Going to crunch some numbers today, and do a year-end review tomorrow. I do know that our sales were up by 16% this year. But sales aren't profits, and there's the rub. Much of my profit is frozen in inventory, which was intentional, but I have to pay tax on that inventory and that's going to be brutal. The cost of success.

Meanwhile, I'm still struggling with idea of increasing my games. I've said for some time now that if I tried to bring in a new line of product, that my brain would explode. New books have been an easy reach for me, a natural fit. Games would be more of a stretch. Yet, if I can somehow shoehorn them into my store, it would be the final piece of the puzzle. As my wife says, "Your motto for years was, Diversify or Die."

I did one of those good/bad ledger things: listing all the good things about carrying games on one side of the page, and all the bad things on the other side. The bad things ran most of the page, the good things basically came down to two listings: (1) the potential sales that new games might generate, which COULD be considerable, and (2) the additionals sales of existing game inventory through synergy. The latter reason is actually probably more important, in that those numbers might actually pay for the gamble.

As you can see, I'm conflicted. One more night to sleep on it.

I think I've decided I can start at a comfortable and affordable level, and see what develops. I've learned to never dismiss the potential of any product lines; sometimes they can just take off for you. And risk is just inherent in any decision. If I hadn't made a couple of these leaps of faith over the years, I'd be long gone. On the other hand, if I hadn't made a couple other leaps of faith over the years, I'd have probably made more money. But, either way, you can't just not make the leap occasionally.