The Booklover Bookshop in Milford is a much-loved institution, a magnet for bibliophiles of all ages and interests. Last year Olivia Spooner, who while owning the shop also wrote five books, sold the store and handed over the responsibilities of maintaining The Booklover’s reputation to Rachel Panossian. Christine Young talked to Rachel about taking over the highly regarded independent book shop.

Rachel had long dreamed of owning her own shop one day, but confesses “it’s been a rollercoaster ride” since she took over The Booklover just six months ago. “I honestly don’t know how Olivia ran the bookshop, wrote bestselling novels and raised three beautiful kids – superwoman! Even though I’ve worked here for five years there was still a steep learning curve – and I don’t recommend taking over a retail shop two months before Christmas!”

Not that Rachel regrets the decision to buy the shop. Far from it. But she’s a self-confessed perfectionist, and her own hardest taskmaster, with ambitions for the shop she has yet to fulfil.

Rachel loves books and can’t imagine “where I would be without books in my life”, thanks to the stories her father created for her based on pictures in books, and to regular library visits with her mother during her childhood.

When the family moved to New Zealand from Canada 14 years ago, Rachel attended Auckland University, majoring in English, drama and event management, before taking on book-related roles, including as a part-time bookseller and later a full-time supervisor at Whitcoulls’ Albany branch, before moving on to a stint at an independent bookshop in Takapuna. Whitcoulls “gave me experience in a chain bookstore” – and confirmed to her that it was not her preferred milieu. At the independent store, on the other hand, she immediately felt she belonged. She knew she wanted a specialist bookshop. It was, she says, “cosy, intimate and personalised”, attributes she now aims to amplify at The Booklover.

She began working at The Booklover as a sales person, after she applied for but lacked the experience to get the advertised role of co-manager. She was, however, delighted to be contacted by Olivia and offered a part-time role. After a year, she began taking on additional responsibilities and became a full-time Booklover team member, looking after, among other things, the store’s popular social media and regular email newsletter. “Olivia was very, very encouraging to me learning, and the role grew,” Rachel says. When the co-manager left to return to Australia, Rachel became co-manager alongside Olivia.

Like Olivia before her, Rachel prioritises being in the shop. “It would be weird not to have the owner customer-facing,” she says. But as owner she also deals with all the administrative and financial responsibilities; one of her frustrations is that she is not on the shop floor more often. It’s important to her personally, as well as in making book-buying decisions, that she knows what customers want. “You risk losing touch; you don’t hear what people are reading, or want to read.”

Part-time bookseller Laura Watts helps compensate for Rachel’s inevitable focus on finance, ordering and buying. Rachel says their reading interests complement each other and each fills in the other on customer preferences and comments, as well as on the latest books in the many genres represented in-store. “I couldn’t do it without Laura,” Rachel says. In the frantic pre-Christmas period last year, Laura and regular casual Jacki Fortune helped manage the rush of customers as Rachel adjusted to the need to balance selling with all the back office tasks at the busiest time of the year.

This month, Venice White, with experience in independent bookshops here and in the UK, joins the team as a part-time co-manager.

Owning a bookstore – and perhaps even The Booklover – was “always in the back of my mind”, says Rachel, but she hadn’t expected it would happen in her early thirties. “When Olivia asked me, my gut reaction was ‘no way’, because I thought it was too good to be true. My gut said no, my heart said yes, and my brain said no.” It was the start of many long conversations with her husband, Armand Panossian, and her family and friends.

It was Rachel herself who perhaps prompted the opportunity. She had had a conversation with Olivia in which she said she felt she had learned everything she could in her role at The Booklover. “I wanted to move into a buying position, or perhaps join a publisher. That raised it for her and me. Olivia wanted to sell and offered it to me.”

Rachel knew how hard an independent bookshop owner works. And with Rachel and Armand in their thirties, they had assumed a move as big as this would follow once they had taken a more regular route of “house, children, dog”. As they debated, they overcame Armand’s reservations about bookshops being an endangered species and agreed it was too good an opportunity to pass up. They still want children, and a house – but “at the end of the day, there was no way we could say no”.

Before formally taking over, Rachel had already followed her passion for children’s books and encouraging young people to read by taking over as children's book buyer, and had met and worked with most of the publishers' reps. But being solely responsible for all the decisions has been challenging. In making buying decisions especially, she has to be a clairvoyant, anticipating trends, following award long lists, reading publishers’ reading copies, and anticipating who might get reviews that generate sales.

Having mastered many of the routine tasks, Rachel continues activities such as the newsletter and social media (both of which she still enjoys creating), the regular book clubs, book quizzes, showcases of new books, and occasional book launches. She is now starting to plan ahead, keen to make The Booklover a hub not just for books, but for the wider community. Perhaps yoga classes in the spacious room (carpeted and lined with books) at the back of the store, or talks, or…  The only limit is the time she has to ensure whatever she does meets her own high standards.

“I’d really like to establish stronger relationships with local schools. We already have some schools we work closely with, but I’d like to reach out more and continue to grow those relationships, to further support children's reading. I’d also like to work towards re-establishing our 'Booklover Banter' podcast because we’ve had to take a break (for obvious reasons!). It was fun for us to have another reason to talk about books, and fun for people to listen and get an insider glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes of a bookshop.”

Rachel will also continue the popular ‘Staff Picks’ section at the front of the store, the staff recommendations in the newsletter, and her focus on personalisation – finding just the right book for whoever comes into the shop. This is what The Booklover does best, she says. “Without personal selling, we would be nowhere near as busy.”

“I never wanted to be someone who came in and changed everything,” she says. “I would just like to do more; we have this amazing space [at the back of the store]…. I would love to do more children’s events: story times with the latest picture books in the morning… I want it to be a special place on the Shore. I have a backlog of things I haven’t done and things I want to do.”

While Laura urges her to take a step back and aim to do just one thing a week, Rachel’s approach is to do five things, and “If it’s not perfect, why bother? I have very, very high expectations of myself.”

She confesses that by now, she thought she would not be working until nine or 10 o’clock each night. But “it’s just me learning as much as I can about running a small business. I thought it would be easier as I’ve been here so long, but it’s different when you own the shop. There are things you just don’t realise until you own it.”

Despite the challenges, she sums up, “It’s rewarding, and I’ve felt an overwhelming amount of support from the community. I don’t regret it for a single moment.”