In defense of Mid-List books.

First a little history and a definition of terms.

In the not too distant (for me) past (1992)  there were around 13,000 bookstores in America. These bookstores all ordered in advance, using their own judgements about what titles to buy with advice from reps and sometimes a media splash, though nothing like today.

Because of that, most books didn't have to be bestsellers to be profitable. You could sell a niche book that would find enough readers that it would turn a profit for the publisher. Out of these books, some would emerge as bestsellers. Those that didn't could be returned for credit.

It worked pretty well for mid-list books.

Barnes and Noble and Borders came and crushed the indies. By 2009, there were a mere 1600 indie bookstores left. What books the big bookstore chains selected to promote became the bestsellers and every other book an also-ran. Books became like movies: publishers looked for big bestsellers, umbrella books whose profits paid for all the other books. But the other books became fodder instead of stand alone profitable books. 

Slowly, the indies are making a comeback(currently 3400 or more) ironically because they are still more likely to have an esoteric and curated selection of titles. 

But the big bestsellers dominate even here.  

We're a bit different. We really don't sell piles of new releases. Instead, I've tried my best to identify mid-list books that will constantly sell and try to always have them available. For as small a store as we are, we have a very high hit rate of having the title people are looking for.

I've never returned a book to the publishers or wholesalers. I sell them all or keep them.

For the longest time, pre-Covid, I wasn't even ordering bestsellers during the initial release. I'd wait to see what happened. Eventually, I made the jump but quickly found out that locals don't come to us to get the latest and the greatest. Having two or three copies of even the biggest bestsellers is usually enough especially since more often than not I could just reorder and get the book within a few days. 

For one thing, I didn't have a system in place to keep track of who wanted what and when. This was on purpose. While it might seem like an easy thing to do, it's actually quite complicated, especially since you're more or less committed to delivering a book to the customer in a reasonable time when in fact you have no control of the supply or the timing of the shipping.

To avoid disappointing the customers, you have to put in larger orders, and sooner than you might like, with the publishers. This means, to reduce the risk, that you need a "return" ability. But returning books reduces the discount with the publishers. (Makes no difference with Ingram, but enough overall difference to make the whole procedure less useful.) 

When I look at the new release racks of other bookstores, I tend to have a mere majority of them in stock, somewhere around 60%. But when I look at the bestseller racks, we'll usually have more than 90% in stock. In essence, I'm waiting to see which books really do have momentum and then order them.

This means that occasionally I miss the boat. Ironically, the same titles I'm likely to sell out of, the other stores are also likely sold out of. They just sold more to get to that point. But to the customers, we're no more guilty of not having the hot book than the other stores are.

Yet, I'm fairly certain that we are matching a lot of these other stores in overall sales. My metrics for sales per foot and sales per employee and net profits are very high.

I think that I'm much more willing to identify and sell mid-list books that still have some life in them and to keep them in stock. I'm probably much more willing to reorder just about any books that sells in my store with the attitude that if it sold recently there's a damn good chance that I will sell it again.

This means that more of my weekly budget it tied up in mid-list books instead of stacks of new releases. Instead of ordering 50 copies of a hot new book, I can order 2 or 3 and then reorder 45 copies of books I've recently sold. Titles drop away naturally, either because a copy doesn't sell and thus doesn't necessitate a reorder or it goes out of print or it becomes unavailable for long enough for me to lose track. (The latter is admittedly an inefficiency.)  

I look backward a little more than most bookstores, finding titles that are still worthy, and surprisingly, these books often sell. I try to curate what I call "perennials." Books that sell again and again and again. One perennial will eventually outsell most bestsellers (and only a few bestsellers become perennials.)  So I I slowly but surely accumulate 50, then 100, then 500, and upward perennials, the sales start to flow. 

To me, this is better than gambling on new releases to the exclusion  of everything else. 

Obviously, I'm writing from my perspective, but I can tell you this--the results speak for themselves.  

Contrarian small business advice.

If I wasn't so lazy, I'd rewrite my small business book, "Small Business Survivalist Handbook: A Contrarian's Guide for Mom and Pops."  I wrote it on the fly, posted it on Amazon, and haven't looked at it since. I think I've maybe I've sold two copies.

I've learned a whole lot in the last fifteen years. I could make the book so much more insightful and useful.

For one thing, I've put a lot of my theories to the test. When Covid hit and we had to close down for awhile, I had two months to reboot the store. I took the opportunity to institute all the policies and practices that had been hit or miss in the previous thirty or so years. I stuck to my guns and waited to see what happened.

What's happened is that sales nearly tripled and we've earned more money in the last six years than we earned in the previous twenty-five years. More importantly, our profits quadrupled. 

When I wrote "Small Business Survivalist Handbook," I wrote it from the standpoint of, well, being a survivor, of being a scrappy underdog, but I didn't exactly claim success beyond that. I figured there were other people like me who weren't after a big score but simply wanted to be their own boss.  

I feel confident now that my advice would be good, that the average person who wanted to start a small business would learn from my failures and my successes. 

I recently wrote a blog (which I didn't post) that encapsulated the most important lessons I've learned: Seven Things Most Bookstores Do that I Don't do." I'd be willing to bet that there are very few stores that don't do at least five of the things I listed.  

If nothing else I should polish this up and insert it as either the prologue or epilogue of the book as it exists. It wouldn't hurt to go through and polish the rest of the book as well, though that could turn into a slog. 

But certainly, writing up my short essay and adding it would probably be immensely helpful.  

 

Interesting that there was so little reaction to "Things From Another World" quitting business. 

None of the usual. "Oh, that's a shame. I loved that place!" 

None of the usual. "Good! That place sucked!'

There was some non-nonsensical political comments on the TV website but that just goes with TV websites. Worst trolling I'm still exposed to. 

I guess I should be glad they changed the name from Pegasus to Things or everyone would see the wrong headline!

 

I happened to catch a reel with Springsteen and Melissa Etheridge singing Thunder Road and really liked it. So I put on the Born to Run CD in my car on the way to the store and Thunder Road sent chills down my spine for the entire tune, and did it again with Born to Run.   

A couple of days later I started watching The Burroughs on Netflix where Thunder Road plays an integral part in the overall plot.  

It being about old people, and playing a lot of old tunes, but Thunder Road was meant to get the old folk on their feet. Gotta say, I was 23 when I bought Born to Run, and it's my Deserted Island album, and I still  love the hell out of it.  

 

Read a couple of long articles in the Sunday New York Times about attention deficits caused by too much scrolling and interaction on social media. None of it is a surprise, just confirmation about how I'm already feeling. I really want to concentrate on analog activities. Reading, writing, anything that isn't cyber.

I've pretty much weaned myself from TV, though at the cost of doom scrolling. It's time to really do something about it.

This will sound strange, but I feel myself strengthened and rejuvenated by reading the New York Times. Doomscrolling by comparison is empty calories. The Sunday paper is nothing like the online version; there is so much more in-depth reporting in the newspaper, accent on paper.  Reading it cover to cover including the Book Review and the magazine takes up most of an afternoon.

Unfortunately, that's nothing compared to how much doomscrolling I do. Being semi-retired means I have a lot of free time and I've fallen into the habit of spending hours which turn into days online.  

I've made some good moves. When I'm at the store, I rarely do any computer work, except to make orders. No point-of-sale and all that entails. 

I read every night for at least an hour, which gets me through a book every week or so. (Actually, I've fallen behind, but that's my goal.) 

I also leave my phone in the bathroom at home, or safely in my pocket when I'm out. I don't use the phone for anything but picture taking and phone calls.

When I drive the half hour to and from the store, I don't listen to music or books. I'm alone with my thoughts, and that's the way I like it.  

When I'm home alone I will sit and contemplate things, talk out loud to myself, try to figure out life.  

It's my laptop that is my downfall. I'm as addicted to social media as anyone, and I find myself currently falling into the black hole of YouTube.

Enough already.  

I'm not making any grand declarations. My intention is to ween myself from the internet as much as possible. I think if I can check the news once in the morning and once at night, that will be enough. If I check Facebook and Reddit but once a day and no more than an hour, that will be an improvement.

With all the free time? I don't know yet, but I'll figure it out. 

Made a dedicated trip to Portland to visit the Portland Art Museum one day and the Japanese Gardens the next day. 

So we went to the museum yesterday, starting on the top floor for the Mark Rothko exhibit. There were really only four paintings of the style I expected, the others were early career paintings. The four paintings were fabulous and I spent a fair amount of time examining them. Photographs really don't do them justice.

Next floor down was an extensive Rick Bartow exhibit (a Native American who spent most of his life in Oregon)nwhich I loved and Linda also liked. We ended spending quite a bit of time there, soaking it all up. I looked up some of his prints online and there were a couple I liked that seemed almost affordable. I'm not sure how you'd go about buying them.   

More of a quick tour through the rest of the exhibits, which still took most of the afternoon. 

Today we'll check out the Japanese Gardens, maybe make a quick detour to Powell's Books. 

If I have to retire, I might as well do something with my time. 

 

NEXT DAY: Went to the gallery where the Rick Bartow's art is and bought a couple of prints. A little pricey but also wonderful. 

Then on to the obligatory Powell's Books visit. Found four of my books in stock, which is always kind of a cool thing to see.  

Went to the Japanese Gardens in-between rainfalls. We always seem to be lucky that way. Beautiful, but a little cloudy and wet and not quite full blooms. But very pretty. Another gallery of art. Seems that once your eyes are open to art, it is everywhere: restaurants, public spaces, and stores.  

So here's the big takeaway from the trip. Indulging a slightly nicer visit, better hotel, better restaurants. The differences between a higher end hotel and a middlin' hotel are subtle but noticeable. Whether worth the extra cost probably depends on how much money you have to waste. Probably not something we can do every time. We probably spent 10% of the money on three nights as we spent on thirty nights in Australia, which we did economy sized. But that included some long flights and other expenses. 

Had a couple dinners with Todd and Sharron. They seem to be thriving. Meanwhile, back in Central Oregon, Tobin and Felicia are going full-speed ahead on Origin Millworks, making tables and furniture and other things with their little sawmill. Both guys seem to be doing great.

The store continues to function at a high level--far beyond what I would have considered even possible. I wish I didn't to have to hand it over to Sabrina at the end of the year, but I hope to stick around and be a glorified stockboy.  

Visiting museums and bookstores on trips to new cities seems like a good retirement thing to do. I don't seem to have any fear of crowds anymore, which is a miracle. Not going to say I'm cured of my agoraphobia, but I will say that it doesn't seem to be anywhere near the problem it once was. 

Visited friends Wes and Ev on our way home, had a nice visit.

Glad to get home to our own routines and the manic cat, Schrodinger.  

I write on this blog almost everyday, but it is more of a diary than an interactive thing. Even though I don't think I'm saying too many disgraceful things in my private diary, I still don't feel comfortable posting it. 

I'll try harder to come up with some interesting subjects more often, if anyone is still coming here to check. I guess I just don't feel like I need to intrude myself upon the world. I have plenty of opinions, and I think I even have some business and writing insights, but I've also said most of them...more than once. 

Anyway, just putting this out there until I can think of something more substantial to say.  

Store harvesting.

Listening to podcasts about Ukraine and they were talking about how, with infrastructure starting to fail, the Russians have been forced to cannibalize non-functioning infrastructure to keep the rest of the system working. They called it "parts harvesting." Obviously, this is self-defeating. Less functioning units means less money to get more functioning units.

There is a parallel in business that I've seen over and over again. A store opens with the best inventory they can get. They start selling it. They don't replace it right away because they need the gross profit to pay bills. With less product, sales start dropping, so the store starts to sell remaining inventory in short-term "SALES!" Meaning they have even less product. And down the spiral they go. 

In my own experience it took years of struggle to get to the point where the inventory turnover paid for itself. I had to keep reinvesting in product which left little money for things like take-home"profit." (Tax wise, higher inventory is counted as profit, so double whammy--you pay tax on unsold product.)

The irony is, the capital investment is so large over time, that anyone with that kind of capital in the first place could probably make more money simply investing it in the stock market or bonds. 

Instead, after burning inventory, you are forced to borrow more money. Unless you've learned your lesson, the profits will instead go toward debt. You're paying out, instead of earning in. Borrowing money is also self-defeating if you aren't operationally producing profit.  

But you don't know that going in. 

The only thing you can do without capital is to keep pushing inventory a little higher over what you're comfortable doing and just squeaking by year after year until...overnight success!...you have enough in stock to actually pay for more store! pay your bills! and... wonder of wonders...earn a real profit!