Even though the BookBub promotion was in September of last year, I've encouraged my publisher to keep the reduced (.99 cent) price on "Deadfall Ridge." Meanwhile, its sequel, "Takeover," is at the regular $4.99 price.

It's a strange thing to see that a book at full price that sells 1/10th the numbers of a book at a reduced price, but earns a profit of 33% more overall.

In this case, the full-priced book probably wouldn't be selling as well as it is without the discounted book bringing attention to it. So I'm good with that. I've gone ahead and agreed to another promotion from a different site--not sure if will be as effective as BookBub, but since "Deadfall Ridge" is on a roll, as least as far as number of copies sold, I'd like to try to keep the momentum going.

I mean, the idea is to get more readers, who hopefully will buy some of my other books. But damn, getting 30% of a reduced price instead of 70% of a full price makes it hard to make money.

If you've ever wondered about discounting, this should tell you everything you want to know. I spent years, decades really, having to reduce prices at the store in order to pay the bills. I rarely if ever had an official "Sale;" it was more a one-on-one situation where I'd try to sell an item to a customer on a customized basis: a good customer who I wanted to keep happy, or a one-time customer eyeing a one-of-a-kind item that I might never sell to anyone else, or any oversupply that needed to be weeded down.

 That kind of thing. There were a couple of lean years where I was hand-selling just about everything at a reduced price. Makes it very hard to earn enough to restock the store

Someone gave me the advice early on that you can tell the health of a store by how well they can stick to regular prices.

About 2002 or so, not long after I finally got out from under a huge debt, I decided that I would sell everything in my store at regular price. This mean not discounting anything, but it also meant not raising any prices because of the "collector" thing--with a few exceptions.  It also meant not buying anything off the street.

Everything is strictly wholesale/retail.

That doesn't mean that I don't occasionally sell stuff at reduced prices--again, at the "customized" level, but it's much rarer now.

I think it's a fair policy, and I'm very glad I made that choice. I never felt comfortable raising prices because of "collectability," but as as long as I was in that game, it was necessary. Now I let the customers decide whether something is collectable or not. I may be leaving money on the table, but it feels like the moral high ground, and it makes life so much easier.

As I say, "Collectability is what happens once it leaves the store."

That's not to say that I don't bump prices on toys or comics a little bit if the supply chain somehow demands it--like qualifying for certain incentives and/or exclusives, but I try to keep the price increases to a minimum--just enough to cover the risk.

We're sometimes confronted with a comic going way up in price--when that happens, we sell that comic for far below whatever ebay is selling it for.  There are many times when I know for a fact that I'm selling below market price, but a policy is a policy. (A policy that isn't followed isn't a policy at all.)

Fortunately, this situation is becoming much rarer. 99% of the time, I'm buying an item at wholesale and selling at Suggested Retail Price. It's nice predictable formula, but only possible because the store has reached a sustainable level.

In other words, the store is healthy, and the level of stock fully justifies the asking prices. (Not to mention the downtown location, trying to pay an engaged manager a fair wage, the taking chances on more obscure items, and so on.)

Surprisingly, few customers question it. Oh, I occasionally get someone who won't buy unless it's discounted, but I let them go their way. Sometimes I understand and sometimes I just shake my head. One of the reasons the store is interesting at all is because I'm earning enough of a profit to stock harder to sell items, to take chances, to buy stuff that a Walmart wouldn't bother to carry.

It took a long to get here. I'm hoping I can keep it going.