Worried about diversity? If current books are any indication, the pendulum has swung the other way. Lots of diverse voices represented these days. Then again, it should be said that there is lots of ground to make up, too.
Surely there can't be a market for this many young adult books. Which all look the same. They all look good, but they can't all be good, can they?
All our problems will soon by solved by the self-help books offered. And we'll all be skinny too, because of the diet books. Surely it's just a matter of time.
There can't possibly be a market for this much manga in America. Or, if I was writing a manga, the title would be, "There Surely Can't Be Room for This Much Manga, but buy Mine!"
Star Wars is great. I love Star Wars. But how could so many Star Wars book exist? Wasn't there a time when I was the only store in town that had a selection?
DISNEY!!! Apparently Disney believes if there is room for Star Wars and Pixar and ...whatever ... there is room for every nook and cranny to be filled with something tangential. I have a feeling Disney is paying for placement of their books on these ordering lists (which probably represent a small fraction of what is actually being published.)
The amount of money that is being lost by not having in-stock early issues of most popular manga is mind-boggling. These publishers must know a year or more in advance that they are going to be on Netflix or whatever, yet every single time a new anime comes on, the manga is sold out. Months and months are going by without any Demon Slayers or My Hero Academia or Avatar: the Last Airbender, or...you name it: If it's wildly popular it isn't available, at least during the peak selling time.
There are whole categories of books I skip because they have zero appeal to me. Yet, I rag on most bookstores for not carrying sufficient genre books like SF and mysteries. I have tried to sell romance and chick-lit books (probably not an acceptable term anymore) but I can't seem to sell them.
I've always prided myself on hand-selecting the books for the store. In fact, for years I ignored the bestseller lists. But when I expanded to being a full-on bookstore, I jumped in. What I'm finding is--if I check the number of copies that the wholesaler has on hand, that's a pretty good indications of what they think will sell. So when I order a book based on that number, I basically jumping the bandwagon. Same as when I check the New York Times every day or when I check any bestseller list. But my bookstore is still more quirky than most, thank goodness.
I'm finding that some bestsellers are better for my store than others--usually because they have some hook that makes sense among the selection of books I have. Then again, a bestseller is a bestseller. What I'm learning is--unless I know what the bestseller is and why, I can wait a week or two before ordering it to see how it plays out in the real world. So a middle step between ordering all bestsellers and ordering none.
Sometimes I look at the bestsellers and think, "I guess I really don't know what people like." But then, from the numbers of customers who tell me I have "their" books, maybe I know what my customers like. Probably because it's the same things I like.
So many books that look and sound interesting--but I have to pass on.
I used to think that we couldn't sell hardcover mysteries in Linda's used bookstore because they sold new. But now I realize that I can't sell them new, either. Because my bookstore is drop-in and browse, while anyone buying a hardcover mystery is getting it on purpose? I buy some anyway because--at worse--I get to read them.
There has to be a limit to how many unicorn books we can sell--but we haven't found it yet.
Ordering books is now taking hours and hours, over the course of days. But I love it.
No comments:
Post a Comment