Winging it?

Katie receiving her award from Belinda Budge, Group Publisher at Harper Collins

Young Bookseller of the Year Katie Clapham tells us the story of setting up an independent children's bookshop, Storytellers Inc.

Starting your own business is a funny thing. Like any new job there is a sense of suddenly being in the wrong place - how did I convince these people that I am capable of this job? Do I look like I know what I'm doing yet? The difference is that there is no one to check up on me and more worryingly, no one to tell me what I should and shouldn't be doing. What's our policy on returns? Oh I don't know, I'll go and…make a decision about that. After years of fobbing off sales calls with 'you'll need to speak to the manager', it comes as a bit of a shock to find that I am the most senior person and can say with 100% confidence that we do not wish to take out a year's worth of adverts in the local list.

I thought it'd all feel like winging it until we got some sort of confirmation from the industry that we are doing things right, however I just won the Young Bookseller of the Year at the Bookseller Industry Awards and now I think it's my winged approach that won me the honour. If I'm going to put my name to my business I want it to be something to be proud of and I'm going to build a career that means I will never have to submit a CV again then I've got to work hard to protect it. Storytellers, Inc. is still only 18 months old so being a bookseller and a business owner is still relatively new but it's who I am now - it's not difficult to motivate myself to make it work.

So I decided to set up a school scheme to introduce new releases to primary pupils each term: Cool Books in School is now in its third term and is a regular feature in some of our local schools calendars. I started monthly junior book clubs that are over-subscribed in two age categories and we're developing two more. As well as our regular story times four days a week, we recently decided the first Saturday of each month would be 'Storybook Saturday' - with events and promotions around a chosen book. Now we're developing packages for local schools and author events in the shop are in the pipework for later this year.

Every time there's a quiet moment, and there are still lots of those, for example today when the sun is hot and everyone is sitting on the promenade eating ice cream, we plot and plan other ways to get people back into the shop because we've already learnt that customers' loyalty is not secured after one purchase. We do have a loyalty scheme that lets us see how brilliant some of our customers really are and we reward them for their loveliness but it's also true that people change, forget, get busy or simply drift away without meaning to. The summer holidays are approaching and the 2012 British Open Golf will be held at our local golf course, Royal Lytham, so we're ensuring our calendar is packed with family-friendly events in addition to our usual creative writing workshops to keep visitors and locals interested in coming back to us.

Fantastic support and advice from publishers and Booktrust continues to be really useful to us as a small business contending with major players - I'm dedicated to keeping our branding and profile as high a quality as the stock we sell so it's fantastic for us when publishers develop high quality POS and marketing, offer us authors on tour and support us with running competitions. Similarly, the backing from Booktrust in running our first Teachers Book Club helped us establish some great links with local teachers. It's these types of relationships that really add to our offering as an independent.

I love to hear that people appreciate our work and enjoy our shop. It took a long time to decide on our name and logos; I had to be sure it was something that I felt looked strong, permanent, even established. Although it could be said we went in to business quite suddenly (neither of us had life-long ambitions of bookselling) there could be nothing whimsical or temporary about Storytellers, Inc. We wanted to look like we meant business and plant ourselves firmly in the community from the very start. We've since been asked on many occasions if we're part of a chain or franchise due to our attractive and professional branding so the indications are that my instincts are right and things are going in the right direction for us.

Winning the Bookseller Industry Award is a real boost so early on in my career and the goal is now to channel the enthusiasm in to ways to keep building and improving our business. I have big dreams for Storytellers, Inc. and it's going to take a lot of winging to realise them but at this stage, we're willing to try. The birds in our logos may represent something after all!

Storytellers, Inc. opened in December 2010 and is run by mother and daughter partnership Carolyn and Katie Clapham. Find out more at www.storytellersinc.co.uk or follow them on twitter @storytellersinc