I was talking to another bookstore owner who was contemplating putting in a coffee section. I looked around his store which had roughly the same level of inventory as it did two months ago.

"Do you think maybe you have $5000 worth of books you could add to your store?"

"Well, yeah," he says.

But I could tell he was set on that coffee shop. On creating the vaunted "third space." Which will undoubtedly cost way more than $5000.

The thing is, bookstores are a "third space" by their very existence. If people come in for books, they'll hang around to talk about books. But first you have to have a sufficient and intriguing selection of books, and that is a never-ending process.

Don Quixote was written in 1615 or so? So there are 400 years worth of novels to choose from. There are thousands in the last few decades that people know about and the very fact they "know" about them means there is a chance they'll buy them.

I'm determined to eventually have every Chuck Palahniuk book, every Christopher Moore, every Philip K. Dick, every Kurt Vonnegut, every Terry Pratchet, every Hemingway, every Steinbeck, every Murakami, every Bukowski, and so on and so on.

You get the picture. Because a person who has read a particular author has already proven they'll read that author and by having their entire oeuvre you almost guarantee there will be a title they haven't read. Not even counting the myriad cult books with followings, classics, quirky books.

Anyway, I just sent a $2500 book order off, this after spending $2500 about 10 days ago. So....

It will be hard to find places for them. I'll undoubtedly have unruly stacks, but I will HAVE them.

If I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it.

Books have been strong, and stronger when I have good titles. I'm worried about Marvel's weakness and want to compensate for it by making books and games stronger.

Starting this week, I've told Sabrina to make a good strong game order every week through the next couple of months of summer.

If, in about six weeks, we haven't seen sufficient uptick, we can cut back then in time for fall.

I can take this chance because I managed to avoid debt through the first half of the year.

The only thing keeping me from having more books is space. I'm thinking of taking out used books, which really don't warrant the space. Turn that space over to Sabrina to fill with graphic novels and comics. Then used the freed up space for novels. I need to buy a couple of racks for that is all. Buying racks that are the right size and shape is very, very difficult, unfortunately. I'm on the hunt, but my Google Fu is so far failing me.

I always have to remind myself that it won't be as easy to make those changes as I'd like.

But it's time.