by Nicki Leone & Candice Huber

The first NVNR Owners Strategy Session of 2025 met January 16, with about twenty store owners in attendance from both NAIBA and SIBA regions. The focus of the discussion was "Safety." Moderators Melissa Taylor of E. Shaver, Bookseller in Savannah, Georgia, and Hannah Oliver Depp of Loyalty Bookstores in Washington, DC, guided the discussion over a wide range of topics including weather and natural disasters, in-store safety strategies, and event and online security best practices. Participants shared their experiences and tips of what worked in their stores. There was a strong consensus that preparedness and good communication with your staff and your business partners, including landlords and venue space managers, is key to meeting unexpected challenges and potentially dangerous situations and coming through them safely.

Here are some of the practices shared by attendees:

Weather/Natural Disasters

• Create a natural disaster planning checklist and emergency checklist.
• Make sure your staff can reach key contacts such as your landlord or building manager if something happens and you are unreachable for any reason.
• Keep flashlights at every station and check batteries regularly. Do a walk-through in the dark with staff to make sure you can locate windows, exits, doors, plugs, flashlights, etc. during a power outage.
• Keep first aid kits around.

In-Store Safety

• Make sure you have both a physical and a digital safety plan.
• Ask for a secondary emergency contact for each of your staff, and make sure your emergency and secondary emergency contact information is easy for your staff to access.
• Know what your staff’s boundaries are and make clear to staff that their safety comes first.
• Have a code word or phrase for staff that lets coworkers know when they hear it that the authorities need to be called.
• Put panic buttons at each register/check out station that connect to local authorities.

Offsite and Online Safety

• Create and post the store code of conduct around the store and at every event, including offsite events.
• Create policies about interactions between staff and authors, and ensure that your staff knows they have your support and are comfortable with raising concerns and reporting issues. Give the publicist the store policies in advance, and let them know if their author violates the store's code of conduct.
• Ask staff if they want to be tagged in posts, staff recommendations, and other social media activity. Don't assume they will be okay with it. Also, ensure personal information is not available for staff on your website - be careful with bios and photos.
• Keep personal and business separated as much as you possibly can.

More tips and links to resources here (includes in-store security systems, sample codes of conduct, equipment lists, and links to online webinars and workshop sessions.)

See the schedule of future NVNR Owners Events