In the Press: "The Keys to Selling Books Locally: Community and Conversation" The Hudson Independent

The Keys to Selling Books Locally: Community and Conversation

By By W.B. King, The Hudson Independent, December 13, 2022

Sara Davidson’s Picture Book tucked away in Dobbs Ferry’s Palisades Building (photo by Barrett Seaman)

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A Pan­demic Baby

Pic­ture Book, lo­cated in the lobby of Hud­co’s co-work­space in Dobbs Fer­ry’s Pal­isades Build­ing, can’t rely on street traf­fic for busi­ness, but enough peo­ple from the build­ing and be­yond are drawn to its com­bi­na­tion of chil­dren’s books and adult il­lus­trated art and cook­books have made it a go­ing en­ter­prise. This “pan­demic baby,” as pro­pri­etor Sara David­son Johns calls her “store,” was ini­tially in­tended as an in­terim lo­ca­tion on the way to a bricks-and-mor­tar Main Street venue when she opened in Oc­to­ber 2020. But busi­ness has im­proved each year since—enough so that she has opened a sec­ond shop in a sim­i­lar co-work­ing space in Cross River in north­ern Westch­ester.

“We had a re­ally big week­end with the Hol­i­day Trol­ley” bring­ing shop­pers down to the re­mote lo­ca­tion, she says. “I was talk­ing all day long,” she con­fesses in a barely au­di­ble voice a few days later. While il­lus­trated vol­umes are the core of her brand, David­son also of­fers con­tem­po­rary fic­tion and sells a fair amount on her web site, www.pic­ture­bookny.com.

Like other in­die start-ups, David­son sees her store as an al­ter­na­tive to Ama­zon and the big chains. “Peo­ple want a tac­tile ex­pe­ri­ence—and some­one to talk to.”

Holiday Market Photos

What a weekend! Thank you everyone who came out for the HudCo Holiday Market this past weekend! It was a record breaking event and a whole lot of fun. Make sure you are signed up for our mailing list and following us on Instagram to make sure you are in the loop for the next bunch of fun. Check out these photographs captured by Arielle Joffe to highlight some of the festivities.

Holiday Market at HudCo

HudCo Holiday Market
SatURDAY, December 10, 2022
11am-5pm

HudCo 145 Palisade Street, Suite 200, Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522

HudCo is transforming into a magical holiday extravaganza! Capture the moment in a photo booth, grab some Irish Coffee (featuring 813 Coffee) and Bailey's Hot Chocolate, and shop from a talented group of artisans and shopkeepers to easily procure special and one-of-a-kind gifts during the Rivertowns Chamber of Commerce’s Holiday Trolley through the Rivertowns.

The Shops

813 Coffee, @813coffeec

Adonia Floral Desig@adoniafloraldesign

Ayra, @ayrbarnes

Baked in Heaven, @bihbakery

Cloth and Curate, @clothandcurate

Falena Fine Jewelry, @falenafinejewelry

Handcrafted by Hasiba,

Honey Notes, @honeynotes

Hudson Oven, @hudsonoven

Krop Jeans, @kropjeans

Ophelia & Indigo, @opheliaandindigo

Oyun, @oyunstudio

Parson Brown, @parson_brown

Peace Street Co, @peacestreetco

Shapero, @shaperothebrand

Soy Vida Candles, @soyvidacandles_

Time & Place Interiors, @timeandplaceinteriors

Wild Rabbit Apothecary, @shopwildrabbit

and, of course, our resident fave:

Picture Book, @picturebookny

Yellow Studio Illustration Fair

YELLOW STUDIO Illustration Fair & Pop-Up Marketplace

December 10 - 10:00 am – 2:00 pm

Yellow Monkey Village
792 Route 35, 2nd Floor
Cross River, NY 10518

Picture Book, a bookshop curated by art world veteran and mom Sara Davidson Johns, has opened it’s second location inside Yellow Studio in Cross River, New York. Yellow Studio is an art gallery, artist residency, co-working space, event and workshop host where you will find connection, learning and joy. Picture Book has an edited selection of art books, unique children’s picture books, and gorgeous cookbooks available in Yellow Studio Monday-Friday 9am-6pm and during Yellow Studio’s after-hours programming.

In celebration of the opening of Yellow Studio’s illustration exhibition please join us for an Illustration Fair and Pop-Up Marketplace Saturday December 10th 11am-2pm. Artworks will be available for purchase and can be taken with you on the day of the fair. The remaining artworks will be exhibited at Yellow Studio and available for purchase until January 6.

Exhibiting artists include:

Annalisa Oswald, Danie Drankwalter, Elizabeth DeJure Wood, Emily Ann Hoffman, & Kailey Whitman

Come purchase holiday gifts from our curated selection of vendors including:

Firsthand Thrifted

Gold Coast Dyes

Jane D’Arensbourg

Jennifer Mullowney

Jeweled Coquette featuring Get Connected permanent jewelry

Picture Book

Piece Revival

Salt Point Farm

Very Lovely Soles

Gift Guide

Tis the season to enjoy gift guides! See below for some great presents you can pick up at Picture Book in HudCo and Yellow Studio. If you want to shop from home or to ship your gifts, checkout the Bookshop.org Gift Guide.

For the Plant PArent

For the Friend WHO MISSES NEW YORK CITY LIFE

FOR YOUR FAVORITE LITERARY SNOB

FOR BOOK CLUB Buds

FOR YOUR FAVORITE MENSCH

FOR YOUR CHRISTMAS-Y COUSIN

FOR THE FAIRYTALE FIEND

FOR THE BABE

FOR THE FOODIE

FOR THE ART aficionado

STOCKING STUFFERS

This Week's Events 10/24-10/28

Tuesday, October 25, 2022

1pm Pilates with Sharon of In Motion Pilates at HudCo

6pm @barre3rivertowns for a candlelight barre class featuring Parson Brown followed by shopping & CBD mocktails

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

How to Create A Career That You Love – A Conversation with Emily Yeston & Fran Hauser

6 pm @yellowstudiony

Please join us and learn more about Emily Yeston, Co-Founder and CEO of Doré. In this conversation between Emily and Fran Hauser (author, keynote speaker and startup investor), they will speak about the evolution of Emily’s career – from assistant to CEO – and share anecdotes from along the way.

Sara from Picture Book will be on site to show off the new location in Yellow Studio and to sell books including those by speaker Fran Hauser:

Embrace the Work

The Myth of the Nice Girl

Garance Doré's book:

Love X Style X Life

Thursday, October 27, 2022

Rivertowns Chamber Women’s Social
Thursday, October 27 from 7pm–9pm
Saint George Bistro, 155 Southside, Hastings-on-Hudson

The Rivertowns Chamber is excited to bring you Joanna Prisco of The Good Witch Coffee Bar and Jess Galen of Bloomy Cheese & Provisions to talk female-owned, community-minded, brick-and-mortar small business. Event sponsored by Picture Book and Joyful Dermatology.

Books & Buns: Launch of Picture Book at Yellow Studio

Join us for the launch of a very exciting collaboration: Picture Book x Yellow Studio Pop-Up. For this breakfast launch event, scrumptious cinnamon buns from Tam’s Kitchen will be served. And coffee, of course.

About

Picture Book is an independent bookstore curated by Sara Davidson Johns, an art world veteran and mom. The shop’s thoughtful selection makes it easy and fun to find something special. You can browse the Picture Book edit of kids books, new fiction, art books, cookbooks, and more on the website www.picturebookny.com.  

The first physical location of Picture Book opened inside the co-working space HudCo in Dobbs Ferry, New York in October 2020 and we are thrilled to open our second location in Yellow Studio in Cross River, New York in October 2022. Yellow Studio, with its co-working, art gallery, and artist residency will be a wonderful opportunity to showcase Picture Book’s collection of monographs, exhibition catalogues, and other coffee table worthy art books that highlight the work of women artists. The shop will be installed in the Lounge and the Attic of Yellow Studio with books for kids and adults to browse.  

Party Pics by Camila Montanhani of Living Notes Photography

Summer Reading

Picture Book has temporarily expanded it’s set up inside HudCo to add a table dedicated exclusively to summer reading for your elementary and middle school kids. With nearly 80 new titles of chapter books and graphic novels added to the table guided by recommendations from prestigious awards, local summer reading lists, and The Week Junior’s “50 Books Kids Love the Most” your kids are sure to find something they’ll love for this summer. Not all titles are on the website, so please come in to HudCo in person Monday-Friday 9am-6pm, or email me if you need something delivered locally instead. The additional table is only up for a limited time, so hope to see you in the shop soon!

Hudson Lab School Book Fair

It was a wonderful day to put on a book fair at Hudson Lab School! It was our first school fair and it was a blast to see the kids get excited about all the reading options.

50 Books Kids Love the Most

Did you catch local Mindy Walker on the Today Show??? She introduced The Week Junior magazine’s list of “50 Books Kids Love the Most.” Check out the clip below!

Picture Book is thrilled to collaborate with the magazine and has FREE copies of their latest issue available along with a broad selection of the books on their list for your elementary and middle school kids. Stop by HudCo Monday-Friday, 9am-6pm to pick up a copy and your summer reading stacks! We have much more in person than is on the website, but you can check out a selection here

In the Press: Sara Davidson’s Dream of Opening a Bookstore Couldn’t Be Stopped, Not Even by a Pandemic

Friend and author of Don’t Just Sit There, Do Nothing, Jessie Kanzer interviewed me for the wonderful Zibby Owens blog “Moms Don’t Have Time to Write.” I love to talk about how books are tools for empathy and that community and collaboration have been a great gift to me on this journey. Visit Mom’s Don’t Have Time to Write for the full article


Sara Davidson’s Dream of Opening a Bookstore Couldn’t Be Stopped, Not Even by a Pandemic

An Interview with the owner of “Picture Book” in Dobbs Ferry, New York

[Picture Book, currently located at HudCo — a workspace in the Rivertowns]


There’s one thing that always seems to go by the wayside as we navigate the pressures of adulthood, start families, “settle down” or whatever. I’m speaking about our dreams, of course.

We all have them when we’re younger. Some aren’t exactly realistic, but we revel in our imaginations. Then, responsibilities take over — caring for kids and pets and bills, and by the time we reach the end of the day our only dreams are the ones that break through our much-needed slumber.

But if you read enough books, watch enough films, live long enough, you realize true dreams have a way of making their way back to you in their own time. They take on a life of their own and show you what you are supposed to do. This is what happened to my neighbor Sara Davidson, who I knew as a book lover before anything else.

Everyone in my little town by the Hudson River knew that if you needed a book recommendation, you asked Sara. So, it made sense when she opened her own indie bookstore called Picture Book a little over a year ago.

Well, maybe not total sense —because the world was in the grips of a pandemic. Below, Sara and I discuss her path to owning a bookstore and what she’s looking forward to reading this spring.

 

[Sara setting up her display — photo by Memories By Ana Photography]

Sara, your bookstore is such a boon for our town — that I can attest to. But what in the world made you decide to set up shop during the pandemic?!

Opening a bookstore in the Rivertowns was a nagging dream I had for a while, and I had worked out a business plan and done lots of research by connecting with other booksellers, but it never seemed to be the right time to take the leap. The perfect puzzle that every family has to put together, containing each parent’s career and childcare, seemed too precious to disrupt. But having it all upended by the pandemic with remote school, furloughs, and remote work shook up our life enough to feel like it was worth risking. It might be now or never to realize my dreams and I didn’t want to waste more time doing work that didn’t feel like my true calling anymore. I made it official in August of 2020 and had my physical shop open for business in Dobbs Ferry in October 2020.

Sometimes a crisis is the best impetus to get us moving. Still, I imagine that running a bookstore is challenging, especially in our uncertain times — but do you feel like this venture fulfills something in you? Are you gratified by spreading some book love in the world?

Bookselling fulfills me personally and is my tiny contribution towards making the world a better place. The state of the world can be overwhelming and it is frustrating to feel so powerless against the broader issues and injustice. I decided I want to amplify what is good as a small act of resistance. To get to share excellent literature and art is a privilege and a joy. I hope to provide diverse books that can serve as either mirrors to reflect the readers’ own life, or windows into the lives of others. Honestly, many adults would benefit from the lessons in picture books. Books are tools for growing empathy, and they provide connection.

Can you talk a little about your former career in the art world? It’s so interesting that you were once a curator and now you curate books for your community.

My entire career before this was in the contemporary art world. I was a gallery director, worked in the contemporary art department of an auction house, and most recently was an editor for a publisher owned by an art gallery. I think I take some of the curator’s eye with me when selecting books, making careful decisions, and thinking about how the books speak to each other conceptually. In my display, both online and in-person, I lean more towards a gallery feel than a traditional overstuffed bookstore. Those are great too, but I wanted to offer something different and authentic to my own vision. The name Picture Book, a nod to the Kinks song, is about providing picture books for kids that are beautiful in both content and illustration, but also giving that same joy to adults finding their own “picture books” in art books, gorgeously photographed cookbooks, and great fiction that inspires them.

In the art world, I often felt that female artists and artists of color were not as well funded or promoted as they deserved, so it’s a thrill to just be able to make my book selections with a strong representation of diverse female artists and authors.

Sara curating Picture Book’s selection, photo by Living Notes Photography

How else has running this bookstore changed your relationship with books? Have you had to expand what you read? Have you changed the way you “consume” books?

I do feel pressure to read more books than I normally did, but I don’t want to lose the joy of reading. One way I have upped is by adding audiobooks into the mix so I can continue to read while I exercise or run errands. Thankfully the company Libro.fm offers a platform for independent bookstores to sell audiobooks, and I love devouring their new releases each month. Audiobooks are not the soporific books-on-tape of my youth. They have high production value, celebrity narrators, and sometimes even full-cast narration. I highly recommend adding audio to your reading diet!

You have become such a supporter of local authors like myself (Picture Book hosted my Book Launch on March 3rd!) Who else has your shop connected you to? How does it feel to become more entwined with your community?

I’m very glad that I opened up my bookshop inside another business. I’m set up inside a gorgeous co-working space called HudCo, so I’m a part of a built-in community of people who are working remotely and the wellness providers and their clients who use the space. The spacious location allows me to host big events for authors, including your book launch. I also curate book selections for other shops including a coffee shop and a cute clothing boutique, and getting to work with these other women-owned businesses has been incredible. I love that all of this is about collaboration rather than competition and I think that is the future of small businesses.

 

Sara, Jessie, and a friend chatting at a book launch hosted by Picture Book (Poto Cred: Laru Foto)

What hopes do you have for your indie bookstore this coming year?

My goal for this year is to hold fast to the joy of undertaking my dream, and to continue to learn and grow.

Now, here’s a question I know you’ll enjoy answering: tell us what books you’re excited to get your hands on!

This is always my favorite question, but one I have difficulty narrowing down! This month I’m digging into To Paradise, Hanya Yanagihara’s first novel since A Little Life, which absolutely wrecked me. Coming up on my tbr list are The Books of Jacob by Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk and When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East by Quan Barry.

For kids, I’m excited about follow-up books to 2020 hits, Oona and the Shark by Kelly Dipucchio and illustrated by Raissa Figueroa and Out of a Jar by Deborah Marcero. This spring, I’m looking out for Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change by Angela Garbes, a new art book on Lorna Simpson is coming out from Phaidon, and the latest books from Emily St. John Mandel and Emma Straub.

Sara hosting author Jenny Rosenstrach for the launch for her bestselling cookbook, The Weekday Vegetarians (Poto Cred: Laru Foto)

Jessie Kanzer is the author of the newly released Don’t Just Sit There, Do Nothing