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.