Bookseller Interview #2

The Floating Bookshop: Oklahoma City, OK

Today we’re sharing the second of our monthly interview series with booksellers we love. Check out the first post here!

This month, you can get to know one of our most ardent supporters, Steve “Echo” Gooch at The Floating Bookshop in downtown Oklahoma City! We love all independent booksellers, but we especially love those who make uplifting small press books a priority, and Echo is one of the best examples out there. Since launching our first novel (Rob Roensch’s In the Morning, the City Is the Prairie) at The Floating Bookshop back in November, the book has remained the shop’s top bestseller three months running, and we know that’s due in part to Echo’s handselling skills. Read on to learn more about this newer shop quickly becoming an installation in downtown OKC.

1. Tell us your origin story.

The Floating Bookshop started as a way to stay involved in bookselling as I pulled back from running another local bookstore for several years. It was supposed to be a pop-up for a while, and then maybe, after a year or so, find a small spot and open a permanent location. Well, even before the first pop-up, my friend Nick, who owned the former Word of Mouth Books in OKC, told me about this space on OKC’s historic Film Row, right downtown, just blocks from the amazing downtown parks and in the center of it all. I went to see it and was completely hooked. It’s part of a local market of other businesses, including a coffee shop, a zero-waste and local food shop, and more.

Of course when I went to see it, it was just an empty warehouse, but I was enchanted by the space—especially the garage door that I could open up in good weather. It was really a physical manifestation of the open door I wanted to have to the downtown OKC community.

The whole space, called “Sailor & the Dock,” opened at the end of August 2023, and for the bookstore, it’s been an amazing experience. Everyone downtown has been so excited that there’s a bookstore in the core of OKC, from long-term residents to tourists to newly arrived transplants. We feel so lucky to have been embraced as downtown OKC’s bookstore.

2. How does a typical day look at your store?

We open at 9, and I usually unlock the space, turn on the lights, and then head over to the coffee shop we share the space with, Hunny & Honey, to grab a cafe au lait. Then I check the shelves, straightening and replenishing (although we run pretty lean—99% of what we have is on the shelves at all times). We have a steady stream of customers throughout the morning because of our urban location; several regulars work the night shift and come in before 10am to grab a book before they go home. I also try to be active on social media in the morning, sharing stuff about the store, about other local organizations and businesses we love, and looking at publisher and author accounts. I can get a little bit data obsessive, so crunching the sales numbers and the marketing numbers can eat up as much time as I give it, but thankfully there’s always people who want to talk books to bring me back to the world of the living. I am spoiled for choice as far as food goes, but my favorite lunch lately has been the Winter Harvest Bowl from my neighbors across the hall, Re:Supply.

Our UPS driver usually drops off packages about 2pm, so I get to fill my afternoons with one of my favorite things: checking in and shelving books. Seriously, it’s so satisfying.

We close at 6 during the week and 7 on the weekend, and there’s a nice flow of customers getting out and about downtown OKC that keep the evenings humming. Then I lock up and get ready to do it all over again!

3. What do you think is unique to your store or community?

We get a wide variety of customers—we’re within a few blocks of thousands of hotel rooms and all kinds of events and attractions, which means we see a lot of visitors to OKC, many of whom are in Oklahoma for the first time. We like to think our bookstore lets them know that Oklahoma is a little stranger, a little more unique, and a little weirder than they might expect.

We are also surrounded by hundreds of apartments, which means we’re part of a vibrant community of residents who live down here to be close to work, the museums, the parks, the philharmonic, etc. It’s a really diverse community, with people who’ve moved to OKC from all over the country, and our eclectic selection reflects both our interests and theirs. OKC is just starting to come into its own as a big city, and The Floating Bookshop both reflects, and in its own small way, drives that.

4. What do you wish writers knew about your role as a bookseller?

I wish writers knew how much difference independent booksellers make. We’re community hubs for books, yes, but also writing and creating, and even things like knitting group meet-ups. Independent booksellers care passionately about books and community, and we want writers to embrace that community. I hope they already know how important it is for them to shop at local bookstores—we see it, notice it, and LOVE it when we see writers in our stores. I also hope they know how to promote buying their books from local businesses, and if they feel it’s absolutely necessary to direct people to buy their books online, they post links to bookshop.org, which supports indie bookstores that are part of the American Booksellers Association.

Healthy independent bookstores mean more readers.

5. What’s a small press book you’ve recently enjoyed? Do you have favorite small presses?

I’m not just saying this because it’s Belle Point’s newsletter, but Rob Roensch’s In the Morning, the City Is the Prairie is one of the best novels I’ve read in a long, long time. Roensch is a master at both capturing an image and conveying a feeling, and in this book he distills something essential about being young and adrift, and something essential about Oklahoma City. It’s the novel of 21st century OKC.

It’s hard to pick a favorite small press, but my academic background is in Comparative Literature, and Deep Vellum, just down I-35 in Dallas, is doing amazing and important work getting great pieces of contemporary world literature into English. Relatively few books published around the world are ever translated, but I firmly believe that reading works from other places, times, and cultures educates us on what it really means to be human, so I will always champion those doing that work.

6. How do you think small presses and independent bookstores can better support each other?

Small Presses and Independent Bookstores are the heart of the industry, and I love seeing things like Asterism Books, a distribution channel that makes it easier for indie bookshops to order from small publishers. I spent years in publishing, and I know how hard it can be for a small press to break through. As a small retailer, I need to be able to tell the story of a book—and it’s essential that I actually believe in that book.

It’s hard work on both ends, but one of the big advantages my shop has over chain bookstores and online sellers is that we prominently feature unique books. Sure, we carry many of the NYT bestsellers (but definitely not all), but our top three selling titles in 2023 were all from small presses (followed by Fourth Wing at number 4). I think focusing regionally, for both bookstores and small presses, is a great strategy. In-person bookselling is all about relationships; customers trust both our recommendations of specific books and also more generally that if they know and like the books on our shelves, a book they’re not yet familiar with will probably be right up their alley as well. Similar relationships between bookstores and publishers are crucial—I’ll order a Small Beer book or a Two Dollar Radio or a Split/Lip book even if I’m not familiar with the author because I know what they do and what they do is something I like.

We’re eager to support this new and growing shop in downtown OKC, and we hope you will too next time you’re in the area. Even if you’re not local, be sure to follow them on Instagram for Echo’s excellent book recommendations. This spring, we’ll be back at The Floating Bookshop to celebrate This New Dark, so keep an eye out for updates as we finalize our plans!