Teach children to love reading early in life and you will give them a gift that will bless them for the rest of their lives. Twenty minutes a day is all it takes. However, over the years and decades to come the child will learn to teach himself through reading. It's a lot like the old proverb about teaching a man to fish - except that in this case the child can teach himself how to fish through the skill of research and the joy of reading.

So what's so great about Uptown Books? Why would you come here day after day to see what we have on-hand? First, it's a nice place to sit and read or just talk with folks and enjoy the evening. You could sit in a dark room at home and have a meaningful relationship with the television or you could sit with good friends and watch this sunset from one of our chairs out front:

Or maybe you just love books and know a good deal when you see one - like a free book with every purchase!

Or maybe you have some work to do and would like to have free Internet access for your laptop in a nice calm, quiet environment.

Whatever, the reason just remember, you can't reserve the big blue chair. First come, first serve!

Here's a piece of really good business advice: buy a neon sign. Part of what makes Uptown unique is our evening and weekend business hours. Of course Pocatello is so used to retailers only being open from 9-5 that we have been seeing some folks drive by at about 3 mph peering through the window wondering if we're open. A bright neon sign gets attention and makes it abundantly clear that the store is open for business..... unless, that is, it arrives broken.

Of course the company that we bought from has a 100% guarantee that signs will arrive in working condition so we are trying to get a replacement. Unfortunately, we probably won't have it for at least another week and probably 10 days. So please tell your friends that we really are open!

And speaking of really cool inventions... Every once in a while we run across a book that we just smile at and say "cool!" Case in point is this neat volume on Scientists & Inventors.

And then I got to looking at it a bit more. Now what about that picture says "Scientist" or "Inventor"? With that huge cocktail in front it looked a lot more like an alcoholic's family intervention than a scientist's laboratory. And that large device in the back with the glass ball on top and tube running out of it looks a lot like some early massive piece of drug paraphernalia. Kind of makes you wonder what the stoned-looking guy on the left is putting in it...

So maybe a lot of my friends are geeks. Or maybe a majority of the world is coming to realize just how fun sci-fi is. Either way it was pretty clear that we needed to have more of it on the shelves when everyone walked in and went straight to that part of the store. Well take a good look at the picture above folks. Why? Because that's just a portion of the new sci-fi that went on the shelves today!

And did you notice that little sign up at the top of the shelf? Yep, new stock is going out each day and so we're letting folks know what's new by placing the best of it on those shelves right at the front door. Just another way to make it fun to come in each day and get first shot at the latest trade-ins and new arrivals.

We have also filled the fridge with Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, and bottled water. How much? Well, do you remember when you could by a paperback book for $3.50? Well, that's our average price for a paperback at Uptown Books. So it seemed only appropriate to sell a can of soda for 50 cents!

And, no, we haven't forgotten all those requests for coffee...

Daughter Selah turns the sign!

What a weekend! As usual things went well (although never according to plan). Friday morning arrived too quickly and we worked hard at pricing and putting the books on the shelves.

One casualty

Of course, none of this could have been done without a little extra help and so we were eagerly awaiting the arrival of my parents to help price and shelve the thousands of volumes we purchased over the last year. At 1:30pm I was beginning to wonder where they were when my phone rang. Apparently Dad decided that it was open season on turkey vultures and took one out with the front windshield of his pickup:

Now, Dad, don't you think you could have used something a bit more conventional - like a shotgun? Of course the impact was pretty impressive but, thanks to the wonders of modern safety glass, mom was only showered with pieces of glass from the inner layer of the window rather than getting hit in the face with a vulture.

For you folks who don't live in our region, you may not be familiar with what they are. Wikipedia has a great description, "The typical adult bird is an average 76 cm (30") long with a 185 cm (6 ft) wingspan, and weighing 1.4 kg (3.1 lb). The sexes are similar, with the female being slightly larger. Their body feathers are mostly brownish-black, but the flight feathers on the wings appear silvery-gray beneath, contrasting with the darker wing linings. The adult head is small in proportion to its body, red in color with few to no feathers, and has a relatively short, hooked, ivory-colored bill."

Fortunately everyone was okay (except of course the vulture and dad's windshield) and so upon arrival all went to work hauling boxes, shelving books, and generally getting huge amounts of work done.

God bless family and friends

One of the great joys of this project has been to watch as friends and family have pitched in and helped out - often without being asked. It's a wonderful thing to see how kind and generous people can be and we really do appreciate it. Thank you one and all!

Saved by the spouse

Amazingly we made our soft launch! We were still shelving books on Saturday morning, but the doors opened. And, for those of you who know me, you won't be surprised to find out that I completely forgot one small detail - money. Cash register we have. Credit card machine is on the way. Checks are not a problem. However, wouldn't you think that a store should open with some cash in the register to make change? Nope. Completely slipped my mind.

As usual, the blundering husband was saved by the foresight of the loving wife and her grocery money (and the kids' piggy banks). By 9:00 the doors were open and it wasn't long before we made our first sale! (And yes we did reimburse the kids for their "donations").

Since this was a soft launch we were not expecting a lot of customers. Still, we made a few sales throughout the day and really enjoyed having friends stop by to peruse the shelves. A few students and visitors to Pocatello also dropped by after we put up the temporary poster board signs. Frankly, with all of the help and the few customers who came through there were a couple times when it seemed downright crowded in there.

Here we are!

So what does it look like with books on the shelves? Beautiful!

Kind of nice huh?

However, there is still a lot to do. We still have two or three pickup truck loads of books to haul from the house to the store. In particular, we have to get the paperbacks on the shelves. Most of what we have are hardbacks and while those shelves look extremely nice what we need now are trade paperback books to fill in the center of the store (so bring your trade-ins!!!!)

Also, we have not yet moved in our collectible books. We've made some really amazing finds in the last week. Some of which will be featured here on this website in the coming days.

Coffee?

What is the connection between books and coffee? Every second person who walked into the shop seemed to ask if we were going to have (or already had) coffee. I kept trying to figure it out. Coffee - books. Nope, they don't sound the same. Don't smell the same either (usually).

Maybe it's that people just associate coffee with comfort and books with comfort. Or possibly folks have just come to expect coffee from bookstores trying to attract customers. Or maybe it's the chairs and tables we set outside for people to sit on and enjoy the beautiful Pocatello late summer evenings.

Unfortunately, there's a problem. You see, coffee is considered a prepared food and there is a licensing requirement with the state necessary for anybody who tries to serve it. Since we're a bookstore and not a coffee shop that could be a real problem. We would have to have health inspections, licensing, and all of those fun signs in the bathroom about employees washing their hands all the time.

In addition, there is also a coffee shop just down the road and we don't want to be in competition with them. We're trying to create a nice little symbiosis in the area and if we start serving up cups of Joe they might get hurt. That's not a nice thing to do to the neighbors...

However, there is still something we can do. According to Idaho law if something is factory sealed it's not considered a prepared food and so the store is not considered a restaurant. So, we have this nice little fridge sitting behind the counter and we'll have a few items in it that the customers can buy if they're thirsty. It's a compromise, but it's still caffeinated!

And who knows? Maybe there will be something else we can do in the near future to help folks get their java fix...

The shelves are done. The counter is built (isn't it pretty?). And after a bit of sanding, staining, a lot of cleaning (sawdust everywhere don't ya' know), and hauling out a pile of extra wood something amazing has begun to appear on the shelves...

Hey! What are those things? This whole project wasn't just about building shelves?

Guess not! That's right folks, we're actually putting the stock in the store and figuring out which shelves will hold which genres. The soft opening is on schedule for Saturday. We're spending all day on Friday pricing books and hauling them to the store where friends and family are going to help put them on the correct shelves and in alphabetical order by author.

I get the feeling that Friday is going to be a looooong day!

A lot has happened in the last couple of days - which is why there haven't been a lot of updates. The sign for the billboard has been ordered using the graphic to the right. However, it will not be in for a week to ten days. That's not really a problem since we decided to use the soft launch to make sure we know what we're doing for the next week or so. Once the sign goes up (and the neon "OPEN" sign goes in the window) there won't be as much room to make mistakes!

Now, before any of you decide to point out that the picture on the sign is clearly not a picture of any place in Pocatello (or Idaho) we'd like to remind you that that's not the point. This is Uptown Books and we wanted a graphic that looked uptown. You history buffs will know that the term "uptown" came from New York. No, it's not a picture of New York either. It's Chicago and it's the only "uptown" feeling city-scape we had full rights to use (since I took the picture). Besides, it looks cool!

So why the yellow and red color scheme? Isn't it a bit garish? Why aren't we using something a little more....well, bookstore like? Because we want the sign to be noticed! All of the business studies done over the last couple of decades have shown that the higher the contrast of your sign the more likely the customer is going to remember you. And nothing is more effective than yellow with black and red lettering.

We've also got our insurance taken care of and been buying all the little niceties needed for a retail store:

Well, that's what happens when I find that I have just too much wood sitting around (even after cutting shelves for both of the back rooms). Now there's enough to play with to make some really nice additions like these wood pillars for the counter. The light in this picture is pretty harsh and the vertical lines where the pillars come together are overstated. In normal lighting they're really pretty.

Oh, by the way, all the hardback shelves are now put together in the main part of the store. Next step, sanding and staining. Then we can start bringing the stock in and putting it on the shelves. Looks like there's a great chance of us having a soft launch next Saturday!

Interest continues to grow in the community. Today I had a nice gentleman stop by and ask, "So what kind of store is this going to be?" When I told him it was a used bookstore he quickly started telling me that we needed to make sure we had coffee and chairs for people to come and sit and enjoy themselves. I let him know that we're already ahead of him...

I've also noticed a few people in their cars look in at all the wood shelves and turn on a big smile. I think they know - even if they don't it's pretty clear that they love the look of all that shelving. I'm starting to think this is going to be a lot of fun!

One of the keys to Uptown Books being a successful business is the software we're using to help us with inventory. Pricing books can be difficult even for those who are well versed - for the average person it can be a nightmare. Fortunately, we have developed some in-house software that will help us ensure that our inventory is properly priced and cataloged.

Now comes the less enviable job of pricing all of those books we've been sitting on for a year. Each book needs to be input into the inventory system and then a price included inside.

Meanwhile, back at the storefront, the construction of shelves for the hardbacks continues. Fortunately, we had some extra help today! Two more sets of shelves are now built and ready for sanding.

One realization came to light today....after two weeks worth of worry and sweating it's pretty obvious now that we have too much wood for the main part of the store shelving! The pile of 2"x8" boards just doesn't seem to go down no matter how many shelves we put up. Part of the reason is that we were given slightly longer boards than we expected and so that has allowed us to build more with less waste. Also, the lumber yard provided us with some extra boards that we were not expecting.

The plan is to not only build the perimeter shelving that we need in the main store but also to build more shelving in the work room. Of course, a table would be nice too. If we find that we still have too much wood then we'll add a few more shelves to the other back room in preparation for future stock.

The paperback shelves are finally complete. They are now properly aligned with 42" between aisles and are (relatively) parallel. Also, they have all been stained. We have a little more cosmetic work we can do on them, but for all intents and purposes they're done!

Not only that, but we've finally begun work on the hardback shelving around the perimeter of the store. The first set of shelves is up and ready for sanding and stain. Unfortunately, the 2"x8" boards are pretty rough and are going to need a power sander to make sure they don't tear up the book jackets. However, that shouldn't be too big of an issue. Below are a couple quick pics.

Fortunately, the hardback shelving seems to be going faster than the paperback shelves. Part of the reason is that we don't need the plywood backing on the hardback shelves to keep the books from pushing through. Also, the 2"x8" boards are sturdy enough to make the frame stable without added support.

We've also had more visitors over the last couple of days! One of the neighboring business owners (a chiropractor) has wandered in a couple times. They're putting their business through a remodel and it looks like their building is going to be really nice when he's done.

Everyone is being extremely complimentary of the look of the store and the shelves. We're also seeing a lot of people driving by each day curiously looking into the shop wondering what's up. Hopefully this means we're starting to generate some buzz...

Oh boy do my hands hurt! Who would have guessed that a 10 hour day with modern power tools could make fingers so sore? I can only imagine what it would have been like with a hand saw, a hammer, and a bucket of nails...

Okay, so when we first started looking at the design for our store we figured that throwing together a "few" shelves for paperbacks would take "a couple days". Uh, huh. Take a look at all of them!

That's definitely more than a couple days worth of work! Each unit (front and back shelves tied together) takes about two hours to build. And that does not include staining them and doing the final work to finish positioning them (see below).

However, it would have taken a lot longer to do had we not been given the chop saw (visible sitting on the floor in the picture below). It's a great tool for quickly cutting through lots of lumber!

As I said above, there's still a lot of work left to do on the paperback shelves. First, we have to adjust the space in the aisles so each aisle is the same width. I could have sworn that it was when we put the tape on the floor but once the shelves went up we found out that we were off quite a bit. We also have to align the shelves so they are truly parallel. Next, all of the units we just built have to be stained. Finally, once the hardback shelves are up, we have to tie them all together.

It's been a bit of a battle to get all of the wood in that we need for so many shelves. First, the lumber yard sold us stock they didn't have. Then we had to beg them to just deliver what they did have. Then we had to go back and get them to deliver it when they promised.

Turns out the guy who actually manages the lumber yard was on vacation for a week and didn't know what was going on. Once he came back into the office he made sure that things were made right. Good thing too! We had used up every piece of wood we had and were at a standstill and about to cancel the order and find another supplier.

Apparently they still had not received their truck in with our order (after a week) so the manager decided to send us the rest of the 1"x6"'s (plus a couple extras) and, since he didn't have any 8' 2"x8"'s he sent us three bunkers of ten footers instead! So how much wood is that?

A lot. On the other hand the 10' boards and the extra 1"x6" boards are really going to be helpful since I only paid for just enough wood to build exactly what we needed. This gives us just a bit of breathing room and maybe enough to put up some shelves in the back work room. Still, that's a large load of wood and so the kids helped me haul it all inside late Wednesday night.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get much work done with it yesterday (Thursday). Seems that when you are opening a store and under a lot of stress you should avoid eating fast food....particularly half-cooked fast food with lots of grease and some stuff in it you're allergic to.

Also, our friend was unable to help out with his chop saw so I just cut up enough 1"x6" boards with my circular saw for a couple more paperback units and then went home to bed.

Yep, a new bookstore in Pocatello near the University! We've decided to make the front page into a blog for the time being so that we can keep everyone posted on our progress.

Lumber!
Things are moving incredibly fast now. Our lease began on the first of the month and we have been ordering wood. Lots of wood... like 4,000 linear feet of wood! For those of you who spend time in lumber yards that's about six bunkers of lumber. Half of it is in 1"x6"s and the other half in 2"x8"s. There's also a lot of plywood for the paperback shelves.

As it arrives we throw together the shelves as fast as we can. We still have thousands of books to stock, a sign to put up (we got the billboard on the roof with our lease!), and there's even more to do before we put up the open sign...

Here are a few pics from the first five days of construction:

This is a quick view of the interior with the shelves marked out on the floor with tape. The center three units will hold paperbacks while shelves along the outside walls will hold the hardbacks. The counter is over by the front door. One of our biggest concerns was keeping the shop open and comfortable. Too many bookstores are crammed so tight with third-hand shelving that it's nearly impossible to walk down the aisles. We not only wanted our customers to be able to walk around freely, but also to be able to pass each other. Even more importantly wanted to be sure that the disabled can move easily through our store. Fortunately, even our bathroom is ADA accessible!

This is the view north up 4th street. We've found a wonderful location! Albertson's is one block up on the left (behind the white pickup). To the east is a bagel shop, a coffee shop, and a sandwich shop. And to the Southeast, one block away, is the Idaho State University campus. 4th street has been a huge morale boost for us as we watch cars stream by all day!

Construction begins! We started building the center paperback shelving units first (we didn't have wood for anything else). Fortunately, we have the help of a professional cabinet maker (there will be a post on him later). The paperback units are made of 1" x 6" boards with a plywood backing.

Here are a few of the units completed. The next step is to stand them up and place them back-to-back.

Of course, the whole family pitches in on this project. The two older children (Jonah and Selah) help carry boards and keep things clean. The two younger ones (Lucas and Silas) add comic relief and Trish keeps everybody in line.

Here's a completed run of shelving with four units on the front and four units on the back. They are all tied together for stability. When we are through they will be tied into the shelving along the outside walls so that the entire store becomes one solid unit.

And this is what they look like with a light stain and sealant on them. We wanted to keep the natural color of the wood, but still bring out the grain. What do you think?

With all of the hammering, nailing, cutting, power drills, and wood chips oldest son Jonah got into the spirit of things and built our first sign. The sign reads "Stop! Books" and measures about 2"x2". It sitting in our west window now.