Bookshop Staff Profile: Nichole Solga McCown

I was born in a bookstore.

Just kidding—I was born on a camping trip—but I did spend extended amounts of time as a baby hanging out in the back of the Yolla Bolly Press Bookstore in greater downtown Covelo, California, while my parents taught stained glass classes. Apparently I was pretty happy in my little carrier seat, hiding out in the back of a bookstore. Perhaps that was a foreshadowing of the future.

I’ve always loved books. My parents joke that teaching me to read was their first mistake—because they never saw me after that. I can easily remember the first bookstore I fell love with—Blue Dragon Book Shop in Ashland, Oregon—and it was a stack of used Asterix and Obelix comic books that sent me head over heels. We must not have known any other source for them, but every time we visited I got two books and it was the only time I got them. This meant that if we were taking the hour-long trip north, I was clamoring to go to Blue Dragon.

I grew up in Mt. Shasta, and I grew up with computers. My mother had a Mac Plus in the late ’80s (which I used mostly to play games like Stunt Copter) and she and I took classes in HTML way before it was in vogue. She also raised me on Tolkein and Star Trek . . . so you can see who’s responsible for my inner nerd. My dad threw in a mind for numbers; I got my bachelor’s degree in mathematics from UCSC. When I was younger, he and I traveled to Canada, Mexico, and all over the place. Thus my love for travel and travel writing was born along with an appreciation for poetry that will fit on the back of a postcard. Hello, haiku!

At Bookshop, I do a little bit of a whole lot. I’m a used book buyer and a supervisor. I work off the floor, building and maintaining our website, blog, and other social media outlets. I give the science fiction and fantasy section as much love as I can and I try to make Judith—our book buyer—smile as often as possible. My official title is Community Marketing Director but I’ve recently added a great new hat to my collection: Consignment Specialist.

Bookshop has recently made a lot of changes to the way we deal with locally and independently published authors, and when the chance came up to take this on, I jumped at it. I love my current blend of time spent working with people and working behind the scenes. This new position brings me into contact with a whole new group of people—local authors—to help them distribute and promote their work. It’s fascinating and very rewarding.

 Bookshop Santa Cruz is a great place to work, and Santa Cruz is a great community to live in. I look forward to interacting with all of you, in some form or another. And if you want to come talk about SF&F, consignment authors, or whatnot, you can ask for me in the store, reply to one of our emails, send us a tweet, or message us on Facebook. Any of those will get you to me.