Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are Affiliate Links. That means if you click on a link and purchase an item, we receive an affiliate commission at no cost to you. All opinions remain our own. We are affiliated with Bookshop.org to help support Indie Bookshops. Click here to learn more about our decision!
The Changing of The Year
Well, we’ve said goodbye to 2020, and 2021 is staring us right in the face. Just like borders, the changing of the years seems to be an arbitrary line that humans have constructed to help us make sense of the chaos.
I’ve caught myself saying “I can’t wait for 2020 to be over” at least a thousand times. As if the calendar rolling from the 31st to the 1st will change anything about the world we are currently living in.
However, I think that it serves its purpose to hit the reset button and re-evaluate your life and make plans. So, even though I know that nothing fundamentally will change, I’m still going to enjoy the feeling of saying out with the old and in with the new.
Who’s with me?
To that end, we’ve got big plans and big dreams for Alchemy Bookshop in 2021. As you might recall us mentioning, we’ve had to delay a physical location due to the pandemic. Everything is a little up in the air and we don’t want to overstretch ourselves until things are more certain.
Building a Solid Foundation
When we first came together and decided to breathe our dreams into existence and actually pursue Alchemy as a real possibility. We really honed in on being able to support ourselves, our families, and our communities via a business that lives our values. We wanted to create a business that wasn’t solely driven by profit. Where things like friendship, authenticity, mental health, a thirst for knowledge, and joy were ever-present.
That being said, we also want to provide a safe and secure existence for our families, so we will not rush into the next phase until we feel confident that it will cause no harm to our finances. We are working to build a strong foundation that can hold all our dreams for years to come.
We’ve pivoted for 2021, but we are very excited about the pivot.
Here are our plans:
Further Reading: 5 Star Books of 2020
The Blog
Obviously, we started with the blog, and we are SO EXCITED to continue to grow it in 2021. Our ideal lives consist of reading books, writing about books, talking about books, and perhaps even writing books one day. The blog has been such a fun creative outlet for us and we are very invested in seeing it grow.
As you know we are affiliates of bookshop.org because we believe in their mission and it aligns with ours. We’d love to grow the blog and monetize it so that we can be on the way to making this our full-time job. However, we NEVER want monetization to come at the cost of quality or community. The choice to purchase books through our links is always up to the reader.
We are working hard to bring you consistent quality content and our hope is that purchasing books via our links is a natural progression because we’ve sparked your interest in a new book. 😀
Further Reading: Why We Are Affiliates of Bookshop.org
The Pop Up Store
With our ability to gather safely very limited in a covid world, we’ve decided to start 2021 with a themed pop-up bookstore. We’ve got our eye on various outdoor festivals, farmers’ markets, and events where we could have a pop-up shop safely outdoors and socially distanced. We plan on starting as the weather warms so probably May onward. Hopefully, we’ll be able to distribute vaccines relatively efficiently within the US and covid cases will be down and we will be close to herd immunity. Fingers crossed.
What are we going to sell at our pop up?
We are super excited to bring you our favorite debuts and new releases at the pop-up store. We’ll have to carefully consider how much stock we will be able to safely and effectively carry, so we might end up having a thematic store so we can narrow it down to a specific genre or genre. Ideally along with a bargain bin of books because I personally love rifling through a bin of $2 books.
We also want to offer a branded line of candles, items made by local makers, and some plant babies to be your quiet reading companions.
We have big dreams of a super cute and aesthetic space with some adorable items to go alongside our books. Watch this space, we’ll start posting our events once we have them scheduled.
Further Reading: The Best Books About Bookshops that Keep Us Motivated
Instagram has also been such a fun creative outlet. As it stands, Instagram doesn’t drive much traffic to the blog, but it’s been such a fun challenge to create quality creative content.
We’ve learned A LOT about taking a good picture, editing, and building community. We love our bookstagram community and we have found so many amazing books due to Instagram.
We’d like to continue to be active in this community and to engage our creativity via Instagram. If you don’t already, feel free to follow us on Insta if you feel so inclined!
Further Reading: 2021 Most Anticipated Book Releases
We are very active on Pinterest. It’s a great way to get our blog posts out there. Pinterest is currently our largest source of traffic and it was a bit of a difficult nut to crack. We had a steep learning curve but now it’s a huge part of what we do.
We really enjoy being able to provide book lists and content that our Pinterest followers are interested in. If you’d like to, you can follow us on Pinterest!
Further Reading: Check Out Our Free Reading Tracker!
If 2021 had a motto for us it would probably be: Quality, Expertise, Growth. We want to keep the quality high on all the various ways we engage with our book loving community. Good content, great pictures, and interesting takes. We want to build our expertise in all the different avenues we are pursuing Alchemy so that when we go full time we feel confident and ready.
Finally, we want to grow. This little fledgling baby that we’ve nurtured this year is getting ready to fly. We want to let Alchemy reach it’s full potential and we want to encourage longterm sustainable growth.
What does your 2021 hold? What dreams are you chasing this year?
Xoxo
Anne, Alice, Jane
