Bookstore thoughts.

These aren't serious complaints. I'm really having fun at Pegasus, finally seeing people respond to our selection. 

 

It's so interesting to me that people open specialty bookstores. A general bookstore is already "special" enough. In my experience, you need all the customers you can get. Why exclude any of them, much less narrow your reach to a small subset of what is already a small subset? You can still specialize, the way I do genre books, but why cut out a whole audience?

 

And while I'm on the excluding thing, I'm amazed by how limited most bookstores' genre selections are, especially SF/Fantasy, but including mysteries, romance, and horror. (Most stores don't even have a horror section.) I know that I'm inclined that way, but we sell a lot of genre books.

 

Had a guy in yesterday who just insisted I was leaving a ton of money on the table by not selling online. This despite the fact that he could look around my store and see the hordes of customers milling about. I mean, hordes. Hugely busy day. I was already exhausted when he said that.

I mean, how many hours and how much energy do I have? It's a bit like telling a guy who works a 48 hours week that he could make "so much more money" by working 64 hours a week! 

I'll say it again and again and again: Time, Space, and Energy ARE money. Period.

The funny thing is, this was a guy who'd retired at the age of 52. (Hey, you could make so much more money if you were working!)

A couple of days ago, an older couple was telling me how the store in their hometown sold coffee and this and that and the next things. Again, the store was packed with customers, who I'm barely keeping up with. I pause a moment and say, "You know want?"

They look at me expectantly. 

"I....just want to sell  (#@&%*) books."

Fortunately, they laughed.

 

Most frustrating thing about serving customers: I always, always say, "If you're looking for a title or author, just let me know." Ninety percent of the time, they'll shrug it off. But here's the thing: when they actually do ask for a title, I have a very strong hit rate. More often than not, I have the book in stock.

Sometimes they're headed for the door before I finally coax them to tell me what they were looking for...and it seems like when that happens, I always have the book.

I mean, there is only so much I can do. I offer, and sometimes mildly repeat it if I sense they're actually looking for something. But I can't pester them.

Teenagers especially will almost never ask.  (It's a secret...)

And then there are the customers who ask for a book, I show it to them. They ask for another book, I show it to them, they ask for another book, I show it to them.

They leave. 

That was fun. 

And finally, the people who ask for recommendations. I gets all enthusiastic about a particular book, they hold it in their hands, squint at it skeptically, and then hand it back. 

I love people, really I do.

Cats and dogs rise to the top

Stayed late and rearranged shelves. 

I don't know...it feels like I made changes that will matter, and then again, it doesn't really appear all that different. I never know if these types of changes are going to have an effect. 

Mostly, I consolidated some parts of the store and weeded out old and worn product. The store feels crisper, somehow. What happens is that when I bring in a new section, such as coloring books or drawing books or whatever, I tend to order quite a lot at first to fill in all the holes, this before knowing how well the section will actually do. Then, over time, I realized that I either overdid it or or under-did it. 

I could've ended up with two new shelves, even after adding Japanese fiction, but instead eliminated a tight shelf for a more open look. The final shelf will be used for Japanese "art" books. This may not work, but I got a deal on some very cool books, so we'll see.

I've opened up two shelves near the counter, and at least for a week or two, I'm going to highlight new books there by putting them on face-out stands. There is no way in my store that I can leave two shelves open, so eventually they'll be filled. Mostly by quirky, impulse style books. There are always books that sell based on covers or themes. For instance, I think at least one shelf will be cats/dogs. Yes, a whole prime shelf devoted to cats/dogs. 

I'm going to weed out the young adult section. I rapidly grew that section over the last few years and there were a fair amount of experiments that didn't work. Basically, stand alone graphic novels have a harder time hanging on, whereas series continue to sell. 

After that? God knows. Everytime I do something like this, I think it will be the last time, and then I get another brainstorm.

Meanwhile, it's going to be raining cats and dogs.

Mad ergonomics.

I've got some ideas, God help me. 

My mind is churning with ideas on how to configure the store. Small changes, but lots of them, and they'll add up to something significant. 

I'm trying to take the same limited space and make it as diverse as is possible. So that means adding some things, reducing some things, and most of all, moving lots of things.

The summer has arrived. What seems to be happening is that we are getting more people in the door than ever, but each of them are spending a little less money, and it comes out about the same. But it's also nearly impossible to file books when the store is packed, much less try to move product from one section to the next.

I will have to go in early for several days if I'm going to have any chance of pulling this off. 

The cubes have arrived. These are going to serve as risers for the new shelves, which were children's shelves and low to the ground. I've already raised them by one foot, and I'm intending to raise them another foot. Also gives us extra storage room. 

I'm going to put them together today in the basement, then install them on Sunday night.

I'd like to get all this in place by July 1, which means getting busy over the next week. I have a vision for how it will all look in my head and it's kind of exciting.

One unexpected result of going all in on the new bestsellers is that I'm noticing even more than before how cynical the book trade is. 

Now, this doesn't come as a surprise. I do believe all the arts are infected by commercialism (the horror!), pirating, plagiarizing on a grand scale, misdirection, and so on. 

But up to now, I've been able to avoid the worst examples. I ignored most celebrity books, most political books, most self-help books. I've avoided most books that I knew and/or suspected were ghostwritten.

A particularly notable (egregious) example is the new #1 bestseller by Michael Crichton and James Patterson. (Now there's a couple to ponder on.)

Here's the thing. I'm pretty sure that everything Crichton had ever set to paper has already been published. I read Dragon Teeth, published after his death, and it was barely a book. Meandering, paper-thin characters, disjointed. 

So my feeling is that the Crichton's pantry had already been raided, emptied of anything usable. I suspect the genesis of this new book was a tiny scrap of paper in the corner of the pantry on which was scribbled, "Hawaii explodes."

I admit, an interesting idea. But the world is full of interesting ideas, but most of them get no coverage unless they are written by already well-known authors. 

Well, nothing to do but order the damn book. Not for me to judge what other people read, me but to do as they will.

License Plate Bingo

I'm playing License Plate Bingo with myself this summer. Starting on the 25th of May, I started writing down license plates I see on my commute. The goal is to hit all 50 states by the beginning of September.

So far, in three weeks, I've seen almost half of them. The obvious, of course, but also states like Hawaii (that's like getting an inside straight) and Iowa and so on.

I figure I might be able to catch about half that many states in the next month, and then half again as much the last month, leaving me short by about five or six states. My guess is that Mississippi and Louisiana will be the hardest: maybe Delaware and Rhode Island. 

Populated states are easy: New York, Texas, but I also see a lot of Wyoming plates.

Some of these license plates have tiny lettering or are obscured; I have to stop myself from tail-gating just so I can see the plates. 

Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Montana, Arizona, Hawaii, Iowa, Colorado, New York, Texas, Alaska, Wyoming, Kansas, Georgia, Florida, Arkansas, Ohio, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts.

It just goes to show that Bend is a tourist destination.

Grow or Die?

I'm pretty obsessed with the store right now. Constantly monitoring what's selling and what needs to be put back out again and what needs to be displayed face out. I'm really banking on the idea of having extra copies of the good selling books, even more than I am in ordering the new bestsellers. 

I'm not sure bestsellers is the right word, because these books haven't really proven themselves. They are more the "Chosen," by the industry to be the next bestsellers, which is somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think I sold two or three of the "Chosen" in the first four days of the week. I probably need to sell at double that pace, at least. I'm definitely banking on the summer tourist trade. 

Yesterday was the first day that really that both really felt like summer and in which all the books I've gotten were fully in place. Sure enough, we hit our goal. That's kind of what we need to do. 

Whatever happens, I need to remind myself that we have returnability. It will probably make a huge dent in our cash-flow, which is why I'm doing it in the summer, but in the end, it can all be justified. PRH is gambling on me, and I'm gambling on them. 

I'm also intending to do returns with Ingrams, but I'm not going crazy on my orders there. Probably ordering twice as many of the "Chosen" as normal, but not three or four times as much as I am with PRH. 

 

I'm fine-tuning the displays in the next week. I've bought white cube lifters to raise up the new book displays and to give us more storage. I thought I'd ordered 10 of the 15" cubes, and then realized that was probably a mistake in that they would be too big for the center rack. 

However, apparently I only ordered one by mistake. 

When I went back to look at the white cubes, I found a different maker who makes slightly smaller cubes, which work much better for us. So the mistake turned into a bonus. 

By the way, I'm also being very aggressive with buying Magic. We've made real inroads there. The "Buy 5, get the 6th Free" offer is really attracting the gamers. It probably reduces our profit margin by 10%, but it also probably doubles our overall sales, so it's a net gain. 

I really gambled that having more SKU's would make a difference and I think it's paid off.

I'm pretty sure this recent increase in sales won't go away and can still be built on.

Pokemon, meanwhile, seems more static. But there are always people who buy them so I'm not worried.  I ordered enough of it to probably last us through the summer and beyond, especially if a new wave is coming. 

I'm continuing to be aggressive with comics and graphic novels, as well as toys. I'm taking advantage of every special offer, which may not pay off immediately, but if done consistently eventually take on a sort of "rolling" benefit; that is, the special offer product I bought a year ago sells enough to pay for the special offer this month. That's the theory, anyway. I think it works. 

Board games are probably the most problematic product right now. There's just too many coming out, too hard to predict, too hard to get the in-demand games. We're making sure we're stocked on the base games: the Catans, and Carassonnes, and Ticket to Rides and those sorts of games and I've given Sabrina the go-ahead to keep her eyes on what other games we could be selling.

I'm making sure the D & D stuff is fully stocked, with lots and lots of dice, and I've plunked down a bunch of money on Pathfinder; which will give us a second RPG game we can try to sell. 

I don't really buy into the Grow or Die philosophy. I think that corporate America's goal of constantly increasing profits is starving the core of our country as well as destroying the environment.

However, I think I do believe in Strive or Die. That is, make improvements over time. I don't think it's wrong to rest on your laurels for awhile: I've been trying to train myself to do that for years. But I do believe that once in awhile, you need to see if you can't make things better, if for no other reason than to keep one's interest in the business.

170.2. I'm OK with just maintaining that weight for a few days. Still have three days to get down solidly to 170, which was my original goal. I'm going to keep on doing this way of eating for the rest of summer, not so much to lose more weight, though that will be nice, but to establish a new baseline to my weight, the way I did when I reached 180. 

I'm more flexible and have more energy, lighter in step. No real change in my appearance, though. Darn it.

New book risk/reward.

First big batch of new books came in and I found places for all them. The new display racks have space for two or more books: one face out, the others in storage below. In theory, when one sells, there is another copy beneath which can immediately replace it. 

So they all fit in. But that was just the first week. They'll be another batch next week (actually, coming in today though not all can be put out until Tuesday) and another batch the following week and so on throughout the summer. At some point, some of them will need to be removed and stacked somewhere to be returned. (If a customer asks for a copy, I can give it to them for a big discount rather than pay the postage.)

I think I probably would have been better off increasing the number of new books I bought but keeping the higher discount I had before. I wouldn't be able to return them, but I think that if I were careful, that wouldn't have been a problem.

But I've bought all in on the program, and I'm ordering considerably more than I would have before, so we'll see what happens. 

I'm ordering books far in advance. I've always been a little leery of back-orders or pre-orders both; I much prefer to order books as they come into play. That way I know exactly how much I'm spending. The tough years trained me to never make purchases without knowing the totals. (I can still keep the totals, but it's a huge bookkeeping effort.)

But we've gone beyond that point now. There is no way to grow the business further using that method of buying. What I was doing until now was pretty much waiting for the books to become successful in the market before I ordered them, but by buying that way, I was missing out on the initial sales which, while not as certain as waiting would be, are probably the bulk of total sales.

In other words, I'm taking on more risk in hopes of more reward. Ain't it the way.

Turning water into wine.

It shouldn't be possible, but we've ended up with 55 linear feet of brand new shelving, and yet we have more room than before. (Not even counting 54 feet of linear new shelving we put in the windows.) All but about 15 feet of this shelving is dedicated to showing the covers of the books, which we dearly needed.

Everything is set up and it looks and feels great.

How do you add bulk and lose weight? How do you add so many more bookshelves without having to reduce any of the space and attention given to other product lines?

This miracle has happened before, more than once. I've been trying to make room for more product for years and every time I think I've reached the end of it, a need arises and a solution presents itself. 

The most impactful of these changes was during Covid. I'd been trying to turn the eastern half of the store into more of a bookstore. I'd made some progress, but was blocked by a lack of space. When we had to close for two months during Covid, I decided to lay down some much needed new flooring.

In doing so, we had to move everything out of one side of the store, and then put it back and put everything into the other side of the store. It got me to thinking about the layout and I realized that by dispensing with a couple of fixtures which weren't really doing us any good and by moving other fixtures just a few inches here and there, we'd be able to add a few more bookshelves. In actually doing it, I found that I could add even more bookshelves. I started to realize that something would be more effective here, that there was underutilized space there, little changes that added up to a lot.

With the new flooring laid down, it seemed to me that the actual layout of the store hadn't really changed but somehow we'd added hundreds more feet of shelving. So while I was at it, I consolidated a few more product lines, without losing any volume for the other product lines, with even more bookshelves.

Still, when I was done, it didn't feel to me like we'd changed things all that dramatically. But within a short time, I realized that in the perception of customers (especially tourists and new customers) we'd been transformed.

People kept commenting on what a nice "bookstore" we had. Now, we'd always gotten compliments. But most people before the changeover had referred to us as a comic store, or just a store. 

I realized that we had, indeed, become more of "bookstore" because we were able to carry so many more books and because we were finally able to add non-fiction books, as well a dedicated sections to poetry, nature, philosophy, and so on. Once on that path, I continued to fine tune the selection until we had the selection a bookstore should have. 

So this is a continuation of that process.

Now we find out if it actually results in increased sales. If nothing else, it makes the store more attractive, and that is good in itself.  

We're getting a massive load of new books today. I've really turned on the spigot for titles since we are now going to be returning books to the publisher if they don't sale. I'll probably be spending a few weeks adjusting, but we should be ready by the time summer really kicks in. 

Amazing stuff.

Final touches?

Well, I showed up for work yesterday and whatever event they were having on Bond on Saturday, was gone. But all the parking spots were being used, so I just went ahead and parked near Hospital Hill. After work, I took a couple trips around the block, finally inserted the car in a space not quite big enough, moved the fixtures onto the sidewalk, parked the car in the garage, and then pulled the fixtures into the store. 

Spent a couple hours putting everything in place. I'd managed to already push the bookshelves an inch away during store hours. I also managed to put in place the game books shelf and find a place for the toys somewhere else. 

I'm very seriously considering moving the front counter about eight inches to the west. That should give us plenty of room, maybe even to put the side bookcase back up. If I do it, I'm just going to do it. I'm undecided about using the cubes on the center bookcases. They would overlap the base by about three inches. I can use three of the cubes under the counter for storage. 

My measuring was all wrong. I think I translated the 48" by 24" of the card table into the base, when it was actually 40" by 28". The old story of measure twice. I sometimes don't measure even once. I'm just not good at carpentry, but if I take it slow and steady, don't get upset and just reverse the errors or try to jury rig them, I can get it done. 

All's well, that ends well. Everything is done but the cubes and putting the Rom-Com books in order. Tomorrow is the big day on new books. I figure we'll get about 500 books, which is about three times what a normal big order would be.

What I think will happen is: it will appear hopeless, but I'll adjust a little here, move a few things there, take out a few things, stack a few things, and so on. Over the course of a few weeks, I can get things functional. Then try to figure out what kind of flow I can handle. 

I have faith.

Spurred into making upgrades.

Not going to try to do anything today but deal with customers. Can't get near the doors anyway with the event happening. 

Luckily, I'm working Monday and most of the books don't arrive until Tuesday. 

My overall feeling is that the returnability program is a gamble, that ordering so many books maybe won't boost sales and that I might regret losing points on the profit margin. I'll see it through Christmas; I can opt out and go back to the old way of doing things if I want to.

If nothing else, I found a few more way to display more books, which I would have thought impossible before. The second best thing about this is the extra storage. 

Speaking of which, I ordered ten stackable white cubes. I want to raise everything up another 15 inches, to a little over five feet high. Plus, more storage. I figure three at the entrance, and six on the table. Could be cool. The only question is how secure they'll be. With tight quarters, they're almost certainly going to be collided with at some point. I'll see how solid they are when I'm done, and if they seem shaky, I'll hire someone to screw them together (who has proper tools.) 

Can still have it all done before the end of the month. If nothing else, the returnable program has spurred me into making upgrades.

I'm nothing if not inconsistent.

I preach the gospel of don't complicate things, Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS), if it ain't broke don't fix it, time and energy and space are the same thing as money.

Well, I'm nothing if not inconsistent. 

All it took was an offer from a major publisher for a generous book return program to throw all those good thoughts under a bus. 

We will almost certainly lose profit margin, work much harder, and risk having everything becoming uncomfortable. All for the uncertain goal of increasing sales.

Thing is, once I accepted the program, which seemed like a no-brainer as long as I didn't take into account all the things I mentioned in the first sentence, it was easier to keep going than try to change course. Now that I'm in the midst of it, I see even success in the venture as a possible problem.

We are stretched to the max right now in handling the flow of customers and still maintain a store staffed by one person at a time. If we boost sales by, say, ten or twenty percent (the best result from ordering more books) it will be that much harder to maintain our energy. 

I'm always trying to build sales, and this venture probably will, if for no other reason than we'll have more product to sell. I've always said, the more you have in stock, the more you sell.

The reason to do this is to boost sales in the slow months, or eight months out of the year. I'm always aware that there will be another down market. There always is. You want the slow months to continue to be profitable, or at the least, still viable.

If sales increase too much, we can let business take care of itself during the summer and Christmas, slow the pace down a little.

We also have the option of opting out of the program, going back to the previous way of doing things. If nothing else, this has impelled me to find more room for books (which if you had asked me in advance, I would have said was impossible.)

But most of all, I just think I need a challenge once in awhile, even if I'm throwing the gospel of KISS out the window.

Final changes just in time for summer.

I've built two of the window displays, three yet to build. Pretty crude, but effective. Once the books are on them, they'll look fine. I used wood glue this time, so I'm hoping that will be strong enough. It cost about $250 bucks because wood has gotten very expensive. I mean, buying window displays even if I could find them would cost a lot more and assembling them myself isn't that onerous a chore. And it needed to be done. 

I don't know. Maybe taking out the standups won't make any difference, but at the point in the store where I have only so many options about going forward. I'll have excess inventory, and this will eat up over 100 spaces.

So basically, about the same number of face-out titles in the windows as inside the store, or about 250 in total. I think I might be able to figure out one more bookshelf on the slat walls above the games if I'm willing to put some toys aside; say for Warhammer and other game related books. (Just had this idea, but it's a good one. Warhammer fiction sells extremely well.)

I now have two days to get all the fixtures fixed and ready to transport. I'll need to go in early on Sunday a couple of times to transport everything. (I might make a run this afternoon.)

What's kind of cool about these changes is that I have done anything but scrimp on comics. I've encouraged Sabrina to up our orders, I've got a whole fresh supply of back issues, all spruced up in fresh bags, boards, and boxes, with a large backstock to keep refilling them. 

So in exchange for pushing books harder, I've made the commitment to keep up the comics, card games, toys, and board games. I have more product than ever in all these categories. 

I think any changes from here on out will be micro adjustments because I can't imagine finding any more space. 

 But I've said that before. 

Many times.

I'm really proud of Pegasus Books.

 

When I first started carrying books, it was a sideline. I thought that even if I did choose a few categories to be in depth, it wouldn't be possible to become a full bookstore.

Well, we've done it. I don't know how. We don't have any more space than we did before, but by being as ergonomic as possible, we now have a wide range of books: fiction, non-fiction, art books, biographies, true crime, Rom-Com, classics, mysteries and thrillers, fantasy and horror and science fiction, manga, graphic novels, pop culture books, literary, inspiration, self-help, journals, coloring books, puzzle books, children's and young adult. 

And we managed to do this without really infringing on the other product we carry. Amazing.

I did the math on the latest changes, which will allow us to carry even more books since we're shifting to returnability.

I started off by taking out the poster rack and the spin rack for greeting cards (we're converting to a smaller counter rack). I'll be sorry to lose the posters, but they really don't sell all the often.

By taking out one bookcase, substituting with a smaller bookcase, and by adding the three new faceout displays, we're:

Replacing 168" of linear space (that is, spine out or storage), with 296" of linear space.  Basically, it's letting us take out of the general fiction area the titles that I'm calling Rom-Com, (not all are comedy, but most are light, even if mysteries or fantasy), and giving them their own dedicated space. These aren't what I consider Romantasy, but there is some crossover. 

This opens up space in general fiction for more titles there.

But the biggest change is how much dedicated space we will now have to facing out books. We're going from 49 face-out book spaces to 111 spaces face-out.

In other words, we now have 62 more spaces to display new bestsellers. If we couldn't do this, I'm not sure it would make sense to order on a returnable basis. 

I'm going all in. My first order in June from Penguin Random house was the equivalent of a full month of normal orders. (It actually covers two weeks, because I had to wait until June 1st for their program to begin.) At this rate, I'll be almost doubling my orders.

So I needed that space. If I didn't have the extra space, I'm not sure it would make sense to order so much. We are very dependent on books of which people can see the covers. Because we're a tourist town, impulse buying is more important than people coming in for a specific book (though we try to have the inventory to do that too.)

Most of this won't be finished until this coming Sunday, then we'll be ready for summer. 

The final change for this season is that I'm going to take the standups out of the window. Seeing cartoon characters in the window makes us look less than serious to the casual passerby. We'll still have standups, but they'll be inside on the comic side of the store. 

To hide the backs of the three bookcases I have against the windows, I'll need to build some more window display. With the multiple copies of books we're be ordering this summer, we'll have more than enough bestseller type books to show off. 

I'm excited by the changes. I don't know for sure if it will change sales. We perhaps already had enough selection to get whatever sales we were likely to get. We will get some sales by having a hot book in stock without any delays, but I suspect this won't quite be enough to cover the loss in discount.

So I'm banking on more sales with the simple equation: the more titles we carry, the more we'll sell.

Most of all, I'm really proud of Pegasus Books.

Trying to make the best store possible.

I moved eight very large bookcases last night. Turns out, I could maneuver them still almost full of books. A bit of levering and scooting them, and I created the six inches I needed. Took out the poster rack and one of the metal display cases. There should now be enough room for the customers to move around the new bookcases easily. 

(I do realize what I'm saying is hard to visualize. I lack the proper terminology.)

I laid out a four-foot by two-foot table to see how much room it would take up. 

One thing I hadn't considered was that one of the bookcases was hiding all the wires to our computers and such. Because of that, I took the bookcase that faced the door and moved it over the wires. I lost about 6" of space, but that's better than the 11" of space I would have lost with one of the new bookcases, which I had ruled out.

I think it will all fit, and because I was able to keep one of the existing bookcases, we're going to have a increased capacity of 2.75 bookcases, instead of the 1.75 bookcases I thought I was going to have.

We're talking inches, here.

The 3/4 sized bookcase can't be fitted in without moving four bookcases exactly one inch to the left. One inch. I couldn't quite do that last night, so I'll attempt it on Tuesday night. 

And then all I'm waiting for is the new bookcases (four in all, plus a foundation table), which Linda and I are going attempt to put together ourselves. 

We are also awaiting a huge avalanche of books, probably quadruple the normal number for a week. Part of the reason is that I was saving up for the new program Penguin Random House offered, which didn't start until the first of June, and then there is the fact that I can pay for the bulk of the product at the end of summer.

It's a bit of a chance, but also one that can by redeemed by returns, if need be. I'll be out of pocket in the short run, but it should pan out in the long run. 

I'm creating more display space and storage space. Instead of ordering one "Just-in-time" copy of a title, I'm ordering multiple copies so that I don't run out of them in the heat of summer. 

That's the plan anyway.

Why am I doing this when everything was going so well? 

My goal from the start has been to make the best store possible, and I still feel that way. 

And, well, it's just fun to see if I can make something work.

Just-in-Time model.

What I've been doing up to now:

I order some bestsellers each week, but I reserve most of my budget for backlist and...

new bestsellers that came out in the last month or so.

In other words, I hang back a beat, wait to see what's actually selling, and THEN order it. Because most of my buyers aren't coming in specifically on the week something is released to buy something from us. They come in more or less on a whim, tourists or locals out for a lark, and so what they see is all new to them.

My theory is that many stores have already moved on the next new shiny title while there is still demand for that last new shiny title that might have come out a few weeks back. It's kind of a sweet spot where I can see what's actually in demand and then order it and have a pretty good chance of selling.

In some ways, this was necessary because I wasn't returning books.

Now that I'm starting to return books, I can take more chances on this week's shiny new book.

But what I don't want to do is go away from what was working. So I've got to try really hard to find space for this week's shiny new books and last month's shiny new books. 

The problem, as always in our store, is finding space for both things when I barely have space for one thing. 

As I said, I'm bringing in a few new shelves which should allow me to show off about 75 new titles that I couldn't before. So I should be able to do both if I'm careful.

The other thing I'm going to start to do this summer is ordering more than one copy of any backlist book that has a record of selling. I do this already on the very best of them, but I think I can take a chance and order more copies of all the backlist books with a good history.

Up to now, I've been mostly getting one copy of most backlist books, figuring that I'm only a few days from replacing it from Ingram, and a week or so from replacing it with Penguin Random House.  It's the Just-In-Time model of stocking.

In theory, if I have two or three copies, if one sells, I still have a copy in stock, covering the time it will take to get another copy in. 

In theory. 

It's summer and I can experiment a little bit. It's always fun to try to find more effective ways to sell things.