The Joy of Pride and the State of the Shop

East Side Pride has been one of my favourite days of the year since I arrived in Vancouver in 2016. Performance, consciousness-raising, community mourning and solidarity and joy, at a human scale in a people-friendly location. Last Saturday was our second time vending at East Side Pride and the kindly welcome from everyone was just the same, only more so! Thank you, neighbours and friends, for every encouraging word. Thank you for talking us up to your folk--so many people said, "Hey, I've heard of you! I've been meaning to come in and see your shop!' Thank you for buying books, especially from our author and artist guests. Thank you for bringing your whole selves to the gathering and letting us celebrate with you. Thank you for supporting us. We can't wait to meet up with you again in Grandview Park for Dyke March, on 3 August!

Speaking of support, we are now going to call on you to support us in a specific way. Many of you regularly ask how you can help us (really, you are just the best humans and I am routinely misty-eyed at all the kindness you bring in this door with you), so this is a response to that as well as to the State of the Shop. Which is--

--holding on. Just. June is on target to be down about 25% from May, after two months of nearly reaching our goals for sustainable operation. [Note: Edited to update figure from prevoius estimate of 20%.]

So of course Your Data-Driven Bookseller sits down and does the math and looks at all the graphs, figuring out what they tell us about What's Working and how we can do More Of That, Thank You. And what they tell us pretty consistently is we need more of you lovely folks. Here's how it's looking:

1. About 8 out of every 10 visitors to the shop makes a purchase. Especially for a place of our modest scale, that's astounding. The average "conversion rate" across all retail categories is about 25%, so for 80% of people who walk in the door to choose to spend their book money here is massive. This tells us we're getting the right books, and connecting them with the right people.

2. Our average sale is a respectable $33--that's 1 new book or 2-4 used books, or a stack of stickers, for every person who spends money here.

3. We have been seeing fewer people. We know why, in at least some cases:

- As genocides rage and the economy gets harsher, even our biggest fans are reducing their spending. This means you. We see you making the same decisions we do every time we go to the grocery store or pay our utility bills. We get up every day feeling like we have rocks in our chests, weighing on our hearts as bombs keep falling on our siblings in Palestine. We know you're sending some of your budget to UNRWA and Operation Olive Branch and other orgs struggling to help. We know that's what you're doing with your money. We can't begrudge it or dream of asking you to do any differently. That's just what needs to happen right now.

- The developer building the new apartment block two doors over from us still frequently closes the sidewalk without warning. A couple of weeks ago, our neighbour from Games on the Drive popped their head in and asked how the day's closure had affected us, and that was the first I heard of being closed that day. It explained why I had seen only three people all afternoon!

- We still haven't saved up enough to get the big sign we planned for the front of the building. Your Eager Bookseller went over budget getting new books when we first opened, and that was the thing sacrificed. It's still on the list, just not first on the list. So some folks are still having a hard time spotting us, or think we're not open.

What we need to do to get this place self-sustaining is connect with more people like you. Folks who cherish queer space and make a point of seeking it out, even when the construction and traffic are really annoying. Folks who treasure books and especially queer books, and the experience of being in a bookstore. Folks who love meeting and supporting queer authors and artists. Folks who, when they want a book, choose places like this to get it from. And we can't think of a better way to celebrate both Pride season and the first year of being your bookseller, than to make a bunch of new friends. So send us your beloveds, your darling buds, your favourite people, and we'll give all of you some queer booky love!

This Pride season, from today until the end of Vancouver Pride on 4 August, we're offering a special for every person who creates a new account on our website, and every person who refers a new supporter. New customers will receive a promo code good for 25% off their first online order (the whole order) placed any time through 4 August. And when they place their order and name the friend who referred them to us, we'll give that excellent friend the same promo code! New accounts will receive instructions on sharing their referral along with their promo code.

Thank you, beauties, for all your help. I'll be back with you soon to update you on plans for our first anniversary and a long-delayed zine launch! Keep well--

Nena