When it’s time to sell your bookshop, this is what you need to know.
To many people’s surprise, book sales have been increasing and independent bookshops have continued to have a place in the market.
Readers are attached to the printed word and, because of this, book sales are on the rise again despite a small dip at the time of the release of machines like the Kindle.
This means that the prospect of selling your bookshop is an exciting one. You should be able to get a reasonable price and find the right buyer.
Increase the value
Before you sell your business, it is a good idea to think about ways that you can increase its value. There are several ways that you can make your bookshop more appealing to buyers.
One of these is to strengthen the ties that your bookshop has with the local community. Think about hosting events and advertising them in the local community.
You could hold reading hours for children that you can advertise at schools or you could host writing or reading clubs in the evening and get guest speakers to attend them.
In order to increase foot traffic in bookshops, many of them have started to sell coffee and sometimes even some food.
Making your bookshop a place where people want to hang out is the ideal. There are many bookshops that draw people in because of their ‘Instagramability’. Walls stacked high with books are an ideal starting point for creating this kind of environment.
Getting the online component of your business up to scratch should also be something you should focus on before you sell. Having a user-friendly website that people can order books on is a fantastic asset to your business.
All of these changes will also be diversifying your income stream, and this will all make your bookshop become even more attractive to buyers.
Valuing your bookshop
The usual formulas that are used to value a business don’t work in the same way of finding the value of a bookshop. There are many intangible assets that you have, hopefully, been building up for years that will ass value to your business beyond, simply, the value of your inventory.
Increasing the value of your business in the ways that have already been mentioned in this article will have added to the value in different ways. While the online sales and the foot traffic will be easier to calculate, the goodwill that you accumulate through the strengthened community ties will be a bit more difficult to put an exact number on.
Finding a buyer
Finding the right buyer is an important part of selling your business. After spending years building up your bookshop, you will want to make sure that you are handing it over to the right person.
If you use Global Business Brokers we will take the time to understand your business. A bookshop is often an extension of the owner and something that you have done because books are your passion. This means that you will need someone who treats the sale of your business as such.
