The childhood of each of us is connected with books. Mom read fairy tales at night, it was interesting to read about adventures and sea voyages with dad. But pessimistic people have been assuring for many years that the book has outlived its time, that it has been replaced by electronic versions.

Many people love the book

It is not true. Books have always been read and will continue to be read. And what they read should worry you if you decide to go into the book business. Because you will need to trade with what is most in demand. If you love books, if you really enjoy reading books and enjoying the rustle and smell of its pages, then you will definitely succeed in opening a bookstore. Knowledgeable people say that the product that you really like sells best.

The main thing is to organize everything correctly. And in this case, the bookstore will bring good income. And now let's try to answer the questions that worry every novice entrepreneur. How to open a bookstore from scratch? What are the first steps to take for this?

The book business is a beautiful business

Registration

Market experts say that opening a small bookstore will require about one and a half million rubles from its owner. But within a year this business will pay for itself.

Of course, it would be better and easier to register as an individual entrepreneur. But this is only possible if only you own the store. If you open a store with a group of several people, then you need to register it as an LLC.

About 4 thousand rubles will be spent on the registration procedure. If you have chosen a separate room for the store, not on the territory of any store or center, you will also need documents from the sanitary and epidemiological station and the fire inspectorate for permission to open. To obtain these documents, you will need another 10-15 thousand rubles. If the area of ​​the store does not exceed one hundred and fifty square meters, you will pay UTII according to a convenient taxation system.

Room selection

The issue of space should be one of the most important for you. Because if the location is chosen correctly, the attendance of the store will be good, respectively, and the profit will increase.

For a small store, an area up to 60 sq.m is suitable

You need to find a busy walkway. Walk through big supermarkets and shopping centers. Agree with the lease of premises on their territory. You will receive a number of benefits. First. No advertising costs, because traffic in large stores is high. It will only be necessary to come up with an unusual sign and decorate the window beautifully. Second. The administration of the shopping center itself will deal with the issues of protecting your store and obtaining permission to sell your goods. You won't have to do this.

Most visited places in shopping malls- this is at the entrance to the center, next to the escalators and hyped shops. These are the places where you need to find a room.

Renting a room is the most acceptable option for a novice businessman. Buying a room to set up a shop there is an expensive pleasure, and not every entrepreneur will pull it at the beginning of his journey. But there is another, no less interesting possibility. Surely, in your city there is a supermarket or shopping center under construction. Invest in it, and in this center, when it is built, you will have your own area where you can open a store.

Read also: Business plan for a children's toy store with calculations

Now about how to attract customers to your store. Renting a room in a large shopping center, complex advertising campaign you won't need. Consider the name and appearance of the store sign. It should be beautiful and memorable. You can use volume or backlight. Put up advertising posters or stands in the lobby of the center on the street. It will not hurt to create your own website, where you can post all the information about your store.

Room expenses. It will be necessary to make repairs and spend money on a sign. It will take you about two hundred thousand rubles. The fact is that the sign itself and the approvals for its installation are expensive.

Format and assortment of the store

Book stalls or small shops are very popular with people, where you can find a book for every taste - both children's fairy tales and a love story. Therefore, entrepreneurs consider the diverse format of the book kiosk to be the most profitable.

But if, when studying the market in your city, you did not see worthy competition, and there is a demand for specialized literature, you can choose a narrow-profile store.

Examples

• Children's book. In such a store, you can add various educational games for sale. Choose areas where there are many kindergartens, there is a clinic. A good option is to choose a room in the children's center.

An example of a children's book store design

• Technical and educational literature. Perfect for a college campus or next to an institute.

An example of a university literature store

• Bookshop. This option is suitable for large cities. Such shops resemble an interest club where everyone knows each other well, both visitors and sellers.

An example of the design of a second-hand bookstore

• Easy reading. Shop for a resort town. Pick up inexpensive adventure literature and romance novels that vacationers enjoy reading on the beach and on the benches.

Study the book publishing business, be aware of all the new products. You need to always know what people are reading today and what they will like tomorrow. Because you have to sell this particular literature.

Another point that you need to know. Such literature as children's, genre, modern prose, and classics is in constant demand. And in seasonal demand - textbooks for schools and universities, gift editions. The peak of activity is in August-September - schoolchildren and students buy the necessary textbooks and related educational material. The second peak occurs at the end of the year when gifts are bought. There are still people who consider the book the best gift.

Therefore, it is for this time, August or December, that you plan to open your store. Successful promotion of your store, subject to all the rules of the organization, you will be provided.

How to properly equip a bookstore

It is necessary to carefully and responsibly treat the purchase of equipment. You will need special slides, low cabinets, convenient racks and showcases, and, of course, shelves. Consult knowledgeable people. The equipment on display should fit as many books as possible. And there should be room for buyers to move around.

True book lovers don't buy a book right away. They look at it, leaf through it. Therefore, let your books be freely available.

The books were laid out. Think of a cashier's workplace. Lockers should be provided for customers to store their personal belongings.

Negotiate goods directly with publishers. And the prices will be lower, and you can agree on the calculation after the sale of books. Approximate costs for the purchase of goods. With a store capacity of ten thousand books, you will need about one million rubles. For the book segment, the margin on books is usually from 50 to 100 percent. And that's a good income.

A bookstore is a very troublesome and, as many believe, irrelevant occupation for doing business. But in vain! Right now, the paper book is taking on a new meaning, and more and more people are drawn to this source of emotions and knowledge. A competent construction of a book business will help make it profitable and exciting.

Originality is the foundation of the modern bookstore

When starting a bookstore, remember in today's flow of information and social networks, you must be original:

• Do not rule out that there are libraries for reading in the dark, where you can borrow a book absolutely free for your own needs, therefore - you should be more interesting than just filled with books reading rooms.
• The product range should be diverse: fantasy, classics, comics, educational materials, and psychology - everything that is interesting and necessary for readers.
• It is good if there is an organized place to get acquainted with books. In the world e-books you need to create a particularly attractive and cozy place that you want to visit more than once.
• The sale of “near-book” products is also not ruled out: notebooks, magazines, souvenirs, holiday layouts and postcards.

Documents required to open a bookstore

First you need to register as individual entrepreneur or, if a group of people is involved in opening a store, then it is better to make a company with limited liability. Taxation with a quadrature of up to 150 meters is best to choose UTII (), calculated from the area trading place. But you can use and - it all depends on personal preferences and the calculation of the estimated budget.

If you want to open a store that is not related to a shopping center or department store - a separate one, then you will need permission from the sanitary and epidemiological station and the fire inspectorate.

It is also worth noting that subsidies are allocated for business development in many cities, programs for young start-up entrepreneurs are especially relevant. Find out about such a program at the administration or employment center, and prepare a well-thought-out business plan that should distinguish your idea from the usual type of warehouse bookstores.

This question is very sensitive for any "bookish" businessman. High traffic is the key to the success of the store, since books are not bought every day, and cash desks are especially needed here.

Unfortunately, rent “eats up” catastrophic amounts for book circulation, so ideally, try to “reserve” a place when building a large residential building in a densely populated block “under the foundation” or when building a shopping center:

• You save yourself from paying huge amounts of rent (the average area for a bookstore is 50 square meters) and thereby leave room for a good one, and the monthly payment will decrease to the level utility bills.
• Store location: best in the city center, next to the university or any major educational institutions, on the corner of the main streets.
• Do not skimp not only on the interior design of the institution, but also on the outside. Here it will be great to pay attention to European or Asian design options. They attract people at first sight and differ from our stores - in taste, a personal "highlight", which is visible from the other end of the street.

No matter how strange it may sound, in our age of computer technology there are still a sufficient number of people for whom the book remains the most reliable friend. But the modern book market is influenced by several factors. Some of them have accompanied book publishing since its inception, while others arose quite recently under the influence of a market economy.

The modern book business, in addition to losing interest in reading, suffers from a lack of standing books that will be successful among true connoisseurs of the printed word. At the same time, there appeared a large number of commercial publications, the age of which is short.

Another negative point that affects not only the book business, but also all other activities related to copyright (music, films, discs) is piracy. For potential consumer it does not matter much, but for the publisher it entails significant financial losses, because having studied the quality and quantity of the audience, he plans the circulation.

But the experience of book publishing in Russia over the past ten years shows that the business of selling books can pay off already in the first year of its existence, and even at the stage of a “falling” market, it can generate up to 25% profit per year, which cannot be said about many other types of activities.

Even if you are confident about the future and see yourself as a famous publisher, the publishing business from scratch for you should definitely start with. This will serve as a good practice, will provide an opportunity to study the nuances of the book market.

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Book trading: from zero to stable profit

A book-selling business can have many different options, depends on the city in which it is organized, how relevant it is here, what investment opportunities are available.

The best option is a bookstore designed for different age categories. In this case, it is better to reduce the number of products within one unit.

A bookstore, like any other business, must be registered. AT tax office you can be listed as an individual entrepreneur (individual entrepreneur) if you are going to run a business alone, or register your book business as an LLC (limited liability company) if you have to work in a team of founders. In any case, your activity in the OKVED classification goes under code 52.47 - “ Retail books, magazines, newspapers, stationery and stationery. If your store does not exceed 150 sq. m, it is quite possible to get by with a single tax on imputed income. When registering, you will still need to show permission from the SES and the fire service.

Pay special attention to the place of trade. Few people go to the store just to buy a book, although this is not excluded. The ideal option is a store in a busy shopping center. If you are starting a business from scratch, better room rent, as its acquisition in a favorable location is expensive.

The most popular are small bookstores with a wide range products. When choosing this type of store, you should initially study the modern publishing business well through the Internet, but only in order to determine the quantity within each unit of production. There should be no problems with the supply of goods, because there is no shortage of publishing houses on the modern book market. Among the staff, sales assistants and cashiers are obligatory (in small stores this can be the same person), a manager (most often this is the owner himself) and an accountant (you can hire this unit out of state, but it is difficult for the manager himself to fulfill these duties when it comes to is about the bookstore).

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The financial side of the issue

Now it remains to draw up a cost estimate for opening a bookstore and estimate the payback time for the business. The organizational stage includes a fee for registering an enterprise with the tax service (5 thousand rubles), certificates and permits from the SES and the fire inspectorate (5 thousand rubles).

Then it all depends on whether you are going to buy or rent a premise for a store. Booksellers prefer renting as a cheaper option. Rent 1 sq. meters in Moscow ranges from 25 to 100 thousand rubles a year, depending on the location retail space, but above we have already given reasoning about a place convenient for trading books. Square trading floor must be at least 150 sq. m, since in the field of book trade it is preferable that the entire range is available to the eyes of the buyer. If you need a warehouse, get ready to pay 1 sq. m 10-15 rubles per day. Sophisticated equipment not needed: racks for such a room will cost another 30 thousand rubles.

It's time for the books. Publishers most often work directly with stores, saving on intermediaries. Don't worry if you're starting from scratch, publishers like newbies with their own ideas. The range of an average store should include 15-20 thousand items. The retail price per unit will range from 35 to 100 rubles, not counting gift editions and albums, but they should also be in the arsenal. Information and technical support, signage and advertising will cost another 75 thousand rubles. Total: an average of 250 thousand rubles. You should also take into account the cost of salaries for two consultants and cashiers working in shifts. It is rather difficult to select staff for a bookstore, since they must have either a philological education or a good memory. A computer will help to simplify the work of sellers, but this is an additional expense. Put 300 thousand rubles into circulation.

Experience shows that the income of such a store will be 360 ​​thousand rubles per month. From this amount we subtract 10 thousand for taxes, 260 thousand for staff salaries and utilities, 50 thousand for advertising and Additional services. We will receive 40 thousand rubles of net profit. Thus, the payback will come in about a year, and if the place and assortment were chosen successfully, then you can expect an increase in income.

Books are always in demand among all age categories. But children's rooms are always distinguished by their bright design and special attractiveness.

Even adults stare at children's publications and purchase them with pleasure both for children and for themselves. This is also due to the fact that many parents during their childhood did not have all this diversity, and now they are catching up. A children's book store can be a very profitable way of earning if you organize it correctly. First of all, you need to think over the range. Any bookstore should have a hall with bookshelves, access to which is constantly open. The seller must wait for the buyer at the checkout, not counting the consultants who must be in the hall and provide maximum comfort in search of the necessary literature.

Children's books, especially for the little ones, should not only have beautiful drawings, but also beautiful fonts. While the baby himself still cannot read, he evaluates all the letters in terms of beautiful and ugly. And the more he likes the letters visually, the more he will have a desire to get to know them better and find out what they mean. Departments in the store should be divided into age categories in order to avoid confusion among the sellers themselves and greater convenience for customers. The opening of the store must be advertised in all available means. mass media in order to collect the maximum number of guests on it. It makes sense to hold an additional exhibition on the opening day, organize some kind of competition, make this day memorable for more parents.

The binding of a book has a significant impact on its value. The better it is, the longer the printed matter lasts, especially since it is intended for children. Cheap books will sell out faster, but it’s not a fact that those parents whose books crumble soon will again turn to the same store for new ones. It's not worth saving. For paper-bound children's books with a small number of pages, there are folders with pockets in which individual pages can be inserted. It's nice to have a department, or several, in a bookstore with related and stationery products. The largest editions are designed for the smallest readers, they are printed on both paper and cardboard, and take up the most space inside the store. In addition to books printed in a printing house, you must also have original ones in the store.

Currently, there are many services that are engaged in the publication of fairy tales to order. Each such product is individual, and the main character in it is the child himself. Contracting with these companies and giving them a place in your store to advertise their products can greatly increase the popularity of the place. Specialists will not only replace words in the text, but adjust the plot in such a way that the narration does not lose its meaning and is interesting for the child. Before opening own business, it is necessary to market the book market, to study the demand. It is important to understand the state of the children's book market and understand the dynamics of its development. It is necessary to know the manufacturers of products and their geography, segmentation of products by purpose.

You need to know exactly the prices of books from various manufacturers and realistically represent sales volumes before entering into contracts with them. You need to know both the positive aspects of this type of commerce, as well as the negative ones. It is necessary to take into account the increasingly popular in recent times books in in electronic format and audiobooks. It is very important for the store owner to know the competition in this industry, where and what wholesale bookstores and their warehouses are located. Equipment for the trading floor and for utility rooms should also be taken into account when calculating the costs in connection with the start of activities. Security systems must be provided and personnel selected. In some cases, entrust part of all these activities to specialists in order to obtain a better result. A contract for the lease of premises must be drawn up, and the premises themselves must be suitable for trade.

To find out how much space you need to rent, you need to figure out how the shelves will be installed and how many books will fit on them. Utility rooms should also have shelving, and in more in order to have the necessary stock of publications. Books for children compare favorably with all others in that a large volume of gift-wrapped editions sells very well, while this rarely happens with editions for adults due to the high price. Both the hall and the utility rooms must be equipped with video surveillance systems and exit detectors, since all literature currently uses bar codes and magnets. The air in all rooms must have a certain humidity that would not harm the printed matter.

Inside the hall there should be enough bright, but not cutting eyes, lighting. From appearance The trading floor depends not only on the profitability of the business, but also on the amount of investment that will be needed. The most convenient form of store formation is the registration of an individual entrepreneur. This helps to reduce accounting, simplify reporting to the tax authorities and save on taxes. The tax will directly depend on the size of the retail space. A license is not required to engage in the trade of printed publications. When decorating the hall, you need to immediately determine the location of racks with books and departments with related products and place them correctly. Market analysis is carried out in the area where the store is located, and we bypass both for the owner of the store and for the commission that considers the issuance of a loan.

Renting a space is much more profitable than building it. This is a significant reduction in time and money, and the possibility of changing the area of ​​activity if the business in this place is not profitable. To get started, it will be enough to have two administrators, an accountant, a cleaner and several salesmen in your staff. All opening expenses will consist of: advertising, books, furniture, utility bills, staff salaries and rental costs. In addition to the above, there will be additional costs. Statistics show that the average revenue in such stores is 200,000-300,000 rubles, and the profit is a third. This means that within a year the store has every chance to pay off.

At present, the demand for all types of book products in Russia is undergoing significant changes. Sales of smartphones, book readers, digital devices and e-books are increasing. Demand for audiobooks and e-books has grown, while demand for standard paper books has declined significantly. And, if books for the smallest are still bought in full, then literature for grades 4 and older is much less in demand. Book prices are on the rise, and in three years have increased by 20% annually. The book publishing industry is growing, there are more and more titles of published books, and the proportion of the population that does not read books is declining by 10-14% every year.

When planning, it is necessary to make the visit to the store as accessible as possible for the consumer. This means comparing the work schedules of industries in the area and the opportunity to visit the store during a period when people are not busy in production. Renting premises should be done in areas with sufficient traffic, advertising, especially at first, should be as intense as possible. The assortment should include both domestic authors and foreign ones for all age categories. Opening a medium-sized bookstore will require spending 1.5-2.0 million rubles and will pay off in a year.

Books are alternative way take a break from the hustle and bustle and the main source of knowledge. Despite the technological breakthrough of our time, the demand for printed editions will never fall, because reading books by your favorite authors is much more pleasant by flipping pages than by touching a tablet, because they are not able to convey the very atmosphere and smell of new book pages. Therefore, the idea of ​​how to open a bookstore from scratch can become very profitable and cost-effective.

The right place is the key to success!

Now you need to decide not only how to open a bookstore, but also what more favorable place to choose for it. To do this, it is better to give preference to places with an impressive flow of people. You can safely choose a territory nearby with large shopping centers, markets, etc. This location will be optimal and advantageous for the owner. If possible, you can rent a room in the central part of the city. However, in this case, the entrepreneur is faced with a lot of competition, since in these places such stores are mostly already open. It is best to rent a small area in a shopping center. In this case, a businessman does not need to spend a lot of money and effort on creating bright advertising to attract potential customers. A creative and colorful sign will suffice.

What will reduce the level of competition?

If you open and start developing this business in small town, then the level of competition can be minimized. Option in the form of a small store with an area of ​​​​about 45 square meters. m with a rich assortment of book series will be very successful. Dormitory areas, the area near the city center, the opening of outlets in local shopping centers will reduce competition to a minimum and increase profits. During the purchase of goods, it must be taken into account that the choice should be varied (for example, one should not predominantly purchase professional or educational literature, since a small selection of other products will affect the number of potential buyers not in better side) if the place for the store is chosen on neutral territory. It is better to follow simple patterns:

1. When opening a store in large cities, you can focus on literature that specializes in antiques and teaches professional skills.
2. If the room is located next to the kindergarten, then a good selection of children's literature preschool age will bring good profit.
3. If you plan to open a business selling books near universities, colleges or schools, then you need to focus on the appropriate book series.
4. In resort towns, entertainment reading will be in good demand. The price category should be in the middle position, and the books themselves should be light and unobtrusive in terms of semantic load.

More about the range

It is necessary to correctly assess the contingent of the city in which the store opens and draw up a plan for the future assortment of goods. The entrepreneur must be aware of all the new products, the average age of the population of the city and the general demand for certain books in modern times. Only in this case, with the ratio of all the above nuances, it is possible to correctly determine what kind of literature will show off in the windows. Naturally, do not forget about the classic genres that never go out of fashion:

• novels;
• books for children;
• detectives;
• collections of famous writers (M. Bulgakov, L. Tolstoy, F. Dostoevsky, etc.).

In addition to books, you can diversify your selection by including calendars, fashion magazines, small stationery, postcards, or even paintings.

Suppliers

There are many options for buying books. You can, for example, work directly with a publisher, intermediaries or wholesalers. But it is best to give preference to the first option, since it is more convenient and profitable to do business with them. It is also worth taking care of the transportation of goods. The costs will be much less if the entrepreneur has the opportunity to bring literature to the store himself. Otherwise, you will have to spend money on cooperation with a transport company.

Equipment

It is desirable that the buyer has free access to the book. This is a standard move of any store: a person holding a product of interest to him, already at a subconscious level, will not want to part with it and in 80% of cases he will buy it. Therefore, you need to think about how to set up shelves with books so as not to interfere with the movement of customers and create comfortable conditions for the first acquaintance. potential client with products. In addition to equipment for literature, you need to figure out where the seller’s working corner will be.

Staff

To work in a bookstore, you need people with experience, or at least those who themselves like to spend their own leisure time reading some interesting book. Such people are usually aware of all the novelties in the literary world and own experience will be able to offer the buyer this or that reading matter, briefly describing what it is about. You can do without sellers at the first stages in order to save on issuance wages, because a responsible entrepreneur, like a good consultant in a bookstore, must understand his own business.

Business plan

For example, an entrepreneur decides to open a store with an area of ​​​​50 square meters. m. It is necessary to carefully consider the business plan for this project, since the future success of opening your own business will depend on it.

Registration of an individual entrepreneur in the tax office will be approximately 5 thousand rubles. A similar amount will be needed to obtain documentation that will make it possible to carry out trading activity in room. Naturally, you will have to spend some money on advertising to attract customers and equip the store itself. For a given quadrature, the figure will be about 200 thousand rubles. You should also buy 5-10 thousand copies of the books themselves (up to 1 million rubles), classifying them by genre and demand. If the premises are rented, then the entrepreneur will have to pay up to 200 thousand rubles per month. including salaries to salespeople and other minor expenses. As a result, in order to fully equip a store of 50 sq. m will need about 1.5 million rubles, which will pay for themselves within a year.

To increase your income and draw more attention to your business, you should create own online store. The main task at the same time, there will be a competent compilation of a catalog with books, descriptions and price category. The site will be in demand if buyers will be able to buy the product they like with home delivery or by mail.