Owning a business means obsessing over budget.

I had a goal for saving money this summer, and we quickly passed it. I raised the goal, and we quickly passed it. I raised it again.

Over the last week, the sales have dropped enough that the middle goal is probably the real one. 

I was feeling down about it last night. But as I went to bed, I thought, "Quit stressing over money. You're fine. You're more than fine."

I'm just used to to obsessing over budget. Owning a business means obsessing over budget. Constant vigilance over cash flow. Checking sales on an almost hourly basis. Making sure bills are paid. Crunching the same numbers over and over again. Getting product ordered and back in stock as fast as I can manage. 

It's hard for me relax over these things. The store is doing fine, better than fine.

Besides, perhaps we've survived as long as we have because of my single-minded obsession. Anything less and it gets away from you. 

We're no longer on the edge of the cliff, but I can't get over the feeling that we still are. 

The Middle Man Trick.

I'm going to need to watch "The Beanie Bubble" because of how much Beanie Babies helped my business. It was one of four fads in a  row that helped us survive the massive debt incurred by the first couple of fads.

1.) Sports cards (and non-sports cards.)

2.) Comics

3.) Magic

4.) Pogs

5.) Beanie Babies

6.) Pokemon.

My definition of a "bubble" is along the lines of, "I know it when I see it." A bubble is madness, exponential growth in face of doubt, a complete buy-in, a cresting series of warning signals, and then a collapse. 

All of these bubbles (or, if you will, fads) happened in our first twenty years of business. I think since the internet came along there haven't been any retail bubbles that quite match them. (By my definition). Covid revived some of them, but not to bubble level.

Obviously, there have been many bubbles since then, but mostly I've sidestepped them over the last 23 years. Bitcoin is a good example, the housing bubble another. Ironically, it was my experience with retail fads that helped me avoid the housing bubble. I joked that Pogs and houses had the same dynamic, but it's also strangely true. 

Everyone is excused one bubble, because unless you've actually experienced one, you have no idea. 

I don't have the excuse for one bubble; I was caught by two of them. Sports cards were the biggest bubble, the biggest buy-in, the biggest collapse. Followed quickly by comics. Ironically, the comics bubble helped us survive the first bubble, at least at first. Then, the comics collapse just added to our debt level.  I thought I could outmaneuver the bubble, but it still caught me because the rules of the game changed. (Hint: there are no "rules of the game.") I tried to time the comics bubble, but the massive load of comics that came in after the collapse caused us to add to our credit card debt.

Yep. I did the classic. Maxed out 8 credit cards to survive. You could say it was stupid, but we did survive, after all.

Back to Beanie Babies. I decided that I couldn't forgo the massive influx of money that comes in on the upswing of a fad; I just had to be careful to get out in plenty of time. Fortunately, I'd learned a good trick: The Middle Man.

Toward the end of the sports cards boom, I decided to opt out of buying massive quantities of product direct from the manufacturers and instead buy smaller, more affordable quantities from a Middle Man. My discount was about 20% less, so I had to go full retail. (Another reason we survived--after we shed the huge number of customers who wouldn't pay "retail," we rebuilt with customers who valued us enough who would.)

So when Magic and Pokemon and Beanie Babies and Pogs came along, I continued that practice of not opening accounts with the manufacturers, but ordering what I needed from the Middle Man.

The Middle Man was a kill switch. I wasn't obligated to buy massive quantities in order the qualify for the product. I could cut my orders at any time without repercussions. I had an escape valve.

It's funny; I can look back on that moment in all these fads when I decided to get out. In every case, I had customers look at me in astonishment and say, "But the Beanie Babies, (Pogs, Magic, Pokemon, et al) are bigger than ever!"

And I'd just nod my head and quietly start reducing my risk. 

A dangerous game to play. I look back and see Pogs as a bases filled home run; Beanie Babies as a home run; Magic and Pokemon as good, strong triples.

I'm just as glad not to have to gamble on these things anymore, but it was the playing this game that pulled us out of debt that the game incurred in the first place. 

I still order, whenever possible, through a middle man.

Because I've run out of the Court of Thorns series, I decided to make an extra order to arrive on today. I feel like I need to get books in the store before the UPS strike. So spending a little more now and a little less later makes sense. 

Wanted to save 2% from Penguin Random House by joining some sort of program. So the guy from PRH arranged to call me "this afternoon."

Well, the sucks. I'm sitting here waiting, not knowing if he is going to call in the next five minutes or the next five hours. Stupid way to do things. (My fault.)

Got the call. Not only do I qualify, I'm a model store!

 

SVENGOOLIE.

It's rare that I don't know of a significant pop culture thing, if only vaguely. 

There's a new comic out, and I had no idea what it was about. Starting in 1970, a spoof of SF and Horror shows. How the hell did I miss that? At the height of my hippie phase instead of my nerd phase, so I was probbly too stoned to notice.  

Cat led me outdoors, where he got on my lap. He looked totally alert and at the same time looked like he was nodding off.

"That's a cat for you," Linda said. 

The further I am from actively writing, the more satisfied I am with the writing I did do. I accomplished what I set out to do (write one book!) (25 books later...) I wrote what I wanted when I wanted and more than few people actually read them and liked them. I enjoyed the process, I loved being in a fictional dream for 8 years or so. 

Now I'm back at the store and enjoying that too. The biggest difference, and this is the same thing I noticed 40 years ago when I bought the store--any creative inspirations are instantly rewarded at the store. The rewards of writing are in the doing and if anything happens, it happens much later and with people at a distance. 

I'm glad I had the chance to do both things. 

 

Was browsing a Reddit thread on comics and it made me realize I'm completely out of touch with the comics world. I don't have a clue. All my knowledge comes from ten years back, or farther. 

Thankfully, Sabrina is completely up to date and in charge of all things comics. I only work behind the counter one and a half days a week, and I'm upfront about how clueless I am. I can only hope that they don't stop coming in because of my cluelessness. We sell a variety of product that I'm not completely immersed in: anime, manga, Magic, Pokemon, and so on. 

Books are about the only thing I can claim to be somewhat up to date, but it's a huge world with a huge history, so it's all relative.

Running a store isn't always about knowing all the details. It's about knowing the general state of things. You can't always keep the same level of interest in everything all the time forever. 

The 2% chance.

So Penguin Random House is offering an extra 2% discount to qualifying stores. 

I talked to the rep from PRH this afternoon. Turns out, the object of the program is to get comic stores to buy more books. Heh.

His comment was, We qualify easily. In fact, we're almost the model for such a store.

So here's the thing. I've long thought that most bookstores completely underestimate pop culture, almost completely neglecting most genres, especially SF, Fantasy, and Horror, but also Thrillers, Romance, and Paranormal. Never mind graphic novels and comics. I was in a bookstore last week that had zero SF and even weirder, almost no children's books. (Lots of bookstores do children's books, but then I have the opposite question: why just children's books, why not all?)

It seems like the Mystery genre is the one genre that most bookstores will take an active interest in.

It seems very snooty. 

So...it's their loss. Nothing I could say will change their minds. I've talked to some bookstore owners who even say that SF and Fantasy is important, but never seem to enlarge their selection much. 

At the same time, I believe that most comic shops are underestimating how many books they'd be able to sell. There are tons of pop culture books that would easily fit into the comic stores; not to mention, the YA graphic novel is probably the most popular books genre there is right now. 

But in both cases, the stores have to take a chance, build their inventory, learn about it, and find out the limits to how much they can sell. But it does require an effort.

In defense of comic stores, they are most often destination stores, not in places where the average book buyer is likely to find them.

But the average book buyer is very open to pop culture, even the most snooty of them. There is a decent chance that comic stores would sell more books if they had them. 

What I see happening, in both comic stores and bookstores, is that they will dip a toe into the other market, not have immediate success, and then be convinced it isn't worth it.

Far be it from me to suggest that they take a bigger gamble, though in at last some cases those stores would profit by it. It's up to each store owner to decide how much chance they're willing to take.

How did we become a bookstore?

Dropped in on Brett at Heroes Haven in Roseburg. Very perceptive fellow. Made me realize how I go along with my own opinions and assumptions here in Bend, but never have them questioned or run by anyone else who does the same thing I do.

His store was packed with good stuff.

Anyway, in talking to him, it made me wonder about when and how my books sales became so important. I went back a few years to check.

Here's the thing: I'd been dabbling in book sales for years, and just before Covid, books had overtaken comics as our biggest seller, but not by much. 

So two things happened: 1.) I came back to work after writing at home for eight years or so. And 2.) Covid. 

Book sales had already started increasing because of my paying more attention to the store. Sabrina had done a great job running the store, but the decision to turn toward books came because of my own interests and also because I saw great potential there, whereas comics were veering in a direction I wasn't comfortable with (more collecting, than reading.)

When Covid happened and we had to close the store for two months, I took the opportunity to lay down new flooring. While I was at it, I also rearranged things slightly, rethought things, and managed to add a significant number of bookshelves. I saw it as a way to expand my selection and to get more books. I don't know that I thought it would increase sales.

But, strangely, it was the customers who told me I'd made a significant change. People coming in off the street gave me the feedback that we were, indeed, a bookstore. Not only that, but they started buying more.

From that moment on, my job was simply to supply that demand, which I've been doing ever since.

Our sales in books increased and then increased again. Meanwhile, our other product lines continued to do what they'd been doing, which had been more than enough to keep the store going. So, book sales were a huge bonus.  

It was the right move for us, keeping up with the changes downtown.

The plot twist...magic is real (not).

Article in the New York Times about how some professional magicians are coming around to seeing Uri Geller as one of their own. (It doesn't sound like the predominant opinion: certainly, The Amazing Randi never came around to that view.)

"Wait a minute," some magicians are saying. "Isn't he just doing what we do? Pretending to be able to do magical stuff? Isn't this how magicians started? What if...what if Geller is just better at hoodwinking people? Maybe he's just carrying on the act full time!"

A simple little trick, bending a spoon, something most magicians can do. But Geller made people believe it was "magic."

Geller, for his part, has started to be a little more "wink, wink, nod, nod" about his supposed powers.  

I love this sort of turnaround, a paradigm shift that make you completely turn your opinion in the opposite direction. 

In a book, it would be a great plot twist.

Edison was a bastard.

The more books I read about 1800s and early 1900s business, the more I realize that business fuckery has always been with us. The amount of copyright and patent fights and theft and lawsuits makes it all very confusing. The good guys (the real inventors and innovators) didn't usually end up winning. I mean, Edison was one hell of a bastard, but he was also typical.

It's a jungle, I tell you. 

The longer I'm in small business, the gladder I am that I am an owner and also that I am small. We are finally making good money, by luck, and experience, and longevity. I don't know that we'd have done any better by being bigger. Maybe, but it wouldn't have been worth it. 

Luck because downtown turned around and became popular again and our landlord stood by us.

Experience enough to change with the times. 

Longevity by pure stubbornness. 

 

Speaking of which: Summer Fest.

These events don't kill us anymore. We're doing about average for a Saturday so far, but the number of transactions is a little scary. Pretty much a ring-up every five minutes, which doesn't leave a lot of time to do anything but stand at the counter.

Thing is, our store is already so packed that it almost becomes a negative. Too many people in the store means that everyone avoids coming up to the counter, unless one of them breaks the logjam and then it becomes a cascade. I mean, it can almost become too much.

This is going to sound strange to say, but I think we maybe shouldn't be promoting downtown anymore. Let nature take its course, let us do our business without interference. Maybe I think this because we're doing well and maybe there are stores not doing so well, but still... 

It's not my battle anymore. I think the events are unnecessary or should be done without closing streets, but I'm not fighting it anymore. People are having fun, but I'm pretty sure the same things could be accomplished without all the interruption. Oh, well.

Time doth pass...

fuck me, I'm already dead.

I was looking in my collection for an album I loved, Cheap Trick's "Rockford," which is quintessential power pop, my favorite kind of music. This late album by the group is, in my opinion, every bit as good as their early popular stuff, with the added benefit of being all new and not worn out by radio. 

I couldn't find the album, so I decided to listen to it on YouTube. Here's the thing. If you had asked me when the album came out I would have honestly said, "Oh, five or six years ago."

The damn album came out in 2006, seventeen years ago.

Jesus. I don't think I have that much time left.

That's just painful.

Getting $77 worth of books from Diamond Comics next week, this following a $100 worth of books this week. Together, the profits probably wouldn't pay some of the utility bills at the store. 

Diamond used to have the exclusive distribution rights to Marvel, DC, Image, and Dark Horse, which represent about 85 to 90%  of the comics sold. The other several hundred comic publishers make up the last 10%.

Well, the Big Four have left Diamond, so we're left getting the scraps from Diamond.

Obviously, it's really hard to see how this continues.

What's really amazing to me is how many comic retailers and publishers were pushing for this result. It's as if Diamond was a leaky boat and their feet were getting wet, so they started screaming about sinking the damn boat! When there wasn't another boat on the horizon!

I started seeing this trend about six years ago and started changing course. There was the choice of becoming a "collectables" store, but I'd already rejected that years ago. So I started looking for a life raft and the obvious choice was new books.

It was a solution, though I didn't realize how well new books would perform. 

So we will still sell Marvel, DC, Image, and Dark Horse by ordering through two other distributors, and it's a major part of our store. More expensive and time-consuming, but that's the cost. But all the rest of the stuff we were getting from Diamond is in jeopardy, especially small publishers and toys. 

We'll do what we can, but I'm glad I'm not depending on those categories to keep us going. 

It's just painful to see happen.

A constant flow of books.

Stupid business stuff that has to be dealt with. 

Preferably, I'd like to time the arrival of books, so that most of them arrive at predictable times, best of all during days I'm already working. Absent that, I wouldn't mind just being able to know a day of the week I could depend on them arriving.

Well, with about a third of the books coming from Penguin Random House, this is completely impossible. They send books in a willy-nilly fashion, piecemeal in smaller orders at different times no matter when I actually order them.

So I've been trying to wait until I get notice of when PRH books will show up and then time our Ingram orders to match them. But PRH is all over the map and waiting for them means delaying my other orders.

So I'm just going to make constant orders throughout the week from PRH, and do a couple of (predictable two day delivery) orders per week from Ingram, and just get in to the store to put them away when I can. Our UPS driver now delivers them to the back hallway so if I don't get to the store, we won't have boxes clogging the display space. 

I've just sort of realized, after doing this for about a week, that I'll probably get the orders out almost as fast even if they sit in the hallway occasionally. Trying to put away books all at the same time just meant delaying orders to consolidate them.

 Well, ordering constantly means that books will perhaps arrive sooner, so sitting the hallway won't delay them further. If that makes any sense.

There is so much in small business that I simply have no control over. Usually I can figure out a way, but with PRH being so unpredictable, I've given up. 

After spending most of the 4th of July putting in an order to replace the large volume of books we sold over the weekend, I'm having to admit to myself that there are a lot more hours being put into the process than I've been willing to talk about. Partly because I sort of enjoy the process--but it makes me realize that anyone running the store when I'm gone will have to factor in the time and energy and homework needed to get the job done. 

I still think the store can be handled by about one and a half workers, or divided up, maybe one full-time and two half-time workers. But it is work, and it will have to be done. It seems relatively easy to me, but that might be because I got used to spending 60 or more hours a week at the store for years, without any employees. 

Ordering books from homes hardly seem arduous but, like I said, I enjoy doing it.