Book returns. A big step.

Yet another phase in the evolution of books in Pegasus. We're finally going to bite on "returns."

The publishers and distributors allow a certain percentage of books to be returned for credit, but up to now, I've been ordering non-returnable. I have favorable terms with non-return, and I've been well trained by comics to order only what I can sell, but one of my suppliers has offered me pretty decent terms with returnability, so I'm finally going ahead.

This doesn't really affect the backlist books in my store. I order those to keep anyway, but it will affect how I treat new titles, especially so-called bestsellers.

I've been careful with new titles from the beginning. For one thing, I can fill my store with proven standards. For the first few years I was doing new books, I didn't order any hardcover bestsellers. I basically didn't have faith that I could sell them in numbers enough to warrant the risk.

When I redesigned the layout of the store during Covid, I decide to take the plunge. But even then, I was pretty careful. Probably a little too careful. Take a book like "Lessons in Chemistry." I was probably ordering one or two of that title at a time, and I distinctly remember several occasions when I didn't have it in stock when a customer wanted it.

I looked up how many I'd sold direct from the publisher (and I'd probably sold another third on top of that from another wholesaler) and the numbers of books I sold was, to me, pretty impressive. I should never have run out. Same could be said of a another couple dozen titles over the years that have had legs.

So I've thought for some time that I needed to up my game. If I can order larger quantities upfront, then I'll have enough in stock while I'm waiting for reorders to arrive.

Of course, doing this goes against two of my precepts.

1.) Keep it simple, stupid. 

This won't be simple. I'll have to keep track of which supplier sent me the titles, and how long I've had them, and so on. A Point of Sale would make it easier, once I got past the complexity of learning the system. Up to know, I've been able to keep track the old fashioned way: paper, pencil, and a calculator. Heh. 

2.) Don't be a duplicate of other stores. 

As I've mentioned, we specialize in backlist. If I find a book or an author I like, I keep it in stock. Not just one or two Kurt Vonnegut books or Cormac McCarthy books, but every book they ever wrote. 

It believe it's made my store stand out as different. Not just the same bestsellers as everyone else. What I have somewhat disdainfully called the "American Booksellers Association" model.

So ordering more bestsellers means I need to create some space. I looked around the store, which is packed to the tippy-top, and tried to figure it out.

If I remove a few free-standing fixtures, I make a little room. But...and this ALWAYS happens!--if I move a block of bookshelves 5 inches, I make room for two new outward facing shelves, and if it move another block of bookshelves 1 inch (yes, 1 inch. It's ALWAYS 1 inch!) I can fit in yet another bookshelf.

This necessitates that I remove all the books from each bookshelf and move it over an inch, and then refill the bookshelf. Arrgghh. 

But once I've done it, I'll have once again found a way to display more books, so even if the returnability program is a flop, I've still improved the store. 

 

Paying attention to the collector market again.

When the comics bubble popped in the mid 90s, the only customers I had left were readers. 

About five or six years ago, that started to change. It's taken us a little bit of time to readjust to collectors. My theory is that the 20 year olds are now 45 year olds with nostalgia and money in their pockets. 

So, recently, I've snagged two rather large collections of comics, going back to the Bronze Age. (Also bought a collection of pulps from the 50s, for which I haven't found any interest. But they are cool, cool, cool.)

Anyway, had an older fellow come in with some Golden Age comics. For perspective, in the first twenty years of buying collections I'm not sure I saw even one Golden Age Batman or Superman. This guy had about 20, (very late Golden Age, nearly the 60s) not in great shape, but one of them was a Green Lantern Showcase with the first appearance of Hal Jordan.

He also had a box of old Walt Disney, most in terrible shape, and a box of Dells, ditto.

I priced out the Golden Age, added the Disney on top, and made an offer for the whole batch.

He turned me down, no hard feelings. The sticking point was he wanted to save the Disney. (More on that later.)

Actually, I'm proud of myself. I offered what for me was a realistic amount of money. Yes, a lot these comics "Book" at high prices, but there was nary a one that would score a 3 on a scale of 10. 

To be honest, the DC Golden Age comics would have been advertising: "Look at us. We have old stuff!"

But it would have been a long time, probably never, that I would have made the money back.  

However, I could have taken the Disney comics, that aren't really worth that much, and put a moderate price on them and maybe had some luck. 

This is typical of buying collections. They want you to make an offer, and then, almost invariably, they want to take back the part of the collections that would make it worthwhile. 

Shrug. I don't really have an idea if he can get a lot more for his collection, or whether everyone else will turn him down. 

I just know what I could have done with the collection.

Long-form business podcasts.

I've started listening the "Acquired," a podcast about tech companies that usually runs 3 or 4 hours long. They go in-depth into the history of major companies, from their precursors all the way up the present day. 

So far I've done Costco and Nike. (Yes, Nike is a tech company now.)

Whenever I start one of these, I think that there will be very little parallel to my Mom And Pop business; but I've been surprised. Costco, not so much, but Nike more so.

Costco comes across as a very admirable company; but bottomline, it's a discounter. It's the best of what to me is a destructive thing. We Americans have traded middle-class businesses that offer regular prices for volume of discount scale. They present this as an unmitigated good.

But do we really need so much cheap stuff? 

When I was younger, downtowns were filled with drugstores, clothing stores, etc. etc., all of which provided middle-class or even better earning for their owners. Owners who were all local residents. But most people could afford less clothing, less furniture, less toys. 

So yeah, we have more bang for the buck now, but for what? Cheap stuff that either we don't really need or that falls apart and can't be repaired. We fill the land and oceans with crap we don't essentially need. 

The other problem with the podcast was that the two guys seem to believe that volume discounting started with Walmart and Costco, but it has been around at least since the turn of the century. The idea of putting a big warehouse sized building on cheap land on the edges of cities and undercutting retail has been around for a hundred years (or more.) It's just that they get old, they don't adapt, and they get clogged with bureaucracy. I would posit that the big stores of today will someday follow Sears, Montgomery Ward, Woolworth, and Kmart into obsolescence. 

Nike, I thought I'd have almost nothing in common with; but their beginnings were very familiar. They started by importing shoes from Japan. Phil Knight had very little cash. His business was doubling every year. It was nearly impossible to grow without cash for inventory. Roughly speaking, a 50% margin and doubling sales means that all your money is going toward growth. There is nothing left over. One or two bad quarters and you're gone. 

Worse, if your margin is more like 30 or 40%, you literally can't pay for the doubling of sales. You're constricted by a punishing slow process of building your inventory. It's almost the definition of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. In order to grow, you need money--either investment (give up some or all of your control) or by borrowing money.

But 40 years ago, that "investment capital" (or venture) didn't really exist. So you went to an old fashion bank, who in those days were unwilling to loan you more than about the value of the inventory you already have. 

So Nike and Pegasus had similar beginnings. Sales doubling every year, banks being very leery of loaning money. 

There's a funny anecdote in Phil Knight's book, "Shoedog," where he went into a bank and proudly showed how his sales were doubling every year and that it didn't look like that would slow down anytime soon. 

The bank officer looked at him and said, "That's a problem."

"That's a problem?"

"Yes, you are growing too fast."

The reasoning is, you're plowing all your money into growth, but if you don't keep growing, if you have a bad quarter or two, you have nothing left. You're toast. 

Of course the answer is to get enough borrowed money to be able to withstand that kind of downturn, but there was the Catch-22 back then. Banks would only loan what you where already doing, no more, no less. So failure was almost built in. 

So here's the funny thing: I had EXACTLY the same conversation with a bank officer. "You're growing too fast. That's a danger sign."

"Huh?"

It proved to be true. With the money we had, we could barely survive a downturn, and we had several, it was only by stubborn tenacity that we survived at all. 

I had no interest after we stabilized to gamble like that again. But people like Phil Knight and my old boss, Mike Richardson of Dark Horse Comics, constantly leveraged their way to bigger business, taking chances all the way. That they succeeded was unusual. Most who try that technique don't.   

The other thing that I find fascinating is that these broadcasts, which get into the nuts and bolts, are often describing processes that I figured out for myself. When I finally got a loan from a bank it was with the help of a small business counselor from COCC. He told me I had a "primitive sophistication." 

I figure these things out the hard way, I guess. My eyes blur over at any business book I read.

It's hot? Let's overdo it!

I gotta say this: The number YA graphic novels coming out each week is insane. We specialize in YA GNs and there is no way I can order them all, or even a hefty percentage of them. I'm taking a wait and see attitude toward most of them, unless they are part of a series that we're already carrying. 

It's the usual thing of when something gets hot, everyone follows. I could say the same thing about coloring books, or Tarots, or Greek mythology books.

Sometimes a single book can inspire an entire genre. I'm not sure who started Romantasy (fantasy+romance) but Sarah Maas is the queen. "A Court of Thorns and Roses"is emblematic of books with two or more nouns combined. Again, total overkill.

There are diminishing returns on these types lemming books, so as an author, you need to be one of the first to jump on the bandwagon. I'm sure that authors everywhere are instantly changing their titles and descriptions of books already in the works or even finished, in order to be in the zeitgeist. 

My first book was homage to Tolkien, but Sword & Sorcery was hot when I sent it off, so the publisher bought it on that basis. Close enough. I loved S & S almost as much as high fantasy. 

The covers of books also give it away: if there is a hot book with a distinctive cover, it doesn't take long before you see cover after cover giving off the same vibes. My book "Star Axe" had an undeniably Frazetta-ish cover.

I mean, it's true of everything. Most of us are followers, even if we deny it. But a bookstore can ride the wave a little too long and find out not everything that is based on something hot is going to be hot.