A customer asked me if we carried used books. "The reason I ask is that you have a much broader range of titles than most bookstores."

She gave us an unintended compliment. Because that's exactly what we do. Because most people don't come in on Tuesdays to buy the latest bestseller, or reserve books in advance, or join a "book club," or any number of other things most regular bookstores do, we've arrived at a different process. 

We concentrate on "midlist" books. Oh, we get the new bestsellers, but we don't get stacks of them. Because the Oregon warehouse for Ingram books is just two days away, we don't really need to. All we really have to do is keep track of what's selling and reorder immediately, which we do. Because we don't have money tied up in stacks of bestsellers, we can buy more titles. 

I focus on perennial sellers. Books that continue to sell, even if their bestseller status has faded from the national lists. Part of this is because we are very oriented toward tourists. This summer has really proven that. Our sales have dropped almost in half from our pinnacle of sales in August (not to worry, sales are still really good, but sales reached a record level last month). So...well, I guess something like 35 to 45% of books that sold were to tourists.  

It all seems to work for us. Each store has to adapt to their own circumstances, and we seemed to have stumbled on a formula that works really well for us.