Books are my business: Bookstation's head of marketing Alan Johnston

I studied economics and history in Queens. On the last year of my degree, I ended up in America selling books door to door.

It was part of a student programme that was being run by a company there.

I arrived at the airport and the friends I was meant to be going with hadn’t turned up. 

I got on the flight, arrived in New York, took the Greyhound coach down to Nashville where this company was and had a one-week crash course in selling books.

I ended up in Washington state, Seattle, and Tacoma, selling books door to door. I came home after two or three months and finished my degree.

I was looking for a job and I saw that Eason were running a trainee management programme.

 I went for that because I liked the look of the new flagship store in Belfast. 

I got that job and it took me two years to talk them into letting me into the book department. 

I had done a certificate in marketing and advertising and my dream was to work in that area. 

While I was working for Eason, I did a master’s degree in business strategy, which had a big chunk of marketing and advertising as well. 

Later I got the offer to go and work in Dublin as the marketing person for Eason, and so in 2000, my family moved down to Donabate. 

I moved to Bookstation in 2021 after surviving a year of covid and working out how to sell books solely online. 

Bookstation were expanding and I saw that I could bring some of my experience, it was a nice fit.

What does your role involve?

There is a PR element to it, a brand element, there’s marketing and advertising.

There’s also a huge amount of forecasting involved in my job, what we’re going to sell, how many books we’re going to need. 

Publishers want things to be that much tighter in terms of returns so you have got to get your forecast right in the first place. 

I swing between PR, marketing and brand, and forecasting, buying, commercial stuff. It’s really a combination of everything I’ve learned along the way.

What do you like most about it?

How you can impact the result of a particular book coming into your store, and play a part in its success. There is a lot you can do to make books happen. 

One of the things I really love is when you listen to what people are asking for when they come in. 

If you’re in any way inquisitive about how they found out about it, that’s where it is really interesting. 

Joining all those dots is the bit I love the most. It’s so fast moving and I find it exciting, I never get bored.

What do you like least about it?

It’s when people in the industry think of selling books in the same way as any other product, like they’re selling tins of beans. 

It’s people’s interests and hobbies and imaginations, it’s escapism. There’s a kind of magic to it.

Three desert island books

I would choose Animal Farm first, because it’s a brilliant fusion of art, political thought, and ideology. It’s also timeless — George Orwell books still trend because of what’s going on in the world.

The second one would be The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe, which is about New York and high finance, Wall Street traders being the masters of the universe. 

You come away from that book and you realise how messed up that whole thing was, the sheer unfairness of that world and the hypocrisy of it. 

It made me realise, like Animal Farm, that you should be be careful what you wish for.

My third one would be Divorcing Jack by Colin Bateman. I was working in Eason’s Bangor store when it was published and Colin came in and told me about this book. 

I thought it was hilarious, funny, and satirical. It was groundbreaking because it was taking a pop at everyone, you had to be there at the time in Northern Ireland to understand. 

That moment, it represented something.