in an obscure office building <\/a>off the Beltline. That location opened in 2018.<\/p>\nJacobs says he\u2019d been looking for a space to open a used bookstore on the east side, in part due to requests from customers, but also due to the bookstore\u2019s longtime mission of \u201cspreading literacy and making books accessible.\u201d Then Garver general manager Bryant Moroder contacted the bookstore about the idea of having a mini store inside the feed mill. The self-service kiosk idea also came from Moroder.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was new to us,\u201d says Jacobs, but GROW Greenhouse, the business that sells plants throughout Garver, operates that way: scan a QR code, pay electronically, and you are on your way. The automation was logistically necessary to have the bookstore kiosk open any time that Garver was; staffing it consistently would be financially unrealistic.<\/p>\n
The Book Deal worked with a Milwaukee company that helps with payment systems for food trucks to customize a system that works better for books than out-of-the box Square software. \u201cHaving the self checkout be easy makes sense,\u201d says Jacobs. But ultimately, payment is by the honor system. \u201cWe know there’s some risk with it but the whole idea is built around trusting people and we think that the overwhelming majority will respect the space and pay for what they take.\u201d Jacobs jokes there\u2019s a saying that \u201cReaders don’t steal and thieves don’t read.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the most part people want to support us and allow us to continue to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The kiosk will be staffed for big events like the Dane County Winter Farmers\u2019 Market, which operates Saturday mornings at Garver from January to April. That\u2019s not necessarily to monitor customers but to have someone on hand to help and also recommend books, a special pleasure of bookselling, says Jacobs.<\/p>\n
The 2,000-some books that will populate the shelves at The Book Deal at Garver are curated to create \u201ca selection that feels thoughtful, approachable and fun to browse. We’re starting with a mix of popular fiction and nonfiction, leaning a little more towards fiction \u2014 all the main fiction genres, romance, mystery, thriller, general fiction, literary classics, and for nonfiction, nature, food writing, memoirs,\u201d Jacobs says. There is also YA, children\u2019s books and even board books. They\u2019ll see what sells and adjust accordingly.<\/p>\n
Readers might be tempted by Nick Offerman\u2019s travelogue Where the Deer and the Antelope Play, James McBride\u2019s hit novel The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, or Isabel Wilkerson\u2019s trenchant Caste. The shelves run across the Garver space between the Ian\u2019s area and the lounge, between the main north and south entrances.<\/p>\n
The Book Deal is also sponsoring literary trivia nights at Garver on the first Thursday of the month; signups topped 100 for the last one. Jacobs also hopes to host author events at Garver.<\/p>\n
At the Mineral Point Road location, which houses some 30,000 books, Jacobs has observed \u201ca lot of younger folks coming in at the store and buying two, three, four or five books at a time, and it seems like they’re looking for kind of a digital break. They’re on their phones or their laptops a lot and they look at a physical book as a way to get a break from all of that screen time.\u201d He and his co-owners hope that the Garver kiosk will be another way to get books into the hands of readers.<\/p>\n
The Mineral Point Road store features a children\u2019s book giveaway program and people who sponsor a Little Free Library are welcome to take, gratis, surplus books that The Book Deal has set aside for that purpose to repopulate their stock. Those programs will not operate out of Garver.<\/p>\n
The ribbon cutting will be at 4 p.m. on Oct. 16, and Jacobs has invested in a comically large pair of scissors for the celebratory snip. The bookstore will, from then on out, be open when Garver is open \u2014 as long as the electricity is on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Madison will gain its first self-service bookstore kiosk when The Book Deal at Garver Feed Mill opens on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":882541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[370544,223,88,370543],"class_list":["post-882540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-arts-beat","tag-books","tag-entertainment","tag-linda-falkenstein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=882540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/882541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=882540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=882540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=882540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}