Betsy Burton is the owner of The King’s English Bookshop in Salt Lake City. The bookstore will celebrate its 35th birthday Sept. 10. Betsy is also the author of “The King’s English: Adventures of an Independent Bookseller.” The following is a transcript of her interview with Cracking the Cover.
How did you get started with the bookstore in the first place?
I was renting an office where the old main room was, where the fiction room is now, and I was working on a terrible novel. I talked my friend Ann Burman into renting the office next door. We used to have coffee every morning — the way that writers always do when they’re trying to avoid writing — and we talked about there not being a store where you could just go and browse and sit and sip coffee or tea and talk about books. Sam Weller’s is a wonderful bookstore, but it wasn’t the kind that we had in mind. What we wanted was our fantasy bookstore. So we talked and talked and then we thought, ‘You know, we could actually do this and then write in the back room and come out when the bell tinkled.’ That was our idea.
How long did that last, writing in the back room?
Oh, a day. Not even a day.
The funny thing was the way we ordered the books, because we knew nothing about the book business. I mean I had worked at Sam Weller’s for a few months when I was in college, but I was doing inventory control and was out on the floor. I didn’t know how the business was run.
At that time we had ‘Books in Print,’ and there were three volumes of authors. So we read all three volumes. We had little notecards and every time we came across an author we knew we wanted in the store, we’d choose all the titles and make cards for them, and we put them in a shoebox and that’s how we ordered.
How long before The King’s English really became part of the community?
Well at first it had to become a serious business. We had to learn how to organize accounts payable and really how to do everything. That took a year or two. And then Ann got sick; she had really bad back problems. So after three years, I ran it on my own for the next nine years or so. Then I had a child with special needs, and I really couldn’t do it on my own anymore so I brought in a partner at that point.
How long it took to become part of the community? First we became part of the neighborhood. It was kind of a run-down neighborhood back then, but it was still a walkable neighborhood.
The first thing that came in kind of on our heels was Smokey’s Records, they moved in next door. And then Brackman’s Bagels opened up, and they were fabulous. People used to line up down the street and around the block to get in there, it was so wonderful.
I bought the building at one point about a year or two in. Afterward, we remodeled the back end, which became Afterwards and subsequently Fresco.
Bit-by-bit. I think what happens with local businesses is that if one comes and kind of gets people a little excited, then that looks good to the next local business. So then they move in and that gets more people excited. And it begins to build, and unfortunately the economics of what then happens is that chains come sniffing around. Once that happens, the landlords get delusions of grandeur about the rent they can charge. And then the local businesses that build up the area get priced out.
I mortgaged my house and bought the building and subsequently it’s the thing that’s saved us over and over again. I couldn’t afford the rent around there now. Bookstores have a very small margin, and you really can’t afford a high rent. It’s allowed us to stay in business, the fact that I own the building.
You’ve extended the building as time’s passed; it’s gotten bigger and bigger.
First of all it was a front room, and we had a bench and a little cash box. At the time that I bought the building, we expanded. … When I later brought my partner in, we bought the gas station next door and her husband remodeled what’s now the nature room and made that to connect the two, and that’s now the whole building.
It’s kind of a funny way to do things, but it’s kind of an organic way to do things. We grew organically as we could afford to. We never got grandiose and took out a giant loan and had to pay the loan back. In retrospect, that’s actually a good way to grow a business — although I don’t think I did it out of any great wisdom, I think it’s just the way it happened. I think a lot of people make the mistake of getting really excited and overextending and then they can’t service the loans. So I feel like in hindsight, it was a good way to do it.
You had been writing since before this all happened. Had you always wanted to write?
Yes, I always wanted to write. And finally after, I don’t know, 25 years in the book business, I did write a book called ‘The King’s English’ about the book business. Not only a book, but it has lists at the end of each chapter of all our favorite books. It really is a book about the book business and books in general and about small business. And now I’m working on a novel that has, you know all novels are in part autobiographical, so the main character owns a bookstore and has a special needs kid.
When you were writing before the bookstore did you have another job or had you gone to school and known you were going to go into writing?
I always wanted to be a writer. That’s what I wanted to do. I’d worked in advertising and hadn’t much cared for it. I had my daughter when I was 23 or 24, and I got divorced. I was a single mother, and I just didn’t think I should go back to work until she was in grade school. When she was in grade school, that’s when I was renting that office and writing, and that’s when we opened the bookstore. It was great. She went to Uintah and could walk over to the bookstore. It truly was a neighborhood, is a neighborhood. We’ve actually seen second generations bring their kids into the store. Kids who came in baby buggies when they were little are now bringing in their kids. It’s quite wonderful.
How have you managed to survive with chains and e-readers?
Local First.
When the chains came in, bigger was better, and everybody thought it was wonderful. And we thought, ‘Oh our customers are so loyal they’re not going to leave.’ And then our business, which had been up 28 percent every year, flattened, and then it started to go down. We thought, ‘I guess they’re not so loyal after all.’
That’s when six of us got together and started Vest Pocket. … We worked hard for many years, and then we finally decided that even though a business alliance was very helpful to businesses, what we really needed was an educational outreach. We needed to reach way beyond businesses. We needed to reach the public. We needed the public and government to really understand that we were not only important to their community; we were vital to their economy. …
That’s when we started local first. We’ve been working for seven years now. First with government, and they really totally understand now. They’re making neighborhood districts that are about local and giving us grants. We tested our own local business in this study, and we’re even better than the city average. Really, if you shop locally, you return practically everything. …
We’re very grateful to the people who are loyal. We knew from the time the chains came that this was the only thing that would save us. But we didn’t know how to convince people. We didn’t know how to communicate this. Over the years, people have become kind of converts to this idea that local first is important. When I was growing up, people would protest the war in Vietnam. Now, they’re volunteering for local. They’re volunteering for this movement because it’s something they really see as vital to the future. So that’s very exciting.
Has that save you from the e-reader?
The e-reader is a whole different story. You know books, in whatever fashion are going to be around. Print books are my love, but e-books are fine, too. The trick is, you should buy them locally. There’s no reason you can’t buy e-books from The King’s English — we sell e-books. In the beginning Amazon had a 90 percent monopoly on e-books. Their devices are proprietorial. … This fall we’re going to start carrying our own device. … The problem with Amazon is they’re just using this as a loss leader because our customers have a fair amount of money and sell more digital equipment. … It’s just sickening and commercial. …
The publishers started an agency plan, which instead of being what we are in all other ways, you know retailers, we became agents, and everybody could buy at the same discount. So suddenly Amazon couldn’t discount. Now everyone was on a level playing field since the chains first came. With e-books we were on a level playing field with everybody else. The DOJ decided that six publishers had colluded to do this, and not only did they visit a punitive settlement on the three publishers that settled, which is fine, people collude, but what they made as the price for this was doing away with the agency, not allowing these publishers to participate. So instead of punishing the publishers, they were publishing everybody but Amazon. …
The whole book business is up in the air because of the DOJ decision. Otherwise, sure e-books have changed things but they don’t have to change the fact that books need to be chosen and edited. The thing that hits the best-seller list isn’t a measure of a good book. The book business is far more complicated than that.
Before the DOJ thing had come about, had you seen success with your e-books?
Yes. It was starting to change, and it still is. More and more people are buying e-books. It’s still a small part of our business but a growing part of our business. It’s very important for us. Most of our customers are book people who might buy e-books so they can take them on vacation so they don’t have to take 12 books or because they want to give their mother-in-law something where they can magnify the print. There are all kinds of reasons why it’s good to do that. So we still want to sell them their books but to sell the e-books that they want, too. Whether it’s an audiobook or a paperback or a hardback or a picture book for kids or an e-book, we want to be able to give them the books they want. That’s our job. That allows us to say, ‘You’ve got to see this book. You can’t miss it.’ … This is what we love to do.
You’re known in Salt Lake As the place where authors do their launch parties or they just want to be at your store. How did that evolve?
I think it started because of all the authors I met in other ways. When I read ‘The House of the Spirits’ I just fell so madly in love, I was just stunned. So I wrote Isabel Allende a fan letter. I had no idea that she answered all her fan letters. So when she answered mine, I thought, ‘Oh isn’t this nice,’ and sent her another one. She answered it and pretty soon we had a correspondence. I met her at a BEA after that had been going on for a number of years, and she agreed to come to the store. … She’s been coming ever since. She must have been the store eight times. She’s just so loyal and wonderful. … She came and we did a good job with her, and so the publisher sent somebody else. … People at first came because I or someone else at the store had made a personal connection. That’s how it happened. And then over time, as the publishers saw how well we could do with major authors, they started to understand that we knew what we were doing, and they put us and Salt Lake on the grid. So now they’re sending us all kinds of people.
You have the dream job.
Oh I do. I have the dream job. How could you have a better life than this? You get to talk to people who sell you books — the reps come three times a year and they get to know your bookstore so they’re not trying to sell you things you don’t want, and they’re just excited as we are, they’re book people. So we’re yammering on about books, and then I’m out on the floor yammering on to customers, and they’re yammering to me. I learn more from my customers than they learn from me. They’ve always got something I haven’t heard of that I want to read. And that’s what we do all day every day. It’s really just amazing, and then you go home and read books at night.
Is there a book from your childhood that resonated with you?
“Smoky the Cowhorse,” by Will James. I just loved horses from the time that I could even think about anything. … I read all horse books, but for some reason, “Smoky” just struck a chord with me. I don’t know why. I also liked Nancy Drew. I think I was always kind of a nascent feminist even when I was 6. I liked those mysteries because she was very independent.
Is there anything else you want people to know?
I would never say people shouldn’t shop in chains or online. I would just ask that they think before they spend their money. It may be that they’re in such a tight place in their day that they don’t have time to go shopping. They could still do it online with us. But you know, there are times when you just make a decision based on convenience. Just think before you do it so you don’t make that decision all the time. It doesn’t take much. If you give us 10 percent more than what you have been giving us, that might be the difference between survival and going out of business.
Not that we’re in that place. Actually, honestly, the first six months of this year, our business is up 12 percent. It isn’t just us. This is true of independent bookstores across the country. Not all of them. It’s a shift in mindset. It’s making a huge difference.
We have to start them young. That’s another thing. Read to your children from before you even have them. You can read to your belly. Make books a part of their life because then they will always be a part of their life and there is nothing that can give people a better foundation than that.