Selling new books is ten times easier than comics.

This is probably going to sound arrogant, but I have to say--selling new books is ten times easier than selling comics.

I mean, in some ways it's a no-brainer.

You find good books and you put them out for sale, and by golly, they sell. The more good books you have, the more they sell.

It's not a guessing game like comics. Comics have to be ordered in advance, with limited information, you have to guess how many will sell, you are committed to having enough in stock to keep your customers interested, if they don't sell, you can't send them back. They sell for a very limited amount of time, then they're outdated. It's a constantly shifting market, with ups and downs, changes in artists, writers, story-lines, with innumerable variations, covers, one-shots, crossovers, series, and starting-overs.

Comics are so difficult that no mass market outlet has ever really figured out how to do it. Which in some ways has helped insulate the comic world from being stomped on by the Big Guys. Also, there isn't a whole lot of money in it. Not enough for the Big Guys to do more than take an occasional foray into the comic world.

The Big Guys find out that despite the latest Avengers movie wracking up a billion dollars, the actual comic with the same story line sells in the low five figures. I can just see them in their corporate lairs going, "WTF?"

Comics have always had a glass ceiling. That is, if you find that a Spider-man comic sells 10 copies, and you order 12 just in case, that you've allowed for growth. But that ordering 20 copies doesn't sell more than the 10 you were already selling.

Don't get me wrong. I love comics. I think they're one of the most creative art forms there is. But they are difficult.

I've always had to carry other product to survive. It wasn't until I hit the mix of comics, graphic novels, toys, card games, board games, and new books, that we became self-sustaining.

At first, new books were an adjunct to used books. I got used books from Linda's store, but never enough of the really good titles. So I figured, I'll order the books that people are constantly asking for but which never came in.

I was surprised to find that the same amount of space for new books outsold used books 5 to 1.

Huh. What do you know?

See, all I'd heard was how bookstores were struggling.

So I started visiting bookstores on my travels, and I found out why. Most of them pretty much weren't doing a very good job. Same damn books in every store. Limited inventory. Snobby, not carrying many genre books, disorganized and messy, disinterested clerks, nothing very interesting. The American Booksellers Association, the ABA style-bookstore, focused on "best-sellers" and culturally approved "literary" novels. More concerned with appearances than content.

Tiny sections for SF and fantasy, maybe a bigger section for mysteries/thrillers, probably few if any romance, western, or horror. A paltry selection of classics, almost no cult books, same old, same old Oprah books that B & N and Costco were selling for huge discounts.

I mean, I'm a reader. I've always read a lot, and not just the same genres. I've read every kind of book. I know what books I thought were good, which writers, and I looked up lists of cult books, books with an ongoing following.

I get a stock of books and they never date. They don't become paper like so many comics do. If the book is good, someone will be looking for it. Not only that, but they have probably been looking for it, and instead finding ABA style bookstores full of the latest literary darlings.

So I'm going to look for that kind of book, the kind the ABA stores can't be bothered with, and if it sells, I'm going to order it again.

And slowly but surely, I've built of a roster of evergreen books, titles I know will sell, either fast, or slow, but will sell.

At this point, the only thing stopping me is lack of space. I'm crammed, and with the other product lines, including comics, providing a self-sustaining level of business, I have no real incentive to replace them. So I keep looking for nooks-and-crannies to place my funky books.

It's fun and it's a challenge, and I feel like I've only just started.