Pegasus Improvements.

Second day of boxing books, making room for the new fixtures. Have two of the new fixtures against the window. I think this is going to work!

Today I'm tackling the corner that I intend for used books, two racks worth, then if I have time, work on boxing the SF and Fantasy books.

Have decided to have 3 shelves of mass market SF and Fantasy, 3 shelves of mysteries/thrillers, 1 shelf of horror, and 1 shelf of westerns.

On the other rack, it will all be general fiction trade-paperbacks. So we will still have a selection of used books, but just using 1/20th the space.

Did a little math and figure these new face-out magazine racks are 240 feet of linear display space. Which should allow me to display something like 360 graphic novels full cover--or a little more if I leaf them slightly, say 7 books per shelf, which works out to 420, minus some space devoted to art books, so somewhere around 400 books that can be seen in all their glory.

You have to realize, other than an 8 foot space on a current rack, and a single rack devoted to Indie graphic novels which is probably 50 linear feet, and a Dark Horse rack (how do they rate?) of about 20 linear feet, at the base of which is another 20 linear feet for art books, all other graphic novels are displayed spine out.

So I currently only have a grand total of 98 linear feet of display for graphic novels.

(I do face-out on comic monthlies--really the only way to do it.)

Crazy! These are books with crazy good art!

But I decided my store would do better by having as many books as possible, and a single face out book is the equivalent of something like 15 books by spine. So my calculation was that having 15 books was better than displaying one book. Which was the right decision at the time, I think.

Used books were great for us for a time because I was getting all I needed from Linda. So the dollar value of any sold used book was twice that of any other item in the store.

But surprise, surprise, new books outsell used books by ten to one, or five to one taking into account the discount level.

But the deciding factor is I have no more access to used books unless I trade or buy off the street, and that is against my policy. (I simply can't do it anymore--I spent 18 years doing it until I was ready to collapse in a nervous angry puddle, then quit doing it happily for the last 18 years no matter how much it might have benefited me monetarily: read my book, the Small Business Survivalist Handbook. 😉

So this finally gives me permission to "waste" space on face-outs. The craziest part of all is that the best-selling graphic novels are the ones that haven't gotten any exposure (on the theory that Saga will sell with or without face-out.) So Image will now have a rack of its own, and Marvel, and DC, and Vertigo, and probably Star Wars, and the rest will be an experiment to find out the best use.

I love doing this. It is a creative effort. Something very satisfying about it.

But also a lot of work.