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(upbeat music) - Welcome to Business Forward.

I'm your host, Matt George.

Joining me tonight, Mary Beth Nebel.

Mary Beth is the owner of I know You Like a Book in Peoria Heights.

Welcome Mary Beth.

- Thank you for having me.

- Well, we're glad you're here.

Before we get to business, which is books.

I love it.

Let's talk about you.

Are you originally from here?

- I actually am from Chicago.

I moved to Peoria about 32 years ago.

- Okay and so you were an attorney before you were a bookstore owner, right?

- Yes, yes, I moved here to join the legal department at RLI Insurance Company.

- Well, RLI is not only a great supporter of our show here, but a great supporter of our community and they do so much here, so that is cool.

So a little side note, so as an attorney for RLI, what was some of the functions that you did there?

- Well, I was the general counsel, so I was the head of the law department.

And did corporate work and insurance regulatory work.

- [Matt] Okay, sounds fun.

- It was.

- [Matt] That is cool.

- It was intense at times.

And that's one of the reasons that I decided after a while that I wanted to go into the book industry.

I had the opportunity when I was at RLI to talk to some of the greatest legal minds in the nation.

And after a long day of depositions or working on a case or whatever, you'd go out to dinner and I'd asked everybody, well, what'd you read on the plane coming over here?

And all of a sudden the conversation just took a whole other turn and people were engaged and animated and alive, and really wanted to talk about what they were reading.

And after awhile I decided that's what I want to do.

That's what I want to be a part of.

- That's pretty cool.

So, you're sitting in New York, let's say, and you're talking to an exec and you're trying to figure out where that conversation's going.

I think we've all been there right in business conversations.

And that is a real interesting way of putting it.

By talking about a hobby or learning, however you want to look at it, actually turned the conversation into the night, really.

- Really and yeah, I do believe it's more than a hobby for most people.

I'd call it a passion.

- [Matt] Okay.

- And it feeds so much of who you are, whether it's your intellect, whether it's your imagination.

We have a bulletin board in the store and every year we ask a question and people can write their answer on the bulletin board, like, what's your favorite book?

Who's your favorite author?

This year, we put on there the power of a book is.

- [Matt] The power of a book is.

- And one of my customers wrote on there, guided passion.

- [Matt] Oh wow, that's strong.

- And it was very strong.

And for about 10 minutes, he lectured everybody that was in the store about what that meant.

And it was absolutely fascinating.

His theory about passion being neutral, but a book guides that passion in you towards some end result.

And it was just fascinating.

And that's the sort of experience that you have, particularly in an independent bookstore.

- Yeah and I guess you get a lot of interesting people in there and being a boutique store, so to speak, you're able to talk to these people.

Some could be collectors, some could do it for passion, love of reading, whatever the reason is, but you see so many different types of people come in.

I bet you, you hear and get to have a lot of fun conversations during the day.

- I do, I do, that's the real joy of being there.

- That is awesome.

So you're in Peoria Heights.

- Yes.

- And you've been there about 15 years?

- Yes.

- And, are you an entrepreneur at heart?

Because now that I know that you're an attorney, I mean, you could do many different things being an attorney, having your law degree, right?

- Yes, yes, I could.

The bookstore really opened my eyes though.

And when I worked at RLI, if I had a marketing problem, I'd go to the marketing department.

If I had a problem with my computer, I'd go to IT.

Now it's like, if you're an entrepreneur, you're doing it all yourself, or you've got to know someone to call to get it done.

So that's a whole different world.

- Are you the only employee or do you have?

- I have one assistant who's been with me since the store opened, Cindy Baker.

She is wonderful.

She's loyal as the day is long, flexible with her hours.

Her reading is different than mine and it really compliments what we can do for customers in terms of recommendations and knowledge of books, so it really works out well.

- You know, personally, what's interesting is about 10 years ago, I went on a mission of saying, I'm gonna read a book a week, that's true story.

- [Mary Beth] Wow.

- And I did for a solid year and I actually stacked the books up and I read a whole year.

And I said, wow, this is intense.

I don't think I can do this, this upcoming year, but it did put me in a mode, so to speak, of wanting to constantly get better, wanting to constantly learn and wanting to constantly have a book by my side.

And it's interesting because that was a decade ago, maybe even a little longer.

And personally, I sit here and I probably read every day now.

- [Mary Beth] That's great.

- Sometimes it's small, sometimes it's an article or a snippet and I'll get to that in a little later, my real opinion on that.

But I read a lot about leadership, a lot about business, and you just go through these waves of what you like and then you get bored sometimes with a topic and so on.

So do you see that with a lot of customers coming in or if somebody likes mysteries as an example, do they come in and just for the past 15 years are just always looking for mysteries or do they stray?

- I think for the most part, people do tend to stay in their comfort zone.

- [Matt] Okay.

- And then every once in a while they'll do a stretch and that's one of the things I think we're there to help with.

If someone likes, let's say, a mystery and they've read all the more popular authors, you know, sometimes we can say, hey, have you ever tried so and so, who's, you know, really never quite made it to the best seller list, but they're really good.

- [Matt] Okay.

- So we can do that, yeah.

- So I was gonna ask you, you kind of alluded to what made you get into the business, but as your career at RLI was winding down, did you have other things in your mind that you were going to do and were they a second career or entrepreneurial mindset?

I mean, where were you at?

- I'm not sure.

The way this came about really was actually, I was in a book club and we were talking in the book club about how there weren't that really many great bookstores in the Peoria area at the time.

- [Matt] Right, right.

- So yeah, I am a single mom.

My son was just about finished with college and it was just time for me to try something different.

And when that came up, I started talking and decided that, yeah, let's try it, so.

- So do you like to write yourself, are you an author so to speak?

- (clears throat) Excuse me.

No.

- [Matt] Okay.

- But that's not to say that I don't like to write, I do.

- [Matt] Okay.

- But that's one of those things that's kind of on the horizon too.

Like maybe someday I'll actually put pen to paper myself, or fingers to typewriting keys.

- I mean, you could write a book on owning a bookstore because of all the people that come in.

- [Mary Beth] And people have.

- Okay, that's cool.

I always thought that someone like you, when I went into your business, I looked around, I said, okay, this is pretty cool, and when I looked around, I thought, you know, to be in this business before I knew the RLI part, I said, you have to be a scholar almost because I wrote down, it's more than a passion.

It's a constant learning.

Your brain's constantly moving.

Is that how it is with you in this business?

- Yes, I think so, yeah.

And you know, I pride myself.

We have new and used books both and the used books are basically whatever comes in the door, and people have been very generous.

We don't buy from the general public.

They just come in and say, you know, I'm cleaning out my attic, I'm downsizing, whatever, here take my books and sell them, which is a real blessing.

It really helps the bottom line.

With the new books though, every independent bookseller will tell you, they are a curator.

Now they decide what they're going to order.

What sort of books they think their basic customer base would like to read.

And it's been a real learning curve doing that selection.

And, you know, it's based on books I've read, reviews, book reviews.

I get the New York Times every week, read through the whole book review section there.

I'm in the American Booksellers Association, which has all sorts of recommendations.

And customers, customers will come in and say, you know, I've read this, is there something that's close to that that I'd like, but have you also read this author?

And that starts the whole conversation.

And that gives me the ideas on what I should order for new books for the store.

- I've always been curious, an author like Patterson, as an example, who seems like he has a new book every two weeks, and I know he has, I don't know if they're called ghost writers or coauthors, I guess maybe is a better term, but how does an author like that, is it because the need is there and there's always a demand for his type of books that he churns them that fast that he sells them?

I don't understand how somebody like a DeMille, as an example, will put out a book once every couple years.

- [Mary Beth] Yeah.

- But Patterson seems like he puts one out tomorrow and next Wednesday.

- First of all, I'm going to say right upfront, James Patterson has done so much for the independent bookstores.

- [Matt] Oh neat, okay.

- He's fantastic, so I'm never gonna say a bad word about him.

- Okay, I like him.

I just can't figure out the theory on how an author looks at distributing or writing.

I mean, it's almost like it's non-stop with a guy like Patterson.

- My understanding is that he used to be an executive in the advertising industry and so is an expert in terms of marketing.

- [Matt] Oh, okay.

- That's one of it.

In terms of the writing, I heard him speak at some convention one time and he was pretty funny.

He stood up and he said, yes, I write my own books.

- [Matt] Oh that's funny.

- So he knows that there's this rumor out there that he just, you know, has other people do it, but, you know, I'm sure that there's lots of help with that in terms of editing and filling in or whatever.

But yeah, and he found what people liked.

It's as simple as that.

- He did, he found an niche.

I mean, he sells a lot of books, that's pretty cool.

So how are things let's just talk- - [Mary Beth] In fact, he's doing one with Dolly Parton now.

- [Matt] Is he?

- Yeah, it just came out, I think last week or the book didn't come out, they made the announcement.

- [Matt] Oh, that's cool.

- Yeah.

- Oh, that'll be fun.

Yeah, he's a beast when it comes to just authors.

I mean, he puts out a lot of good stuff, so I just didn't know how he did it.

All right, so let's talk about just, not only your business, but independent book owners of business across the country.

I mean, how does that look when you're fighting against, I don't know if fighting is the right word, but that's my word.

You're going up against Amazon.

- [Mary Beth] Right.

- You're going against barnesandnoble.com and Barnes and Noble the monster store.

Like how does it look for the future of stores like this?

- For a while there I think it was bleak to put it bluntly.

We've lately in the past, I want to say three, four years have seen actually an increase in independent bookstores.

I think that people are, particularly with COVID and the shutdown, people are figuring out the value of an independent bookstore.

You know, that's not to say that during COVID, there was an increase in book sales, overall, people needed something to do.

They started reading again, but most of those sales did come from Amazon.

- [Matt] Wow.

- Now, and Amazon, as I can never say enough good things about Patterson, I could never say enough bad things about Amazon.

That's how they started their whole operation was the discounting books.

And I would call it de-valuing books truthfully.

- Well, that's a good way of putting it because an author takes pride in what they put out too.

- Yeah.

- But also they realize if I'm selling a thousand books instead of 200 and that, you know, their names out there and so on, so I see it both ways.

But, well, here, you've got a new customer.

I'm now a new customer.

And I'm pretty sure after people watching this show that you'll have some other new customers too.

So when you look at like Borders and they haven't been around for awhile, but how does a store like that not make it?

Was that because a Barnes and Noble strategy or whatever was so strong that they just kind of overtook it?

Because it seemed like all of the small bookstores still stayed out, still stayed on the fringe, still did their business, still did okay, some good, some bad, but Barnes and Noble became the king, but there's only one king, this is pre-Amazon.

Is that how you look at it?

Or like, how does a store like that work?

I'm trying to figure that piece out.

- Well, I think the difference is like, we'll go back to Patterson again.

I typically only order his new books if someone does a special request for it.

- [Matt] Okay.

- Because I believe whether it's Barnes and Noble or Kroger or Target or Amazon.

- [Matt] Yeah, I wasn't thinking Target, yeah.

- They're gonna get those books in and immediately discount them.

I can't compete on that level.

So my niche, my strong point for my store is to get in and focus on the books that wouldn't necessarily come to the general public's interest in those other areas.

It's a huge, I mean, I can't give you numbers on how many books are published per day, but it's a lot.

And there's no, you know, other than Amazon, and even with Amazon, no one can have all the books in their operation at one time, so.

- Right, right.

So, let's say somebody buys, we just keep giving Patterson a lot of pub, but let's just keep that because he comes out with a lot of books.

So they sell a book on Amazon.

Patterson sells a book at Barnes and Noble.

There's a lot of fans out there that like someone like that, they like their authors.

So they buy the book, they read the book.

A lot of people don't keep books.

They do drop them off.

So then you could sometimes get a fairly new book, maybe a year old and still be able to get that book maybe donated and then resell it for X, right?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

So there is some advantage here and there because it could turn the bottom line to your advantage if someone was in that mode.

- Yeah.

- So do you market that way?

Do you have your set core of people, if you have any extra books lying around?

Or do you just wait for people to come in?

- No, I just wait.

You know, in fact, typically starting this time we actually tell people that we don't take things because we get so many in and then with Christmas stock and things, we just don't have the storage a lot, so it's all a balance.

- Yeah, what do you see the future of printed books?

Are they always gonna be there?

- I believe so.

- [Matt] I think so, too.

- In fact, it was fairly interesting.

I was speaking with a woman about a week ago, who used to be in a book club that would meet at my store.

And after COVID they didn't meet there.

But she said that out of all the women in the group, and I don't know, there's maybe nine or 10 of them, eight of them were reading electronically before COVID and she said now every one of them reads from a regular book.

- [Matt] Great segue.

- Yeah.

- Because I cannot read anything electronically.

I can read an article, but I cannot sit here and say, okay, here's a book, here's the Nook or whatever it is and sit there and go like this, like I'm on my phone.

It's not fun.

There's fun in reading a book.

- [Mary Beth] Exactly.

- There's not fun in reading an iPad or whatever it is.

- Yeah, yeah, it's the tactile, it's the smell of a book.

- [Matt] It's everything.

- It's the ability to wander through, as you like.

- Bend the page, come back to it, you know.

- [Mary Beth] Don't bend the page.

(laughs) No, go right ahead.

- No, I'm just teasing.

Personally, I can't read a newspaper online either.

And so I go back to growing up and my dad would read the newspapers and get magazines and do it.

And I still love getting the papers and getting and holding the newspaper.

Even though it's like holding it smaller now it seems like, but are there a lot of people like that that maybe are our age that sit here and go, I still love the book?

But then you look at like my younger daughters and stuff, they don't really have books, it's crazy.

- Now, I'm gonna differ with you on that.

- [Matt] Okay.

- And that's probably the most refreshing thing that I've seen in my bookstore.

I get in the 20-somethings.

And the first thing they ask me is where's your classic section?

- [Matt] Oh wow, that's awesome.

- Yeah, it's wonderful.

But I see a real resurgence in younger people wanting to read classic books.

- Well maybe my daughters just need to come to your store.

- Sure.

- Well, what is a box store, like a Barnes and Noble look like three, five, ten years down?

Can they compete with the Amazons?

- Oh, I think that that was Borders' demise was Amazon.

- [Matt] Oh, okay.

- I really do.

Barnes and Noble, I know they've had some corporate issues that may have impacted, but I don't see why not.

You know, I haven't been in one in a while.

And I like to travel and every time I travel, I do go to bookstores.

- I was gonna ask you that.

So, when you travel, do you go to bookstores like yours?

- [Mary Beth] Yeah, independent, small, little.

- So, you Google independent small bookstores, boom, oh that one looks cool.

- Yeah, I was just at Rhino Books in Nashville, Tennessee last week.

- [Matt] All right.

- I got five books, but usually when I go there, I look for out-of-print books, you know, authors that I follow, that I know I can't order their books.

And if you go to a used bookstore, you can definitely pick some up, so it was pretty cool.

- That's cool, that's cool, so you don't go into a Barnes and Noble and kind of scope and see what they're doing, because it's really not, I mean it is your business, but it's not your model.

- Right and the last time I was there, sorry, it's what it's going to say before, like, I don't know if it's still like this, but it was, I would say a third toys.

- I don't get that.

I do get it because they have to try it out of their revenue streams, but it is a different store.

- Right, yeah, than it used to be.

- It's a bakery, it's a coffee shop.

It's a toy store, it's a calendar store.

- Yeah and we have some sidelines, you know, that are, I think, more book-related.

- [Matt] Like bookmarks and things like that.

- Right, right.

- Yeah, I got you.

So, I want to read this review that someone wrote, and this person was from the east coast, but I always think it's neat to read what someone else says outside of your community.

And this person wrote, this is a gem of a bookstore.

There aren't many small independent bookstores left in this country.

There's fewer that have the kind of wonderful, friendly, knowledgeable staff as I Know You Like a Book.

It takes creative, innovative thinking to even have a chance to survive in today's bookstore environment.

This store has an abundance.

- Oh my goodness.

- [Matt] Isn't that cool?

- It is, where'd you find that?

- [Matt] I Googled it, I found it, I did my homework on you.

- Oh wow.

- But I love stuff like that because, I'll email this to you, - [Mary Beth] Thank you.

- But I love stuff like this because it's not somebody that's a friend of yours saying, oh, I love your place.

Well, of course you do, you're my buddy, right?

You do book signings, I love that.

So are there any upcoming book signings here in the fourth quarter of this year, like holiday time?

Because this is a great time for gifts when you're looking at holiday and book signings.

I like autographed books and things like that, so that's fun.

- Yeah, up until COVID of course, that kind of changed everything, - [Matt] Yeah it did.

- But we would do local author signings typically about twice a month.

- [Matt] Okay.

- And on a Saturday and we've just started that up again.

And I think we've got one coming up in October, but we've just had about three or four of them.

And, you know, people come in and they're so excited and you know, I've just written this book.

Will you carry it on your shelf?

And I say, well, what we're gonna do is start off with a book signing.

And that way we could see what the level of interest is.

And then I can determine if I could carry it, you know, in the store.

- [Matt] Well, that's cool.

- So, yeah and it's always fun.

You know, the guarantee is you may not sell any books.

You may sell 50 books.

No one known knows, but it's an opportunity for them to talk about their books with customers and get that feeling going, so it's fun.

- Right, are book clubs still popular?

- That's another thing, before COVID we had four book clubs that would meet on a monthly basis at the store and two or three others that would come in, maybe once, twice a year.

Now we're down to one.

So I think maybe book clubs are still around, but they're not meeting in public places, I think.

- I got you, well you've seen Peoria Heights grow.

- Yeah.

- What does Peoria Heights and what does the community mean to you?

- It's fantastic.

And there is so much community support and the Height seems to reinvent itself every few years.

- [Matt] They do.

- Yeah, with new things or new ideas.

And it's really a good place to be.

I mean, it was a great spot to find.

- Well, yeah and you know, all of the new restaurants that brings more foot traffic.

And here's what's cool about the Heights, is not just the restaurants that is what kind of drives some things, but stores like yours are plentiful down there.

So if you go down and they're all these little boutique stores and you go down and each one of them has something unique and cool about it as you go down and the frame shop.

And what I like about it is they have local artists.

It has that local feel that a lot of places don't have.

- It does, it really does.

And yeah, that sense of community is so important.

- Well, I love it, I love your store.

I'm coming in.

Thank you for everything that you do.

We appreciate it.

- Oh, thank you.

- Yeah, thanks for coming on.

I'm Matt George and this is another episode of Business Forward.

(upbeat music) - Thank you for tuning into Business Forward, brought to you by PNC.