NY NOW Podcast

NYC Cultural Powerhouse

July 21, 2021 NY NOW Season 1 Episode 46
NY NOW Podcast
NYC Cultural Powerhouse
Show Notes Transcript

Sarah McNally is the owner of both McNally Jackson Bookstores and Goods For The Study- 2 different stores but both are meccas for those seeking a connection to culture, discovery, and community.  She has 6 stores peppered across the best locations that NYC and Brooklyn have to offer and cater to the classic bookworm or the paper junkie… I mean paper aficionado.  Join us in this next Buyer Spotlight episode and learn about Sarah’s history, philosophy, and vision into two of our favorite stores to shop.

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https://www.mcnallyjackson.com/   
https://www.goodsforthestudy.com/   

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https://nynow.com/podcast   

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Dondrill Glover:

Welcome to the new york now podcast, a modern wholesale market for retailers and specialty buyers seeking diversity and discovery, gathering twice a year in America's design capital, New York City. It's where buyers and designers on earth have refreshed and dedicated collection of eclectic lifestyle products.

Amy Loewenberg:

Welcome to the new york now buyer spotlight podcast. I'm Amy lowenberg relations and partnership development manager at New York now, and I'll be bringing you important information, conversations and perspectives from both sides of the aisles. I treasure the relationships I've established and I relish in the new ones I make every day sharing information, introducing our amazing community of retailers, buyers, vendors, artists and makers through my spotlight podcasts in New York now and my store tours on Instagram. So you might be living under a rock if you don't know about the McNally Jackson bookstores or goods for the study stores peppered across the best locations that New York City and Brooklyn have to offer. So let me bring you up to speed. Sarah McNally owns and operates six locations of awesomeness catering to the classic bookworm or the paper junkie. Excuse me, I mean paper aficionado. Sarah has created two different stores that both are a mecca for those seeking a connection to culture, discovery and community. But her enterprises don't stop there. She's now moving into a new publishing venture McNally addition. Very excited to learn more about this. So join us in the next virus spotlight episode and learn about Sarah's history, philosophy and vision into two of some of my favorite stores to shop in McNally Jackson bookstores and goods for the study. Sarah, thank you so much for joining us today. How are you? Fine. Thank you for having me. excited to talk to you. I've known about you for a while I've known about your businesses for a while. So super intrigued to learn more. So in 2004, you opened a branch of McNally Robinson, a family owned Canadian bookstore chain in New York City. In August of 2008. The store separated and it was renamed McNally Jackson books. McNally Jackson is a very well known independent for location bookstore here in New York City in Brooklyn. And then additionally, you opened another important New York City gem of a store called goods for the study, adding another two locations. So we definitely need to define the difference and the history of both. So why don't you share with us the great difference between the two and their timelines?

Sarah McNally:

Well, the name of the stores to Phenix It was never actually a branch of my parents store in Canada and it would have been actually hard with me to branch my parents store in Canada because the publishing doesn't really cross the border in that way. There's different books in Canada than in America, they're published with different ISP ends there. What wouldn't actually, the only there's very few economies of scale and multiple store bookselling, but all of them are at the database level, essentially. And that would have been almost no use over the border because the database would have been completely different. Wow. But the I did, I was gonna name it when in 2004 I was quite young when I was opening the store and I was gonna name it vegetable books. I just thought that was hilarious for some reason, vegetable books. And everybody said you have it's a horrible you can't do it's a horrible name. And I was standing. I was standing with my mother who was visiting and helping me out and we were standing outside of this space, it would become an alley Jackson. And I I hired these people from Chinatown to build me a storefront just to cut the stainless steel, just the cheapest storefront that they could make. And they were standing there and they said we need to know what name to cut into this stainless steel. And I had been my working title is bendable books which every which in retrospect everyone was right. It's horrible. It's an ugly word. Wonderful. I don't know what I was thinking. I don't know what I was thinking. And I standing that I looked at my mother and I thought of all that she her legacy and all that she had done with her bookstores and Canada and I just said call McNally Robinson booksellers. I opened it. And then everybody thought that I was like this opening sort of an extension of the Canadian prairies bookstore, which isn't like the coolest thing in the world. I mean, it's it is very cool to have Canadian prairie bookstores in the Canadian prairies. But it's not like what Soho is, right?

Amy Loewenberg:

or right.

Sarah McNally:

I think every force, I realized it was a problem on that I had to change the name. It's hard though, to change a name once you're established, although we were barely established and when my son was born, his name is Jasper McNally Jackson. And so when he was I mean really a few weeks old when the pictures I can't have him in my arms at the name change party. I can't believe I even took him out of the house level into a party but after he was born, I had a name change party and I named it after my son and McNally Robinson, which is my mother store, and McNally Jackson, they're actually very similar, but it's only the our ob II to the JCK. And so it seemed like a very organic change. And there wasn't actually a change in any of the structure of the company just in the public perception. And it was, it was a good call, I think. And I do like the name McNally Jackson, I think, I think I do sometimes it feels a little odd, having my name on it. And it's sometimes when I rarely get McNally Jackson t shirt that says McNally at the top, and I feel like I'm wearing a name tag or something, it feels true. And then, you know, I'm starting, I'm starting this publishing house this fall, which is going to be incredible. And we're calling it McNally additions. And it feels sort of absurd, again, naming it after myself, but then not building on what we've I've already built seems also insane. And at one point, the editor in chief of the publishing has said to me, Well, it's your name on the book. And it was just like, as if I'm like, some kind of like, you know, Knights in the Middle Ages, you know, my name, my name, the importance of my name. So just a little silly, the McNally Jackson thing, for that reason, and especially, the frustrating thing to me is that my ex husband is an extraordinarily good publisher, he's, and he's very well known within the world of books, and everyone assumes that he and I, that he's part owner, and that he and I started it again, it's just sort of a gender thing that it just and also his name is on them bookstore, which makes it I think, especially with eating and I sing, named after my son, but I understand why you might think that but it is, it does play into that perception that I must be doing have done this with a man But regardless, well, I mean, I,

Amy Loewenberg:

I understand what you're saying, first, first of all, congratulations, you just dropped a little bit of news there for us. So we're gonna have to revisit that later in our conversation. That's super exciting. But also, you know, I think just standing in your own shoes, you know, having a T shirt with your name on it feel it feels like, you know, like, like you said a name tag. But, you know, for all of us outside looking in, you know, it is a name that has much history and much credibility. So, you know, I don't view it that way, if that means anything, but it definitely is like a destination no matter where you're located. And it's easy to to reference you by name because it's so identifiable. So I feel like organically you moved in a really great direction, at least on the outside looking in. But you have another type of establishment as well. You've got goods for the for the study. So Can Can you give us a little bit of like, what came first the chicken or the egg?

Sarah McNally:

Well, this is study I opened when my son was a few years, probably four years old, and I was sort of getting back into the thick of working really hard. I mean, I took a I took I chilled out for a couple of years and just enjoyed his babyhood and toddlerhood and then. And at that point, McNally Jackson was doing, it was doing well when this would have been probably 2012 2013 2014 and it was I was delighted and surprised by its success, but like every person who has some success you never know if it's a fluke you never know if it's just sort of you don't know how proud of yourself you should be and how much you're just sort of lifted up by good fortune. And I had a strong urge to challenge myself to do something else but it wasn't there was an IT WAS VERY incoherent urge at the time and I left the bookstore one day for my lunch break. And I went to a place where I often I still get lunch all the time called time which is on the corner of mulberry and spring I'm a vegetarian it's amazing Middle East vegetarian, healthy amazing run by a wonderful chef and I was walking to get my falafel and I saw this little shop and Mulberry Street performance sign and I just called and offered the asking rent and rent sort so insane back then either up there now but it was also a small space and I I didn't I wasn't even sure what I would do with it at that point at the bookstore we'd already we were already selling almost a million a year of stationery just out of the bookstore tiny little section sewing I knew and I'd already started traveling a lot for stationery like I'd already started go i mean i i would go to the Japanese stationery show I went to Frankfurt to paper Veldt happy about I went to I go to Paris to the museum Shea I went to England for what is their shop? What is everything? I forgot it wasn't very good. But can I say that was it just was a very small fare. And all the good British vendors actually do exhibit in New York now it turns out most of them so I was already in like quite invested in stationery and had oddly found that like a gift for buying stationery which wasn't something that I expected to have like I often people say like what's your greatest strength, but I was I'm an incredible greeting card buyer like it's not the, it's not the gift I would have chosen in life like when my fairy godmother was by the bed and I would have. I mean, it would have been amazing to be like a sculptor or something. But regardless, I'm an amazing greeting card buyer. And so I'm

Amy Loewenberg:

just going to interject as being a paper person. I know exactly what that entails. So when you have greeting card skills, I'm sorry, that's like top notch in my book.

Sarah McNally:

You're so nice. Anyway, thank you. So I knew I sort of had a strength in this area. And it was something that I mean, it's something that I have always I've always loved stationery since I was, I mean, I've used fountain pens, pretentiously since I was a child, which is I think, in retrospect, ridiculous, like what a 12 year old is sitting there with me it wasn't raised in France, it was raised in Winnipeg, like it was unusual. But I've always always loved stationery fountain pens, the whole that whole world. So it came, it came somewhat naturally to me to kind of keep building and learning. And I also felt that there was, I personally didn't love the style of the stationery stores that we had in New York City. They're very much gift stores. They're very feminine, very floral. And I had, I mean if they didn't align with my tastes personally, and also having done all this traveling, particularly to Japan, and seeing what stationary stores were like there, I wanted to do something different. But that was not even my first thought. When I rented that space. My first thought was a little it would have been very, it would have been a pain in the ass as as many first ideas are, but they evolve. So I rented. And I knew I wanted to do a lot of stationery. But I had this idea, which in retrospect is forced, but it was interesting to set it up as like desks. So there which is now still set up with desk as display as on it. But instead of each desk to sort of think about it as like, this could be an architect's desk and what kind of objects or stationery would an architect want. This could be like someone who loves traveling their desk what this could be just to, it might have actually been remembered. I don't know how much nervous fish are doing or deer Hancock's launch before they became like all about bunnies and stuff. And dear Hancock, the stationery, the greeting card line launch, they had these beautiful cards that were meticulously drawn deskscapes of different like you'd have a gardeners desk with little pots and things on it and all the things and it would have, they were really charming. They've definitely become a different line from their launch. Firstly, it was very charming them it might have taken the idea from them a little bit. And just also as to think about I've never, I've always bought by section I think like as I've been a bookseller for a long time, I grew up in bookstores and working in bookstores since I was 13 years old. So now, you know, 33 years and I think it was hard for me to think of buying outside of section. So like when you buy books, you think oh, this will appeal to people who like reading nature books, this will appeal to people who like reading for. And I think that that initially I applied that kind of thinking to how a stationery store would look. And then as I started sort of working it, I realize that these constraints are artificial and annoying and unnecessary. And actually color. Color is a much more interesting way to display stationery and its way and the way that I applied the knob the knowledge I have as a bookseller to becoming a stationer is we have like an encyclopedic stationery store. So when you come in, we have if you buy a pen, we aim to have every refill available for it in every color in every in every width of tip. It's we try and be in the same way that when you come in, you're going to find all of Virginia Woolf in my store, your when you come in to buy a fountain pen, we're going to have it in fine medium, find medium, but we're going to have dozens and dozens of inks for you to choose from. And so you can really you can really, you can really curate your stationery experience in the same way that I do in the bookstore. And it feels

Amy Loewenberg:

like you're walking into an art supply store and you're just choosing the point of a paintbrush. There's so many to look at. You can just Yeah. It's really not our supply. But yeah, I mean, we do No, no, no, no, I would not. It is.

Sarah McNally:

Because the thing about the art. So the thing that I does I don't like about art supply stores is that they themselves don't feel like for people who aren't artists, they're not welcoming spaces, like people. But maybe that's okay, because the only people who need this stuff are artists like so for the stationery stores that I have. I mean, I when I see people using really terrible pads, or notebooks and really awful pens, I'm like, literally $10 you could use you could have an amazing notebook with amazing paper and an amazing pen like you don't have to spend 50 pretend dollars, you could up your entire game, you'd end that notebook could last you for three months. I mean we $10 for three months of work and it's very and everybody uses notebooks and pens and papers to some degree. I mean certainly some more than others but to some degree and so it's very important to me that the goods for the studies that they don't feel like an art supply store when you walk in, they feel like a space that like beckons with its beauty and like makes people Realize that literally anybody can add that small degree of comfort and pleasure to their quotidian life. And so instance they really are they really do these stories are so bound up with elevating the quotidian Yeah, and you can only do that if you if you if you work in the stationery store for even an hour you realize it's people will come in and they'll say I like a notebook. I like the cover to be hard, but not too hard. I like the line to like, be like, I like a line, but not too narrow. And also the ink can't be too dark on the line. And also it needs to be like not more than like 150 pages because it's too I mean people's when they actually when you actually start thinking about what you want within the stationery space, it's incredibly specific. And I mean, overwhelm, you almost can't help people find like, you can't really help someone choose a date book. For example, if you can't say, Oh, I like this one, they'll say, you know, good for you. I don't, because they associate those. So, so specific and, and there's no other store that you can go to that you can actually kind of really hone in on the specificity of your desires in this space, at that I know of outside of Toya in Tokyo. So that's so that's what that's what this space evolved. That's what the store evolved to. So it's really in the end, it's so similar to the bookstore in ways that I would never have expected in the same way that like you can. I mean, the book that I'm reading right now, you probably wouldn't like it, you probably wouldn't want to read that book, you know, but, but it doesn't mean it's a bad book, or that the book you want is a bad book. It's just we're allowed to really to deeply engage with our own individuality. And in a well curated thoughtful space, you can do that.

Amy Loewenberg:

It allows perfect sense. I mean, it really does Sarah Schwartz, Schwartz and I hosted another podcast called the paper plane podcast hour, and we just interviewed Caroline Weaver, from CW pencil and enterprises and the way she speaks of pencils, and the way you speak of your product, there is a lot of similarity. But it is it is interesting the way people come in and how different materials will impart some sort of impression on them, you may think you like a certain pencil or pad, but then through experiencing trying seeing sampling, you could move into a whole different world. And there are very different customers come into your store you you've already kind of shared a little bit of the flavor of who they are. But are you seeing a different flavor of customer per store per location? Or just like a different customer base at all? Or is it really overlapping from

Sarah McNally:

the bookstore and goes to the standard rack? Yes. Um, it's interesting, because originally, I tried to keep the two brands quite separate, because I already people would think I mean, I've been so stringent McNally Jackson is such a serious bookstore. Like I refused for the first 10 years that we had the bookstore refused to even make totes, because I thought it was too tacky. Which we now do totes. And actually we're about to do t shirts. So I will see the we did Yeah, we did them through we did t shirts, the bonfire just to stay in business over COVID and by my creative directors to T shirts they made are so awesome. It just seems insane. Not to make them but um, in any event, so that so I it was so important to me, mother Jackson was like, couldn't even no one could be confused. And Bella Jackson is not a very serious bookstore. Like there's, as bookstores have changed, they've invested a lot more space in sidelines. I mean, it's become increasingly common to see walls of socks at bookstores. It's actually like a very common thing. I don't know why some people just resell socks and and just all sorts of tchotchkes, key chains, all of that stuff, which I have. I just won't do it. I just won't do it. And I mean, even if you go up to like the even the only academic bookstore in New York City, which is book culture, on 112 Street by Columbia, if you go up there, I mean, there's you walk up into main part of the bookstore and the entire first swath of the store is devoted to like literally handbags and purses. It's just an eye and I, I would rather not be a bookseller than go in that. I mean, I'm not a gift shop operator. It's not why I do what I do. I'm very serious. We devoted to the, to books to the art of to literature and to writing and so I've always kept it very book forward in my stores. And we've always gone madly deep into the backlist, like the investment we make in the backlist is is, it's insane how many how many books we strive to have on our shelves at all time, the depth that we go into, we try to go into and often succeed in every category, whether it's philosophy or science or what it might be. And so I I didn't want anybody if we had this sort of other sort of sister store that was stationary. I didn't want people to think that we were less serious because of it. But then as the stationary store, kind of found it Like when I opened the second location of goods for the study, and it was the first location of goods for the study is quite small. There's a pen and pencil store, one store and the next door to it expanded that store, I rented the next space as a pen and pencil store on one side. And then there's the stationery and paper store on the other. And then when a bit when I opened the larger space on eighth street, and I was allowed to be much more encyclopedic. And then when I open the pen and pencil store, which is quite encyclopedic. Again, I realize this isn't no one would perceive goods for the study as a gift store, you can buy gifts there if you want. But that's really, it's really not what it is. It's very, it's not that different from a bookstore, it's just coming at it from a slightly different angle. I mean, both of these stores are very much devoted to letting people you know display elevating people's private mental intellectual space. And as as good through the study came into its own as a global encyclopedia, it's encyclopedic stationery store where we import, we import stuff from all over. I mean, of course stuff from almost every continent to sell there. And as soon as that took form, I realized it's not down market, it doesn't make the book sourcing list series of anything makes it seem more serious because it's also serious stationery store. And so I just in the last kind of a year and a half started melding the brand swag bags or shopping bags now say goes for the study on one side and McNally Jackson, on the other side are kind of membership program now applies to both businesses. And I mean, a lot of people I think didn't realize at the stores. I mean, why would they I mean, it's interesting, like when you do what you do, or what I do, like, I'm so aware of these kind of this insider baseball stuff, but realize that 98% of people, they don't even know it, McNally Jackson, it's not all of them that like who I am, let alone that I happen to own these two brands. It's not like maybe a little less than 90. It's specialized knowledge. So I I don't. And when we started sort of coming out a little bit that we were the same company. I mean, there was there was a lot of overlap. And customers, I think because people who are serious readers all also probably take seriously the idea of recording their thoughts. Even if there were a lot of the thoughts I record. Like, I'm not sitting here like writing like Marcus Aurelius. I'm like, it's a to do list, but it's still my thought. It's something I have to do. And I still I still kind of want that space to be somewhat sacred and beautiful and cherished. And so I think there is a lot more overlap than I expected. But I don't know. I mean, I don't work on it. Since I've six stores, I'm not on the floor, that often I sort of pass through and have, instead of the cash register half Next, I love it and just talk to strangers. I love it. But I'm not quite sure how much how much of an overlap there is. I just I just don't know, we don't do any data metrics or any invasion of any sort of privacy of our customers. So there's no way for us to study.

Amy Loewenberg:

I mean, there are ways we just choose not to do them. Right? Well, just in Yeah, you take that information and in a different way. The anecdotal information sometimes I feel is really just the most important when you're just there on the floor meeting and talking with people.

Sarah McNally:

Yes and No, sometimes anecdotal information, sometimes even can leave you to overvalue a trend. That's not actually a trend. It's just someone who like, sent framed a thought in a very interesting way. So it's stuck with you. It can happen with booksellers where a bookstore will say, Oh, my God, this book is selling so well. And I'll look at the computer. And I'll say it's not really they just happened to that bookseller, it was just standing there when all four copies of that book sold. And so drinking like a bestseller. So it's you can go either way. But yeah, anyhow, it's gone.

Amy Loewenberg:

Have you seen a shift in any book themes purchased? Like, are we saying more like fantasy over fiction or financial over food? Like I'm totally thinking that child development has been probably a very strong growing category, just you know, with all the second jobs that you parents have taken on over that last year.

Sarah McNally:

Interesting VM, the things that were weird, that are really jumping for us is are the last couple of years even before COVID is self help. And also peripherally to self help like the astrology stuff that kind of New Age stuff, and that I think is cyclical, like when I first started working at bookstores in the early 90s it was really huge then it went down and and at that, but there's the self help category right now is huge. And it's also affecting other categories if the memoir category is becoming increasingly self help. I mean, there is becoming it's like a memoir, but it's also very explicitly female or, or very explicitly in empowerment genre where it used to be when I first opened the bookstores memoir was sort of a What do they call it misery lips, they It was like a misery latch on or you would read and think Damn, Sucks to be you is what you used to think when you read these memoirs. And people like the more horrible the better that people love these love these memoirs, the more depressing you are, the worse the drug addiction, the closer to suicide, the better. And now the memoirs that are selling are they're really like out there and go don't believe women but you have to do it mentally. So the Self Help is also an essays, two essays, which was a very big category for us. But his essays has increasingly become a self help genre too. So not only is self help up, but it's also encroaching upon peripheral genres poetry, which used to not be a self help genre isn't constantly these Instagram poets are selling, like unbelievably. And that is, again, we shove in poetry, but it's very clearly self help and empowerment genre. So I would say that that is up a lot. romance is exploding. Weirdly, the romance novels are really doing well, I don't know if. Yeah,

Amy Loewenberg:

I mean, just because we had a year of shutdown alone. Some of us were, I don't know, the I can't say the I don't.

Sarah McNally:

I don't know what I don't know. But I only noticed the romance books. And it's also it's clearly new readers to romance because the the shelves at eye level are selling much better than the like, if you go to a section if you're if you just buy the books at eye level, it means that you're not you don't know which author you actually want. And so like if you're a romance novelist, in your last name starts with like tea, you're probably if you're not in a lot of luck right now, because you're close to the floor. But if you're like in the, if you're like a to a to L you're selling quite well. So that's that's what makes me think it's a lot of new romance readers. So that could be COVID. related. You're right, Mongo nationwide, we haven't been great at capturing the Mongo market Mongo, it's a kind of Japanese comic that is like it's selling practically on par with literature at a lot of stores right now. It's ginormous, we have not been great at it. But nationwide, that's the that's the most market trend this year in American book selling is manga.

Amy Loewenberg:

So the book landscape is kind of ever changing, you know, the internet provided direct to consumer platform, online, retail giants are offering discounts that, you know, often can't be matched by an independent. There's also my understanding is there's you know, not a great margin on books in the first place. So, but yet they're this really great source of business for both the bookstore and the specialty retailers. Is there any experience that you can part on buying into this category, anything that you can share with retailers that they want to expand on the on that

Sarah McNally:

category? mean retailers who might want to sell more books? Yeah, the margins aren't that terrible. I mean, it's, it's the enormity with the perks that come up to around coming up near 50% generally, sound amazing, I mean, the margins are terrible in anything that you don't make your own product. Like I eat my my margins and stationery aren't amazing, because I import the stuff from all over the world. And like they if you want good margins, and you have to get like your own sweatshops in China, essentially. And if you're doing if you're if you're selling anything that you aren't the means of production for you're not going to great merchants. And so anyone who's in retail already probably knows that. And it's one of the reasons why I go through the study. I mean, I Sony ideas for products that we've made journals, which I think are pretty great. But I want to definitely have so many ideas for stationary objects that I want to make myself because I think that is actually the only way to get good margins. But that being said, the margins are slightly worse than they would be for me, I'm assuming every retailer has their own formula, we we double, essentially we try to within stationery, we, when we incorporate shipping and the cost we pay we just double that. And that's so our margins are 50% in stationery. So that's not dramatically off for books for us selling books is it's very interesting. Like it's a very interesting kind of buying, like the you know, and I buy greeting cards and I it's always funny when I walk through the gift shop or like oh shit at Sarah McNally, we have to get our fastest writer cuz I'm like, I'll take 4896 I'm so fast, you can just I can just look at it. I think it's because I'm trained as a bookseller where I do all the buying for the bookstore and I look at 10s of 1000s of books a year. And it's so hard compared to buying a greeting card where it's just Do you like it? Or do you not sure that you like to do that is a pretty is not? is a sentiment stupid? Do they put too many exclamation points and it's cheesy, it's you know, is that it's just it's clear whether or not you like a greeting card. Where is with a book, it's it's such a triangulation you have to you could have a book that you're incredibly excited about the subject, or the author, but if the cover is awful, you can't put it you can't feature it, no one's gonna want it because no one's gonna want to it doesn't happen. Like we want to even try to remember probably when the store was young, I wouldn't bother with this now. But when the store was young, and I was more hopeful and idealistic, we did a book called display of like really good books with bad covers and it didn't sell anything because like a bunch of bad covers together doesn't matter how you message it. It's just it doesn't work. Sometimes and sometimes the cover is great, but it speaks to an audience that's just off for your store. Sometimes you know, you suppose everything looks good. And then you have to click through I try and always read like a little bit of a sample if I can. If because it catalogs Book selling are now all electronic. And sometimes you know, you're excited about something and then you open it you think I hope God really like that's how you wrote this book. And so then you don't. So the layers in which you have to be simultaneously analyzing like a book, it's like, it's like, you know that expression for the Bible like fitting a camel through the eye of a needle. It's like there's so many ways for a book, or a book publisher to stumble on their way to a bookstore, front table. And yeah, it's hard. And there's not a lot of spending. my closest friend is a book designer Peter Mandelson. And he actually did our logo too frequently, Jackson, bless his heart. And he has stopped doing his stop doing book covers, he's now focusing on his own writing, and his painting, and he doesn't design book covers anymore. And I had drinks with a publisher the other day, and she said, Oh my god, so many people can write books, but almost nobody can make a decent book cover. It's so true. I don't know why it is so hard, but you go, like there's book covers in MoMA, when you walk through the moment you look at those cases, it's, it's a real, it's a true art, it's a true art and there's not a lot of great artisans. So there's a lot of so book buying is you have to the way that I do it, I've been doing it a long time. And I don't know if it's the best way or the worst way. But it's gotten us this far is I sort of let a book sink into like all all of all of my senses at once I let a book sink into it. And if it bugs me in any way if I think that title so stupid, or I was like I've seen like five books on this subject already, I just I just I just sort of let my like irritability be might be my filter in a way. And then and then if something gets through all of the irritability, features, which are you know, visual, intellectual, emotional, they're they're born also have you know, knowledge of what's come before then you can then it like the book tends to land on like the bottom, which is like true enthusiasm, and then it hits when a turn these yazmin then you can decide what to do. It's, that's for books, if you just want to do a few bucks, because then you're then you're featuring books. If you're doing like an actual bookstore, it's a little more complicated, because you have to have like, the single copies of things that like there's some books that like every so some authors, like every book that comes out by that author, we sell one copy, I don't know why I don't know if it's the same person every time it comes in and buys like the new whatever, ruler by whoever from us. I don't know if it's a different customer, I just don't know. But there's these you just after years, you just you start seeing these patterns emerging, which is different again from choosing features. Yeah. And then I don't do the backlist, the reorders I don't to be orders and that's but that's its own very interesting art. Sure. Any I mean and that's the same in any retail like it's just it's it's interesting kind of getting that balance of you know, if something is sells modest moderately, but it only sells if it's on display, what's the minimum quantity? You can have to keep it on display? And then it I mean, that stuff? I don't I don't I'm not as good at I'm not good at that part at all, actually, well, I

Amy Loewenberg:

mean, the rate of sale just completely varies depending on the time of year and what's going on socially what the book is about, like anything, any variable can pack that smart as we think we are. You know, it is it's it's it's definitely a science and that, you know, I just heard of something recently called booktalk. Have you heard of these book talkers? booktalk is a term used to describe the bookish community on Tick tock, where people post videos recommending books and they share their love of literature, and you've got book talk influencers and they can literally impact the sales of a title based on their following. It's apparently I mean, I just read about it as I was just diving deep into a little bit of your of your past. You have you have a pretty big so

Sarah McNally:

my son just sent me he sent me a screenshot of a tic Tock that someone in his class sent him that had like, a tour of one of our stores, and another billion views like literally hundreds of 1000s of likes, and I don't know how to look at it. No one in my store is even I was like I emailed it to my marketing director. I was like, because this was in to your level of awareness. She's like, No, I don't know how to know how to use tik tok. I don't even that's ridiculous but I just I

Amy Loewenberg:

thought I thought it was really interesting just because just you know where we are right now you can put you know, a drop of water over here and it just explodes and tick tock is not something that I'm deep in but I mean it obviously is is pretty powerful. It's a pretty powerful platform but but you have a strong platform to with with your following not on Tick Tock though. No, no, no, I'm talking about your you're following your Instagram and and you know, you've got some superpowers. There. You're You're Self, you know, nobody else can see your face. But I see it, I think you've got some superpowers.

Sarah McNally:

That's been traditionally real weakness of ours is social media, we're trying to get better. My new marketing director, I think, hopefully will help us. That's the plan. Because I'm not really on social media. And it's just, I'm just not it. Yeah, it's I think it's our weakness. And I look at how some bookstores sort of are so good at social media, it's hard for us to even think to translate what we do to that medium, right? I feel a little in those situations where, you know, there's a whole world around you, but you feel like you're wearing blinders or blink. Oh, yeah. Like a horse with those things. And that's what I feel like I, I feel very limited, being part of running a business is realizing what you're bad at. And I've had to admit that that's not my strength. And so I, I'm hoping where I feel like we're gonna get better in the next year. at it, because it's, it's friendly. Social media is such a friendly medium, you know, when I'm friendly, why can't like, yeah, should work.

Amy Loewenberg:

I mean, the one thing I would say is that as, as we just came out of a difficult year, and I mean, I can just speak for like awesome trade shows going into a digital market, like we've moved, you know, heavy into that platform. And there is a relationship between physical and digital. And I think that, that that's the relationship that we want to find on at least I tried to do on my Instagram, I, it might be a digital representation of, say, your store, but I really want people to feel like they're in it. So it's, it's finding that personal and, you know, emotion evoking pictures that, you know, that relate with with somebody, but, you know, the, the, the thing that i i love about bookstores is I, I kind of feel like bookstores were the pioneers of the in store events, I mean, back in the day, like, I feel like you guys were doing readings and signings, and you know, you'd get your educational programs and storytimes even before we knew like what the word pop up store was sort of words. So you know, now as we're doing so much digital, and now they're pop ins digitally. And you know, are you are you looking for? I mean, maybe you just answered this this question, but like, Are you beginning to look for maybe like, new ways to do like shopping events on on your website? We do shopping events on our website, and we want new experiences, for sure. I mean, you've you've got

Sarah McNally:

Yeah, I mean, I got I just drink hope I got so many of my friends to teach seminars for the bookstore that they were amazing. They were incredible. And I'd like to, it's interesting to try to figure out how to how will balance that because it brought in national people who, you know, used to live in New York or, you know, used to travel to New York and come to McNally, Jackson, and then they would sign up for these seminars. And so they were very, they weren't grounded in New York, which were when we first opened the bookstore. That was when there was no one really doing events other than Barnes and Noble in New York. And the Barnstaple events were really crappy, like I remember when I moved here, and I went to see Joan Didion, and I was so excited to see Joan Didion, and then she was at the Upper West Side, Barnes and Noble. And there were like, 20 people there. And it was in the children's section. And I said that but I mean, this woman's, a hero, she was she's a hero. She's famous. And it just wasn't part of the culture in New York to have events in the bookstores. And I think the Indies were all too small to do it. So that was a big part of what I did when I opened the stores events. But I, I've grown to feel more ambivalent and confused about them, especially as like, you know, as the bookstores become more successful like to have an event actually shuts down enormous part of the store. For hours, you have to wield the shells of the way no one can shop in like half the store. It's like the whole thing. And so I think they probably actually, at this point negatively, like in store events, negatively impact revenue, but then doing them online. I mean, the sell through is abysmal. I mean, it's like people do not come and see an author hosted by Michael Jackson on zoom and then buy the book from us, it just doesn't seem to happen. We were lucky to sell one book. So that is not a good model, either. But at least like even if it's shutting down, have this towards like bringing people into the store. So I'm, I haven't, and I think because in the space in which not the station works, I've so much stuff because of the study that you literally can't buy anywhere else in this country. And you certainly can't buy online, but the bookstore, I mean, where I'm competitive is not like my website versus Amazon. That's not where the bookstores really shining, the bookstore shining because you come in and you find books you would not otherwise find in an environment you would not otherwise have access to if you didn't have access to like a really kick ass good bookstore, which it is. So keeping it so moving events online or shopping events online. I'm not sure if in the end, we're just sending people over to Amazon hedging that if if it's purely in the book category, what we do what we can do, we can do programming that we charge for that That is has depth that is unusual, which is what we did. I mean, Daniel Mendelsohn has been teaching all disabled books. We're on to our fourth one. And he's one of the greatest critics of our time teaching one of the greatest novelists of our time and they've, they've been mind blowing. And we've run Ulysses seminars when Michael Cunningham taught to Virginia Woolf novels this summer, last summer for us, she did the hours into the lighthouse. And it's like access. I mean, it was where you would, you know, they were it was the last four weeks and you talk an hour, hour and a half each time. And if they were met, they were very beautiful. I mean, they were really deep and beautiful kind of access to kind of education that like if you don't quote me, both of those men teach at Ivy League, if you don't go to the Ivy League, there's just no way that you could even have an as an adult, there's no way you could really have access to that offering your

Amy Loewenberg:

own masterclasses there. It sounds like That's

Sarah McNally:

right, but really, really deep dives into into literature and so that we can do online, which I don't know if it's a shopping event, but it it those those are not those do you make some money for the store. And so I'm focusing more now. I'm like at the seaport bookstore, we have this really lovely bar with I opened a cafe bar in it. And I just did a seminar party, actually, for all of these people who've been going to seminars online, I had a party so they could meet each other. And we did this party at this bar, and it was hectic. It was the actually the best party. It was interesting because the people who came or people who don't mind going to a party alone, because it's not like you know, I didn't invite them in their husband, I invited them because they had taken a seminar. So they're people who were like extroverted and brave enough to walk into a party alone. And they're also people who are deep into difficult books, because like we only really did difficult through these seminars. So you had like extroverted deep readers of difficult fiction. And it was like that party. That intersection was incredible. So, but I was thinking this, it was so fun in the way that the bar functioned. And it's on it's at the seaport on a kind of cobblestone pedestrian only Street. And so the party bled out onto the street. And I thought this, this is something I could see as events is doing book launches there, and then having them flow into the bar and into this beautiful cobbled Street. And, frankly, the most beautiful part of New York City, probably the seaport is really very special. It's a lot of construction right now, but inshallah it will pass. Anyhow, so it's in that store the storm, and it's very beautiful. It's a pre Civil War building, you can still see the X marks and a lot of the themes in the stores, it's kind of an expensive store that just sits room after room, it's just you can, it's really quite special. And these window seats looking over, you sit in the window and look over the water. And it's it's a very special store. So I think that like having having parties, like maybe they're not events in the way that bookstore events have become, which have become kind of pro forma to like, it's very, the only thing when I was more involved in I only had one store, I really pushed for the events program, I always wanted every event to have sort of the spark of creation during the actual events. So I wanted to have a conversation that felt actually, like people, the people sitting on the stage, were saying things that they hadn't thought of before I wanted them, I wanted that. And that's become so I I told my best quarterback then like don't do an event that's not an in conversation. And at the time that it's hard to remember that was innovative at the time. It's not innovative anymore. Now every event is in conversation. And so like everyone's use these conversations, and you don't get that kind of magical spark happening on the stage. And it can still kind of accidentally happen every once in a while my favorite series we have ever had, which I've asked my marketing director to resurrect was the author editor series where the authors speak to their editor and editors don't do a lot of events generally, but they've thought very deeply about the books and the author as a person. And those conversations could be authentic and exciting. So maybe we'll start doing more of those. But my point is, I think like moving bookstores like what they are is we've all booksellers, missing bookstores or third place, they're like you have your home, you have your work. And then you have this bookstore, which is like a public safe space, but you don't take actually responsibility for it, is to turn it more into a place of actual celebration. So I like having the bar at that store. So we can have events that are also actual celebrations. And I'm negotiating another lease to do a different another bookstore that will also have a bar which will so I think that that's how Actually, that's how I'm thinking now is how to turn the bookstore into a place of celebration, rather than shopping events online, which I mean, which frankly, like honestly to eat, I don't know, you've probably noticed this in your life as something doesn't interest you that much you don't do that. You don't do a great job at it. And I'm not that interested in shopping events online.

Amy Loewenberg:

Well, you know, just the fact that you bring up where your what you've done and where you're moving in terms of like having that event in a bar within the location. You know, you also have a coffee shop within one of your stores too. So I mean, I kind of feel like that social element that we have, you've kind of already begun carrying that into your stores like a while ago. You know,

Sarah McNally:

kind of like close that coffee shop, drink COVID and move stationary in there and I'm I don't miss it. Michael is not back. I think I'm all for bars more than coffee shops.

Amy Loewenberg:

Hey, I'm with you on that. I love my coffee too. But you know, that sounds like a lot of fun

Sarah McNally:

but anywhere you can talk like this just and also you can get it anywhere but yeah, I think I and also coffee shops have become when I first opened the bookstore coffee shops were social spaces, but increasingly like with like, as people have become so their computers are so able to even though we don't share Wi Fi with the customers, they can they have their own hotspots, everything that coffee shops no longer actually celebrates, like places of celebration and social interaction, their workspaces and workspaces. That's a really good point. You're right. Maybe less interesting to me. And people aren't reading there. They're just on the computer soccer.

Amy Loewenberg:

Huh? No, talk more about the bar. It sounds super interesting. And does this go show like those that's like, that's fun. I really appreciate you sharing all this information with us. I want to ask you a couple of personal things, if you don't mind. I read in an article in 2017 article in The New Yorker, that if you don't wake up at 6am, your day is ruined. Does that still hold true?

Sarah McNally:

I'm not a creature of habit. I'm very, very bad with habit. And I often, like this weekend, I just I went down this rabbit hole of reading science fiction. And I was I was staying up till 230 in the morning, every day and every night and waking up late in the shed and running into my day. And, and but then other days. Other times I feel very organized. And I wake up at seven and six in the morning. And I get everything I know that my when I was true. When I wake up at six, I'm more I am more effective, especially since my job is so chaotic. And there's so many stories, there's always like some dumb problem. Just because the physicality of the job is different. I think then most of my friends work in the corporate or their artists and they their jobs just don't have like there's not they don't at any moment have like a dozen air conditioning units that could break and, and redirect their day. I do. Yeah. And the director McNally Jackson, Douglas Singleton, he wakes up every morning and starts working at 6am. And that's his process. And so he can, and it does work. But it's it's not mine, I'm very erratic. And sometimes you know, I do so much book buying. And sometimes it's hard for me to do it during the day because I'm I have so so much energy and a very, very high energy person and to sit and like stare at a computer for five hours is it's anathema to my actual nature. But I can do what I'm half asleep. So if I do it at 11pm, until like two or three in the morning, it's like I'm just tired enough that like I don't want to actually get up and do something else. And I can get through a lot. So there's different. I don't know, I'm sure that no one no one's gonna write a book about me as a highly effective person. Oh, there's

Amy Loewenberg:

a lot of sorry. I don't know, I think we all have different pockets of time where we can, you know, really focus and I too, I take advantage of them. If it hits me at 1038. I'm working at 1038.

Sarah McNally:

That's really right. And then some days I find them just useless Some days I think, Pam, I'm so not anything, I can't focus today. I can't think an interesting thought. And then other days, I'm incredible. Like I can work for 18 hours. And I'm just on. And it's I've learned to just sort of accept those flows in myself I think was was a woman like we do have, like, so many hormone flows that we have to acknowledge make us or whatever people just do it or not, but themselves I have to acknowledge that like I'm just there's different different days, I have different kinds of engagement

Amy Loewenberg:

levels, concentration engagements. Totally. So you kind of already alluded to this already, but I think we might be curious about and I also believe it's probably ever changing what is on your bookshelves right now.

Sarah McNally:

My bookshelves right now, looking around my room, but I'm in my living room. What am I reading? Oh, I'm reading Maggie Nelson has a new collection, a new book of essays and thought about about freedom. I don't know if you read Megan Nelson. She's quite brilliant. But she's got a book about freedom, which interests me because I'm becoming an American citizen in two weeks. So I was it's just I'm engaged with the idea of freedom, which congratulations. Yeah. And it's like that's a word that has been part of American and it's was shifting meanings and multiple and you know, multitude of meanings. It's been part of American warfare since the beginning so I'm reading that book on freedom I've been reading. I just finished sere six I'm taking my son to Greece. He studied Ancient Greece this year, and he did so well at school and I asked how what he wanted you know, in like, as like a congratulations on getting such a perfect report card and he said I want to go to Greece. I want to go to Athens I want to see all these places I study. So I just read CRC by Madeline Miller, which is a huge bestseller. She also wrote Song of Achilles, which was your first book I have just started. I've got it right here. Song of Achilles is about his relationship with metropolis. And, you know, which was I mean, everyone sort of assumes Achilles was gay but is not you know, made explicit. But it's rare in this book, it's really an expression of the love affair. But the one I read this, which was CRC, which was incredible, which is like this nymph, who, you know, was also sort of sorceress, and it's, it's maybe one of the best female empowerment novels I've ever read. I recommend it extremely highly to anyone, but especially any woman. And it's, I mean, it's commercial fiction, literary commercial fiction in a way that literary commercial fiction now is so often, really just genre. It's not like a really is kind of romance or it really is kind of a thriller. And like we do remember like when, like in the 90s and the early aughts or literary commercial fiction was also very, it was very beautiful and very literary and sirsi has that is literary commercial fiction that is beautifully written beautifully done so much fun completely. So again, I was reading that I was staying up to three in the morning, my days were shot, but then I would do stuff at night. So yeah, I'm not I don't start at six in the morning, often because I read so damn much. I just read deep into the human juggler.

Amy Loewenberg:

Do you read multiple books at the same time? I'm

Sarah McNally:

also in multiple book clubs, like I started a powerbroker book club. But you know, the history of it's the history of New York City told the Robert Moses, it's incredible. So I just did my as just at my powerbroker book club last night with with four friends or five friends, for friends. And so I was reading yesterday, or the last few days, I read only New York City history, which was amazingly interesting. I just finished a five year run of rereading of Proust with another group of friends and we're starting, we're starting Middlemarch. We're doing a reread of Middlemarch with some friends this summer. So I do and then I also have to read I mean, ever launching this year, which I'm very excited about, we're gonna launch the Book of the Month Club with McNally Jackson. And so I've been reading a ton of contemporary stuff to try and find like a book that I can wholeheartedly full proudly recommend every month. So yeah, so that that also throws reading is very inefficient. It's just an inefficient thing to look, I think if I had like gone into like, film, I can, like I if you gave me six months, I could become like a true film buff, like in six months, I can really, you know, nail like the history of them. I mean, forget it in six months in books, you're lucky to like read Moby Dick. And there's no way you'll you'll finish Proust, also, you can't get there. It's just an inefficient even reading, like I read, to kind of not crap, I read to like, ridiculous science fiction novels last weekend, and I probably spent, I don't know, 20. I mean, especially 20 hours reading them. And they're not even books that I would want to talk about because of my dignity.

Amy Loewenberg:

We want anybody know, we're in and out in the two hours and you just move on with your life, you know. Alright, so the last thing I want to ask you, you've also just made mentioned to your relationship to New York City is what are your favorite New York City shopping experiences? locations like what is it about New York City that you love

Sarah McNally:

this system because New York is it's funny because I I've had this bookstore Nolita since 2004, and miletus, like a little village in New York, it's not just one of the few places that still has a ton of independent businesses. And the spaces are small, so chains aren't that interested. Although increasingly, the stores there are I think, venture capital funded shops that like with a large online platform, that kind of this is their trial run. So it's becoming a little much less eclectic than it used to be compared to the rest of the city. It's still quite eclectic. And I love I love walking through there. I live in the village. And I mean, I don't buy online, I don't shop online, very specifically, I don't shop online, and I look at my neighbor's getting their groceries delivered. And I think, are you insane? Like what happens in our grocery store? We are just lost. We just lost agathon Valentina, we just lost one of our distributors. Oh, gosh, Dawn, man, and now we've got Cinderella in lifetime. And it's like, if you buy groceries online, like you can't expect them to have around the corner, like, yeah, this is zero sum, it is actually zero sum. It's not like you can just make decisions and expect like the city to kind of float on. Regardless, it's very, very, very frustrating. And it's like during COVID you know, the people I realized that I was so often I like Bigelow you know that? That old? airmass? Yeah. Seven years around the corner of my house. I wasn't Bigelow all the time or lifetime. And I would stay and I would talk to these people who work there and it because I wasn't seeing anyone as middle COVID was a lock in their house except for me. And yeah, even just having that. I mean, that to me is a neighborhood that is a community, the guy that works at my deli, it's it's so part of my experience of living in the city, is that and it's it's scary to see how New Yorkers don't value that and every day I see these, you know, these boxes from Amazon or Amazon Fresh has come to the door and I think, Oh my god, like New York City. It's like it's no it's us. We are New York City. Like it's not like New York City has alternate sources of funding other than us, right. We are they We have to keep it alive. And if you want to live in some like industrial, like apartment block where there's nothing but restaurants and delivery services like can you leave like there's places that you could go and where you could get that? I mean, anywhere go to Dallas you know Dallas is perfectly decent restaurants and great delivery circle Godspeed go, but like don't undermine that, like don't take out the financial guts of the neighborhood by just working it's it's very frustrating to me, because I do and I value independence like I do sometimes shop, it's still relevant. I so much prefer to shop at lifetime, which is also which is extra big on Sixth Avenue came to me because it's an independently on business. And you just the people who work there are such a bunch of eccentrics, and they've all worked there forever. And they all have such clearly defined personalities. And the management you can tell is like friendly and kind. Whereas you go to like a chain grocery store. And it's like you don't, you know, you don't really know what the personalities of the people that they're there. They don't people don't stay for very long at the jobs, and they're given scripts of what they're allowed to say. And it just it doesn't have the same feeling as when you go in and like the guy who works lifetime is telling you about like how he was surfing that morning, Rockaway and blah, blah, blah. It's just so

Amy Loewenberg:

for me what I'm what I'm hearing is shop local, I'm hearing community, I'm hearing relationships, and I'm hearing that you see and you experience it and you support them. And that's probably one of your favorite aspects of New York. There are pockets of us that exists, but I know what you're talking about. But yeah, I mean, even I'm on the Upper West Side, and you would think that it's not a small community, but I grew up here it's a community you know, I'm still saying hi to people who knew me when I was three so it's a it's um, it's definitely a lovely experience to have that in New York City. You know what I'm gonna I'm gonna tell everybody that if you're not aware of McNally Jackson bookstore or goods for the study. You should be you should get to know her six locations. please correct me if I'm wrong, Sarah, we've got guests for the study and know Lita and the West Village. And we've got McNally Jackson and Alito Williamsburg seaport in downtown Brooklyn. Am I correct? Um, she has some amazing products and amazing titles. And I'll tell you that I've been into all your locations except for the seaport and now I have to go down to the seaport because not only am I miss that experience, but how, how can people reach you? If is it just through through your website? Is that the best point of connection other than walking in a human to human contact into any of your locations?

Sarah McNally:

I guess it depends what people want from us how they want to get us but we do our website is and we're just finally we've just figured out how to switch to a mobile friendly website. It was like when COVID hit. I mean, online sales were not something that we even thought about so we had to it was it was quite a drama repositioning ourselves. But yeah, we go through the website you can call. I mean, all the stores have phones, you probably would. I think calling is the nicest, I always call everyone, but um, let me just be my age.

Amy Loewenberg:

So excited to see you and I can't wait to see you in August. Are you going to be at New York now?

Sarah McNally:

I cannot wait to get to New York. Now. I was I'm kicking myself. I didn't fly to Atlanta to go to the show this in Atlanta right now. I miss I cannot believe I missed gift shows as much as I miss them. After all of the actually I made my son. I was so sad that I didn't get my vaccine at Javits because I thought no one has spent more time at Javits than I have the American booksellers Association and the gift shows. And so when I got when I booked my son for the vaccine, I specifically went to Javits because I just wanted to even touch base, I miss New York now so much and this year, I almost because I have another I guess I have a seventh location at the shed in their lobby, and I want to do more giftware, which I've never done, and I was gonna hire a giftware buyer. And then I thought, I want to do it, I want to do it. I love I mean, that's, I think my great strength is being a buyer. And so I'm, I'm this year I'm going to go I always try and cram it into too short of time when I go to New York. Now I always cram it in because I only do stationary. It's very specific. I don't decide not to just be stationary. So I always think I should be able to fit it in at a small amount. But this year, I want to go for the entire time from beginning to end. I want to walk down every aisle I want to find the actual giftware for this shed store and I cannot wait I cannot wait to see the vendors. I cannot wait to see. I mean, I don't know how many stationery especially card makers that you know, but it's a particularly beautiful person, the kind of person who makes greeting cards because they're people it is. They are Yeah, they're artists. I mean, they're all artists. Yeah. And also, they love like communicating. They're making literal cards to get in touch with people so they're all extroverted artists who are built I just I'm so excited to see them all.

Amy Loewenberg:

I cannot wait. Well, we can't wait to see you. I already know our second conversation is going to be completely built on greeting cards. So we have we have a very deep relationship with the the GCA we've got the GCA village, we have some Amazing designers who are going to be there, we've got some Louis award winners who are going to be there. And I will introduce you to all of them. So we will walk the aisles together. Well, Sarah, you are deeply interesting. You are wildly smart, you are wildly creative. And I loved listening to your organic growth and path and what's happening in your future. I can't wait to see all that you develop. I will even though I'm so sorry, I don't think I can hold myself in a conversation, some of these books that you're reading, but I can certainly hold a cocktail, and take some pictures I would love to. And I just thank you so much for sharing your morning with me. I can thank you. Thank you so much for joining Sara and I today. I hope you enjoyed our conversation as much as I did. She shared a lot of information with us. And I know that I will not walk into any other store selling books and look at them in the same way. Especially if they are an encyclopedic bookstore. I'm going to make sure that I look at the authors whose last name falls past the eye level shelving of a through L. So thank you again for joining us. And don't forget New York now is now an online 365 sourcing and connection platform. Make sure to sign up and sign in. And definitely connect with me when you do. Thank you so much and I will talk to you soon.

Dondrill Glover:

Thank you for listening to the New York now podcast. Make sure to tune in weekly for engaging and insightful conversations touching on the most relevant topics facing our community today. Is it through your mouth comm to learn more about our market, and how you can join in on the conversation