Washington Square on air is the Audiotown square for the Washington Square Review, Lansing Community College's literary journal. Writers, readers, scholars, publishing professionals, citizens of the world, gather here and chat about all things writing. Hey there. This is Melissa Ford Dawkin, editor for the Washington Square Review. I'm here today with Matt Grossman, one of the owners of the Hooked bookstore here in the Lansing area. Hey, Matt.

Hi. Good to be with you.

Thanks for coming. So tell us a little bit about your bookstore.

Hooked is a independent bookstore, coffee shop and wine bar. And it is in Lansing, but walking distance to the university. So it sort of serves as a bridge between the full Lansing community and the university.

How did you come to decide to do this?

I think the coffee shop, wine bar sort of came first. We moved here from Berkeley, California, and at the time there wasn't a whole lot of options in those categories. And so we had this as kind of a dream going forward. And then we took a sabbatical in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where bookstores are very central to culture with a lot of events that we went to regularly. And we decided we can combine these and make it work in Lansing.

You guys have a lot of community activities?

We do, in part because we are also a cafe and we're open 80 hours a week. That means that we have a lot of time to fill and also a lot of people who want to come in for events. And so we try to have a couple to three events a week on the schedule, so there's always something happening.

Tell us a little bit about some of the events you have.

The predominant events, I would say, are an author coming in, trying to give a reading, do a signing, talk a little bit about their book. But we always try to do it with a little bit of a twist to try to get more folks involved. So sometimes we'll have multiple authors come in. For example, a person who works at the Lansing Zoo, who wrote the Junior Tiger Companion, and someone who wrote more of a fiction book on creatures. And so they're kind of talking together, and then they're going to do a craft activity for kids where they put together their own sort of twist on a fictional creature from a zoo animal.

That's super cool. It's almost like a library.

Yeah. So we try to mix in, you know, events of those kinds. We also have pretty regular meetings by all kinds of groups in town, including two writing groups. We have a crafting group. We have some people who do other kinds of art. So, you know, it tries to be a general community space as well.

A lot of students come there to study?

We do. We have a regular student studying population, especially if it gets to finals week. We have a lot of studiers and we sell a lot more food than I was expecting, in part because people spend. Spend a lot of time there. So I think by our Google numbers, it's like an hour and a half is the average time spent in the store. So pretty long time. So people will study, they'll eat a little bit, and they'll shop a little bit.

That's really cool. Do you list the events on your webpage?

They are. They're on our website, on all of our Facebook and Instagram social media as well.

Okay. I want to kind of go backwards a little bit and have you talk a little bit more about how did you decide what kind of vibe you wanted for your bookstore? You've obviously been to a lot of bookstores, so were there any that in particular inspired you?

I think we were inspired by the ones that we saw in Cambridge, like Harvard Bookstore. We also were inspired by the ones that we went to graduate school in Berkeley, California. And so the ones that were there we enjoyed as well. We also tried to take from the cafe aesthetic as well, though. So we visited a lot of coffee shops, a lot of wine bars, seeing what we liked. We also had some help. We didn't have anybody doing kind of interior design, but we had someone who's a woodworker who worked with the MSU Forestry Department to actually use wood that was from trees that had to be cut down on campus to make the bar and then also make the big community table. So we tried to take little touches. And then we have a local artist who did a mural for the kids section. And then on the first anniversary, she came back, literally, like, painting on a ladder high above the store, doing a new mural for the. For more of the cafe section.

That's very cool. Those are additional layers of the community elements that you were talking about. Just from everything you've described, your vibe of your bookstore is quite different from other bookstores in this area, in the Lansing area. So I think that's really special. It makes it stand out. And I would imagine customers probably tell.

You that people really love the space, and they definitely tell us that they like everything. It is interesting, though, because we bring in a variety of people, including students. We do actually get weird questions like, are the books for sale? And, oh, can you check these out? But we try to take that as a positive, that that means people are super comfortable in the store. They feel like they can Pick anything up and take a look. And we're happy to explain.

So, yes, listeners, the books in the bookstore are for sale. You probably also can order books too. If it's not on the shelf, you could probably still get it.

That's right. And hookedlancing.com has access to everything. And you can order for in store pickup or for delivery, too.

That's pretty neat. So it's a pretty big space. So you do welcome groups and individual people.

That's right. It's 3,000 square feet. And there's community table for events, and then there's kind of a secondary table for small groups. You don't need a reservation, though. You can come in. And we do have, like church groups and student groups that meet without even telling us. But if it's going to be a big group, it's useful to call and just let us know. And we'll make sure there's no other group meeting at the same time.

Very cool. You were talking about, you know, unusual things that people ask you. Were there any other surprises when you first got started? You told me that your store's been there for about two and a half years. So when your first store opened up in those first six months, what happened that you didn't expect?

Well, there are some surprises. Food is one I mentioned. We thought we're gonna have charcuterie boards. It's a wine bar. We thought some people would want food, baked goods. But we now have a sandwich menu, a pizza menu we've kind of added along the way. And that is because people spend so long in the store. So even if they didn't necessarily intend to come for lunch or dinner, often, they'll stay. So that's one surprise. I would say. We weren't necessarily ready for kind of what the student readership would be. Students do read books, contrary to some views. But the whole romance and romantasy kind of explosion happened right when we opened. And so we were ready for it to some degree. But we've had to kind of adapt along the way.

And how did you adapt?

We just make sure we have everything in stock. We keep everything that is kind of prime interest on a big display table. But we also don't view ourselves as just catering to what people already think that they want, but also introducing them to new things. So we have been able to do that as well. Caitlin Lyles, who's the bookstore orderer and manager, has kind of managed to create audiences. For example, we have a pretty big audience for fiction translation, especially Japanese. You only need three or four customers that really, really like something for it to be a new focus of a small part of the store. So that's been useful. Oh, that's the other surprise. Book sales are incredibly concentrated. So there are some people who read books, a lot of books, and buy books for everyone on their list. And that means that a small group of people can account for a pretty large portion of the book sales in the store. And it's especially noticeable in our store because 90% of the customers are cafe customers because, you know, people come in for coffee all the time, but about 50% of the sales are books. And so that's just a way of saying a lot of people come by for a coffee, but a smaller number of people account for a large amount of sales for the books.

That's interesting. This percentage of people that buy a lot of books, do they give you suggestions? How do you figure out what they're into?

Yeah, so we make sure that we are catering to people who come in a lot to ask, you know, if they start asking for a special order. We try to figure out, do we actually need to stock that item? What is the kinds of things that would be of interest to that person. We make sure that our orders online that are for pickup in the store are kind of, you know, people like to do that because they want to come by anyway. So we make sure that part of it works as well. But we also try to, you know, gain some new customers. So, for example, everybody who orders something at the cafe for $5 or more is told that their receipt is worth a dollar off a book. So that's just a way of sort of saying you are in a bookstore, you can go shopping and the books are for sale. Even for people who just came in.

For coffee or wine, that's really different. That's cool. So some of the stuff that we're talking about right now are differences between an independent bookstore and a chain bookstore. And I think what you're describing is that unique flexibility that independent bookstores have to work with their readers and their customers and their community.

Yeah. And we have additional capacity because of the mixture of uses. So our most popular events are called the boozy book fairs, which are designed to be kind of scholastic, but people can have wine and cocktails. They're often kind of literary themed drink specials. And, you know, that's just something that is pretty unique to our.

So you pick a collection of books from a different theme for each.

We have like a Halloween one that and a, you know, Valentine's Day that are very popular. But we sometimes have just the back to school busy book fair. So kind of a mixture.

Very cool. The young people that come to your bookstore, do you find that they eventually will want to come on their own or always with their parents? I'm just thinking about the community building over time the way that's going to happen.

So certainly the college students come in all the time. The high school students also do come in on their own. We have a kids book club cause we have a 11 year old and a 9 year old. Sorry, 12 and 10 kids. Ages.

It happens.

12 and 10 year old. And so we have kids book club along with the adult book club that meets monthly. And we do have kids that are just dropped off if they're used to being in the store. We have people that just wait to get picked up in the store and it's just kind of their place. We're in the ground floor of an apartment building. We're also right next to two hotels and older like a retirement built community as well as student housing. So it's a nice mix in terms of ages and folks and it means a lot of people just stop by.

That's really cool. Let's talk a little bit more about the difference between an independent bookstore and a chain bookstore. Because a lot of people are familiar with bookstores. They go in, the books are for sale, sometimes they have coffee. But they don't always stop to think about when you see the books on the table. The difference of how the books get there with an independent versus a big box or chain store. What are some things people don't know about independent bookstores?

Quite a bit. I would say just from a business perspective it's not a great financial proposition. But it is possible to survive. But it survives based on community support. It survives because people have an attachment to the store. They want to shop there. They view it as a place not just that they can pick up what they already know what they want, but browse for new things for recommendations. Yeah, and so I guess a few things people don't know. Discounting for starters. So we have pretty regular discounts for events and for specific topics. The boozy book fairs come with 10% off retail store wide. That is 10% off for the customer. But it's probably about 30 to 40% off from the bookstore's perspective in terms of how much they are actually able to collect from anything that you buy. Just does mean that if you're trying to compete with Amazon or with anybody who can survive on very small margins, then it's hard to do. That may be something people don't necessarily know. Another is books are both a concentrated business. A very small number of books account for a huge portion of the sales but also a long tail business. That means that it's kind of hard for all those books in the middle.

Right, the mid list.

Yeah. Because it is useful for us to have one copy of a whole lot of books. We have 10,000 titles in the bookstore. But that's not necessarily going to be a book that is face out that people know where is that people have heard of. It's there because if someone is looking for that specific book or we could recommend that, then it's there. But I think. Yeah, I think there may be sort of a misperception that all it takes is to kind of get on the shelf and that that's the key barrier. I don't really think that that is the key barrier.

Right. Yeah. If they're coming in for a particular title, they'll find that title. They may or may not browse the shelves.

Yeah. And I look at this also from an author's perspective. I have six University Press books that I have published and those are, you know, small audience books that are, you know, designed to speak to the public but not, you know, not automatically. And so it's just been interesting to see it from the other perspective. Especially we have an author coming in for a University Press book. MSU professor. Good for our match. But University Press is just not really set up to sell books at a bookstore. We do it for the sake of the community, but there's not really a way to make money selling that. So we have like a bigger University Press section that than most bookstores and some of them can do well. But that's one piece I didn't necessarily know for sure.

I think that's something that a lot of people would not be aware of is the differences between the publishers and the way that they market their books. So a commercial press is likely to have a system set up to work with bookstores. Like you said, in a smaller university press, not so much.

Yeah. And to be frank, there are six large publishers that we buy directly from and then almost everything else comes from Ingram, which is the main independent bookstore. Sales, distribution, distribution. And we do have relationships with other publishers if we have specific strong interest in them. But it's almost never worth it beyond the top six. And so that means that a lot of it, even for commercial publishers that are reasonably well known, it still is about kind of what is their relationship with the distributors.

It used to be that bookstores would take things on consignment. Is that still the practice?

We don't necessarily have an active consignment program, but when people come in and we see a book that is going to. That will work for us, then we'll do that. Most of our sales along those lines start with events. So if an author comes in, we mainly steer them towards having an event. Because for us, that's the best way to see if there is interest. Since we're a cafe, come in and order drinks. And it's fine to have a small group there. If three people show up for the event, that's still fine. So we try to kind of start with that. And then if we think, okay, it looks like now there is a market, people showed up for the event, then we start to stock those.

What about tearing the covers off? That used to be something that happened years ago.

Don't think we've had much problem with that.

Okay. No, because it used to be that bookstores would take the books on and stock them on the shelf, and then if they didn't sell, they would tear the COVID off and send it back as proof that they didn't sell the book. And then it was part of the business. It's an old practice.

Most of the major publishers, this is something that is beneficial for the book industry compared to other industries, is that most books are returnable. That means that if something doesn't sell, you can just put in a big shipment and return it. We obviously pay for shipping, so there's some cost. But that means that bookstores can stock more than they might end up selling. And it means that we do have to regularly rotate stock. If something is out. We have a hardcover, but it's out in paperback. We have to send that back. Some people prefer the hardback, but not enough. Keep that. And so it means that we have to rotate through.

It's pretty complicated keeping track of which books are on the shelves and which ones are you going to keep on the shelf. Which one are you going to send back? That's a lot. That's a lot to keep track of.

Yeah. And as a result, we have another complexity on the business side is that we end up having two operating systems because there's one. One to keep track of all of the books. And then the cafe ordering just works better with another system so people can come up and get a book at the cafe because they're connected systems. But it just makes the back end a little more challenging because we have to keep track of all that. And we need a book specific system that's saying this book has sold two in the last six months and so we need to keep it in stock or not.

I think you made a really good point saying that it's not just a matter of getting the book on the shelf for the author, that there's a lot more to it than that. Let's talk a little bit about that. If an author, now that they've heard all of this stuff about all the books coming and going and keeping track of the system and that kind of thing, it's easier for an author to understand how complicated it is and that bookstores can't always just order all the books that they think sound exciting. What can an author do to approach an independent bookstore in a successful way?

So I mentioned a couple things. First, obviously starting as a customer helps. So the first time that you've come in is to say, you know, I put my book on the shelf. Or if you write to us and it's clear you don't know what the store is like, then you know that's, that's worse than if you are someone who's for sure.

Well, I think that's really valid because like I said, each bookstore has a different vibe. So they need to know who is it that's coming to the bookstore.

Yeah, I think that's perfect. So if you come in and you're, you know, in the process of buying a couple of bucks, are having coffee, then we're probably more likely to start listening to any pitch. For us, it's a little bit different because again, we're sort of event focused. So for us it's events. And it is useful for people to know that we pay to advertise the events. We also have an email list of 7,000 people where we're going to advertise the list. But that doesn't mean people will necessarily come in. So we have to have a pitch. We have to have kind of a little twist on what might be. We have to have a target audience that isn't just everybody. And authors have to basically be able to bring in some people on their own. Some of our most successful events do start there. They start with just, well, the author had seven or eight family members and then we had five people from our lists. And that ended up being, that's a pretty good crowd.

12, 13 people. That's a pretty good crowd.

Book sales. And some of those books are still on our shelf because people expressed interest. So I think that's another thing to know.

How about out of town authors?

Still, I think it's useful to know what the store is like to have been in there before you make the pitch. I think it's also useful to say if you're going to be in town at a particular time, here's when I can do an event or when I can stop by to do a signing, because that can be useful if those things aren't feasible. I would say it's mostly not about just contacting bookstores. It's mostly about what is your relationship with your publisher, your publisher's relationship with the intermediaries. Because that's really going to determine more.

Do publishers approach you sometimes with suggestions or requests that you host their authors?

The event hosting is a little weird because the major publishers have these events grids that they make you fill out with and everybody subscribes to the same 20 authors that they really have no chance of getting.

And then is it like a giant Google sheet?

Yeah, and we've had a little trouble with this because it's like, well, why don't we have like again, like a mid tier author who is already going to destroy it or Grand Rapids, just add, add us to, you know, their list. But yeah, we do have, we do have publishers approach, but it's usually not for, for an event. It's usually, here's our new list, here's what you should get. And we go through a lot of, I shouldn't say we, Kaitlyn Lyles, mostly our bookstore manager, goes through a lot of solicitations, a lot of what's coming out and what's new to try to stay on things. So yeah, there's a lot of pushing to bookstores to try to get interest.

That seems like that would be a lot to sift through because there's so many books out there that it just seems like just trying to select which ones, if you haven't read them, that would be really tough.

Yeah. And you can get advanced copies of stuff. There are people who try to push by saying read this, but Obviously we have 10,000 titles. We're not going to be able to read through all of them. I'm more on the nonfiction side because of my own work. And so I, I tend to be looking out for what's coming out in that world. Sarah, my wife, tries to do a little bit more on the kids side and Caitlin, most of the fiction side and most of everything else. So it helps to sort of figure out who in the store might specialize in what you're Pitching that makes good sense.

So it's really back to starting with the relationship, knowing who the bookstore is, knowing who the community is, and also making sure that your book is a good fit for their vibe, I think.

Yeah, yeah. And just realizing, you know, just how much competition there is to get anything out there. And I see it from the author side because I have a new book coming out and you know, the university press is, you know, they're buying ads in four magazines, they're, you know, buying online stuff to try to pitch directly to bookstores. So it's not like there's no pitch. But still there's thousands of titles in similar markets that are coming out at the same time. So it's still, even with a pitch from the publisher, is kind of hard to break through for sure.

Talk a little bit about your own writing. You have this one book. Tell us about that one. And you have a couple others too, right?

Yeah. My book is called Polarized by Degrees, how the Diploma, Oklahoma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics. I'm a political science professor and director of Public Policy Institute. So it is kind of at the intersection of higher education and real world politics. And describing how trends where Democrats have become more college educated and Republicans have become more oriented toward those without college education is really transforming not just the voting coalitions of the. The parties, but kind of how they're seen. And also social institutions like universities, like the media, like nonprofits, as each of those kind of becomes seen as a side in the culture war. So it's a. Go ahead.

I was just going to ask, was there a particular event or series of events that prompted you toward this topic?

We have probably my best selling former university press book is called Asymmetric Politics and it's about the difference between the Republican Republicans and Democrats overall in a broad series of ways. And so in some sense this is a follow up to this or kind of a response to the big question we get, which is, well, you're describing the two parties as very different, but aren't they changing radically in recent years? And we think they are, but not necessarily in the way that most people think. So we wanted to write that out.

That's interesting. And the other two books.

So I have a book that's on interest group politics and lobbying. I have a book that's. That's on kind of the history of social science and methods. And I also have a book that's on state politics. I'm very involved in Michigan and so it's called Red State Blues and it's about kind of the history of the Republican takeover of state government, but how it didn't always result in a big conservative turn in state policy.

Okay, what is it that appeals to you about the writing process?

As an academic, I'm normally very engaged in journal article writing, which has a very particular of format that isn't necessarily conducive to kind of big picture argumentation, taking a lot of strands together. And so books are really the best opportunity for me to kind of think about the big picture. Even when you're engaged in a particular research project. I have several books that are like, I have a book on the history of federal policymaking that's very in the weeds about each public policy issue area, but still it's not so specific that it works as a journal article. It really only works as kind of a big picture argument.

While you're saying that, I'm thinking about the difference between a short story and a novel, because writing a novel is just a different kind of experience than writing a short story. And I think I can hear what you're saying about just really digging in and making a large scale experience when it's a novel versus a large scale argument. And it's. It's a different brain exercise. And it's fun. It's hard, but it's fun. All right, Is there anything you want to finish up with? Any last thoughts about bookstore and joys of being a bookstore owner? What do you got?

Well, it is a lot of fun because we see both people that we know every day, but also people that we've met from being involved in the bookstore. It is fun to. To see people who have participated in a writing group, but then they have a book that comes out.

Yeah, yeah, you get to see the process.

And I'll have a book launch for my own book soon, so I'll be able to kind of see that piece of it as well. And it's fun to kind of have that come to fruition.

Yeah, it's really the center point of community and writing books and reading all of it together.

Absolutely. And we are very excited about the literary festival that we're doing with the other bookstores and libraries in town because it is part of our mission to sort of, you know, help advance the literary culture in the area for sure. And we think we'll be a part of that.

Awesome. Well, thank you very much for joining us today.

Absolutely. And if folks are interested in that, it's. We have a new website up, LansingLit.com that'll list all of the events for that beautiful.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks for stopping by the audio Town Square of the Washington Square Review. Until next time, this has been Washington Square on air from Lansing Community College. To find out more about a writer's community and literary journal, visit lcc.edu.wsl. writing is messy, but do it anyway.

Sam.