The Ghostbuyers’ Guide to Becoming a Great Bookstore Buyer

Most new bookstores lose thousands of dollars on inventory mistakes that nobody warned them about.

Buying books for your bookstore can be an opaque and overwhelming process, and learning how to do it can feel impossible.

The catalogs are overwhelming and the terms can be confusing. The reps are friendly and helpful, if you can figure out how to get one.  Your POS system has tools, but which ones are useful, and how should you set everything up?

Most new buyers learn by making expensive mistakes. They over-order frontlist, ignore backlist, buy from random places they saw on the internet. They build habits in the first six months that take years to undo. I’ve seen it happen, and have helped a lot of stores dig out afterward.

This course exists so you don’t have to learn that way, so you can learn from my experience rather than from your mistakes.

What you’ll get: Twenty-seven lessons built from 20+ years of buying, teaching, and solving inventory problems for independent bookstores and publishers. No quizzes, no busywork, just practical, up-to-date guidance you can actually use well before you open.

We’ll cover how to develop an inventory philosophy that fits your store, how to set up your accounts and POS correctly, how to navigate frontlist and backlist with confidence, how to use Edelweiss without wanting to throw your laptop, how to manage returns, run a physical inventory, build lucrative publisher relationships, create a smart and relevant opening inventory, and get your staff genuinely and organically involved in the title selection process.

Up-to-Date: Video courses go stale fast, sometimes before they’re even posted. This one doesn’t work that way. When something changes in the industry, we update the course. You get lifetime access to materials that actually stay current.

Who this is for: New bookstore owners, prospective owners doing their homework, new buyers, and anyone pursuing a bookstore job.

About Joe: I spent 15 years at Above the Treeline (Edelweiss), working directly with hundreds of independent bookstores and publishers on buying, inventory management, and teaching how to use critical industry tools. Before that, I was the buyer at Maria’s Bookshop in Durango, Colorado. Being in this space for so long, I am very passionate about the survival of independent bookstores. I’ve seen a lot of stores fail over the years, most for very avoidable problems. Ghostbuyers is how I’m helping stores avoid those problems.

Designed for US-based booksellers. Universal principles apply, but tools and vendor references are US-specific.