Becoming a "real" bookstore.

Figuring out how well we did is going to be a little more complicated this year-end. Obviously, missing 54 days for Covid is going to skew things. The only real way to do it is by figuring out daily averages.

I've already done that with books, with a close guestimate of December sales.

We have roughly doubled last year's sales in books. The real trick was doing this while in no way neglecting--in fact, actually increasing--our selection of comics, graphic novels, games, and toys.

It turns out, I may have a knack for this. I've always been extremely bookish--not just in what I read, but also in wanting to know what else is out there. (I used to read the New York Times Book Review from cover to cover, even if I never read most of the books reviewed.) I have a pretty good sense of what is going to attract people. I'm able to mix books at full retail with books I can get at a discount. I'm not too shabby at displaying what I have.

I should also mention, adding new books was probably only possible because we are located in a busy downtown with lots of foot traffic and tourists.

I'm operating under certain restraints. I have only so much room for display, so I have to curate carefully. It's the quality of the selection that ultimately matters, not the number of books in the store. (Though I am a firm believer that the more good books I can fit in, the better we'll do overall.) 

It's basically a matter of finding what books sell, and then stocking them. So if I find, say, 500 perennial sellers, that's a firm foundation for the rest of the thousands (ten's of?) of books. As time goes on, I keep adding to those foundational books. So, for instance, I find out that "The Queen's Gambit" is by Walter Tevis, who also wrote The Hustler and The Man Who Fell to Earth, well, it immediately becomes part of the menagerie.

For instance, I found that a certain edition of Edith Hamilton's "Mythology," sells over and over. Partly because of the subject matter but also because of a very attractive cover and a pretty good price point. So I started ordering three copies of that book at a time instead of one, making sure I reorder when it drops to two copies.

Same thing with "Princess Bride." One ultra copy at $35, a really nice hardcover for $25. By putting the Simpsons graphic novels and all the Calvin and Hobbes books in front near the door, I guarantee that they'll sell constantly.

Keep all the "Dog Man" series, all of Kurt Vonnegut's books, have a stack of Charles Bukowski books, Pablo Neruda's "Love Poems," a nice selection of Tarot sets, and so on and so forth. 

I keep my ears open for anything that might work. I steal ideas shamelessly from Herringbone Books in Redmond, because Brandon is much more of a traditional type bookstore who orders most highly rated "new" books. (Bookstores tend to sell the books the American Bookstore Association recommends-whereas, I'm a bit more leery.) I check them out, see which ones attract me--because of the cover or the subject matter or whatever--and order them for my store.

I am not a destination bookstore, really, the kind that people think of when they hear a good review on NPR. People tend to buy books from me because they see I have it. Tourists and locals who are making a trip downtown. So I don't necessarily have to be the first store to have a book in order to sell it. 

The most uncertain I am is with new "literary" and/or Oprah type books, especially the titles that women want, but which really don't attract me at all. (I'm sort of over "literary" right now.) I tend to order at least one copy of most ABA promoted books; or at least a legit selection of them. I find out pretty quickly which ones sell and which ones don't. About a third or so are clunkers, but another third sell constantly which more than covers the clunkers. 

Still trying to figure out pre-orders. I ordered two cases of the Obama book, or 16 copies, and sold out two days before Christmas. So unlike a lot of bookstores, I can't sell 50 or a 100 copies of these hot-bestsellers, but that's not too shabby.  I ordered 15 copies of each new Dog Man book, and that usually has to be increased within a couple of weeks.

Because of limited space and because I want to carry as many titles as possible, I usually carry one copy at a time (with exceptions, as noted above.) I'm a mile wide and an inch deep. However, I make up for this lack of depth by being very diligent about reorders. Any good book that sells immediately gets reordered so that I'm rarely out of a book for more than a week. I'm going to double down this coming year by ordering twice a week, since volume is justifying it, which means I will rarely be out of stock for more than a few days.  

I keep trying to make the case that I'm a "real" bookstore with "real" books, but whenever I visit Herringbone or Dudley's I realize that my store, while it does carry mainstream books, is also very pop culture oriented. I suppose I can't help it. I tend to order more graphically oriented books than more bookstores, which also makes sense.

Nevertheless, I'll sell "Where the Crawdad's Sing" just as readily as "Starship Troopers."

I mostly keep my ears open for new possibilities. A book that gets mentioned in the mass media, a book that pops out because the subject matter catches me, and so on. The biggest way I find new good books is by listening to people. 

This is somewhat tricky. I have to be able to distinguish between one time requests for odd books, and requests for books that are likely to attract more than just the asker. I'm not sure how I do this, but I mostly get it right. So, yeah, if someone raves about a book, and I ask a few questions--finding out how old it is, how the person knows about it, whether that person has similar tastes as me, whether there is a history behind the author or title, that kind of thing--I'll take a chance. Even if it doesn't sell immediately, if the book is at all quirkily interesting, it adds to the store's flavor. 

I think I've been able to navigate the nerd interest really well. Like I said, the weakest part of my ability is in the Oprah type books, but I'm getting better at it. 

If compliments were money, I'd already be rich.