My Ideal Bookstore

If I had a mind for running a business and the money to start one, which I don’t, I would have opened a bookstore a long time ago. Here’s how I have envisioned it.

A Film Projection Area

This comes from a combination of sports bar design and library design. Sports bars have big TV screens where fans can watch soccer games (and other sports). Some libraries have nooks where you can watch DVDs (with headphones on).

I say, if you can't have a large room dedicated to film screenings, have at least a corner with small open booths where people can see films on DVD / Blu-ray / through streaming video.

Well, what if you have a bookstore with a soundproof room with a nice projection screen, the kind you have in conference rooms or art museums? Then simple benches, just like in an art museum. There, you have your own little cinema.

It may help book sales as well.

As Katie suggests (see under comments), if would be wonderful for writers to have a bookstore where they could meet and exchange ideas. I'll be thinking about what this place could be exactly. Of course, it could be the café area, where writers could sit down with their laptop and actually write.

But I'm thinking there should be a nice round couch somewhere, something like two rounded halves facing each other, with a coffee table in the middle. Writers could come there and even leave a copy of their book for people to read. In fact, many writers might want to do that, so it would be a good idea to have a narrow shelf dedicated to books that writers could bring into the bookstore for other writers and bookstore customers to comment on. Authors could leave with the book their Web site, blog address, Facebook account, or other info about their whereabouts online, and other writers could contact them with comments about their book(s).

Selling Tea and Coffee

Well, first of all, I would sell only great tea and coffee in the café area. Then I would make all that tea and coffee available for sale in the bookstore.

Asking the artists to create these notebooks through print-on-demand companies would be another opportunity to collaborate with them: artists could include their work not only on the cover, but also inside the notebook, in places marking breaks between various sections, which the artist may or may not designate in some fun way.

All these ideas I’ve seen done, but I've never seen them done in one place!

What does your ideal bookstore look like?