Broadening the selection in a pop culture store.

I'm posting this on my blog for comic shop owners who might be interested in trying new books.

Here's a very incomplete list of perennial bestselling authors and books. You can add these slowly, experimentally. Obviously, whatever titles you give your attention to most will sell best. 

I'm doing this from home, so I'm certain I'm leaving out a bunch of good titles.

Overall advice: Concentrate on the offbeat, mystic, SF, hip, classics, humorous, quirky, pop culture.

We have a very large selection of Young Adult Graphic novels. Pretty much everything I can get that Brian Hibb's lists every year. Now that I'm working on the selection full time, I'm also more aware of new releases. I'm still surprised that some good books escape my notice--until they don't.

Also Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes, Far Side, and other cartoon collections. Simpsons (the Simpson's GNs are currently being sold off cheap and I've been stocking up). These get the closest space to the doorway to draw in the mainstream customers.

Carry your favorite books, the ones you can shove into someone's hands and say, "Read this!" For me, The Once and Future King, Watership Down, Chronicles of Amber, Armor by John Steakley, Lois McMaster Bujold, and many, many more that I can't think of right now. Some of these don't sell well, but dammit, I try...

Topical big sellers: Hope Never Dies, the Science of Rick and Morty, Queen's Gambit, etc.

I have a shelf of humorous books near the register stand, next to the mythology. Jeffrey Brown, Big Lebowski books, anything that seems quirky to me. Even if they don't always sell, people notice them. Cat books, so many I could probably give them their own shelf. "How to Talk to Your Cat about Gun Safety" is one of my best-selling books, believe it or not.  

Off the top of my head: 

A stack of Kurt Vonnegut

A stack of Chuck Palahniuk

A stack of Charles Bukowski

A stack of Philip K. Dick

A stack of Murakami 

Mystics like Coelo, Gibran, Castaneda,

Poetry, believe it or not. The giants, mostly, but a few hip young poets as well.

Beatnik poets and authors: Snyder, Kerouac, Burroughs, etc. Also hippy authors: Abbot, Hesse, Kesey, etc.

Hardcore philosophy. Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus. The thing to remember about poetry, philosophy, hippie and beatnik authors, transgressive books, is that there will always be young adults expanding their consciousness.

Young adult chapter books: Listen for the requests, but be careful. There is no end to them. 

Unicorns. Just...unicorns.

Lots and lots of mythology books. More mythology books than you think you need.

Wicca, with a large selection of Tarot.

A nice selection of classics: Dickens, Twain, Bronte sisters, Jane Austin, Dostoevsky, everything you can get. Also, though it seems like everyone would already have them, the usual school books classics like Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, that kind of thing.

A selection of classic S.F. Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and whatever Golden Age SF that is in print (which isn't as much as should be) and one-up classics like Armor,  

Just about any SF or Fantasy book that won a Hugo or a Nebula. A whole shelf of Tolkien, books and art. The leather bound Tolkien Encyclopedia sells constantly. 

I have two full racks of Star Wars. Books and graphic novels and comics mixed together.

I carry a fair amount of horror, because of the books I myself wrote, but other than Stephen King and a few others, they are a harder sell. All the Lovecraft, a smattering of everyone else.

Manga. Here's where I really listen to the customers. Someone requests a series, I get the first few as an experiment, if they sell, I get more, and eventually the entire sequence. 

The Oprah hardcovers. The big bestsellers. The "literary" books. One little trick is to check how many copies Ingram's ordered. When it's in the thousands, pay attention.When it's in the tens of thousands, really pay attention. Otherwise, I check the bestseller lists. I don't try to get them all, just a representative sampling. So that the hardcore readers think, "Yes, this is a bookstore." I have a bestseller rack near the front. I do find that if one of these hardcovers sells once, they may sell multiple times. One at a time orders.

Weirdly enough, though thrillers and mysteries are what I love most, I don't tend to sell many of the new hardcover bestsellers.(Though most bookstore owners I talk to do very well with them.) Or the paperback either. I think people pick these (Lee Child, John Grisham, James Patterson) up at the chainstores. I carry classic authors like Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett Raymond Chandler, the Parker books-- but as much for show as because they sell. I carry my favorites, with the knowledge they'll sell slowly. Stephen Hunter, Thomas Perry, James Lee Burke, John Sandford, John LeCarre, Elmore Leonard, Michael Connelly, those guys.

I've had no luck with romance, paranormal romance, cosy mysteries. I try, but feminine oriented books are a bit of a blindspot for me. But when I find ones that work--like the Outlander series, they sell well.

Much of my effort has been to find the transition between books with all words and books with all pictures; to establish a continuum. So, for instance, the young adult graphic novels are at the front of the store, prominently displayed. As you move to either side, chapter books start to blend with the GN's until they become all chapter books, mixed with "art of" type books. If a chapter book series has a GN series, they are put together.

When you move from the book/game half of the store to the comic/graphic novel half of the store, I have two bookshelves facing the transition filled with "Art of" and other pop culture books that people can relate to, (Umbrella Academy, Venture Bros, Archer...etc.) which are a blend of art and words. And then from there, it becomes GN's and comics. 

I've got direct accounts with Scholastic and Penguin Random House, at 50%, no returns. (One thing about owning a comic shop is that I got very accustomed to no returns, so I'm careful.) I was intending to get Simon and Shuster, but they are being bought by PRH, so that is taken care of. I will, over the course of the next year, sign up for Hachette and MacMillen. 

Like I said, this probably only works if you get a fair number of casual browsers, and not just hard core comic people. My rents in downtown Bend have gone up along with the foot traffic so I had no choice but to broaden the appeal. 

I'm very glad I did.