Local.

Amidst the retired Harry Potter pages currently covering our windows is a “Shop Local Buy Local” poster for The District. As an independent bookstore, this fits right into our philosophy.

We are enjoying being on the other side of the Shop Local Buy Local picture. Yesterday we sat in our back office, crowded with furniture and boxes to be distributed around the bookshop in the coming days. There were piles of paperwork, overtasked computers, conference calls, and some slap-happy banter. Meanwhile, local businesses were putting their mark on Skylark Bookshop.

Ryan from Homecraft Painting was meticulously touching up paint. Adam from Withrow Electric was pulling wires and installing lighting (from Bright City Lights). Jeff and Jesse from Midwest Remodeling and Restoration were busy building stairs to the front stage. Back at their shop, Andy Werth and his crew (including the fabulous & detail oriented Pete) from Stickman Woodworks were busy with the ridiculous number of maple shelves and our other stand-alone fixtures. It is difficult to describe how wonderful it was to work in the shop with that hum around us. Even harder to explain how valuable the relationship with these folks has been.

We are investing in them, and they are most certainly investing in us. The care of their labor is evident as soon as you walk in the door. They are patient with us as they walk us through the endless decisions we need to make. We might be a tad bit tired these days, perhaps a little decision weary, but they somehow make everything easier and more exciting.

As we approach opening our doors to the public, we are looking forward to developing similar relationships with our customers. We are downright giddy about putting the right books in the right hands. We are also a bit teary as we think about showing you this space. It is beautiful, and we know just how hard these guys are working.

Small is Beautiful

Here’s the thing when it comes to bookshops:

Yes, it’s nice to have a beautiful logo. Yes, it’s nice to have a shiny new website. And yes, of course it’s nice to have a lovely space. But let’s be clear: these things are not what makes a bookshop a good bookshop.

What makes a bookshop a good bookshop?

It’s the books.

We’re a small shop. We don't have the space or resources to stock every book out there, and we would be crazy to try.  Instead we’re going to make a virtue of our size: we’ll be presenting a highly curated inventory that we think people in our community will enjoy and be interested in.

When we think about our own trips to independent bookshops, the word that most springs to mind is: discovery. You’ll find all the usual bestselling titles at Skylark, of course – but we’re also hoping to introduce a lot of you to a lot of new, brilliant books that won’t necessarily appear on the front tables at Barnes and Noble, or get coughed up by some dubious online algorithm. In other words, we want to surprise and delight you with something a little different.

With so many titles being published every week, there are many, many wonderful books that don’t get the attention or publicity that they deserve. It’s our job to find those under-the-radar treasures for you. We spend a lot of time reading pre-publication copies of books that are still months away from arriving on the shelves. We pore over publishers’ catalogues. We speak to sales reps who tell us about their forthcoming titles. We talk to other booksellers. (Also, there’s this great thing called the Internet, which you should totally check out.)

At the front of the store we’ll have two huge tables of paperbacks – one table of fiction, one of non-fiction. We’ve just finished selecting which titles we’ll be featuring when we open our doors for the first time. It was a difficult process, but very fun – and we can’t wait to share these books with you.

As Carrie said the other day: we’ll just be stocking just one genre of books: good ones.

We Are Hiring!

As we edge closer toward August, we're looking to recruit some brilliant, funny, hard-working, and kind people to help us run our shop. If you've always dreamed of working in a bookshop, or if you just love books and people, please go here, read all the stuff (including very important information about drinking coffee and loving dogs), and - if all that nonsense doesn't put you off - send us a job application. We'd love to hear from you.

Skylark Bookshop construction underway!

Right now, with about a month to go before we open, we’ll admit that the shop looks like a bit of a war zone. There are half-built shelves all over the place. There are wires peeking playfully out from behind screens. (Where do they go? Nobody knows.) There are light fittings we can’t wait to replace. And there’s half a Harry Potter novel plastered to the front window to protect our modesty from curious eyes.

What there isn’t much of, so far, is actual books. We’re nearly ready, though.

In the back room stands this beauty, which will hold the shop’s galleys, or ARCs (Advanced Reading Copies).  These are uncorrected proofs that publishers circulate to booksellers and other industry people several months before scheduled publication, in the hopes that early readers will rave about the book and start creating a buzz about it. These galleys are one of the best things about being a bookseller. When we went to the American Booksellers Association Winter Institute in Memphis this January, there was a whole room full of the things, and we each returned with – well, it doesn’t matter exactly how many we had in the trunk of my car, really, but it was a lot. It’s fun to read the hot new books before they come out – that’s how we’re able to give our customers recommendations about the vary latest releases as soon as they’re published.

There are already many treasures nestled snugly inside this beautiful box. We can’t wait to tell you about them.