THE BOOKSTORE
L'Aquilone is a 20 year old bookstore located in the city centre of Verona. It specializes in books and toys for children, kids and young adults: 0-16. The services offered at L'Aquilone are quite traditional:
_ book selection
_ advise
_ book retrieval
_ book market shows in schools
THE BOOKSELLERS
The owners did not have any previous experience in bookstores.
They took over a shop selling toys and some books and now they proudly run a specialized bookstore selling also some special toys.
EDITORS AND DISTRIBUTORS
Fairs and salesmen are the channels to take and keep contacts with editors and distributors, occasionally through the internet, preferably face to face. The kind owner who talked to me seemed terribly discouraged by the distance between the e-commerce and the traditional book system. He complained about the fragmentation of the editors-distributors-booksellers system, underlining that we do have considerable couriers, but, "if you need a book you have "to hunt it out" through bookstore-distributor-editor while Amazon would bring it to your doormat in two days".
PROMOTION
L'Aquilone built its promotion through 20 years of honoured service and word of mouth. It has a Facebook page at its beginning, and a window website to be done. The owners are thinking about starting events such as meetings with the authors, even if the thought is not yet a plan.
RELATIONSHIPS
With Associations
L'Aquilone is not part of ALI for one main reason: its owners found ALI offered services unnecessary and weak compared to the subscription fee.
With other bookstores
L'Aquilone has occasional contacts with other indie Veronese bookstores, yet those seem to be considered irrelevant to the business.
With libraries
Libraries are perceived as lost clients. Once they used to go to bookstores to be counselled on new books, now they do not have founds enough, and if they buy books they deal directly with editors to save some money. Nevertheless they still would like to be in contact with librarians.
With clients
The majority of L'Aquilone clients are children 0-10 years old, or better, who buys for them. During the nineties the "young adults fiction" used to sell remarkably well, especially thanks to the work of three great managers: Margherita Forestan for Mondadori, Donatella Zigliotto for Salani and Orietta Fatucci for EL. "But now that's over".
Specialized bookstores and specialized offer:
The strength of specialised bookstores is the incapacity of general bookstores to host a large variety of high quality titles for each section, along with the incapacity of offering related services, such as prepared shop assistants.
Serious crisis comes when there are not (enough) indie editors publishing niche books.
"I cannot fight supermarkets with Geronimo Stilton".
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