the shop as she co-ordinated the Meeting Place warm space over the winter and spring months. She will be taking on the promotions role and had a busy first week with lots to take in as we had our Marketing and Promotion review with the Becky from 92Minutes and Jack and Amelia. A really useful afternoon for us all and a long overdue marketing plan has emerged which I’ll tell you more about in a subsequent blog.
I’ve also had the opportunity to catch up with Suzanne this week and we are really excited to be hosting a new series for the autumn called We Can Make…. Some of our previous We Can Learn to… session hosts will be back and we will be welcoming some new ones too. Watch this space to find out more.
A few of these new sessions came about after conversations at our Members, volunteers and hirers meal which we held at the shop on Saturday 17th in the afternoon and evening. A really wonderful celebration of community as people came together to help us prep and cook the meal which was shared with over 20 people. Many thanks to Katherine, Alan, Alex and Gerald for helping to create our feast.
Matt West from Artful Scribe has started to promote his Writing as a Spiritual Practice course which we will be hosting at the shop from late September. We have another couple of offers of music at the shop and we are really looking forward to working with Don John and Anthony Smith in October, when we have the Colourism exhibition in our gallery space and a talk from Don about the exhibition.
Many thanks to anyone who has responded to our recent news about not breaking even at present, by coming in and buying a book. Do keep telling friends and family about us as we have worked out we need to sell around another 15 paperbacks a day to bring us back to a more stable financial footing. Said in those terms it doesn’t feel too hard a task!
My continued priority request is for someone to help us with our financial management as this tasks falls to me now that Ellen is taking a step back. Its something I can do but I much prefer to focus my time on the community role and I am sure it takes me twice as long as anyone qualified in this area! So, if you have a background in accountancy or book-keeping along with a passion for helping a local independent bookshop to thrive write to me clare@octoberbooks.org if interested. A couple of hours a week is all that is required.
