What Running a Bookshop Taught Me About Writing By Natalie Jenner
By Natalie Jenner
Four years ago, I realized my lifelong dream of opening a small bookshop near the shore of Lake Ontario, in an idyllic and vibrant downtown community. For someone who had long ago given up trying to get published, yet still craved a way to make books a bigger part of her daily life, this was a tremendously exciting time.
With my one child in high school and a husband semi-retired, I saw the bookshop as the last project of my working life. But not for the first time would life have a different plan in store for me instead.
Given the skyrocketing rental market in a downtown that included a L’Occitane, an Anthropologie and other high-end stores, we were lucky to get a short-term lease from two local entrepreneurs for a small 500-square-foot space in the alley behind one of their restaurants.
For the past six months I had peered through the window of this vacated former jewellery store and knew that, with its dark grey hardwood floors, deep blue walls, and well-placed halogen lighting, all it would take to turn it into a bookshop would be a series of black Ikea Billy cabinets and about a thousand books. So we shook hands with our new landlords and opened our doors three weeks later.
To distinguish our store – now christened Archetype Books – from Amazon and big box retailers, I focused on a highly-curated selection, showcasing books that people would hopefully be excited to discover. With bulk sales never the goal, I preserved as much shelf and table space as possible to keep covers turned out to the customer, rotating which ones were most visible on a regular basis. I would watch customers pick up a book solely due to its cover and turn it over in their hands, and I noticed that the longer they did that, the more likely they were to buy.
I also learned just how difficult it is to distinguish a debut book in a crowded market, where thousands of books get released every week. A decade earlier I myself had written five different manuscripts and been convinced of their quality – and equally heartbroken when I had failed to land an agent let alone get published.
One New York agent had even told me, in response to a manuscript dealing with the music industry, that if I had actually worked as a personal assistant to a rock band, he would have had no problem selling my book. At the time this did not make me feel better. Yet now, standing amidst all the boxes of books in my own shop, I truly understood the cold hard reality behind his blunt words.
I was also getting an eye-opening window into what readers really want.
I remember one Saturday morning a woman running into the shop in the middle of a rainstorm, still wearing her pajama pants under her raincoat and holding onto the leash of her soaking-wet dog, as desperate for a copy of Eligible, Curtis Sittenfeld’s retelling of Pride and Prejudice, as I have ever seen anyone need anything – and I remember thinking that that Jane Austen was really onto something.
Here is also what flew off the shelves of my shop: new releases such as The Little Paris Bookshop, The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, and The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend. Less recent books such as Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookshop and The Shadow of the Wind. And the historical fiction that people could not get enough of: The Nightingale, The Summer Before the War, the My Brilliant Friend series by Elena Ferrante.
These were the books that customers came running in to buy, that word of mouth spread throughout the neighbourhood, that my customers would literally push into the hands of other customers—strangers to them—who were standing nearby. Books about books, books about the love of books, books about how that love can connect, and comfort, and save us.
Sadly, I was about to learn that lesson myself.
Just a few months after opening the bookshop, my husband was given a devastating medical diagnosis. As a family, we had to make the very difficult decision to start winding down the shop at the very same time that we were building it up. The rest of the year was a blur; we closed down on Christmas Eve 2016, almost exactly a year to the day we had opened. To cope with the medical challenges ahead, I read a lot of books – especially Jane Austen’s – as a form of distraction. I took a solo bucket-list trip to England to walk in the footsteps of my lifelong favourite writer. And eventually I surprised myself by wanting to write again.
I remember sitting down at my laptop and thinking to myself, if I write another novel from beginning to end, then it only has to do three things, but it has to do all three: I have to love writing it, my husband has to love reading it, and it has to have a hook. Otherwise I knew it wouldn’t stand a chance in such a crowded market.
I thought about writing a book about a group of people who get together to try and save a country house, like Downton Abbey. Perhaps set in the past, a time of war, of hardship. Or having something to do with books, and their power to comfort and connect us during difficult times. And my daughter remembers me one day looking up from my reading and saying, very simply, “I am going to write a book about a group of people that come together to try and rescue Jane Austen’s house.”
And that is pretty much still the tag line of my debut novel, THE JANE AUSTEN SOCIETY.
Recently a writer friend jokingly said that in running the bookshop, it turned out I was doing unintentional market research on what kinds of books sell. And over time I have indeed come to appreciate my year in the bookshop as something much more profound than a waste or a loss. Instead, my bookshop will forever be a source of invaluable insight and inspiration as I—a debut author in middle age—start out on my own next chapter ahead.
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NATALIE JENNER was born in England, raised in Canada, and graduated from the University of Toronto with consecutive degrees in English Literature and Law. She worked for decades in the legal industry and also founded the independent bookstore Archetype Books in Oakville, Ontario, where she lives with her family and two rescue dogs. The Jane Austen Society is the first published novel for this lifelong devotee of all things Jane Austen and comes out on May 26, 2020 from St. Martin’s Press (North America) and on May 28, 2020 from Orion (UK).
Follow Natalie on Twitter @NatalieMJenner
Find out more about her on her website http://www.nataliejenner.com
THE JANE AUSTEN SOCIETY
“Fans of The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society will adore The Jane Austen Society… A charming and memorable debut, which reminds us of the universal language of literature and the power of books to unite and heal.” —Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Girls of Paris
Just after the Second World War, in the small English village of Chawton, an unusual but like-minded group of people band together to attempt something remarkable.
One hundred and fifty years ago, Chawton was the final home of Jane Austen, one of England’s finest novelists. Now it’s home to a few distant relatives and their diminishing estate. With the last bit of Austen’s legacy threatened, a group of disparate individuals come together to preserve both Jane Austen’s home and her legacy.
These people—a laborer, a young widow, the local doctor, and a movie star, among others—could not be more different and yet they are united in their love for the works and words of Austen. As each of them endures their own quiet struggle with loss and trauma, some from the recent war, others from more distant tragedies, they rally together to create the Jane Austen Society.
A powerful and moving novel that explores the tragedies and triumphs of life, both large and small, and the universal humanity in us all, Natalie Jenner’s The Jane Austen Society is destined to resonate with readers for years to come.
Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips
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