Avoiding the best-seller lists.

I've gone from avoiding the best-seller lists because I knew I couldn't afford them, and because I knew that the mass market had those bases covered to -- actively avoiding the best-seller lists because I'm continuing to see double digit increases in new book sales.

I'm convinced that's happening because, not in spite of, paying no attention to "best-sellers."

I was talking to a customer yesterday about why some products just keep on going, while other products die off.

I said, for a small retailer, the biggest danger isn't online, but the mass market.

I know this runs counter to the common wisdom, but let's look at some of the evidence.

First of all, if you asked me, as an independent book-seller, which would result in higher sales for me -- the disappearance of Amazon, or the disappearance of discounted books in Costco, Walmart and Barnes and Noble, I have zero doubt I would pick the mass market disappearance.

Secondly, of all the product I've had, the two product lines that I've retained the most customers are comics and magic.

Both of these are available online, easily and cheaply.

But both of these have a small presence in the mass market.

Which would seem to prove to me that the Mass Market entry into any of my product lines is what causes the disruptions, not the online. Online in some ways is just a more glorified version of what was always there -- mail order.

It's that "Extra Step" of ordering online and waiting, that allows me to continue to sell product in the here and now. Instead of driving 20 minutes and buying from another local store. (Frankly, they'd be better off buying online, saving the time and gas, but people are pretty unaware of all that, for some reason.)

What the hell. I can extend this reasoning to everything in the store. There are well-established online sites selling Euro boardgames, you can get every single carefully selected and curated offbeat or quirky book I carry online, you can get every toy I have online.

But you can find almost none of it in the local mass market. Therefore I can sell them.

It may be nonsensical, but there it is.

The same is not true the other way around. If you asked the mass market which they'd rather disappear, Small Retail or the Internet, you know which they'd pick. In fact, they'd laugh at the thought that Small Retail was any threat at all.

So I'm cheering for the big old bully Internet to thrash on the old big old bully, the mass market.