In today’s episode, we sit down with Christine Bollow, co-owner and events manager for the DC based, community-oriented Loyalty Bookstore.
We discuss the importance of book events to communities, Christine’s previous career in audiobooks, how Loyalty raises up young authors and marginalized voices, and our least favorite household chores.
Libro.fm: Loyalty Bookstore is described as a “community oriented bookstore.” Can you tell us more about it?
Bollow: We’re called “Loyalty” and that’s a word that means a lot to us and it’s part of our mission. We are loyal to the community. We have put roots down in this community and we hope and strive to be a place that the community will be loyal to as well. So for us it’s not just like, “Oh, we love the community.” It’s not just lip service, it’s something that we really think about in every decision we make. And it’s a very diverse community. Our staff is a very diverse staff […] we want to make sure we give that accessibility and representation to folks.
Libro.fm: Tell us more about your approach to curating events and deciding what’s going to happen at the bookstore and why it’s important to your mission.
Bollow: We are championing books by marginalized authors. It’s important for me and for the store, to champion those authors in every way we can, and a big part of that is the events programming, whether it’s authors who are super established in their career, like Jesmyn Ward, [or debut authors]. For us, the events, it’s not only a way to highlight the book, it’s a way to really celebrate it with our community of readers, with the authors.
Libro.fm: How does your team go about picking what goes in the Loyalty Bundles and Leap of Faith boxes?
Bollow: [For the Bundles, someone can] either get it for themselves, friends, or family members, and give us some guidelines on what the person likes and then the booksellers will pick it out from there. It’s really fun because we can guide them to books that we know are amazing but for whatever reason they don’t get the marketing dollars or they’re not selling as well…so it’s our chance to get those books in people’s hands.
And for the Leap of Faith…[Loyalty’s founder] Hannah came up with the first title, which was Legendborn by Tracy Deonn, which ended up becoming a big, huge hit. And that started because Hannah is a recovering academic and Arthurian super nerd, and I say that with lots of love.
Listen to the full episode:
To celebrate our 10th anniversary and continue amplifying the importance of shopping local, Libro.fm Podcast hosts Craig and Karen interviewed three independent bookshop owners from Lighthouse Bookshop, Cafe con Libros, and Loyalty Bookstore to learn more about their partnerships with Libro.fm and the missions and challenges behind their businesses.
Full transcription
Intro Music:
Libro.fm Podcast with Craig and Karen supporting local bookstores out of your books and more join the world of stories. As always, thank you for listening.
Craig Silva:
Hi, welcome to the Libro.fm Podcast where we talk to authors, narrators, booksellers, and more. I’m Craig.
Karen Farmer:
And I’m Karen. All right, this is our third and final installment in the 10th anniversary podcast, one might call it an extravaganza-
Craig Silva:
An extravaganza.
Karen Farmer:
We get to speak to Christine Bollow in today’s episode. She is the amazing co-owner and business partner of Loyalty Bookstore in the Washington DC area. There are two locations there and they do some of the most incredible events I’ve heard about in a long time. I’m so enthused about what they’re up to.
Craig Silva:
Yeah, I was amazed. So Christine is a co-owner of the store, but also the events manager and I was looking at their calendar and there’s something almost every day and they’re all amazing authors and events and I am wildly impressed by Christine.
Karen Farmer:
She is a busy and incredible person and if any of that seems exciting to you, well keep listening. You can learn more about it.
Hi Christine, welcome to the podcast.
Christine Bollow:
Hi, thank you for having me here.
Karen Farmer:
We are so excited that you’re here. And to get started, we would love if you could tell us and our listeners a little bit more about yourself and about your bookstore.
Christine Bollow:
Yeah, so my name’s Christine Bollow. I’m one of the owners of Loyalty Bookstores. Loyalty is a Black queer Asian owned bookstore. I co-own it with Hannah Oliver Depp, who is a fabulous bookseller and human. I have been in book selling since 2018 or so. I actually was a quality control editor for audiobooks before that. So I am a huge super nerd fan of Libro.fm in all aspects. I’ve even written for the blog before, so I’m excited to finally be on the podcast. I’m like, “What are they going to ask me?” What else? Loyalty is in DC and in Downtown Silver Spring, Maryland. And that’s about it. And I also, besides being a owner, a co-owner, I plan all of our events and our marketing. So I do social media, author events, things like that. I’m very busy and tired.
Craig Silva:
I was going to say, you have no spare time.
Christine Bollow:
I really don’t.
Craig Silva:
Don’t worry. We have a question about all the events later.
Karen Farmer:
Yes.
Christine Bollow:
Okay, cool.
Craig Silva:
I’ve seen Loyalty described as a community oriented bookstore. Can you tell us more about what that means to you guys?
Christine Bollow:
Yeah, so we’re called “Loyalty” and that’s a word that means a lot to us and it’s part of our mission. We are loyal to the community. We have put roots down in this community and we hope and strive to be a place that the community will be loyal to as well. So for us it’s not just like, “Oh, we love the community.” It’s not just lip service, it’s something that we really think about in every decision we make. And it’s a very diverse community. Our staff is a very diverse staff. And between Hannah and I, we’re like, you can just keep us on all of the months, like Black History month, Pride month, Disability month. We’re a little bit of everything.
Craig Silva:
All the bases are covered.
Christine Bollow:
Yeah. So for us, it’s not just about celebrating that one month. It’s like having that representation all the time in all aspects in every corner of the store and every event we do that kind of thing, because we know what it’s like not to have that growing up, not to have that as a reader and we want to make sure we give that accessibility and representation to folks.
Karen Farmer:
I love that you mentioned your booksellers in your response because we were noticing that your booksellers are really prominently featured on your Instagram and throughout all of your messaging. And so as bookstore lovers ourselves, Craig and I always talk about how we love when we’re hand-sold a book and how shelf talkers are our favorite part about going in. And there’s just so much that can’t be replicated by large online retailers, I will say that. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about what the booksellers and that team mean to your store and kind of how you’ve developed this amazing crew of people to do this work.
Christine Bollow:
Yeah. I mean, we have amazing booksellers at the store, and I’m so glad you noticed. So I think one thing that perhaps sets us apart from a lot of other bookstores or bookstore owners is that Hannah and I both started as booksellers before becoming an owner. And this isn’t shade to people who didn’t go this route, it’s just something I’ve noticed. A lot of bookstore owners come to it at different stages in their life and they go into book selling as an owner.
Hannah was a bookseller, a manager. She worked at various different stores for about 10 years or so before opening Loyalty. And then I worked in book selling as well, always in the events side of things. But I actually worked at Loyalty as an employee for a couple of years and then became a co-owner last year. So I think that that gives us that perspective, that the frontline book selling staff is always top of mind to us. And it’s hard, it’s hard to be ethical in a capitalist society, but we try. And we don’t always get it right, but we’re trying our best. And yeah, all of our booksellers, they’re artists, poets, musicians, everyone is just cool. It’s not like it’s a requirement to be cool to work at our store but they-
Craig Silva:
There’s no cool test during the interview?
Christine Bollow:
There isn’t. I do joke that you have to be hot though. Oh my God, this is appropriate, Whatever. I’m a bisexual-
Craig Silva:
The Libro Night podcast.
Christine Bollow:
Right. I’m a bisexual disaster. We’re very thirsty at the store. But yeah, everyone’s just really cool and brings a lot of perspective and we really try to highlight the staff picks and what everyone’s excited about, whether it’s in store on the shelves, and then also on social media as well.
Karen Farmer:
Thank you so much for that. Yeah, you all definitely do seem like a very cool group of people. We were like, “We want to go hang out with them.”
Christine Bollow:
You guys can always hang out with us.
Karen Farmer:
Thank you.
Christine Bollow:
But we’ll probably be-
Craig Silva:
This feels very Mean Girls, “You can’t sit with us.”
Christine Bollow:
No, we are not exclusionary at all. But we’re all nerds but cool nerds, right?
Karen Farmer:
Exactly. Yep, yep. I can relate.
Craig Silva:
I love it. So Loyalty has been on Libro for a while. I did some sleuthing in our database while we were working on the script and you joined when we only had around 500 stores and now we’re at over 3,000 stores. So you guys were in on the early side of things.
Christine Bollow:
Oh, wow.
Craig Silva:
And even more interesting than that stat, my favorite stat that I found while sleuthing around was that your booksellers collectively have downloaded 3,500 ALCs, so Advanced Listener Copies, so it sounds like you have some big audiobook folks there.
Christine Bollow:
Honestly, I’m probably a third of those. I downloaded so many. But I used to work in audiobooks, so. And I do all of the events, so if I think it’s something that might be in the store, I’ll download it because I want to get a listen for it.
Craig Silva:
Totally. Why did Loyalty decide to originally partner with Libro and what role does it play in how you sell books to a wider variety of folks?
Christine Bollow:
It’s funny, because I wasn’t around when Hannah first started Loyalty. We started in 2019 and then I joined in the summer of 2020. So I actually can’t answer specifically why Hannah joined, but I know that they are someone who is always eager and excited to support other people in the community. And I’m guessing that they probably thought Libro.fm was cool-
Craig Silva:
The cool test, there it is again.
Christine Bollow:
… and decided to try it out. This isn’t quite answering your question, but I can tell you that I first found out about Libro.fm through Bookstagram. I won a giveaway and I got a credit for Libro.fm and it was in 2017, so I think that’s when I joined Libro.fm. And the first book I listened to was the, what is it? Lincoln Bardo or something-
Karen Farmer:
Oh, the George Saunder’s book, Lincoln in the Bardo. I love that book.
Christine Bollow:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Craig Silva:
How do you remember that? You were just talking about how you’re reading so many books all the time for this judging, but you remember your first audiobook on Libro?
Christine Bollow:
Well, I have a really good memory, but also I was just thinking about, because like I said at the beginning, I am a Libro.fm super fan and I really love you guys. So yeah, I was just thinking about it before we started, like, “When did I first join Libro?”
Craig Silva:
Now I’m curious what my first Libro book is, so after this call I’m going to scroll all the way back. Yeah.
Karen Farmer:
Well I would love to talk a little bit more about the events that you are planning and hosting. It seems like such an important part of Loyalty, and also as we alluded to before, a very massive part of your job. And I know how stressful, honestly, stressful and time-consuming event planning can be. So I’d just love to hear a little bit more about what your approach is to curating events and deciding what’s going to happen at the bookstore and why it’s important to your mission.
Christine Bollow:
Yeah. Thank you. It is a lot of work, dude. Oh my god. So much work. But it is important and we are an events heavy bookstore. I think for us we are championing books by marginalized authors. And it’s important for me to, and for me and for the store, to champion those authors in every way we can, and a big part of that is the events programming, whether it’s authors who are super established in their career, like Jesmyn Ward, that was something I’ve been trying to make happen for years. I have an author wishlist spreadsheet and when I started in 2020, Viet Thanh Nguyen was my first author on the wishlist, and then Jesmyn Ward was the second person on the spreadsheet because I made the spreadsheet and Jesmyn Ward was Hannah’s first choice. And then last fall, sorry, I’m rambling a little bit, but last fall-
Karen Farmer:
No, this is great.
Craig Silva:
No, ramble away.
Christine Bollow:
… we hosted both of them within a week of each other. And it was crying, “All my dreams have come true.” I’ve worked so hard for this for three years to make this happen. I mean, I think when it comes down to it, Loyalty, we like to say we have zero chill about books. We have zero chill about the authors we love. We’re not cool people, even if we seem like it, we have no chill. We are enthusiastic AF. So for us, the events, it’s not only a way to highlight the book, it’s a way to really celebrate it with our community of readers, with the authors. When I say we really want to do an event, I mean it with every fiber of my being.
And so we do folks like Viet Thanh Nguyen and Jesmyn Ward, but we also do a lot of debut authors, a lot of authors who maybe don’t have that reach yet, but we still believe in them. As an example, we did an event with Victor Manibo, who’s a queer Filipino, speculative fiction writer. He came to the store last week for his sophomore novel. And we were talking because I’m a queer Filipino. And for me, I get, even just thinking about it, I’m emotional about the fact that we got to celebrate his book at the store and see it on the shelves and to know when we hand sell it, I don’t know, it means something to us. It’s not just about… I mean, yes, we are trying to make money to survive and live in this world, but it’s more than that. Yeah, I lost my train of thought because I got emotional.
Craig Silva:
No, I love that. I’m so glad we asked this question. I thought you were going to be like, “It’s hard to find vendors and running events is hard and stuff.” Instead, you had this beautiful answer.
Karen Farmer:
Well, and I love that you mentioned your spreadsheet. A, because I love a spreadsheet and B, because my follow-up question that I was dying to ask you was, what is a dream event that you would love to host?
Christine Bollow:
Well, I can answer that also, so it’s a little bit different, but my dream and something I’m working on now and hopefully will happen this year is to have the inaugural Filipino American Literary Festival in DC this fall.
Karen Farmer:
Wow. Amazing.
Christine Bollow:
And to have [inaudible 00:16:00] authors. Yeah, that’s what I’m working on right now in all my free time.
Karen Farmer:
That’s amazing.
Craig Silva:
I love that it’s your dream but also it’s happening, so that’s amazing.
Karen Farmer:
It’s soon going to be a reality.
Christine Bollow:
I mean I’m working on it and I hope… Yeah, we’re in early planning stages, so I don’t want to say, “Oh yeah, it’s going to happen.” But I feel strongly and hoping that it’s going to.
Karen Farmer:
I am confident that it will. That’s so exciting. Thank you for telling us about it early.
Christine Bollow:
Yeah, you heard it here first.
Craig Silva:
I love how Loyalty has expanded beyond just brick and mortar and typical online sales. I saw that, I forget if it was during COVID or just in general, you guys started loyalty bundles and your Leap of Faith boxes. How does your team go about picking what goes in those boxes and also how has that been going for you guys?
Christine Bollow:
Yeah, it’s obviously not as huge as it was during the height of the pandemic, but we are still doing it. We are still finding that people do the bookseller bundles. Basically they have a couple options of tiers for how much the bundle is, and then they will either get it for themselves or friends or family members and give us some guidelines on what the person likes and then the booksellers will pick it out from there.
So for that, it’s really fun because we can guide them maybe to books that we know are amazing but for whatever reason they don’t get the marketing dollars or they’re not selling as well because either they don’t get the marketing from the publisher or it’s a disabled indigenous author who’s just not getting the attention that they should get, so it’s our chance to get those books in people’s hands. And for the Leap of Faith that started, Hannah came up with the first title, which was Legendborn by Tracy Deonn, which ended up becoming a big, huge hit. And that started because Hannah is a recovering academic and Arthurian super nerd, and I say that with lots of love.
Craig Silva:
In case she’s listening.
Christine Bollow:
Yeah, she’ll know I mean it with love. So it started with that and then it’s like we just… I don’t know if you guys can tell, but we really like celebrating books and authors by diverse people.
Craig Silva:
We’ve noticed, yeah.
Christine Bollow:
But it’s like, yeah, if it’s a smaller press, if it’s a debut author or a merging author, maybe it’s a poet who has a novel out for the first time or it’s an essay collection. And it kind of just happens, like if it’s a book that one of us reads and we’re super excited about it, and we always ask staff too if they have something that they want to nominate, and then we’ve had people vote on things when we’re not sure. I’ve had two picks since I became a co-owner. My first one was, Every Drop is a Man’s Nightmare by Megan Kamalei Kakimoto. She is a Japanese and native Hawaiian author. It’s a really cool short story collection, Bloomsbury published that. And then we-
Craig Silva:
Karen’s Eyes just lit up when you said short story collection.
Karen Farmer:
I was like, “That’s my jam.”
Christine Bollow:
Yes, I love short stories.
Karen Farmer:
Me too.
Christine Bollow:
We’re going to have to talk after this.
Karen Farmer:
I would love that.
Christine Bollow:
But yeah, so we’ll pick out items that we think go with the book. For that one, we wanted to focus on getting products by API Makers, and then we actually ended… Oh, and we usually have a loyalty product that goes in the box. And then for that one we made it a smaller box and we had part of the proceeds go to, I can’t remember which nonprofit, but it was shortly after the fire on Maui, so we had a bunch of the money from the boxes go to that. And then the current book is Ministry of Time, so we picked a journal and then these little bath teas because one of the main characters takes baths every day. And it’s just like we will brainstorm a few things and look at the costs and what can we reasonably get in time, what’s going to work with shipping, what do we think people will like, that kind of stuff.
Craig Silva:
That’s awesome. I love how much thought goes into it. It’s not just, every month it’s a book, a bookmark and a notebook. I like that it seems very thoughtful.
Christine Bollow:
No, no, it’s different every time. Yeah.
Craig Silva:
That’s awesome.
Karen Farmer:
That’s so fun.
Craig Silva:
So we end every episode with a lightning round where we ask sillier questions.
Christine Bollow:
Yes.
Craig Silva:
So I think you have the first one, Karen.
Karen Farmer:
I do. My first question is about younger you. When you were 18 or so, what did you think that you would be doing at this age?
Christine Bollow:
Dance… Well, hmm, that’s not lightning round. Dancing or doing motion capture and movies.
Karen Farmer:
Oh my gosh.
Craig Silva:
Wow.
Karen Farmer:
Okay. Wait, say more about both of those things. Are these things that-
Craig Silva:
I was-
Karen Farmer:
Yeah, tell us everything.
Craig Silva:
I was going to say the exact same thing, like, “More.”
Christine Bollow:
Sorry, I know we don’t have a ton of time. So I used to be a professional dancer and was training to do motion capture and stunt fighting. But I had hip surgery, which ended my dance career, which is how I got back into reading as a priority. And I started a Bookstagram account and that’s how I ended up getting into books as a career because I can’t dance anymore, which is sad, but it’s also led to a wealth of other exciting things.
Karen Farmer:
Totally. Oh my gosh, thank you for telling us that. That was an amazing answer.
Craig Silva:
These are supposed to be lighthearted questions. Karen, what have you done?
Christine Bollow:
I’ll try to go a quicker lightning round [inaudible 00:22:56]-
Karen Farmer:
No, you’re perfect.
Craig Silva:
So given the DC/Silver Spring area, have any famous politicians ever come into the store? And if they haven’t, is there a politician you wish would come into the store?
Christine Bollow:
Well, William Jawando comes into our store pretty regularly. Obama has come in a-
Craig Silva:
Spot blown up.
Christine Bollow:
But that was before it was technically Loyalty, it used to be Upshur Street Books. But yeah, because kind of out of the area for the super political part of DC, so we don’t get a ton of that with the politicians coming to visit us.
Craig Silva:
It’s probably for the best, to be honest.
Christine Bollow:
Yeah, I’m okay with it.
Karen Farmer:
I’m going to throw another one in because Craig and I love to ask people this question every once in a while, what is your most favorite and your least favorite household chore?
Christine Bollow:
Oh, I hate doing laundry. And I like, if I’m not on a schedule, I like cooking and doing the dishes but only if I-
Craig Silva:
Who likes doing the dishes?
Christine Bollow:
There’s something kind of therapeutic about it, like if you’re listening to an audiobook and doing the dishes. But it’s only if I’m not, like if I’m having one of those lazy weekends where… Or if it’s the week you’re on a holiday. If it’s a normal day, I don’t want to do anything.
Karen Farmer:
Totally. Do you want to take the last one, Craig? Sorry, I threw a curveball in with my bonus question.
Craig Silva:
Oh sure, sure. That’s why I was like, “Why is she looking at me? It says her name on the script.”
Karen Farmer:
I’m throwing everything out of whack.
Craig Silva:
I was like, “And she asked-“
Christine Bollow:
I could ask you guys a question. Let’s just go crazy.
Craig Silva:
Yeah. I was like, “She threw in that random T.J. Klune question.”
Karen Farmer:
We asked T.J. that too. And I think he had the same favorite as me, which is that we both love cleaning grout in a shower or any sort of tile situation, which-
Christine Bollow:
Interesting.
Karen Farmer:
… I think it is unique. I think a lot of people think that’s pretty horrifying. But that I find it very meditative.
Craig Silva:
Yeah, because it is.
Christine Bollow:
No, I mean I get that. If I’m mad, if I’m like… That’s a good thing to do when you’re pissed off, like-
Karen Farmer:
Totally.
Craig Silva:
Just hate scrubbing.
Christine Bollow:
Right. I get it. I get it.
Craig Silva:
This was a tangent, but now I’m leaving this all in. Anyway, thank you so much for joining us. Again, I’m sure you… I can see the pile or mountain rather of books that you have to read behind you so we really appreciate your time.
Christine Bollow:
Absolutely.
Craig Silva:
But before we let you go, we end every episode with asking for a recommendation. So what are you reading now or read recently that you think that we and our listeners should be reading?
Christine Bollow:
I just reread The Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki, which is one of my favorite books. I started a new book club at Loyalty called Gaysians, which as you might suspect, we read books by queer Asian authors. And one of my favorite things to do with re-experiencing a book I love is to listen to the audiobook, so I listen to the audiobook with my Libro.fm credit. I think, it’s Cindy Kay or Catherine Ho, I can’t remember, but it’s a really great audiobook, so I highly recommend that. And my favorite audiobook of all time is Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton. And I think it’s Robert Petkoff is the narrator. And it’s brilliant and hilarious and he is insanely talented.
Karen Farmer:
Well, I can’t wait. Thank you for the recommendations. This is gold for us.
Christine Bollow:
Absolutely.
Karen Farmer:
Well thank you again for all of your time. It was so nice to meet you in person and we hope we get to come visit you in your store soon.
Christine Bollow:
Yes, anytime. We’ll hang out and we’ll be like, “We’re so cool altogether in our nerdery.”
Karen Farmer:
That sounds great.
Craig Silva:
Yes, we’ll come down and do some live podcasting during the Filipino author event.
Christine Bollow:
Yes. Oh, that would be amazing.
Karen Farmer:
That would be awesome.
Christine Bollow:
Yes. You’re welcome to hang out anytime. Thank you so much.
Craig Silva:
Awesome, nice to meet you.