Minus 1%,

Our book sales this year are down 1%. 

I consider this a raging success. Covid brought in a wave of new customers, and it appears we've managed to keep them. Books now account for 70% of our overall sales, versus 60% last year. So books have kept our overall sales close. 

This despite a rather noticeable drop in manga sales. During Covid I went out of my way to stock as much manga as I could, whereas I suspect that B & N and other stores just took in whatever manga came through the pipeline. I was extremely proactive during those two years tracking down and stocking the hot titles. 

Now that the supply problems have cleared up, that competitive advantage has disappeared and manga sales are reverting to normal numbers.

If I include graphic novels overall, we are down 3.5% in sales. (Probably mostly manga.) It's become impossible to separate graphic novels from regular novels since we're pretty much ordering them from the same place. 

I believe things are reverting back to normal. There was a boom during Covid because we were open while restaurants, theaters, and game play spaces were closed. That we can match Covid number despite overall competition increasing is actually pretty impressive. 

To put this in perspective, we are selling 5 times more books then pre-Covid! Having to close for two months turned out to be a blessing in disguise. When we laid down new flooring it gave me a chance to reorient the store toward books, and it paid off. 

I think surviving for forty years in downtown Bend comes down to making these kinds of adjustments to the economic conditions. I've been lucky that I've mostly guessed right about trends. 

Onward!