Discount isn't everything.

I'm not sure what's happening with my budgeting. The Pokemon product is piling in the door, not that I'm complaining. I think it's going to be a huge seller this Christmas. I'm also ordering just about every book title I want, every day. 

Meanwhile, my new schedule is becoming kind of routine.  

For most of my life I've stayed up past midnight. My routine until about a year ago was to go to bed around 12:30, wake up around 8:00, go into the store around noon a couple times a week and put stock books for four hours or so. Twice a week I'd spend four hours or so in the evenings making orders. On Sundays,  I'd go into work behind the counter, to get a feel for what's happening.

But we have become so busy that I simply can't stock the store during store hours. Too many people! 

Now I'm going to bed around 10:30, waking up at 6:00, getting to the store and putting away book by 7:30, getting it done in a couple of hours, and driving home before the store even opens. Then each night, right after the store closes, I spend an hour ordering the books we sold that day.

I admit I'm a little tired, but I think that is due more to the sleep time change than from the work. The work has become easier and much less stressful. I think this is the routine I'm going to maintain this transitional year.

Last year I was offered a deal from Penguin Random House that I could order all the books I wanted and it would all be returnable. I'd give up about 12% on discount, but I wouldn't be stuck with dead product.  While I was at it, I set up accounts with Scholastic, Simon and Shuster, and Harper Collins, three more of the top six publishers in the country.

It didn't work. Having more copies didn't sell more books. The ordering systems to the latter three publishers was unwieldy, time-consuming, unpredictable, and slow.  Even though I was getting a 10% better discount, it wasn't helping the profits. 

So this year I decided to focus on PRH and Ingram again, both of which have handy ordering systems and are predictable. I gave up the returnability with PRH and regained the 12% margin I'd lost. But PRH was still incredible slow. I was waiting ten days to two weeks for product to arrive: 10% off of product you don't actually have in stock isn't much help, you know?

Then they seemed to slow down even more. So when this summer hit, I decided to focus on Ingram for everything I could. Yes, I was paying 10% more, but they were easy to deal with, they were predictable, and they were fast. There is an warehouse in Oregon that can get shipments to you the very next day if you order before noon. 

As it turned it, it was a major win: with only nine weeks of full-on summer business, PRH didn't deliver most of their product in July and August until three or even four weeks passed. Fortunately, I'd already sent my business to Ingram. At some point in August, I started getting stuff from Reno, a warehouse that I didn't even know PRH had. Turns out the warehouse in NY was over their head. Not only that, the stuff from Reno showed up in a few days.

I've been getting my books from warehouses in New York!  So I get on the phone to my rep and request that I get my books from Reno. 

"You are a comic account, so you can only get it from NY."

"Yes, I order comics, but I order five times more books!"

"Sorry, nothing we can do."  

So guess what? We had a spectacular summer ordering from Ingram. We're having a record year. I'm doing the same thing this Christmas and it's become SO much easier to get books in on a timely basis. 

In other words, I'm selling so many more books, with so much less stress and effort, that the 10% extra discount becomes secondary.  

If the publishers figure out how to get books to me faster, with the information I need to budget correctly, and don't make me jump through so many hoops just to do orders, we'll revisit the situation. Meanwhile, I'm pretty happy with the way things are going.