I guess I could turn my locked-and-loaded rant about that "cozy fantasy about opening a bookstore" dumpster fire into some kind of writing advice? Because the thing is, if you're trying to write about a particular business you haven't worked in, and you don't do any research or talk to people who work there, you're going to show your entire ass -- not through the decisions you make in depicting it, but through the things you don't know are decisions.
To stretch or adapt the realities of a business to suit your story, you have to know what you're stretching or adapting. Especially in a fantasy settings, you can come up with answers to the "how are they doing [x]" or "how does [y] work" questions, but only if you know to ask those questions.
For example, the author of this book could have answered the question "if your future store is a secluded bandit hideout near a town people hate visiting, how are your merchandise and customers going to get there?" with some kind of teleportation magic. But she didn't seem to know to ask the question, apparently not realizing how important foot traffic and supply chains are to retail.
So, ass shown, and that's how I quit the book by chapter 3 instead of spending 300 pages bashing my head against the wall of "that doesn't make sense."
Especially if you're writing a book that supposedly celebrates the profession you didn't research. NGL, as a bookseller, I felt a little insulted that this author a) didn't care enough to do research and b) thought running a bookstore was this cute little hobbyist thing that required no real thought.
