"Oh, we got the new Jim Harrison?" Kellachan beams, pausing to pick up a book on her way to the door. "The cover is gorgeous. I'm glad we got five of them."
"The holiday season is our busiest retail month. You want everyone to buy books, but you also want to have every book on the shelves," she explains, walking past Golden Notebook's award-winning window display (drawings by Thorneater Comics' Will Lytle) and crossing the street to the Garden Café. "Every year there's some big book that's the gift book everyone wants, and you don't know what it'll be."
Three winters ago, Kellachan had no clue about book sales patterns. An epidemiologist by training, she had not worked in retail, much less run a risky business like a small independent bookstore. The economy was in shambles, and alarmists touted the coming extinction of bookstores (if not printed books) as online retail and e-books eroded their turf.
It wasn't just smoke-blowing: More than 500 independent bookstores closed between 2002 and 2011. But a counter-narrative started emerging as veteran booksellers found ways to boost business with in-store cafes, online ordering, Kobo e-readers, author events, and community outreach, while a new generation stepped in to launch start-ups. Kellachan remembers reading a 2010 New York magazine piece about second-wave Brooklyn bookstores like Greenlight and Word, whose owners found creative ways to finance with grants and investors.
She'd been working in New York City public health for nearly two decades, researching the spread of SARS, West Nile virus, and an outbreak of mumps in Brooklyn's Hasidic community; her husband Paul McMenemy was in finance. They'd owned a home in Bearsville since 1997, moving upstate full-time after their third son was born. (Cole is now 9; his brothers Lucian and Caleb 11 and 12.)
While raising three children, Kellachan continued consulting part-time, eventually taking a full-time job at the New York State Board of Health in Albany. She loved her work ("There's nothing more interesting—and sometimes horrifying—than how a disease breaks out, and I was telling that story in lots of detail"), but the daily commute was a strain.
An avid reader since childhood, when she rode her bike to the Larchmont Public Library, Kellachan was distressed to learn that Shapiro and Samuels were selling their beloved bookstore. Golden Notebook had weathered hard times—sales dropped by 50 percent between 2002 and 2006, as Barnes & Noble opened a big-box franchise in Kingston, and Amazon's ruthless price-cutting lured more and more readers online—but Shapiro was ill, and they needed a buyer. McMenemy and Kellachan met with them, and within a few weeks, they had "a handshake deal."
"We stuck our necks way out," Kellachan says. "It was really like jumping into a fire. I knew nothing about bookselling."
But she was determined to keep the store going. "If you like something and want to keep it in your community, you have to be willing to engage yourself," she says. "We live in times where so much is changing so quickly. I just thought, if I don't do this, it won't happen."
The transition took place after Labor Day, 2010. The store closed its doors as local builders Rennie Cantine and Barry Price reconfigured the space—just shy of 1,000 square feet—to include a new children's section, replacing the adjacent store run by children's buyer Gaela Pearson, who's been with Golden Notebook since 1980. Pearson helped Kellachan set up new accounts and order as much stock as she could afford. When the bookstore reopened around Halloween, "it wasn't even halfway filled," Kellachan recalls. "It was a year before the shelves were fully stocked."
But the community rallied behind the relaunch, and whatever the new owner lacked in experience, she made up in work ethic. "I think I took 10 days off in the first 18 months," she says; seven-day work weeks are still not uncommon. "With a small bookstore, I do everything from paying bills to cleaning the store to WAMC Book Picks, talking with authors and customers, ordering books."
Golden Notebook has a loyal customer base and a high-traffic location in a destination town. But its staff credits Kellachan with not only keeping it open, but helping its business increase year by year.
"I've never seen anyone come into unfamiliar territory...and take it on with more enthusiasm and grace," says Nan Tepper, who coordinates author events and publicity." She calls Kellachan "the least lazy person I know," and 2013's track record—113 author events, plus 11 book fairs in area schools—bears ample witness.
Kellachan recently converted a storage area into an upstairs event space, which seats 25. For larger crowds, Golden Notebook partners with nearby restaurant Oriole 9 or the Kleinert/James Art Center. "The Woodstock Writers Festival is huge for us; we sell a lot of books there," reports Kellachan. But even the smallest events make a difference. "It keeps us relevant. There's always something interesting going on, and it's free. That's lower than the price of a book on Amazon."
There's also the joy of entering a space devoted to books, where shoppers browse carefully curated shelves and get recommendations from passionate readers, instead of online algorithms culled from keywords (i.e. customers who liked Goodnight Moon also liked Stephen King's Doctor Sleep.)
Golden Notebook's staff numbers six full and part-time booksellers, plus two teenage interns and (sometimes) two lapdogs named Buddy and Hazel. You don't get that online.
"Amazon has been so successful at devaluing books," says Kellachan. "People come into the store and it's viscerally hard for them to pay full price." But, she asserts, spending money locally and feeding the tax base helps pay for schools, roads, and libraries, keeping communities vital and neighbors employed. "Income disparity in our country is a result of the choices people make. If you always choose the lowest price, there's kind of a bubble effect. Yes, One-Click is less expensive, but it's not less expensive if you lose your job next week."
"To own an independent bookstore in the 21st century is a radical act," asserts Gretchen Primack. "It is predicated on the belief that writing and reading matter. As a writer and editor and bookseller, I see what Amazon and big-box are doing to literature, and it breaks my heart. But being part of the Golden Notebook—a community resource, a temple to the written word, an operation that values and respects ideas and creativity—gives me hope."
Her fellow booksellers agree. "There's a kind of good will that permeates the place," offers Quentin Rauschenbusch-Rowan. "Everyone who works here has a very genuine desire to put a book in a customer's hand in a way that's not so much about salesmanship as passing on something useful."
Gaela Pearson adds, "One of the best things about the job is connecting kids with great literature and watching them become excited about the written word."
Intern Jack Warren was plucked from the stacks at age 12, when he wandered over from his mother's long meeting at Oriole9 and sat in the aisle reading Mockingjay. He offered to help reshelve books, and Kellachan asked him to come back the next week; he's been working there now for three years. His favorite part of the job? "Books! Everywhere! Being surrounded by so many author's dreams and ideas."
Sometimes, says bookseller Desiree O'Clair, those authors appear in the flesh. "When George Saunders came into the store, I had The Tenth Of December at point of sale. I didn't recognize him, but as I rung him out, his wife asked if I would like him to autograph his book. I was tickled to death." And when Elvis Costello came to WDST to promote his recent concert, he paid Golden Notebook a visit and left with an armload of books.
"Having a bookstore is very anachronistic. With all its inefficiencies, it's a joyful, pleasurable, visceral experience," says Kellachan. "All kinds of relationships start in bookstores. It's all about browsing and random spottings. Who knows where it will lead?"
January and February are traditionally the slowest months for independent booksellers. So when cabin fever sets in, make a trek to Golden Notebook—or any local bookstore you cherish and want to keep in your community. If you're not close enough to drop in, you can order online from their website or pick up the phone. "If we don't have a book, we can get it for you really quickly," says Jackie Kellachan.
Of course they can. In the words of Jack Warren, "It's the best bookstore in the whole wide multiverse."