Counting Down, Ramping Up

Okay, now it's getting serious.

I've left my day job to focus full time on Greenlight Bookstore business -- and the countdown to opening day is beginning!

As we've mentioned elsewhere, we're hoping to have Greenlight Bookstore open for business sometime in September (earlier would be better than later, but given the many factors that have to come together, we're looking at a pretty wide window).

Some days that seems very far away -- and sometimes it seems like tomorrow, as there is a LOT that has to happen between now and then! With that in mind, all kinds of things are now beginning to ramp up -- here's a little bit about where we are right now.

Last week, after lots of bid-sifting and negotiating (thank goodness for having a partner who is a good negotiator!), Rebecca and I signed a contract with Hugo Construction, a general contractor based here in Brooklyn. They're a great firm that has worked with our architects before, and they can do the work within our budget and time frame -- hooray! You may see them at the space this week, bringing in materials and doing the last bits of demolition.

And starting next week, our architect Fred Tang of deFT Projects will be blogging about the construction process on the fantastic Brooklyn real estate blog Brownstoner! So I won't tell you too much about our building plans here -- I'll be linking to Fred's posts where you can get a more in-depth view of the project (and lots of pictures) from a real expert.

In the meantime, we're working on the other side of things: the books we're going to sell! I've made buying appointments for almost every day in August with sales reps from the various publishers we'll be buying from. We're also working on getting a "suggested opening order" from a book distributor -- that's a list of bestselling titles in the areas we cover, which Rebecca and I will look through and edit to determine the books that will be in the store on Day 1. Looking through the lists and catalogs is in some ways the most fun part -- it's certainly what we got into this business to do! I feel especially lucky that we're opening this fall -- everything I hear from booksellers suggests that there are a ton of great books being published this season, so our "New Releases" display is going to be fantastic.

And there are a million and one other things, of course. We've applied for and received our Certificate of Authority to collect sales tax, so we can send our Resale Certificate to vendors and buy wholesale. We've purchased our inventory and point-of-sale software (it's called Booklog), and we're working on finding a good price on the computers we'll need. We're working with the American Booksellers Association to get set up with their website platform, which includes e-commerce (much more on that in a later post!) We're working on creating a logo. A bit later we'll need to sift through the many wonderful folks interested in working for us and hire our staff. And we'll need to get set up with electricity, telecom stuff, trash pickup -- all that stuff.

As I said -- a lot has to happen between now and September. But we're on our way!

Got questions about the store or the startup process? Want to join our growing list of volunteers? Leave a comment here and I'll answer it, or email me at jessica@greenlightbookstore.com and I'll do my best to get back to you. We love the community's involvement in this project, and we want to stay connected with you!