The more experience you have at something, the harder it is not to become cynical. 

For me, it's both books and small business. My experience so often seems completely different from what others say. It's gotten to the point where, if they say something that seems off to me, I either attribute it to newbie naivete, or experiential bullshit.

This cynicism not an attractive quality in myself, especially when expressed to others. It comes off as sour grapes. At the same time, to myself I have to acknowledge the truth of what I think. 

The trick, I guess, is not to say anything at all, but how boring is that?

It's coming down to a choice. Keep the store completely stocked and accept the savings we've made so far the summer or starve the store a little in inventory and catch up later. I pushed a little too much of the burden into the two non-overhead weeks of this month without remembering how severely business dropped last year at this time. The smoke days did their damage.

I have to remember--this is savings I'm talking about. How much I can save, not how much I lose. More savings than I ever though possible, having been in debt almost my entire career.

I tried to have it both ways, and it's not quite working out. Not really a surprise. Always hoping for the best. 

Looking it over again, I'll be lucky to save any money over the next two weeks even if I don't spend another dime. I don't think I can wait two weeks to restock, so it may be a moot point. I was just a little too generous with the store over June, July was exactly as I planned, and then tried to squeeze too much savings into August. Didn't work out.

It's possible I can make up the difference in September. Not easy, but possible. 

Again, by most measures this has been a spectacular success. But there is always that wish for an even more spectacular success!

So just enjoy it and do the best job possible.

Diligence is a bitch.

I've spent my entire lifetime trying to identify how things affect me. My ten years of depression were all about that, obsessively trying to figure out my triggers and how to avoid them.

Here I am, nearly 71 years old, and I'm coming to realize how much procrastination weighs me down. A couple of years ago, I let most of the gardening season go before I tried to deal with it. I felt the burden of that.

This year, I took care of the gardening early and I've kept up since. 

This year, it's the backstop of comics. It really feels like a looming danger, somehow, even though there is no real harm there. At some point, the procrastination itself becomes the point. 

I've been holding off ordering tickets for Australia, though it puts the whole endeavor into jeopardy. 

At this moment, it's taxes. My appointment is in less than two weeks. I need to get that done.

In the past, I'd feel this weight, but I don't think I always understood what was causing it. As I've gotten older and money and personal problems have been resolved, the other things that bother me become clearer than before. 

Sometimes they nag at me for years. The store is always a little run down, a little dusty and dirty. But unless it really becomes noticeable, I tend to let it slide. But, for example, when I finally replaced the flooring, it improved the store tremendously.

I spent years planning to write at least one more book Once I started, the floodgates opened, and ten years and 25 books later, procrastination is not a problem.

There is a cost to procrastination, but it has to be weighed against the value of relaxing, or not worrying, of letting things take their natural course.

There is always a time in procrastination when I get it done, and it feels good. But almost always, the next thing I've been delaying immediately come to mind and has the same weight. 

Responsibility and diligence are a bitch.

The History of Bend

I often get asked for a "history" of Bend at Pegasus Books, but I'll be damned if I can think of one that fits the bill. 

When I was growing up, there were two books that were sort of the standard references for Central Oregon, if not Bend specifically. 

"East of the Cascades," by Phil Brogan, and "The Oregon Desert," by Reub Long. Even when I read them back then, they weren't entirely satisfying. But at least they talked about the early years.

But here's the thing about a history of Bend: it would need to be two different histories because Bend has been two different towns.

There is the town I grew up in, which had a population hovering around 13,000 until I went off to college in 1971.

And there is the town that started booming in the late 1970s, crashed during the 1980s, and then really took off, with fits and starts, in the 1990s. 

Who's going to write that history? Who is still around whose experience and knowledge contains both towns? 

Most people I talk to haven't lived in Bend long enough to remember even the 80s, much less earlier. There is almost no institutional memory in the city or county government, and I have to wonder how many people in the media have any real clue about even the recent past.

I remember when the first TV station started broadcasting in Bend. They opened with pictures of a Bend that I didn't recognize. There were (and are) plenty of local landmarks which give the flavor of Bend, but whoever made that ad missed all of them. It was a strangers' view of Bend. 

That has continued to be true since. The customer who comes in my store and confidently announces that Bend never has snow. (The irony being it was a very heavy snow year that followed.) The real estate agent who announces that it was preordained that downtown Bend would be popular because of the river and the historic buildings. (Nobody who worked downtown in the 80s would agree that it was preordained. And...well... we have very few "historic" buildings.) 

Then there was the woman who came in and asked about doing a "ghost" tour and basically making up stuff when there were actually some interesting things about downtown having to do with a sort of Red Light district, this being a lumber town. I was told that Wall Street used to be the 'ladies" side of downtown, while Bond was the less gentile side, with most of the bars. 

But these are stories, not history. In fact, the tourism history can be very misleading. It's fascinating to me that the "Old Mill" has become romanticized. What I remember was that working in the mill was incredibly hard work, dirty, dangerous, smelly, environmentally damaging. I distinctly remember the layer of oil all over the mill grounds, the smell of it, the occasional loud grinding noises. Our days were marked by the old mills whistles. It was a working mill, with all that entails.

There are superficial or specialized histories of the area, mostly around tourism, but I'm not aware of fully researched and inclusive Bend history. (I could be wrong--if anyone has any ideas, let me know. Especially if it's a book that can actually be ordered at wholesale.)

Someone could research Bend from the Bulletin archives alone. The Bulletin itself has a fascinating history: starting with George Palmer Putnam, publisher of the Bulletin, who was heir to the Putnam publishing empire and who was later married to Amelia Earhart. There were the Chandler years, when the paper had big city aspirations.

It could be done, but it would best be done by someone who has actually lived and experienced the different phases.

It won't be me! I'm too lazy and old for that task. I suspect we'll get histories of Bend that are influenced mostly by it's later incarnation, relegating the older incarnation into something quaint. 

The truth is, for most of Bend's history we just weren't big or important enough to chronicle, and for the last fifty years or so, we haven't been interesting or unique enough. 

Like I said, it would take someone who really loves Bend, both past and present.

 I would buy that book in a second. 

 

The specialty market.

It occurred to me that I can't remember the last time I sold a board game. Which got me thinking about the dynamics of the thing. 

So here's my take:

We used to be a "specialty" store. We carried a wider and deeper inventory on items that weren't well known by the public. But if you were in the "know," you'd seek out the specialty story to get your fix. But even then, only a small percentage of that specialty item would sell well. I'm going to use the 20/80 rule as a point of reference. 

Basically, my interpretation is, that in retail the 20/80 rule means that 20% of your product will make 80% of your profits. So as a specialty store, you'd use the profits from that 20% to help carry the other 80%.

Board games are a great example of this. For years, the games Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride and a few others were the main fuel of the entire product line. 

Anyway, sometimes a specialty item becomes much better known to the public, so it starts showing up in places like Target and Walmart. Again, Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride are perfect examples of this, but it's happened before. The biggest falloff in business I ever had was when the chainstores finally took notice of sportscards. 

Obviously, this causes problems for a specialty store. To be blunt, the product is no longer a specialty but a commodity. That doesn't mean it doesn't sell well, it just means that is sells in the larger arena. The problem with this is that the chainstores, because of how big they are, get better deals, better discounts, wider exposure, and operate on lower margins and higher volume. Add to this, they often get return privileges and get exclusive variations. They often use the "hot" product as loss leaders.

Obviously, it becomes much harder for a specialty store to compete. The irony is that, when a product finally gets noticed, there is usually a surge of specialty store competition as well.

Oh, I hear you say, but we get to carry all the other games that the chainstores don't carry! Yeah, but the reason they don't carry the 80% of slow sellers is exactly that. They are slow sellers. 

At first, I leaned into the specialty stuff (80%) that the chainstores didn't carry, but quickly found out that I was selling even less than before because I didn't have the draw of the 20%. So I reversed gears and carried only the hot sellers, which of course didn't satisfy all those customers who had got used to us carrying the odds and ends. 

You can gamble and go all in, doing every little thing to distinguish yourself. That is probably what most specialty stores do, but bottom line, you're working harder for less and burnout is often the result. Burnout is trying to do absolutely everything, the heavy lifting, and getting minimal results. 

So you need to shift, either into another specialty product that hasn't been discovered yet. Not so easy to do. That product has to exist for you to shift to it. Or you enter the larger market with something that is sold everywhere.

In the end, being a specialty store sounds great. You're dealing with people who appreciate what you're doing, you're surrounded by cool stuff, and you can maybe eke out a living. That is, until the cycle turns against you. 

Here's the Catch-22. If the specialty product never takes off, you're only going to eke out a living. But if it takes off, you'll have most of your customers taken away from you. 

Comics to me are an example of a specialty item that the chainstores have never learned how to do. It's difficult and confounding. Sales end up just not being worth it. There have been a few times when comics almost made the leap, and to a certain extent, graphic novels have, but every time there was a boom in comics it would crash just before the chainstores really got a hold of it. 

Great...but that means probably that sales for your store are probably not great either. 

So here's the lesson that I learned very late in my business career, almost by accident. 

I started carrying new books. Now new books are, in some senses, both a commodity and a specialty item. The chainstores carry the product; indeed, there are chainstores who do nothing but new books. There is, of course, Amazon.

So you'd think that this would be a hard business to compete in. But the difference between the specialty items we've always carried (toys, games, cards, comics) and books is the difference in who buys them. 

A very small percentage of people buy comics. I could literally hand out free comics on the sidewalk and at the end of the day a large percentage of them would end up in the corner sidewalk trashbin.

A much, much larger percentage of people buy books. So it turns out, if you want to have healthy sales, you need a large customer base to draw on. 

The rest is simple competition--how well you do your job, what your locations is, your curation of titles. 

In other words, no matter how good I job I do in comics (or games or cards), there will always be a ceiling. 

But with books, the sky is the limit. (Well, for me, space is the biggest limiting factor.) 

I can compete with Amazon and Barnes and Noble, I can co-exist with Roundabout and Dudleys and Big Story, because there are enough good books that my selection can stand out to enough people to make it all worth it. 

I'm not giving up on any of the product I've been carrying for the last 40 years. Comics and toys and games are still a significant percentage of my business, but I've found out that having something that more people want, funnily enough, means you sell more.

It's a cycle. To my great surprise, for instance, sportscards have once again become a viable specialty item. For how long, who knows. But one thing for sure, there was no way for me to survive waiting 30 years for them to come back. 

My store has been designed in some ways to be competition resistant. I carry a variety of product so that no one thing is vulnerable. I just keep watching the cycles and adjusting. 

 Boardgames are having their moment in the sun of the broader market. 

We'll see how long they stay there.

Ongoing list of great out-of-print books.

Another really great one: "Behold the Man," Michael Moorcock; also great, "The War Hound and the World's Pain."

Should add, "The Languages of Pao," by Jack Vance. Not to mention, most of his other great books. (Note: upon further search, I can find them, but with a minimal wholesale discount...)

Another author almost impossible to find at wholesale prices (not used, though those books can be hard to find too): Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Most of the Tarzan books past the first three (26), all the Pellucidar books (7), all the Venus books (5), and most of the Mars books, again past the first three (11). I've heard no explanation except that the Burroughs estate is difficult to deal with because of trademarks (?) (not copyrights) and no one wants to deal with them.

Anyone know the story there?

And then there is the most in demand impossible to get in the format everyone wants: Elfquest. The ones that came out in the 80s, that you could find in Waldenbooks. Yes, you can get Elfquest in three or four different sizes, but not the right sizes. You can get recent color stories, but not the ones people remember. You can get the ones they remember in B & W, but not in color.

My assumption is that there is some legal reason they don't come out in the color "album" size that people remember so fondly.

Again, anyone know what the scoop is?

 

Meanwhile, can't currently get most of the Ian Fleming, James Bond books.

"Casino Royale" has just come out with a new printing, and "Live and Let Die" is coming later this month, and Moonraker is coming out in July, and so on. My assumption is that they took these books off the market so they could be bowdlerized for modern tastes. (Not sure how I feel about that.) But I'm adding him to the list, temporarily.  

UPDATE: they are coming out in order every couple months. Edited, I presume.

 

Anyway, added to the List:

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Ian Fleming 

Elquest

Harlan Ellison

Behold the Man, Michael Moorcock

The War Hound and the World's Pain, Michael Moorcock

Lord Valentine's Castle, Robert Silverberg

The Iron Dragon's Daughter, Michael Swanwick

Tunnel in the Sky, Robert Heinlein

Shardik, Robert Adams

Barrayar, Lois McMaster Bujold

Shards of Honor, Lois McMaster Bujold

Cordelia's Honor, Lois McMaster Bujold 

Deathword Trilogy, Harry Harrison

Demon, John Varley, (especially exasperating because the first two books of the trilogy are available.)

 

 

 

 

No shame and the A.I.

There's a lot of talk about how A.I. can't be creative.

From what I've seen, it very much can be. The mash-up images for made-up movies are pretty astounding. If I was a director looking for storyboards, I might want to try that. (Not that I would.)

That's just it. Most creativity is simply mash-ups of what's come before, new mixing of old elements. 

For instance, I combined the Donner Party and Werewolves in "Led to the Slaughter." Neither are new on their own, but when I first came with the idea of combining the two, no one had. When I look around at current fiction, not much of it is amazingly original. In fact, most of it is formulaic. Lots of readers want what they expect. 

All well and good to try to be avant-garde, but you aren't going to garner a lot of readers.

But what constrains most of us is that we want to be original enough not to be accused of simply copying what has already worked. Of course, there are always examples of writers who shamelessly rip off other writers, and unfortunately, many of them are rewarded for doing so. 

I have some infamous examples in my head, the type of book where I ask myself, "How does that writer feel good about that?" But I don't want to call out names here. Some of it is simple naivety or ignorance, some might be attempts at homage, much of it regretfully works. 

But I think most writers do want to express themselves and are telling stories like the ones they already like. And there is nothing wrong with that, as long as it's their own creation.

A.I. will have no such scruples. I predict that they will come up with a lot of shameless content, and some of it quite by accident, will come up with some ideas that will seem obvious once done. 

There'll be a lot shakeout while all this is happening. A lot of dross,

But a few good or even great nuggets will creep through, and that will only encourage the shameless to keep trying. 

I do believe true originality will remain the domain of humans, but that's assuming that most readers really want true originality. There'll be two tiers of literature, popular but uninspired fiction, and startling but hard to read fiction, and the occasional miracle of both populuar and inspired. 

Most if not all A.I. will be unoriginal...but then...most fiction always has been.