As I mentioned yesterday, I'm partial to art books. My main interest is in fantastical art, but I also like the Old Masters, Impressionists, post-Impressionists, and Modern Art of the 50s and 60s. Modern comic artists can be wonderful, modern illustrators, kids books. Bill Watterson does a serious story? Sold! (At least to me, if not to many others...)
Do they sell? Not very fast, especially since I don't have much room to display them. Art books that can't be displayed are a hard sell.
And they can also be hard to get. It's crazy how hard it is to get Moebius and Giger, for instance. For a long time, I couldn't find Frazetta. These fantasy art books go out of print maddeningly fast.
But here's the thing. If I can't sell what I like, why am I doing it? I might as well be selling widgets if all I consider is the salability of something.
On the other hand...I need to turn a profit.
Fortunately for me, on a Venn diagram, there is a large crossover between my interests and those of the customers. For the stuff I don't care much for, I find that if I order enough of that stuff that sells but sucks it cancels out the stuff that's great but doesn't sell.
Finally, and this is entirely intuitive, it helps to have a store with interesting stuff even if all it doesn't sell fast. I think many customers can see that and appreciate it.
For example: I've always liked the books that Bud Plant offers online. It has exactly the mix of art books I like, but they only sell retail, so I can only afford to buy books they have discounted.
Yesterday, I learned a dangerous new trick. I perused the list of books for pleasure and suddenly got the idea to check my wholesaler for availability. I expected almost none of it to be there, and indeed, about two/thirds of the titles aren't. But, oh the third that are!
I immediately put them in my cart.
On top of that, I've always really loved the books that the Taschen (a German publisher) puts out, but again, they are either unavailable or very, very expensive.
Again, I've recently found that a small portion of these books are available through my regular wholesaler. (Another really cool batch are only at retail, so if I'm going to carry them, I have to tack on a surcharge, if you will, which I really don't like doing.)
Anyway, between these two sources, I suddenly have access to a bunch of cool art books:
WHICH, I don't have room to display and WHICH, probably won't sell, at least not very fast.
But Pegasus Books has had a decent couple of decades and the last five years have been great and I made decent profit this Christmas and I'm 72 and very near retirement but will still be around for awhile to have fun and so....
Rationalization anyone?
I haven't pulled the trigger yet, but I'm probably going to.