We have ALL the YA graphic novels!!

Well, pretty close.

Brian Hibbs is doing his yearly accounting of graphic novel sales, at least of the top 750 titles.

Out of the first 100 bestselling titles, we have all but 5.

Out of the top 200 titles, we have all but about 20.

Out of the total 750 titles, we're carrying all but about 75. (I have counted all the individual books in a series we aren't carrying as one title.)

I'm not sure how we've managed to do this; mostly, we pay attention to titles that are requested or otherwise rise to our attention for some reason.

I have already tried to order the 20 titles in the first 200 we don't have, of which about 25% are not available. 

I'm going to work my way down the list until we have all of them.

An active social life...of doctor visits.

I'm starting to see a future of constant doctor visits.

A few years back, there was a group of doctors who announced that after a certain age (I think it was about 60 years old) they were going to just let nature take it's course and not accept any treatment. It would be interesting to see if they followed through...

So far this month I've had my regular doctor visit, along with labs, then a visit to a kidney doctor, coming up a scan of the kidneys and also a scan of the heart. another lab test, and another visit to the doctor next month and so on and so forth. My doctor wanted me to have colonoscopy but I demurred. I'll do the poop test instead. 

Coffee is good, Aleve is bad. My creatine level is higher, borderline, so all the tests. Maybe I just didn't drink enough water that week? (Despite what everyone else was telling me, the H2O in my coffee and lemonade is...well,...H2O.)

I know that the heart exam will show a buildup of plaque. I've known this for 40 years, taking statins diligently; it my inheritance and it's the big danger in my life.

Someone I know well who is a generation younger than me just had a life-threatening event out of the blue. 

I don't know. 

It just seems to take up a whole lot of head space.

I'm very fatalistic. What will be, will be. I do not intend to take extreme measures to continue on. Now I'm wondering just how much of this preventative care I want to put up with. Sigh. I'm semi-retired, I can find the time to see a doctor. 

I was worried about having a social life when I fully retired, but these doctor visits may just fit the bill!

Goodbye McD's.

One of the measures I do at the store when ordering product is to gauge my own interest:

Way back when I was a sophomore at Bend Senior High, one of the senior debate guys was doing a presentation and said that, when you try to choose an interesting subject to talk about, you have to decide if it's interesting to you, and if it is, then there is a good chance that others will also.

Stuck with me. 

On the other hand, I often get customers in the store who act surprised that, "people are still..." doing whatever; magic, comics, cards, games.

"Yes," I say. "Believe it or not, this stuff went on without you." 

Anyway, I've stopped going to McDonalds, or indeed, any other fast food joints. Once McD's dropped the $1 sodas, they lost me forever. 

Working a week straight.

These periodic weeks where I work full time are good for me. I get the chance to experience the more general flow of the store.

For instance, I see more comic customers, which reassures me that it is still an active product line. I get to see where people are coming from by their zip codes; it appears to be more than half non-locals, though the majority of those are from Oregon. 

I've been leading people over to the new back issue bins and that's been a great success. I need to remind Sabs and Ash to physically lead comic customers over to that section.

(My crew at are a comic convention in Seattle for six days...)

I've also sold one of my own books every day I've worked, without really trying that hard. There is a certain percentage of people who will simply buy; but I can't tell who they will be in advance. The heavy majority will shrug it off, but a significant minority will buy. 

Could I still work every day if I had to? Probably now, with this slowdown, but it would be very hard. The problem I have with people is more me than them. There is a fair amount of thoughtlessness, but I don't think there is maliciousness involved. So it's up to me to shrug off the thoughtlessness because I can't change that.

I'm definitely tired. No way around that. And that is due to age, I think. I could probably get back into the routine if I had to; it's a matter of rationing my time and energy, of delegating time, pacing myself. 

I feel really good about the store. For once in my career, there is very little I would change, and nothing much to add. Just keep refining what we're doing.

I have the weirdest bookstore.

Every week I order the big books--the ones that will be on the New York Time's bestseller lists. For instance, last week it was "Women," by Kristin Hannah. The week before that it was "Gothikana," by Runyx. And so on.

I can tell they're going to be big books by how many copies my wholesaler has available; a pretty sure sign that the book will be heavily promoted. I have a benchmark number that I automatically order.

However...these books rarely sell for me. They certainly don't sell fast, and they don't sell in big numbers.

I know that most bookstores sell the hell out of these books. I often visit Brandon at Herringbone Books here in Redmond (a really great bookstore, by the way) and he sells most of the big new releases by major publishers far better than I do.

And yet...and yet...

I sell hundreds of books a week. We've been on a very healthy streak for years now. We ring up book sales all day. And there sits the #1 book in the country, gathering dust. 

If I had set out to change my store into a bookstore by doing the traditional things, the store would have failed. I'm not sure why--mostly, I think locals have a pre-concieved notion of what we are. 

Instead, I have a regular clientele of people looking for the unusual, the quirky, genre books, and standards; classics, cult books, etc.  We sell to tourists who are looking for something other than the usual Top Ten.

I pay attention to the books that are bestsellers, but with a long tail. I pay way more attention to TikTok books than I do to Publisher's Weekly. So the big book from a few weeks ago was, "House of Flame and Shadow," by Sarah Maas. This is the kind of genre book that will continue selling for me.

Don't get me wrong. When the USA today does their 150 bestsellers of the week list, I'll usually have at least 80% of them. 10% of the uncarried books are books I don't want to carry; 10% are books that I'm waiting to making sure they aren't a blip and are going to be on the list for more than one week. 

But what I try to do is identify books that sell and just keep on reordering them. Ordering them until they stop selling, by which time, I've usually identified another title that can take its place. 

90% of my books every week are reorders of the backlist. I call them "the standards." Kurt Vonnegut will just keep selling. Tom Robbins, Stephen King, Philip K. Dick, Chuck Palahniuk, Murikami, and so on. 

I'm good with this. I think it's not a bad thing to have standards instead of so-called bestsellers, which can be hit or miss. 

And I think it makes the store more interesting and unique.

There are story ideas everywhere.

 

Started a story yesterday, realized immediately that it wasn't good enough. Made me wonder how many stories I've started over the years. Hundreds, I'm pretty sure. Thousands? It's not that all of them didn't have potential, it's that I was either in the mode of finishing things or in the mode of not finishing things. 

When I came back to writing a decade ago I had one rule: finish the stories, don't change anything until you're done. 

So for eight years, that's what I did. Some of the stories worked out, some didn't. But most of them were finished.

The story I wrote yesterday made me think of how fertile my imagination is; I'll never not have stories to tell, if I so choose. But I'm waiting for the KILLER idea, and that means waiting a long time. I sat on the "Werewolves + Donner Party" idea for years. I knew it was a winner. But most of the other stories were more spontaneous. I don't know that the spontaneous stories were any worse than the long incubating ideas, but it always felt a little iffy, and most of them didn't get the immediate "That's a cool idea!" response that Led to the Slaughter got. 

But I've decided that I should start a new story every day; in fact, just waiting for inspiration for an hour or two every day, writing the beginning, and then seeing if it has any legs. The proof of concept will be the urge to keep writing. 

Today's idea, which I just now came up with.

Barbra Streisand barely mentions singing in the first chapters of her book. She wanted to be an actress. She spent her first few years in New York auditioning for serious plays, trying to the get into the Actor's Studio. At some point she's offered a job if she'll sing in it. The way she depicts it is, "Yeah, I can sing a little." So her best friends say to her, "Hey, we've known you the whole time you've been in New York and you've never once mentioned singing. Sing something for us."

She says "OK, but I'm going to turn my back on you because I'm embarrassed." She sings a song she's been working on, and when she turns around, her friends are crying. 

Nice story. 

So here's what really happened: She went to one last audition where she is humiliated, comments on her looks, and so on. She meets a well-dressed gentleman as she leaves the stage and he says, "Listen, I can get you parts if you can sing." 

"I can sing a little."

"Oh, I can help you with that," the gentleman says, whipping out a contract. She read the paper, signs with a flourish."

"Go ahead," he says. "Sing something."

She starts out hesitantly, but her voice gains power and confidence and she is...well, the diva we all know and love (or hate.)

I know, I know...not a new idea. Completely Faustian. And writing it would be hard; I'm not musical myself. 

But you see what I mean: there are story ideas everywhere. 

Hey, I'm not saying they're all good ideas...

Back issues are up and running.

17 long boxes of fresh back issues; bagged, boarded, and priced.

This first batch are mostly DC and Marvel iconic characters, along with a lot of Star Wars. I have a base price, but didn't have the time to look up every comic online, so winged it as far as pricing goes. I may have gone way under what they actually sell for, or I may have gone slightly higher. I tried to underestimate instead of overestimating. (There is no authoritative price guide, really.)

I didn't have time to separate the variant covers, so they're mixed in there with the regular covers. 

It took a year to get these ready, mostly the bagging and the boarding. I mean, I took long breaks, but it is finally done.

I probably have about three times what I put out still to do. Most of the major titles have been done; Spider-man, X-Men, Thor, Wolverine, Batman, etc. (though I held back some for refills). 

There are lots of good titles I didn't get to yet. For instance, complete runs of Hellboy and BPRD and other indie comics. Those are going to get out there soon, though I'm still trying to figure out how to fit them into the store. 

Anyway, it feels and looks good and it should be fun for some of you to browse through them. 

Thanks to all of you for 45 years of selling comics!