We’re not *actually* booksellers.

It may seem like the journey from authors to bookstore owners is a natural leap.?

But that’s not the career pivot Paul and I actually made.?

The pivot was from investigative journalism to the hospitality business. And those two things couldn’t be more different.?

Your job as an investigative journalist is to make everyone feel on edge. You learn to weaponize silence in an interview, for instance, to make someone feel uncomfortable and start talking. Your task is to break down someone’s media training, because media training is often there as an obstacle to the plain truth. And your job is to get the truth: To get them to tell you what someone has told them they really shouldn’t tell you. You are having to sort through endless spin and gaslighting to try to figure out what the truth actually is.?

The worst thing that can happen after you file a story is for folks to say it was “fair” or they “loved it” or you did a great job capturing the nuance of the story.?

That means you got snowed by someone.?

Being a journalist hurts your soul because your job is to be hated and make everyone else feel uncomfortable. This is why so many people burn out or don’t do a good job at it. It goes against every survival instinct you have and it eats away at you.?

Our current company, The Best Bookstore in Palm Springs, is the exact opposite of that. We are still selling words. We are still on a similar mission and belief that writing and truth and words can change the world for the better.?

The intrinsic motivations and causes we’ve always believed in are still there.?

But our job now is to make you feel great. The other day, I was solo in the store, it was extremely busy, and the computer system kept going down. None of this was the guests’ fault though. So when a man named Bill came in to order a book he’d heard about for his wife's birthday in six days time, I could have easily told him we didn’t have it and created one less problem for myself.

In fact, in this case, we couldn’t carry it. It was self-published and only sold by a small retailer out of the South. But I took his name and number down on a Post-It and told him I was on the case.?

I bought the book myself with expedited two-day shipping so that it could arrive at my house. I was going to “sell” it to Bill for the amount I paid, and I spent three days worried it wouldn’t arrive by her birthday Sunday. He and I stayed in close contact watching the tracking. And when it was clear it wasn’t remotely going to arrive in two days, I called the company to demand they do better for Bill’s wife.?

Fortunately, it arrived on Saturday and we got it to him just in time. I spent far more time on this than a usual book sale, where we actually make money off the sale. But that wasn’t Bill’s fault. It wasn’t his fault the gift he wanted to give her wasn’t in our inventory, and he’d come to us first. So we were going to get it for him no matter what it took to keep that trust. (He doesn't even know the lengths I went to because that's also not important!)

We do stuff like this a lot. And I believe it’s why our bookstore has been a mini-phenomenon down here: Seven figure revenues and profits in year one and 3x the average revenues per square foot for an indie bookstore in a town of 40,000 people.?

As I detailed last week, there are surprising tailwinds of the bookselling business right now. But we think our success is largely because we aren’t in the bookselling business.?

We are in the hospitality business.?

Paul jokes that we are like the TikTok of bookstores. There’s no broken line of sight with tall maze-like shelves. The shelves are pushed to the perimeter and short carts fill the interior space. The store is very open and bright with white walls and polished concrete floors. Our colors are neon, and nod to the transgender flag colors because that’s a cause important to our family and inclusion is the most important value that brought us to Palm Springs.?

When you come in there’s not a moody literary snob who grunts at you. Someone looks up, smiles and says their best “HEY GUYS!”?(Or in my case "HEY Y'ALL!")

We are also a judgment-free bookstore. If you buy stuff on Amazon, that’s cool. We all do it from time to time. If we don’t have something, let’s see where we can find it for you. We loooooooovveee that you love to read smutty romance and we can give you a chili pepper rating for popular titles.?There are a lot of booksellers that gripe about how much Colleen Hoover their customers buy. Not us. All reading is great reading. All reading is supporting an author and the publishers that took a risk on them.

I once had someone come it for a book he’d pre-ordered and before leaving the house he told his husband he was going to the boostore.?

“Oh! Can you ask them for a sexy, queer fantasy thriller that involves gnomes or dragons or something magical?” his husband asked.?

(After a lot of back and forth we settled on "Fourth Wing," but believe it or not, there was a pile of contenders.)?

I was thrilled we could satisfy the request but even more thrilled that we had done something so right at some point, where his husband knew he could ask that and would 10/10 return with exactly that.?

We have a cart labeled “Dad Thrillers” for the dads who used to come in and slump in a chair while their wives and daughters shopped. Everyone laughs and the teens usually take a picture of it. But that dad feels seen and usually buys a John Grisham so equivalent.?

(We aren’t being snide. Paul loves “Dad Thrillers” too.)?

We have a full cart of Dummies Guides because we also love Dummies Guides. They are really great!?And everyone should be celebrated when they want to learn something new!

We have a free bowl of pro-reading stickers and slap bracelets and buttons on our front table for our guests to take-- no charge!

Our note cards recommending books are written in very “you-centric” language. It’s not about showing off what we liked, it’s about what book might be perfect for YOU at this very moment.?These cards are so popular guests ask if they can take them. I had one guest confess that she comes in and steals one from our table when she's having a bad day. I told her it wasn't theft if she was welcome to them. I've had to draw the same rakunk from Oryx & Crake more times than you can imagine. (I've found when I draw an animal on a card, it always sells faster.)

The tone of the store isn’t moody, literary elite. It’s teen girl. The recommendation cards are written like a Swiftie on Instagram. Because– roll your eyes all you want – teen girl speak makes you feel good, no matter who you are.?

I dare you not to get a tiny endorphin rush when your kids’ friends tell you that you are slaying with a hand-heart emoji.?(I AM slaying! Thank you for noticing, Millie!)

We do everything we can to make you feel great while you are there. Because we think buying books for yourself is great. It’s an act of anti-hustle culture self love, and you are supporting an author. In a year that books are literally on the ballot, you are casting a vote for them.?

We know how much each sale means to a lot of different people.?

What do we – two people known for fighting and making people feel uncomfortable– know about hospitality??

A lot, actually.?

I’m from the South where it’s a core skill women need to cultivate no matter how feminist. And TBH, you don’t make it this far as a woman in American capitalism just pissing people off. You are gonna need someone on your side. And Paul’s parents were hoteliers obsessed with customer service, he was literally raised in hotels with all the lectures about service that you would expect to come with it.?

This flew into the foreground of our lives when we listed our house on Airbnb. The obsessive hospitality in both of us came to the fore, surprising two people who were known more for their online fights.

Someone is checking into our mountain home today, and I’ve delivered the books that her kids most like in advance and left them sleds and wine and locally baked muffins.?

I got one of my friends something the other day-- I can't remember what, a can of Diet Coke?-- and when she said “thank you”, I said “My pleasure.” And she laughed and was like, “Is it though?” And I said, “Yes. It actually is. You are my friend and I enjoy doing nice things for friends!”

Being hospitable is addictive. The worst day in the bookstore is when someone comes through the door, asks for a book, and we don’t have it. We spend a lot of time and money trying to figure out how to lessen that experience. (This is one reason we have an annex with every single Lonley Planet in it!)?

I guess that addictive rush of hospitality is how it’s spiraled from there. But we also believe it's good business.

At our recent (and first) Readers’ Festival, we took authors to dinner every night. It cost thousands of dollars, but they all said they would come back for free every year, because they’d rarely felt so taken care of at a festival. It also meant they stuck around the whole weekend instead of coming in for their talk and then leaving. That gave our customers way more access to them. It made it magical. And while magical may feel priceless, it makes you more actual money in the long run.?

This weekend, I’ve been tearing through “Unreasonable Hospitality” by Will Guidara, which I saw on our shelves and gasped because this is our religion at the store. I highly recommend it, because it details how this can be applied to any business.?

So much of our success as a bookstore is about how we’ve applied a lot of startup thinking to what folks consider a classic “small business.” But unreasonable hospitality is an example of the opposite– something that most people in startups don’t try because they don’t possibly think it could scale.

Despite what some very famous VCs might tell you, love always scales.

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