The conversation at the NVNR October Owners Retreat focused largely on 4th quarter and holiday preparations. Booksellers shared what they were looking forward to selling, successful regular holiday promotions, and some of the little things they do during the busy season to reduce stress and take care of staff. One common piece of advice was to look to your community as a resource for creating events. Towards the end of the meeting, the topic turned to "emergency preparedness" and the things stores should do now so that they will be ready if an emergency or disaster happens.

Things booksellers are excited about:

• The Nightmare Before Kissmas by Sara Raasch [Edelweiss]
  "a nice little Halloween-Christmas crossover with an adorable love story and some really fun world building"
• Kinsal Earrings via Faire
• Book Lover's Box

Successful Holiday Promotions:

• Blind Date with a Book Bundle
  (giftwrapped like presents with small gift items -- tea samples, cinnamon or honey sticks, cocoa packets, stickers, etc.)
• Bundled Book Club Gifts: create gift packages or cards for a certain number of club books. For example "3 months of the Romance Book Club choice"

Successful 4th Quarter Events:

• Mrs. Claus Storytime. Also, local celebrity storytellers such as the local police chief, or TV weatherman, or fire chief, etc. This gets the community invested and becomes a destination event
• Letters to Santa: The store collects the letters in a mailbox set up for the purpose, and an engaged customer who loves the job answers all the letters, writing back as an elf.
• In-Store Wreath-Making Class. Other seasonal workshops such as cookie decorating, candle making, soap making, flower arranging, and a mother/daughter bead-making class

Taking Care of the Staff and Yourself:

• Book scheduled time off for yourself several times a month
• Hand out holiday bonuses at Thanksgiving, when it might come in handy for shopping.
• Close for two weeks in January for returns, inventory, store refresh. More relaxing because there is no customer service, and then all those things are done.

Emergency Prep Notes:

• Know your insurance agent and your credit reps. Stay in touch with them so that when something happens, they know who you are, why you are out of touch and/or offline, etc.
• Create an emergency contact list for every employee with two contacts, at least one of which is not someone from the store. Review and update it every six months

Owners Retreats are held four times a year in January, May, August, and October. Retreats are held on Zoom, except for August which is held in person at the NVNR Annual Conference. Owners Retreats are always moderated by a store owner from NAIBA and SIBA.

Read more ideas from the NVNR October Owners Retreat