The changeover is coming.

When you've had a year of 30% increases, (this over the best year you've ever had) you get kind of spoiled. So when that rate of growth finally subsided in June to a mere 15%, it felt like a disappointment. But really, it's a more sustainable level of growth. I was a little worried about what would happen in August if we kept growing at that rate. I don't think our bandwidth, so to speak, could handle that many customers. 

What's happened is that we had a big surge in summer last year, with Pokemon and Magic and books and back issue comics all hitting new peaks. So I knew that as of June, we'd be piggy-backing on major growth which had already factored in. 

I think that's exactly what happened.  

It's harder for me to know what's happening with the broader market and economy. I believe Magic has settled down and Pokemon is not quite the mania it was last year. Books continue to grow, but it's a mature product line for us now so the rate of growth is good but not overwhelming. As I said, it's the rate of growth that has slowed. 

Bend is popular and downtown Bend is very popular, and we continue to benefit from that. I don't know how much longer people will defy the rising costs of everything, but so far it doesn't seem to have slowed down the flow. 

My workload is increasing. I'm going into the store for a few hours before opening to put away books and clean and straighten and break down boxes--all the things that is becoming increasingly hard to do during official store hours. Then I spend at least a couple hours most nights reordering books.

I don't mind. I actually like it. And if I wasn't around, it would be a real cost in time or money for Sabrina. (I'm very, very fast both ordering and stocking.) So I'm hoping to stick around--with Sabrina the owner. She seems OK with that.  

"I didn't know you were here!"

Listening to a podcast called "The Rise and Fall..." with Michael Girdley talking about big businesses that have come and gone. When I heard his B&N episode, he became credible to me. He pretty much got it right, though I wish he could have mentioned that Indie bookstores have had a resurgence as well. But mostly, it was pretty insightful. He ended by expressing some doubts about the story B&N is spinning, noting that almost all the stories were repeating the same things, sometimes the same words, which means it's probably a PR spin. I've heard enough from insiders to think that the big changes haven't been as big as advertised.

Anyway, I continued to listen to his podcasts and what became clear to me was how many business and industries and products have simply disappeared or retreated than I was aware of. Once they're off the radar, you just don't think about them

Businesses like mine that last 47 years seem to be rare. I've changed constantly, from being all comics, to almost all sports cards, to half a game store, to the present day, two/thirds books. It's a bit of a problem with locals because everyone who was exposed to my store in the first 30 years have an impression of my store that is no longer accurate. We're a full-time bookstore, with a fairly deep inventory for the space we have. Over the weekend we had families come in where the visiting members of the family were dragging the locals into our store and the inevitable comment: "I didn't know you were here!" Or "I had no idea that you were doing this!"

I try to look on the bright side. That means there are still a ton of locals to convince into being new customers.  

 

I started taking Wegovy pills six days ago. Not to lose weight--any more than 10 pounds would be really pushing it--but because the possible cardiac, liver, and kidney improvements. I got 4. milligram pills, but my understanding is the 1.5 to 2.5 is the normal starting dose.

It's not going well so far. I've had episodes throwing up and acid reflux and I feel off-kilter most of the time. I'm going to keep trying for another week. If it doesn't improve, I'll ask for a lower starting dose. But hey, I've already got six day in, so I'm going to try to make it work.

 

When you can recognize a Glenn Gould Bach tune by the humming in the background. 

I had a hankering for donuts the other day, but most of the usual places were out. I found a store that specialized in donuts and checked went in. They had none on display, but they had a sign with all the varieties.

I gulped at the price, over $2 each, but my hankering won out and I got two regular glazed donuts. (I like plain or old fashioned or glazed, but not so much the fancier stuff.)

Well, it turns out the donuts were huge; maybe twice the content as the usual donuts.

So worth the price. 

But the sign showed donuts that looked even smaller than normal. 

As a store owner I always notice what other small establishments could do to improve. I wanted to say, "Put some of these out for display so people see what they're getting!"

 But I bit my tongue. I came across a phrase recently that struck home. "No one likes unsolicited advice."

Now, I'd like to think I'd be open to advice that might help, but I know that in the past people have said things that cut a little. In most cases, there was a good reason why I wasn't doing what the person suggested.

Peace out. 

 

My doctor has approved Wegovy pills for me, but she's concerned that I'll lose too much weight. I told her that I was basically a 200 pound man in a 170 pound body.

I was 200 pounds for many years. I finally went on a campaign to lose twenty pounds and eventually stabilized at 180. I was there for several years before I had my heart attack.

A couple years after that I decided to go down to 170, so that I could fit into an entire closet of almost new clothing that I'd bought when I was younger or that my Dad wore.

I did this by calorie counting. I have a pretty good rough estimate of how many calories I'm imbibing as a running total. I cut back when I've overdone it, relax when I'm at my base. 

I recently tried to get down to 165, and while I reached that for a short time, I've been bouncing between 167 and 171 ever since. 

I'd like to say that I'm a disciplined eater, but the truth is that, except for pastries, food is just fuel for me. I'm conscious I need to eat but I don't need too much. I nibble a lot instead of full meals. For instance, I learned at the store that my lowest energy level is about 5:00 in the afternoon, so I always try to eat something around 3:00. 

At best I'd dare lose another 10 pounds, and even that might be too much.

So I'm going to do a reverse calorie count. Instead of trying to stay under 2000 calories a day (and usually failing by a little bit), I'm going to try to stay slightly over 2000 calories a day.  

Reordering every book that sells.

Dylan mentions every time he reports the day's totals that he got lots of compliments on our selection.

I'm actually impressed myself. We seem to have in stock the specific book customers want more often than not, which is a pretty nice achievement for a 1000 sq. ft. store. 

The other thing that impresses me is that reordering almost every book we sell seems to work as a tactic. I mean, it shouldn't, except in the broad sense that if a book sold once it's likely to sell again (?). I probably add about 50 new release titles per week, and fill in another 50 slots with mid-list books I've stumbled across. 

Common sense would tell you that adding 5200 books a year would quickly overwhelm the store--which is constantly threatens to do. But I do go through and weed out older books as needed. Sometimes a mid-list book completely stops selling at all. Or they suffer store damage. Or...whatever, you know when it's time to retire a book. 

But I'm not really trying that hard to take any books out. It happens when it has to happen.  

Whatever we're doing, it seems to work. I don't actively seek out mid-list books, but it seems that they constantly pop up on the radar. Someone mentions a title, or I see a review or and article, or I'm reminded of a book that I've read, or whatever. 

Except for the guessing which new releases I need to get, the rest of the inventory is completely intuitive and original. No algorithms, and I think it subconsciously works with customers who are tired of seeing the same books in ever store.  

It's also fun to have that book that unexpectedly sells.  

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 independent 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. (Notice I don't blame Amazon. The damage was already done.)

Slowly, the indie bookstores 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 pre-ordering 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, and sooner than you might like, orders 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'll say no more, merely that we are doing very well. 

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. It also gives my inventory a uniqueness from other stores in my personal selection of titles. 

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.