Business at the store has picked up as the weather has improved- April’s weather was not conducive to casual bookstore visits and browsing. We announced our plans for Titles @Table 40 a couple of weeks ago and the event is already sold out. It involves a family style dinner provided by the Fraser Café , followed by readings and discussions by authors; in this case by Sandra Gulland on her book “The Shadow Queen” and Anne Fortier on “The Lost Sisterhood”. We have another dinner lined up for June which will be announced shortly. Given the popularity of the first event, we are already planning for a fall season.
Another new item on our calendar is the return of Story Time for Children in the store on Saturday mornings once a month. The first is on May 10 at 10.00 a.m. featuring Tammie Winsor author of “Jack and the Fairy Dogmother”. The next will be on June 14th. This is a great opportunity for parents to do a bit of book browsing in relative peace!
We have an intern from the Carleton University Sprott School of Business who is going to work this summer on customer and marketing aspects of the Bookstore. Yinning Lu is an MBA student from China who is anxious to get some practical experience. She will be carrying out an on-line customer survey (to our mailing list) to find out about our customers and their interests and how their experience in the store could be improved. I hope that you will help her if she approaches you. Yinning will also be carrying out some in store interviews as part of the project. We look forward to seeing her results and adjusting our marketing efforts to better serve you.