When Needs Change
In May of 2024, I put the bookstore I co-founded on the market. “We’re booksellers,” I told myself. “It’s time to sell the whole damn shop.”
Unlike many indie bookshop sagas, the sale of Booksweet was not tale of financial woe. Only three years in, sales were healthy. Through a ton of hard work, strategic partnerships, and a differentiating values-driven approach, we saw YOY growth in readers, revenue (18.2% from FY23 to FY24!), bulk order clients, and community partners. While there are many places to buy books, Booksweet embodied true social entrepreneurship through collaborative, co-liberatory book-raising and fundraising efforts with our community in a number of areas, including: education, banned books education and advocacy, trans rights, racial justice, equity, access to abortion care, housing justice, the diversification of the publishing industry, abolition, and mental health (just to name a few).
Our need to sell the shop genuinely was one of a family-needs nature. Given my emerging personal particulars, I recognized I could not give the bookshop the energy and time it required to serve it’s readers well. While I had my fair share of heartbreak about this (and I’m still caring for some of that heartbreak, truthfully), I did my best to keep my focus on my number one goal: keep the bookshop open and serving the community for generations to come. I wanted a full turn-key sale of the brand and service our community had come to know and love. I wanted all the good work we’d built together to keep going. One of my favorite ways of explaining our work to others was simple: Books bring people together—and together we can imagine new futures and co-create positive change.
Alongside Shaun Manning, my partner in life and in business, I conducted a brand and asset valuation and created our sales pitch. Through strategic communications efforts that leveraged our extensive lists as well as press coverage, when it was time to make the announcement: we went big. Our sale was announced in industry publications, local media, and to our very engaged social media and newsletter audiences. Within two days we had 14 meetings with serious buyers lined up.
Interested buyers signed an NDA and were treated to a shop tour and a pitch deck presentation that I created detailing the shop’s growth, strengths, assets, and standing in the community. We answered questions. We were grounded in providing full transparency about our numbers—we knew it would be a huge decision for people and we didn’t want anyone to feel like they were guessing about the maths (or get too wrapped up in the romance of owning a bookshop!).
We made sure to communicate clearly about our funding options to help first-time buyers and buyers from minoritized backgrounds. What this meant was that we were willing to accept 50 percent of the sale price up-front and 50 percent paid to us over time at a very competitive interest rate (set intentionally lower than most Small Business Association loans offer) and in a way that we knew would be sustainable for the scale of a little community shop (and get us what we needed financially from the sale). The sale price also included forty hours of comprehensive 1:1 training, as well as introductions to all community partners and bulk order clients. We wanted buyers to know that we were committed and invested in the shop’s and the community’s capacity to thrive.
Miraculously, we were able to find a family of values-aligned buyers and complete a sucessful sale just seven weeks after announcing the shop was for sale. My partner and I led a thoughtful owner transition, centering new owner training and a continuation of community/customer care. The press was eager to pick up the story of “the community bookshop that the neighborhood just won’t let go of,” with one of my favorite media clips coming from Meredith Bruckner for CBS News Detroit.
A few things that I think helped us accomplish the sale swiftly and in a way that ultimately felt really good:
This wasn’t sudden. We’d been talking and strategizing for about 5 months prior to the announcement. This gave us time to do things like document asset deprecations, full-scale inventory efforts, and make sure our Profit/Loss statements were in ship-shape.
Math is boring… but it matters. Nobody opens a bookstore because they love math so much. That said, it’s a vital part of doing business. Thanks to our diligent number crunching January-May, we knew our worth and we had receipts. We made sure our worth was clearly translated and communicated in our pitch: these weren’t numbers from the heart (the shop is frankly priceless). They were numbers tied to real and actual assets.
Shared goals are everything. My partner and I agreed on our goal: full turn-key sale of the entire shop (brand, inventory, lists, and all).
Approach is critical. In addition to agreeing on our goal, my partner and I agreed on our approach: transparent and values-driven. We value the creation of equity in our community. We value first-time business owners having a shot at their dream. Our commitment to including a funding option as part of our sales pitch was a direct result of us bringing our values into the ownership transition.
Be responsive. We knew our strengths, our story, our data, our readers, and our community—and when we didn’t know the answer to a question a potential buyer had for us, we looked it up and got back to people quickly. Being responsive to customer care has always been a priority for us, but especially so throughout this process.
Know your customers and pick an owner that will work for them (if you can). We knew what our readers craved: informed but accessible booksellers. People who prioritized community care and inclusion. Owners who understood the importance of equity in our community and how we all play a role in co-imagining and co-creating that reality. Knowing what worked for our readers (largely based on their feedback in our daily interactions with them) helped us assess if a buyer would be successful in advancing the shop’s mission.
Lastly, I think the real “secret to our success” was that we already had a really positive reputation in our community and with our readers. Many of the buyers who expressed interest were Booksweet readers, including the amazing family who purchased the shop. I think a major takeaway here is that the work starts long before the project does. The ways that you show up in the world on the daily—with kindness, with authenticity, centering co-liberation, community care, and love—can make all the difference in the world.