First and long.

I admit, dramatically increasing my new books is a bit of a hail mary pass. (I should make clear -- a hail mary on the success of books, not on the store....)

Forgive the sports analogy, but it does explain my reasoning.

I've been having some success throwing long, and discovered the corners and safeties are slower than my receivers. There is a decent chance my guys will get to the endzone first and if I throw a perfect strike, they'll be the one's to catch it.

My line has been holding well, and it's only first down.

Any hail mary is a gamble. But it's only first down, and I'd have three more downs to get 10 yards.

Unless I'm intercepted. And I have confidence in my own throwing and my receivers to think I can avoid that.

(It's really true -- any situation can be explained by football or baseball....)

I think playing it too safe could also be dangerous, though. Even in the midst of slowdown, I'm getting middle-aged readers in the door who are willing to buy books. I may really need that kind of customer going into the future.

I've been trying to figure out what's going to happen. There has always been turnover downtown -- let's say 10% as an arbitrary figure. But that turnover has been obscured by businesses selling without fanfare, or being immediately replaced.

If that turnover rate goes up even 5% say, to 15%, and only half of the businesses are replaced that used to be replaced, than suddenly we will see the 10% vacancy per time period. Which will be noticeable.

I'm not sure how we avoid this. The boom money is gone, probably forever. We still have people moving here, perhaps, we still have rich people, perhaps, we still have tourism (though I suspect people will be cutting back on frequency, duration, and cost of trips.)

But even if the boom money was responsible for only 10 or 20% of our sales (I suspect it was much higher) that is a very significant amount of money to disappear.

If housing prices drop by 30 or 40 or even 50%; if new building all but stops; there will be considerably less money floating around.

So let's say, business drops only 10% downtown, or more likely a minimum of 20%, and possibly even 30 or 40%; how many businesses are prepared for that?

You all can relate, if you compare it to household income. Most of us live pretty close to our income. Not many 100k income houses spend only 70k; or 50k houses only 35K. Hell, a 5 to 10% saving rate would be spectacular.

Most businesses are no different. They'll have the amount of inventory, employees, and leasing space as their income allows, within a few percentage points.

My store is pretty rare in that I could sustain a 50% drop, at least for several years. Wouldn't be fun, but I could do it.

But I'm guessing most businesses can't sustain even a 20% drop over the long run. Doesn't matter how rich they are.

As I've been saying for a couple of years now, I hope I'm wrong about the depth and length of the downturn. So far, if anything, I haven't been as negative as perhaps I should.