But HOW DO YOU PAY YOUR BILLS?

We get a lot of questions from visitors who walk into our bookstore. I’ve combined the most common ones and then I answered them. Because I’m being somewhat efficient today!

1) What the heck is this place?

CH: It’s a bookstore. A specialty bookstore. We only sell autographed books. You see those purple boxes? We also run an online subscription service where we send out over 5,000 signed books each month in those boxes. All the profit goes to charity from both the bookstore and the subscription service.

2) What do you mean you donate all the profit to charity? How do you pay your personal bills?

CH: Good question. I’m a writer, so I keep the income from my writing career. But any income The Bookworm Box generates after expenses are paid, we donate to charity.

3) You’re a writer? Um…again. How do you pay your personal bills?

CH: With a debit card. Sometimes a checkbook.

4) Where are the Bibles? Why don’t you have the new Stephen King book that was released today?

CH: All of our books are autographed by the authors, so we aren’t a typical bookstore. We don’t carry new releases unless they are donated to us and signed. We also don’t carry things written by people from whom we aren’t able to obtain autographs…like Jesus Christ.

5) What the heck? Is that a half dinosaur, half Christopher Walken clock on the wall?

CH: Yes. Yes it is.

6) Why are most of the books in your store romance novels?

CH: I am immersed in the romance genre, so most of the authors I know or have access to also write romance. We would love to branch out and obtain lots of other genres for our shelves, so if you know an author who would be willing to donate a copy or two to the store, please give them our mailing address.

7) Is your wifi really free?

CH: Yes. And it’s fast. But no one really uses it.

8) Do you have any Pokémon hiding here?

CH: Huh?

9) Why can’t I purchase a subscription box? It says they’re always sold out.

CH: We open up for new purchases once a month for about an hour. Right now, we can’t expand because we don’t have the manpower to organize more than 5,000 autographed books each month to be shipped. I hate to admit it, but I consider my writing career to be my main priority. The Bookworm Box is sort of on the back burner a lot of the time. I do what I can when I can, so the idea of making it bigger concerns me. I have no spare time.

10) Then why don’t you just hire someone? Like an executive director of the charity?

CH: We did! She’s amazing. Her name is Stephanie and she starts tomorrow, actually. We have a lot of great ideas we want to implement and we believe hiring Stephanie to take control of The Bookworm Box will make it bigger, better and more efficient than it already is.

11) Is she nice?

CH: Most of the time. I’m a little scared of her.

12) What if we just want to come inside the store and hang out, but not buy anything?

CH: Here’s the wifi password. And there’s free coffee over there.

13) But seriously. How do you pay your bills if you don’t take any money from the charity and all you do is write books?

CH: I have help from a few guys. Their names are Will, Holder, Ridge, Owen, Benton, Miles, and Warren. Daniel and Luke don’t really help with the bills all that much…

14) Well…how can I help?

CH: Lots of ways. You can come to our volunteer days that are held once each month. Just follow us on social media to find out when they are. You could donate singed copies of any books you might have, or solicit a signed copy from your favorite authors. You could become a Bookworm subscriber to help raise money for charities. You can donate swag, bookmarks, anything that could fit inside our boxes. And if you aren’t able to do any of that, then you can also help by simply spreading the word about our charity.

15) Well how much money has The Bookworm Box donated since all this started? Like a few thousand bucks?

CH: Since we began operation in February of last year, with the help of our volunteers, subscribers and other authors, we’ve donated over half a million dollars to various charities.

16) That’s cool, but what’s that music playing in the background? I like that!

CH: Oh, that’s just the greatest band ever. The Avett Brothers. You should check them out.

The post But HOW DO YOU PAY YOUR BILLS? first appeared on Colleen Hoover.