The new Pokemon was more bountiful than I expected. Not only did we get the elite trainers for two different releases, which I can also break into packs, but three other sets, including one set that had two out of date Pokemon boosters plentiful enough to start selling them again by pack. 

So we went from only five different Pokemon items to sell (a worrisome shortage of choice) to fourteen different choices. I'm very clever in how I divide these up. I immediately ordered several items at higher prices because I know I can sell the parts for more than enough to cover the cost. 

All I needed was an opportunity.

What was really strange about the last couple months was that almost all options had disappeared, in both Pokemon and Magic. Now we're set on Pokemon, and the new Magic is coming in two weeks and the latest Magic release (Final Fantasy) is going to last. (Not to mention, that unlike Pokemon, we have at least fifty formers releases in stock, and probably more than a hundred choices.)

So we're set for the summer....I hope.  

 

I panicked when I thought we were only getting a few elite trainer boxes of the new Pokemon. I bought some more online from Amazon at a higher price. 

As it happens, we paid about what we intend to start selling them for, which is crazy. But it will extend the inventory farther and we'll be making enough of a margin the cancel the error. 

And really, what is our purpose here? It's to have stuff when people come in. That's our competitive feature: to have a wide variety and depth. 

We're in a weird sort of zone where we are selling at only slightly above replacement costs. (A good rule of thumb is to never sell below replacement costs.) But that price has started to turn off demand. Nevertheless, I feel it is extremely important to have product in stock when customers come in. 

What we're trying to do here is position ourselves for the future. If we can have enough leftover of the current release to last into the next release then we have two brands available, and we can extend those into the next release, we have three...and so on. 

 Ratfink brain woke me at 5:30 so I was on the road by 6:30.

Holy Cow!  The roads were packed, and not only packed, but with really aggressive drivers. This half-awake night person was feeling very threatened by the this heightened energy. I never knew so many businesses started so early. 

My only consolation is that these crazy motherfuckers sometimes have to stay up late and deal with us nighttime crazy motherfuckers.  

 

We had another slow day the day before yesterday which threw me, followed by another busy day. The average is still better than we've ever done, though there is still half the month to go to get to the record.

It turns out, we're getting a bit more Pokemon than I expected, so I now feel like we'll be able to get through the next phase just fine. Not going to lower prices, though. This is the tail end of a bubble and the time will soon come when the sales will drop and we will need to be ready to weather the storm.

Ordering and selling lots of books. Or is it selling and ordering lots of books? My original budget in no way could have kept up with this level of sales so I'm leaning in with the sales level instead of the budget. Theoretically, we should earn just as much profit if not more if we sell at the same percentage of the orders. 

 

Three hours putting books away, one hour cleaning the store. Always feels like I really accomplished something.  

Interesting market, this Pokemon thing.

I simply can't find anywhere on the world wide web who is selling Pokemon for any cheaper than we're selling it for. In other words, with all the choice in the world, customers can buy Pokemon in my store as cheaply as anywhere else.

Except they can't. There's a time lag involved. They see Pokemon in a store a month ago, and to them that was yesterday. There's retail lag. Some stores simply get their product, put it out for sale a SRP, and they sell out instantly. So they tell the customers, "Yeah, we sell for XXX. But we're out."

The customer translates that into, "We sell for XXX..." conveniently leaving "we're out."

And waves come into the chain stores and are sold at regular prices and are quickly snapped up, but I decided long ago I wouldn't deprive customers of their chance to get that stuff, nor did I want to lurk around chain stores. (A worse hell I can't imagine.)

What it means if we are selling as cheap or cheaper than anywhere online that. well, we're too cheap.

But the customers don't see that.

Nevertheless, I have two options. Sell out and maybe never see those customers again or bump up the price. Despite the increasing prices, our profit margin is getting thinner and thinner. At some point I will have to cry uncle and just let us sell out and hope that some more product becomes available.  

 

One week into Ingram only. Certainly is more timely and doing the budget this morning was a breeze. There's bonus to it in that I can wait for a statement to show up from the other publishers that includes all the orders I've so far made and then I can start with a fresh zero balance in my accounting.  

I ordered on Saturday thinking it would come in on Monday, which meant I could put it away today before work. It was a strange thing Ingram was doing for awhile, packing up stuff on Sunday to arrive on Monday. Except this time, it didn't. So that means that two big orders arrived today. 

So I came in to put the few boxes that came in Monday from other publishers, then waited around for the huge orders. I got about one box in and realized, "Nope." It ain't possible with people crowding the aisles 

That good, right? Not always. Sometimes all they do is clog the aisles. 

But there is nothing I do about it but stand there and wait until the move. Impossible.

So there's a huge amount of books to put away tomorrow and I need to try to get it done before opening.  

I'm throwing out all the game plans. We've had such an extraordinary month that my budget simply isn't sufficient to replace the sold product (especially books), much less improve it.  

Well, I can't have that. The store must be served. So the budget is now replacing the perennial sellers and the new hot stuff and to figure it will all pan out. 

I'm not spending anything on extraneous stuff. It all product we want in the store. 

So I'll let the chips fall where they lay and hope for the best. On one hand, we're doing far better than I expected, but on the other hand, it's hard to control a runaway beast. Heh. 

If I hadn't stocked Pokemon far beyond normal, I'd be completely wiped out by now. As it is, we'll probably manage to get to Friday without selling out of everything. I have at least two brands and probably three that I can continue to sell, which is still more than most stores, I suspect.

Some new Pokemon brands arrives on this Friday. I don't know if the new stuff will be enough, but I've run out of places to find Pokemon at affordable prices. I'm in the same boat as everyone else, despite all my preparations.

My old saying, "If something is hot, you can't have too much. If it's cold, anything you get is too much," has once again proven to be true. Another saying, "Supply always catches up to demand," may be true in the long run, but in the near future it's going to be an interesting situation of trying to hang onto just enough product to get to the next release.  

And there it is, Bubble Marker #11.

Someone broke into a shop in New Bedford, Mass. and stole 100K worth of Pokemon cards. (I did mention "hijacking," which is pretty much the same thing.)

By the way, that 100K value is bullshit. You have to have a hundred cards to sell one, and a hundred thousand cards to sell 1000, if that. I could live for years on the supposed value of the back issue comics I have. But the only thing that counts is the monthly average in sales, which is a tiny fraction.  

If I was that retailer I'd gladly take 100K than have to spend years and tons of overhead trying to sell the stock.  

It's all rather silly. Life is too short, guys. It's just Pokemon cards! 

I should elucidate what I think are the major markers of a bubble.

 

1.) Allocations. 

2.) New business's and expanding business's. Everyone jumping into the pool.

3.) Price increases to slow demand.

4.) Separation of product into winners and losers. Dumping the losers. 

5.) Stock at manufacturers and distributors going out the backdoor.  Literal hijacking of product. 

6.) Mainstream media coverage.

7.) Scalpers buying up all available product in mass market. (This should be #1, actually.) Fights in the aisle. 

8.)  Schools banning it because of disruptions. Fights in the schoolyard.

9.) Everyone insisting it isn't a bubble and it's different this time and that they aren't buying for the money but because they really, really like these: pogs, beanie babies, sports cards, Pokemon cards. Also shouting down people like me for being negative. 

10.) Original purveyors complaining but going all in anyway because they think they'll outsmart the market.  

 

I'll add more as I think of them... 

 

Had to go in on regular hours to put the last batch of books away. We basically got three weeks worth of books this week because of delayed shipments. It took me four hours of dodging customers and I couldn't help but feel that it interferes with business. It moves people out of the way no matter how I try to avoid them. Worse, I think it distracts from Sabrina paying full attention to the customer.

An hour after I left the store, sales had doubled. 

So I will, for the rest of the summer do two things.

1.) Order 90% of the product from Ingram to arrive within one or two days.

2.) Go in early during off hours to put books away.  

Still on pace for a record month. 

The dreaded "B" word.

Okay, I've been wondering. Should I start using the B word?

Our sales on game cards has more or less doubled, and they had increased dramatically for the previous years as well. We're selling out our allocations. The prices are increasing with every set and there are lots of people in the game.

So you can't keep exponentially growing for long. People's incomes aren't doubling and doubling. 

The allocations are happening because everyone is trying to get a piece of the pie.

We went all in on Final Fantasy Magic. I thought it would be a bit of gamble, but it paid off. However, I was hesitant to go that deep on the next two waves: Spider-man and Avatar. 

I needn't have worried. My allocations are much smaller, so I can only do what I can do.

So should I be using the B word?  I didn't have enough information. TCG cards are a sideline for us. As an example, it too me way too long to understand that actual players were focusing on Commander Decks. I was ordering very little of that. Nor did I understand how Collector boosters had supplanted Play boosters as the main focus of collecting.  

Well, this morning I listened to a podcast by a big game store guy. And it was like reliving the the sports card market of the late eighties/early nineties. I mean, almost word for word, what this guy was saying was the same kind of thing I was saying back then.

He revealed information I just didn't have. And the conclusion was pretty clear. 

We are in Bubble. 

Thank God I'm not that guy. Thank God TCG's are a sideline and not the main focus of our store. 

I'll need to be careful, and I can't avoid running some risk. The Bubble is only about 50% inflated in my estimation, which is a wild guess. But that means there is only about 20% left in the bubble to be doing things the same old way. 

I'll need to watch carefully and not wait too long.  

Told myself to start waking up earlier, thinking around 7:00 or 7:30 would be about right. My ratbag brain apparently went, "Oh. You want to wake up earlier?  5:30 it is!!!"

 

I think going in early to put away books is so enjoyable because I'm able to accomplish so much without the stress of dealing with people at the same time. (Dealing with people is a full time job, heh.) Displaying product in as clever a way as I can come up with has always been a creative and satisfying thing for me. There is something peaceful about an empty store, half-lit, full of cool stuff.   

 

Had a semi-slow day, which at almost any other time in the store's history would have been a good day. My heart sank. 

You'd think after 40 years I'd be immune to being whipsawed by daily totals, but if anything, that feeling is reinforced by the number of times it was a warning. 

Next day, sales went back up again. Still, it bears watching. (Though the only real danger is that I won't keep breaking record sales...) 

Good thing about ordering daily from Ingram is that I can keep firm control over the budget and adjust accordingly.  

I think in some ways, the non-communicative nature of other retailers helped me find my own way. I mean, I was aware of general trends. Over time, I learned on my own to separate the myths from the reality of retail. 

But the "secret sauce" as one retailer said to me when I inquired a little too inquisitively about what was working for him, that remained cloaked. 

Kinda silly, really. I mean if something works for one retailer, it doesn't hurt them if it works for another retailer. In the end, we're individual units dealing with the public. How we deal with the public will be different. A different vibe. 

I know, that's a little muddy sounding, but I've been trying to figure it all out for decades. 

I decided that there is very little I could reveal about my business that would actually hurt us. I've seen only one drawback to being candid with another retailer: I have to be careful not to use anything they say to me in a way that detracts from them. Not that I think it would, but I don't want there to be even a whiff of that.  

I never asked for specific numbers, though that would have been hugely illuminating. But I was curious about general trends: What do you think works here? What doesn't work there?

Unfortunately, my worst experiences with a competitor was at the beginning (40 years ago), a guy who decided to try to take us down by predator pricing and bad mouthing. It was such an extreme example that I worried every time a competitor opened a store. I would try to take a hands off approach, but I would eventually go into their store and greet them as friendly as I could be and tell them I'd be sending people their way any chance I got.   

Honestly, how well another store does doesn't impact on me. But that's not the way most people think. I firmly believe we can co-exist and thrive. The trick is to do your own thing. 

 

How refreshing. Made an order with Ingram on Monday, put the books away today. Replacement copies I know I can sell.

Meanwhile, I'm supposed to get orders I started building three weeks ago from the publisher/distributors over the next few days. 

That's it. That's just too long to wait. I'm using Ingram the rest of summer, probably doing an order every day. Every book they have in stock that I want, I'll order. 

There are perennials that I can order from the four publishers that can be backstock, but I only order backstock when I'm ahead. It's a bit of a luxury. Right now, I can't afford to lose the Summer traffic. 

It's a flaw in the system for sure. I tell you, if Ingram would give me a larger discount for non-returnable books, they'd get most of my business. For some reason, they don't have that option.

I went into the store at 8:00 this morning, which a few years ago would have been inconceivable. I have a set time I go to bed: 12:30. Any earlier and I awake early and can't get back to sleep. But lately, I've been waking up early anyway. 

It's a lot less stressful and much more productive to do the stocking while the store is closed. I can keep my concentration, I can move freely around the store without dodging, or worse, dislodging the customers, and I can make changes without worrying about disrupting the flow. 

 

Made the order and it even qualified for the secondary warehouse. I know they will arrive before this weekend, not two weeks from now. Enough chasing discounts. 

I also rediscovered something I once knew. It's twice as fast to order from one website which is functional than assembling two websites and three emails. Duh. 

So that's what I'm going to do for summer. I will continue to throw backlist orders at the publishers, but everything else is going to be faster from now on.  

I'm nothing if not inconsistent. 

After all my going too and fro about timeliness vs discount, the third element of the equation has come to the fore: accuracy.

I tried to do my budget this morning as I usually do on Tuesday and the truth is, I can't tell how much I owe Simon and Shuster, Scholastic, and Harper Collins. All I've got is a blizzard of invoices, some with as little as one title, and a couple of "statements" that make no sense to me. The dates seem all wrong, and the accounting is indecipherable, at least to me. I'm sure they make sense to an accountant, but it might as well be Algebra 2, which is the  only class I ever failed in high school. (I just quit going after the first few weeks because I couldn't begin to understand it, even when I had my friend Steve Davies try to help me.

I've added up every bit of money I think I owe and I've added 5K to my reserve fund just in case. But I'm not sure I can go on like this. All I want is a simple statement each month: You Owe X Amount Of Money, so I can write out a check for X Amount of Money. Is that too much to fucking ask?

I went around and around with the credit rep from S & S and we didn't seem to understand each other one little bit. "How much do I owe?" I ask.  "Which claim are you paying?" she answers. "How the hell do I know? You tell me!" and so on. 

So I've made a drastic decision. It's Ingram for the rest of the summer until the smoke fades. Sure I get 10% less discount but by God, I get the product the very next day (not two weeks!) and I know exactly what I've spent. I've always chosen timeliness and accuracy over discounts, all things being equal. 

So the quandary continues.   

No wonder Amazon is eating up the book world. Their search engine is a marvel and they get stuff to you promptly. Doesn't help me, as a retailer much. I mean, obviously, it hurts. But I can understand why it's happening.

The Big Five are still in the stone age, as far as I can tell. 

Penguin Random House at least has a way for you to order online directly with them, and know exactly what is in stock. But then...they split the damn order into a dozen little shipments with a dozen little invoices that come in on a dozen different time schedules. So they're halfway there. 

But the others? Might as well be writing them letters.   

 

After sales dragging all day, we had a burst in the last hour, including I believe, a box of Final Fantasy. (Which makes me feel better about buying another couple of boxes from Mag. Ex.) 

We're on a great pace.

A huge number of books showing up this week, basically two weeks in one. (I neglected to hit the "Send" button on the order the week before last.)

The massive volume of books means I will need to go in early every day for the rest of the week. 

I don't mind. I kind of like it. 

I just ordered 20 Pokemon Pop figures, not so much because I think they will sell fast but because they can be protective coloring. There is barely enough Pokemon product available until the new stuff shows up later in the month. We could possibly have gaps in our displays, which I don't like. So if nothing else, we'll have some nice toys to offer.  

I'm having more fun than I've probably had in the entire history of the store except in the run-up to the baseball card crash. After that, I was leery of all such bursts, and more focused on trying the fix the damage of each successive bubble. (Including the housing bubble.) This time, we are not in debt, we're not over-extended and the overhead is well within bounds. 

We'll be fine either way. 

 

Still struggling with the choice between ordering direct from publishers at 10 to 15% better margins but waiting ten days for the books to show up, or paying lower margins from Ingram and getting the books a a very timely couple days later. 

Question is: how many sales are we missing during those eight days, multiplied by the basically 2/3rds of the books we're currently getting from publishers? A lost sale in not only about the lost profit, it's also a failure to meet the customer demand, and that's something you don't want to do too often. 

When it was just Penguin Random House, I chose to order from only Ingram during Christmas. Makes no sense to order a book from PRH on the 10th of the month and at best have a couple days before Christmas to sell it. But that was only 1/3rd of the books, not 2/3rds. 

The same is true during Summer. Really, there are only about eight or nine weeks of summer after July 4th, which is real kickoff for increased sales. So in 63 days, I can order books from publishers maybe 5 times, or I can order from Ingram more than twice as often. That's a lot more books in on a timely basis.

But there is another phenomenon going on. During summer and Christmas we are getting customers for which ALL the books in stock are new to them. They usually aren't coming in for specific titles, but for a wide selection.

And by ordering from each publisher each week, a wide variety of books are coming in all the time. 

Ironically, it's more important to have every important book during the slower months because every customer and every sale counts.

This is Summer week is where I decide whether to switch from publisher ordering each week, knowing that each book I'm ordering will miss roughly 20% of the summer, or to ordering from Ingram and losing less than 10% of the selling period.

Of course, I can finesse this quite a bit. Often I'll order from both Ingram and publishers for books that I'll probably need more copies of.  And the flow of product is so much stronger than it used to be that there is a better then even chance that if I don't have one title the customer wants, I'll have another.

So I'm sticking to the publisher discounts for now even though it will be a dagger in the heart every time a customer asks for a book we could have had in stock, but instead have to tell them, "It's on its way..." 

I always resisted getting an RV because it seemed to me that most people don't get enough use out of them to warrant the cost. Of course, no one will admit to this, but all I know is that I see my neighbors's RV parked month after month and rarely taken out for a spin. 

Besides, you can pay for a lot of nice rooms in nice hotels for the price of an RV.  

But it came down to never leaving the house again or getting a transport for our cat. Our RV is a very expensive Catbus. 

OK... I was up for it, but then I decided to stay around the store for another couple of years and business has been booming, which makes it fun again. So even less chance to get away. 

By the time I'm done with the store, I'll be 74 years old and the cat will be 18 years old, assuming that we both make it that far.

Therefore when the boys started to ask to use the Catbus, no only didn't I object, I was delighted. "Please...take it any time you want!' 

So now I feel like maybe we're getting our monies worth. It's a family bus, and as far as I'm concerned, the money we're currently earning and still saving for "retirement" is family money and that's the way it should be.

I want for nothing. Seriously. There isn't anything I want that I don't have, except a teleporter that can get me anywhere I want to go in seconds. I can't quite seem to find one for sale. 

So the Catbus is seeming rather part of life now and I don't mind it a bit.  

Interesting that retailers are still blaming Diamond for all that is wrong in the comic world.

Here's the thing. Diamond doesn't exist, except as a name. The company that took it over is a completely different entity.

And they are pulling the plug on most of what Diamond was still doing (not that there was much less.) Word is, they're selling off the consignment inventory left and not paying the publishers. So that's gotta hurt if you are a publisher.

Meanwhile, smaller publisher will have to got through a new company that gives a smaller discount and/or minimum orders. This was entirely predictable. It always amazed me that Diamond was willing to pack a singe comic. I mean, it can't have been worth the time, energy, and labor to do it.

Speaking of minimums, that's mostly how the toy industry works. You buy a case with six or twelve figures. You don't get to say, "I want only Yoda and Boba Fett." No you get three minor characters that no one wants. Plus your buying at such a low discount that it's only worthwhile to buy most toys if you tack a little bit above the retail price. (There isn't usually an SRP.)

But the chain stores are selling for below retail price so it's a double whammy. Meanwhile, the chain stores get what they ordered and they get it earlier. We often don't get the 'good' stuff and we have to wait much longer. 

With Diamond no longer there, stores will have to buy from toy distributors and they are awful. Not just for toys, but for everything else: posters, pins, t-shirts, buttons...you name it. Again, minimums at awful discounts arriving late if at all. Whoopee!

 

 

It took many years for the store to get to where it is. During most of those years I not only couldn't afford to carry 100% of what we should, I was probably only getting half to two/thirds of the way there. 

Now? The only thing stopping us is lack of space. We have gotten to that 100% and surpassed it and it shows. Now people come in and there is a very good chance they'll find something interesting. It's the excess inventory that causes the average to stay steady.  

It's made me refine my notion that the most important element of success is to think for yourself. Or more clearly, to separate the bullshit from the reality. So many businesses are concerned about their image, how good looking they are, how wonderful it all feels.

But books are our image. The more and better books we have, the better our image. I assure you that no one sees that the wall is patched in places, or the there is a bit of dust here and there. Not that you shouldn't try to fix that, but just that there is a lot of leeway--if you are otherwise doing the job of getting good product at affordable prices.  

If you've got the space and the fixtures and the manpower, then the most important thing to have is inventory. Somehow I understood that from the beginning and always plowed the bulk of our gross profit back into the store. In the last fifteen years or so and especially in the last five years, we're finally getting rewarded for that. But that meant we spent 25 years getting there. 

It wouldn't have taken so long if I hadn't made so many mistakes, but mistakes are how you learn what not to do. Experience is what teaches you what to do.

Bopping into the store early this morning to bump around. I'd forgotten the aura of an empty store. There's something very peaceful about it.  I don't have any books to put away, so this will be a look-around, whatever small improvements I can make.

When I first started carrying books, I ordered as many "budget" books as I could afford to get up to speed. Getting my inventory at full wholesale through my cash flow was going to take forever. (I don't borrow money anymore for inventory purposes--it all has to be paid for.)

Some of the budget books were decent, some were junk, a few were prizes. 

I firmly believe that, at any one time, 20% of your inventory are going to be 80% of your sales. But I also believe that you have to have that other 80% in stock. You can work on improving that 20% over time, so maybe it can become something like 30% or 35% of your stock. But it will always be a matter that only part of your inventory will be attractive to your customers. 

Don't ask me the mechanics of it. I've just found that trying for 100% saleable product is pretty much impossible. 

There's a context to inventory; where and how you display the 80% will help sell the 20%.

I recently wondered what percent of the books we sell are the books we put face-outward. I came up with a guesstimate of 50%. I ask Sabrina the same question, and somewhat to my surprise she immediately came up with 50%. The other day I asked Dylan, and he immediately guessed 50%.

But here the thing: only a small percentage of the books can be faced outward. The books behind those books are the kind of midlist books that you'll sell less often, but they are just as important. Anyone can have the bestseller, but a store that can please the customer with something more unusual is also important.

So the more books you have, the better. The better those books are, the better. But you'll always be shuffling books around trying to find ways for the customer to discover them. 

I recently add two authors to my cult stacks. These are authors that few people know about but those in the know will totally glom onto if they find them. 

J.G. Ballard and Roberto Bolano. They join Vonnegut and P.K. Dick and Chuck Palahniuk and Charles Bukowski and a bunch of other authors where I try to carry a good chunk of what they've written. They may not be part of the 20%, but they are also important for verifying to the discerning customer that you know what you are doing.  

Anyway, I'm slowly but surely replacing the bargain books I used to bulk up the store. They've probably gone from 25% of my inventory to maybe 10% of my inventory. Eventually they will all be replaced. But it's still pretty satisfying when one sells; 100% profit, for one thing, since I'm not replacing them. 

It's still not easy to get new inventory through cash flow. It's almost the very definition of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, but it's getting done. I probably reorder 90% of the books I sell because I've found that a book that sells once will most often sell twice and a book that sells twice is even more likely to sell three times. I think this is smart, but it also means that the smaller percentage of my budget can be used on new titles and most of those new titles are new releases--bestsellers more often than not. 

But you do it book by book and over time, the inventory improves. I probably won't get to 100% satisfaction, if for no other reason than the amount of space I have to work with, but it's getting better all the time.  

What a breeze! Went in before opening and stocked books. It probably took half as long and there was no stress, no distractions. Obviously, this is the way to do it from now on. 

 

Oops. My smooth operations hit a snag. These days, I'm waiting until Tuesdays to send off Penguin Random House orders, and that frees up Wed. and Thurs. for Sabrina to make comic reorders, then I start constructing a new book order on Friday for the following Tuesday.

I forgot to hit the Send button on Tuesday. Darn-nit. It takes long enough to wait for PRH stuff to show up even when I send orders on time. I'm still working out the new schedule. 

Meanwhile, two lost boxes from Ingram. They don't use UPS and the shipper they do use is horrible. I never know when or if the boxes are going to show up. Especially when they have a new driver. And they always seem to be getting a new driver.  

During busy seasons, like Summer and Christmas, when you need product the most is when the most shipping mishaps happen. I figure the regular drivers are out on vacation, or there are a bunch of newbies just when the holiday crunch is kicking in, but it always seems to go a little haywire. 

 

Broke our streak of good days today. Not by much, but still a warning not to get too smug. A kick in the butt I probably needed. I'd been getting spoiled by what was happening, and that was probably unrealistic. Trending back to norm wouldn't surprise me.  

We're way ahead of last year. In fact, if we just match last year the rest of the way, we'll still have our best year ever.  What's fun is that much of the increase in sales is in product we've already bought, so I don't have to replace it right away.

It's very, very busy. I went in today to put away books and gave up after a couple of hours. I've been planning to go in more often for shorter periods of time to keep down the wear and tear, but there were just too many people clogging the aisles to get anything done. I finally gave up.

It felt very stressful. That stress is self-induced, but knowing that doesn't make it any less. I mean, conceivably, I could take a deep breath and slough off the stress, but I've never been able to adapt my behavior that way.  

The answer is to change the situation. When I nearly quit over my constant conflicts with collectors over the "value" of their collections, my answer was to simply stop buying older stuff. I'm a retailer, pure and simple. 

In most stressful situations, for me it is usually easier to change the situation rather than to try to adapt to it.

So for the rest of the summer I'm going into work before the store opens and putting away product then. It is really a simple solution and the only reason I didn't reach for it before was because I've always thought of myself as a late starter in the mornings. Indeed, I open at 11:00, not 10:00 because when I was working every day it gave me an extra hour to drink my coffee and read my news. In fact, that's a great example of changing the situation rather than my response to the situation. 

Anyway, as I've gotten older, I've been getting up earlier and earlier, and I often find myself ready to go at 8:30 or 9:00. It's been only habit that has me going in later in the day. That plus waiting for the shipments to arrive.

That's the tradeoff. I've got to let the shipments arrive, but come in the next day early to put them away. I may miss  a few timely sales because of that, but so be it. 

Business is running smoothly enough to get away with it.  

Talking to Dylan at the store and realizing that he really doesn't know much about the big comic crash of the mid-90s. I mean, he knows the outlines. 

What I keep forgetting is that he was even born when all that happened. 

So much of the way the market works these days is a result of that time period. For instance, Dylan knows what the FOC is (basically, final ordering) but doesn't know why it exists, how a retailer in San Francisco (Brian Hibbs, kudos) sued Marvel for not delivering on time and what we ordered.

Or why Diamond had a monopoly on comics and the fall out that is happening because Diamond not only isn't the only wholesaler now, they're barely a presence in the market anymore. 

Does Dylan need to know? Probably not. But to me, everything follows from what happened before. It's why experience counts for so much. 

As I've been mentioning in other posts, it seems to me that most people only learn from their own mistakes--but I'd still like to help them avoid mistakes, if I can.  

We're in a groove at the store. Summer business has kicked in, we have the product people are looking for, and we have a sufficient budget to satisfy demand. Bills are all paid. It's time to try to earn a profit.  

It took awhile to figure out how to deal with five book suppliers rather than just two. But I've finally learned the timing and things are getting easier to figure out. (The ordering is very time-consuming, but it's an activity I enjoy, so that's good.) 

I'm going into the store more often but for shorter time periods, and that gets the job done but doesn't wear me out. Dylan has fit right back in and seems to be working complimentary to Sabrina, who is taking charge. I'm just trying to stay out of the way.

Funny thing happening with Sabrina. I check with her before making any big decisions and a lot of the time she talks me out of doing what I planned. I've always been impulsive about big decisions, partly because if I don't get that impulse, I don't do it at all.

But Sabrina has a way of talking sense to me, and since it will be her store in the not too distant future, I am bending to her judgement. But not only bending, but basically agreeing with her. She's more tough-minded than me, interestingly.  

When I started, there was little to no information available on the type of business I was in. Books about business were useless or irrelevant. (The one exception, Growing a Business, by Paul Hawken, which was somewhat useful.) Not only couldn't I get any advice from other business owners, but they wouldn't even talk to me. Especially the Downtowners (all of who are gone now.) 

I flailed around, making mistake after mistake, and worse--I let it show. I didn't hide anything. I was willing to share --and in return, I felt most other business owners considered me a fool.  I tried to figure it out myself. By the time I went up the COCC for the small business counseling, I'd learned enough that the advisor told me I had a "primitive sophistication," which I took as a compliment, not an insult. 

He made me put together a business plan, gave me a little advice, and helped me get a business loan. 

And then I was on my own again. 

So it's frustrating to have learned so much, to have a store that is far exceeding my expectations, which is finally performing at the levels I aspired to 40 years ago, and not be able to pass that information on. 

What I have learned is--everyone goes their own way. No takes unsolicited advice. Everyone has to learn everything the hard way. 

It's a shame, because I can show them some "tricks" but whenever I've done that, they have ignored me, bless their little hearts.  

When Hannah Oliver decided to open a bookstore in Prineville, I didn't have much doubt that the store would be nice and that she'd do a good job. But I did wonder if the Prineville I remembered from my youth was ready for a bookstore.

She reassured me that Prineville was prospering.

I visited her store yesterday and while Linda and I were there, we went to the only Taco Time in Central Oregon. I really love their crisp meat burritos. A Cascade Business News was on one of the tables and I snagged it. 

There was an article on Prineville there, and some remarkable statistics. In the last seven years, the median income in Prineville rose from $45K to $82K.  Crook County as a whole has had a 52.5% increase in GDP.

The town still feels rural; but there are signs. New shops and nice houses on the outskirts. You've got to believe that as Bend continues to boom and with Redmond following, that Prineville will be the next place to accelerate in growth. 

Whenever I make my commute to Bend, I'm accompanied by the grand march of the Cascade mountains on my right, blue skies on my left. This ain't stopping anytime soon.   

A remarkable week, one of the best we've ever had outside of Christmas. And it's only June.

I stocked up on Pokemon and Magic, gambling that we'd be able to sell it during the summer, and that seems to be happening. That's probably 60% of the increase, with books being the other 40% of the increase, holding our own with comics and down a little on toys and games. 

Last year at this time I went all in on returnability with PRH. Bought multiple copies of bestsellers I might not have bought at all before (or after.) It didn't really work out. But in order to prepare, I redesigned the store yet again and that has proven to be a real bonus. Plus I kind of learned that I might have been a little too careful ordering new stuff before that, and that ordering a couple of copies almost always works out.

So the increase in book sales is partially due to that experiment. But as a whole, I really blew my budget on inventory instead of trying for a monetary profit.  

This year I'm going forward with a rolling average for the budget. It's a generous budget (the mistake in the past I've always made is to make the budget too skimpy thus almost always busting the budget in short order.)

I've been doing this for seven weeks now, and I'm about 20% of a single week above the average, so pretty darn close.  

I don't want to anticipate too much. Whenever I do that, it runs the risk of being a disappointment. But July 4th is usually the real kickoff to summer business, where it normally really takes off. If it takes off from the current level...well, that would be amazing.  

Downtown Bend is booming. It's really quite remarkable. I suspect there are few places in America that have as much activity as we do. 

Part of it is that the entire area only stretches a few blocks--you know, like a town of 10,000 people. But we're now a town of 110,000 people and the area isn't getting any bigger. Sure, there are other commercial centers, Old Mill, Northwest Crossing, Cascade Village, but none of them have the old school charm of old downtown.

Now the locals would probably scoff at the "charm" part. To many locals it just seems too crowded to bother with. No Parking!

But newcomers and tourists just see the shops. They don't seem to have trouble parking in the parking garage. They are attracted to the hustle and bustle.

Once again, I'll throw out the old Yogi Berra bon mot:  "No one goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

I wish I had a time machine so I could go back to my younger self, twenty, thirty, especially forty years ago and say, "Someday these streets will be filled with shoppers." Part of me always thought that was a possibility. I always chose to pay the higher rents because I saw a continual progression. I made the right choice to stay right where I was. And I'd already made the mistake of expanding too much, what I will call the Duncan Corollary to the Peter Principle: "A business will expand to its level of incompetence."

I'm happy with what I've got and really don't want to add more complexity or stress. Just grateful to see it happen.  

 

My biggest dilemma is still what to do with myself without the store. (A couple years away yet.) I really don't like doomscrolling and yet I seem to be addicted to it. I seem to be able to read a book only about half an hour at a time these days. Either that or I'm simply not finding books I find engrossing. Linda is able to watch entire seasons of old shows (she currently working through the old Perry Mason shows) but I become quickly bored. Even at night, I have to distract myself with coloring books. 

I don't want to be pest at the other bookstores, which I could easily become. I'm not ready to really consider opening a used bookstore, though if I can't find a solution to my lack of activity, I might end up doing that.  

Take up writing again? Thing is, I don't know how to do that as a leisure activity. I'm either all in or I'm all out. I've tried writing snippets but I quickly lose whatever motivation I had by not diving all in. Still...I could probably get into some routine where I write stuff I want without any consideration of saleability. Just write what I want. But that would pretty much be mental masturbation, though I'm not sure that doomscrolling isn't even more that. 

I'm assuming that I'll come up with an answer in the next couple years. Meanwhile, the store is a lot of fun to watch operating at full blast. I waited so long for that to happen.  

The Final Fantasy Magic cards haven't been a flop. They're selling at about the pace I hoped for, maybe a little faster, though it's the beginning of the run so that seems right. I haven't been at the store so I don't know exactly what's selling. 

Meanwhile, new books continue to sell. It looks like this will be the sixth month in a row where we'll beat last year. In fact, we're on pace to have our best year ever. 

I can't believe how much more work it's taken to catch up from taking a week off. Pretty much spent all of today doing book orders--and I'd already done about 40% of them before today. I'm not sure I'll ever dare do a skip week again. 

Everything comes down to the budget. I'm finding it nearly impossible to keep track of what I'm spending with my three new publishers: Simon & Shuster, Harper Collins, and Scholastic. Unlike Penguin Random House and Ingram, they don't give me totals, and it would add a hell of a lot of time to add them up one by one. I count them, and round them off to a certain number that I'm pretty sure is slightly higher than they actually are. But it's inexact, and I'm been caught flatfooted a couple of times. Nothing dangerous, but slightly off putting.  All those years of living week to week without credit or reserves made me very careful about how I spend the money. 

I figured out a budget that would work within a 20% range of my high estimate in sales and the 20% range of my low estimate in sales. In other words, a firm number I stick to every week. It's hard to see progress on a day to day basis, but I know it's probably starting to accrue. I don't need to change the budget unless there is a radical change in sales, up or down.

Yeah, it only took me 40 years to figure it out. 

This new Magic release is going to be an interesting experiment. Today is going to be a test, though it may be too early to draw conclusions.  

I can't think of a time when we've had all these particular circumstances at the same time.

The eternal retail conundrum: Supply and Demand. 

On one hand, we have a supposed "hot" product that I have been able to order a lot of; as I've always said, selling hot product isn't hard, getting enough material in stock to sell is the hard part. I have this weird feeling that while most stores are not getting as much material as they usually can sell, I'm getting more material than I can usually sell.  

So it's a gamble. Already today, the day of release, the prices seem to have moderated online. However, it also seems to be sold out most places and we have plenty in stock. Not everyone wants to buy in advance, not everyone wants to buy online.

One good thing about ordering so much product is that I can sell a large part of my order at "regular" prices. I'm always more comfortable at SRP. But with hot product, you have to be careful. Another saying I have--it's better to have product at higher prices than to not have any product at all. But preferably, we can have both SRP and sufficient supplies. 

Sure FOMO exists (Fear of Missing Out). But conversely, everyone will always have the fear that they are paying too much and prices will drop. That fear is why people are willing to pay in advance, but that fear is also why they might also want to wait and see.  

During Covid and more recently after Pokemon seemed to suddenly sell out everywhere, my experience told me to buy everything I could get, every chance I got, even at higher prices. That worked very well at the start, but lately I've noticed that I'm able to get more than I'm actually selling. Which would seem to be a warning sign to back off. 

I've also ordered extra product outside normal channels at higher prices. So far, every time I've done that, it's been a step too far. So I think that is where I need to draw the line.  

There is a possibility that it could all be a flop. I'm betting otherwise, but I've certainly had that experience before. Back when I was doing sports cards--the nearest example of what's happening now--I would often itch to buy tons of some product and then only see it flop. But just as often,  the product would be a hit. My general sense was that they cancelled each other out. 

What saved me was that I didn't have the money to gamble all that much.  

This time I do. 

My main supplier has proven somewhat reliable in offering more material over time--but it's spotty. Some product they continue to offer and some is never offered again, and damned if I know which is which until I've already committed.  

All of this stuff will sell over time. I don't know, maybe Sabrina will benefit more than I will. However, I have no problem with handing over a thriving store to her.  

 

Went on vacation for five days and decided to do a skip week.

Oh, boy. I came back to a swamped store and a swamped schedule. Summer is hitting hard all of a sudden. I looked at Sabrina and said, "With the amount of stuff I'm doing off the clock, you're probably going to need a full time employee."

One of my jobs at the store is to just go around and straighten everything. A seemingly simple job that is actually really important with a packed store like Pegasus. It would be so easy for everything to get out of control, to become utterly chaotic, impossible to find anything. Overwhelming.

I spent most of today just doing that; going around, checking to see where we had holes and what was missing or filed incorrectly. Meanwhile, Sabrina was dealing with customers and the register and she's being nearly overwhelmed. 

By skipping a week in orders, I didn't save any work. If anything, more stuff arrived this week than ever before, especially with the huge Magic and Pokemon orders, as well as boxes from Harper Collins and Simon & Shuster on top of the usual Penguin Random House and Ingram. 

Meanwhile the usual six or eight pages of books sold that need to be reordered ballooned to about twenty pages, single spaced pages, books that have to be looked up, to check to see if we have them in stock, figure out which publisher carries them, and enter all the information.

I do this mostly at home, but that's becoming more and more difficult too with the multiple publishers and random arrivals of stock. I make more mistakes if I can't see what the store actually has. 

I think Sabrina has pretty much decided that she'll need a Point of Sale program to keep track and I have to agree though I shudder how hard it will be to get up and running.  

The bright side is: this is all due to success. We're doing very well, sales-wise, and that just requires more effort to keep up with. Peak business, I'd say. Any more and we'd have to completely upend our single store person model and that brings its own headaches. Frankly, having more than one person in the store at a time means we're often stumbling across each other. I try to stay out of the way, but I can't help overhearing discussions where I can add my two cents worth. 

We've got time to try to work out a way for Sabrina to get all this done. I'd like to hang around a little if possible, just be an unobtrusive worker bee, if that's possible. But she's be in charge and I'll need to do what she wants. If she'll have me. 

If not, then...full retirement. Hint, hint, she's been telling me I need to "practice retirement..." 

Getting into the weeds about my budgeting process.

I'm still dealing with the consequences of moving from a timeliness/accuracy model of ordering to not so timely or accurate, but higher discount model. Still working out the kinks, though I'm beginning to get a handle on it. Over the course of the year, the higher discounts should make us more profitable.

I think. 

We get an extra week for budgeting each month, The first three weeks divides almost all the large overhead costs (wages/rent/wages) and leaves the fourth week to pay down on whatever debt we might have accrued, or if no debt, a chance to order something we don't normally order.

Each quarter we get on fifth week, which helps even more.  

I have spent four times as much money as normal this month on Pokemon and Magic, so I'm applying the fifth week to June, even though the accounting Tuesday falls on the first of July. (Tuesdays are when I do all my figuring.) 

I budget week to week. It took years to arrive at this solution. Monthly was too long a stretch and daily is too short a stretch; weekly seems to be the right number to keep accurate track of both sales and budget.  

My budget is planned for when I make the orders not when the monies are due, so I have a lot of leeway, which I try not to abuse.

This week I skipped ordering books. This is almost the first time I've done this since I became a full bookstore. 

It doesn't really matter because we've had huge shipments arrive yesterday and today and probably tomorrow. I can no longer keep track of when books will arrive, except from Ingram. They just keep flowing through the door.

So budgeting has really come down to doing a rolling average of what I spend. This is a change, because until now I've been matching spending to sales pretty accurately. Now that I'm ordering from five different sources for books, I can't really keep track of that. So the focus is on the budget. As long as I budget correctly, the rest should work out (assuming sales continue to be close to what they've been.)

Because of the skip week, I'm moving up my accounting on books to the actual week I order instead of the following week. I don't need to do this, but it does feel more like I'm top of things that way.  

We've been rolling along selling books and cards, and we've turned some of our attention to back issue collectable comics, which we suddenly have a good supply of. As usual, whatever we turn our attention to gets a boost in sales. I finally feel like I have the two major legs of our store on a solid footing so I'm trying to get comics back to being a good solid third leg to the stool. 

 Anyone get this far? It fascinates me, if no one else.  

Because I'm on vacation anyway, I decided to do a skip week on books. We're a little overloaded right now anyway. Of course, it won't matter if I end up ordering the same number of books and get them in one week instead of two, but I'm hoping it will inspire me to be a little pickier for once.

We've got so many good books and we're mostly up to date. Also, the minimums numbers for the secondary publishers have to be reached anyway, so it's only the dozen or so bestsellers that came out this week that we'll be missing. As you've heard me say many times, we're a midlist bookstore, not a New This Week bookstore. 

We're getting the most Magic that's we've ever gotten. Now I have to hope Final Fantasy is a hit. We can be pretty moderate on pricing, at least compared to what I see online, so we can afford to sell a lot at a lower price  

June 8.

Going to walk the one mile Hiouchi trail down to Jedidiah State Park today while Linda tries to attend zoom church.  Jasper is motionless, crouched over a gopher hole in the meadow outside the trailer. He can stay like that for a long time. He's already master of the RV park, wandering around with his leash but without anyone holding the other end of the leash. Tail straight up in the air, head held confidently high, he'll approach anyone who shows the slightest interest, including dogs. With his gear on and upright posture he absolutely looks like a dog from a distance. I've always said he is our Cat/dog.

We did absolutely nothing yesterday. I think I napped three times. Such behavior at home would feel disgraceful, but here it feels just right. (Which only raises the question: Why is it disgraceful at home?)

 

Crossed the highway and found the trail easily. There was a couple in front of me, blasting their radio. Inexplicable! What kind of fucking idiot brings a fucking radio on a nature walk!? I waited to let them get ahead of me. Started walking, immediately came upon a doe who just stood there while I took its picture and talked softly. Didn't run off until I started walking toward it. 

Got sidelined partway to the park. An offshoot of the trail that led down to the Smith River and a gorgeous rock pinnacle over the water where I'm now sitting on a handy seat-sized rock. I will make it to the park yet--I do want to see the Redwoods, but meanwhile I'm going to just take this in. 

 

I'm already relaxed and the sound of flowing water is just layering on another layer. I brought donuts with me. (I know, I know...what kind of idiot brings donuts on a nature walk!) Just going to sit here and imbibe nature and artificially sweetened donuts. And...can't I just enjoy nature without a running commentary? Well you can take the boy out of writing but you can't take the writing out of the boy.

I forgot my hat for this trip, again, so the sun is really beating down on me. I've moved to a less comfortable but shady rock. I think once we really start doing this on a regular basis--which, I hope is pretty much starting now (I'm 'practicing' retirement!) --we'll work out the kinks. Linda brings way too much food and books, I bring work stuff that I'm never going to get to. 

Interestingly, it turns out that a large percentage of people in this RV park are permanent residents. You know, I don't think I would find this kind of living to be all that bad. Maybe a bigger rig than a our Catbus, but...

Toby and Felicia have been making noises about moving to Brookings: she wants the coast and he's adamant about staying in Oregon, so a permanent set up in an RV park in Hiouchi would be great. A vacation home, so to speak. 

Rafters coming by...I'm such an awkward fella, I never know how much to interact or when to wave.  

Guy in the first raft was friendly, people in the second and third raft ignored me. I know, I know...who keeps score but an awkward introvert! Linda and I talk about this all the time; she is a natural, it's second nature, she doesn't think twice about it. I have to admit I'm getting better at it--the trick for me is not try so hard.

Also brought some beef jerky which got got in my teeth. Pulled some grass stems and used them as toothpicks. Real nature boy.

I believe most of the trees along the hills above the river are fir trees. Interesting to be only a mile from the Redwood stands, but no Redwoods. Climbing up some fairly steep rocky terrain. I have to constantly remind myself that I'm an old man--not because I feel like that, but because I don't. I objectively know that my balance, while still good, isn't probably what it used to be.

I think I'll move along to the park, and maybe stop off at this spot again on the way back. I tell you, if I lived in Hiouchi, I'd be down here every day. Maybe getting my writing going again... 

 

Started seeing Redwoods about five minutes from the park--so, probably already the park. They stood among the firs, and weren't the really big ones, so I kept going. Then...relative civilization. Big trees, but also paved roads, cabins, campers, cars, sewage disposal, rangers, the whole shebang. Did a loop, took a few pictures, almost got lost, and headed back.

Took another offshoot, but couldn't quite reach the river without taking a chance. (Someone had even coiled a rope at the top of the slope, but that was more of a warning than an enticement.) I tell you what, though...if I lived here, I'd probably walk this trail every day, especially the offshoots. Only a couple minutes on foot to get to the head of the trail instead of an hour's drive from Bend to get anywhere truly nature and private and not a "No Trespassing" zone. To be fair, there are public trails like the Hiouchi trail a lot closer, but tons of people these days. This trail is relatively quiet. It's just the right length, two or three miles overall, for a relaxing walk. 

Aside from the radio buffoons, saw only two fast moving old men on the trail. Heh. A quail scooting by, leading me away from the nest. That's it. Glorious. 

 

 

I may have overreacted to the shortage of Pokemon. We'll have plenty for summer, and if summer doesn't pan out, then we'll have inventory for the foreseeable future. It's a bit of FOMA: Fear of missing out. But it's also our one competitive advantage: the depth and width of our inventory. We don't do in-store play, or tournaments, or singles, or full boxes at a discount. We sell packs. And more packs. And we can sell packs as long as the trading card games are viable.

There is zero sign of weakness in the market, besides a few grumbles, and there are always grumbles. The prices are being pushed to maximum frequency and price, which may mean people will buy less, or some people will quit, but the game itself will go on. 

I went all IN on Final Fantasy Magic the Gathering. One good thing about having an account with the the same wholesaler for 35 years is that we get a nice allocation of shorted product. In fact, most of the time I don't even take the full allocation.

This time I did....+ every additional chance to order.  It remains to be seen if it was a mistake, which just points out the conundrum. The failures in ordering come from the same place as the successes. The same reasoning, the same planning. It depends sometimes on whether the upside outweighs the downside.

Since we have resources and aren't in debt, the upside tips the balance. When I was broke and in debt, the downside controlled my decisions. Success breeds success, failure breeds failure.   

I like to think I'm smarter than your average bear (though I often fear I'm a hell of a lot dumber). Taking the daily "Slate" quiz is enough to keep me grounded. I'm average, at best, on most quizzes, absolutely terrible at the Science and Vocabulary quizzes (foreign words, no fair!) and do best on Culture and News. 

It's a big comedown for an INTJ on the M&B, and a 5 on the Enneogram.   

Apparently, as far as I can tell, we sell a lot more "Classic" books than most stores. In fact, most stores have a relatively small percent of their space devoted to Dickens and Austen and Hemingway and such. 

In fact, I think that's probably why we sell more classics. We devote a fairly large space to them. It's one of those things where one shelf doesn't have much effect, but two or three bookcases do. But you would only know that if you took the chance to give that much space to classics.

I think when you do things on your own, you tend make mistakes that turn out not to be mistakes.  

 

Another thing I do that seems unusual is that I basically automatically reorder every book I sell. I don't know how this works--or rather, how long it will work. Because it would stand to reason that I'd be constantly expanding my selection. And we really are running out of room.

However, there does seem to be a self-correcting mechanism somewhere in play. Books become unavailable and so drop off the list. I also do drop some titles over time. Just enough, apparently, to allow the other reorders. 

Here's the thing I'd love to ask other bookstore owners. How well do you know a midlist book will sell if you don't reorder them? I'm not talking about bestsellers; those I know you reorder. But that interesting book that took a couple months to sell....how do you know it won't sell every couple of months from then on? Get enough of those rolling and you have a constant flow.  

 

At the doctor's, I compared their weight measurement to our scale at home. To my surprise, the professional scale was actually half a pound less. I guess, in the hour or two between measurements, that's a plus or minus. Not meaningful. 

My BMI is 24, just under the upper limit of 25. But I'm 72 years old, and the internet actually suggests there might be a benefit to being a couple points over. But I like being as slender as I can manage.

It was funny. The nurse started to say something like, "Everyone I see over the age of 70 is..."

"Overweight?" I interrupt.

She shakes her head. "No, the opposite. I see very few overweight and especially obese people, almost none after the age of 80."

I mean, that may just be her observation, but I never would have guessed it. 

For some reason, going to the cardiologist is nowhere near as nerve-wracking as seeing my regular doctor. Basically, about my heart there is no difference that I can tell. As I always say, if I didn't KNOW I'd had a heart attack six years ago, I wouldn't know I'd had a heart attack. No symptoms that I can discern.  

Both doctors said I'm in great shape.  

 

Did I ever tell you guys I wrote a bestselling NYT's novel...under another man's name? 

 

If I told you the name, I'd have to kill you. 

 

Don't ever ghostwrite a novel folks. It feels utterly empty. An exercise in futility, no matter how much they pay you.

 

Basically, I was an intern. (Well, I was paid, but...) I only did it because they promised to seriously consider my next novel. Nothing but crickets. I felt used and I'd given away one of my best premises.

 

Not to mention they turned into complete crap after they took it away from me. Basically MAGA gun porn.

 

 

Another thing that I've noticed about my writing: I wrote about a bunch of different subjects and different genres, 1st person, 3rd person, present tense, past tense, female, male, multiple, single, short, long, anything I wanted.

 

If you're trying to make a career out of writing, this is probably a mistake. Find that thing that works best and keep doing it. 

 

But if you want a fulfilling writing life, do what you want. Write what you want when you want.  

 

 

Anyone reading this will notice that I've been posting much more often in the last few days. I'm probably going to continue that. I'm not going to post it on Facebook. Those who want to read will want to read it.

It's not like I haven't been writing blog posts over the last few years, but 95% of them were private notes to myself. My journal, if you will. 

So what I'm doing is posting publicly what I had been posting privately--with a few more filters attached. Business-wise, I can post the same things, but not with specific numbers, but percentages or trends. 

Fair warning: I'll probably repeat myself a lot. Other than going over every post I've done, this would seem unavoidable.  

 

I went to my doctor yesterday. My A1C has been bumping upward for a few years now, and it was finally at a point where she thought I should really deal with it. 

I didn't get a lot of sweets when I was younger; mostly for special occasions. So around the time I hit 60 years old or so, I decided to let myself indulge. I've managed to keep my weight down. I didn't think I was predisposed for diabetes, and why not? Life is short. 

But it's now getting close to edge of needing medication, so I've decided to quit consuming mass quantities of Sour Patches and pastries and bread. Going to test myself in four or five months to see if that has done the job.

The biggest change is that I'm going to ween myself from drinking lemonade constantly, even though it's always been sugar free. Apparently, the body can be fooled into thinking that artificial sweets are the real thing. So water it is. (I've been doing water for a few days since I got the lab results and I'm already bored. But I think I can stick to it.) 

 

Huge numbers of books are showing up at the store. I'm ordering from four or five publishers now, so I have no control when they show up. So sometimes they all show up at the same time. I have to remember, 90% of these books are books I've sold.

It's crazy how many books we're selling. It's pretty much getting to be a full time job just ordering, collating, and stocking the books. Hell, I spend probably a couple hours a week just dealing with the boxes and the packing material.  

But what fun to see the store fully functioning. It's what I always dreamed of... 

Counter-intuitively, I tend to be more selective in books during the summer and Christmas seasons than I an in the off seasons. 

When I started, I would bulk up for the summer and Christmas because that's when we were selling the most stuff. But, eventually, a Christmas season came along where I really, really needed to turn a big profit and the only way I could do it was to sell down the inventory and be more picky.

Strangely, it didn't affect sales at all.

I started thinking about it and decided that during the off season you need the biggest selection you can manage because people are much more likely to come in looking for a specific title. They are more likely to be locals, so they will want something they haven't seen before.

Whereas in summer and Christmas, the majority of customers or infrequent locals or tourists. It's all new to them. As long as you have a reasonably expansive selection, you will sell books.

The "reasonably expansive selection" is done during the off season.

So strangely enough, it all seems to work, assuming you can afford to possibly lose money to take chances during the off season, you're more likely to make it up during the busy seasons.

I don't know. This is my observation and I could be all wet.  

 

Meanwhile, I've noticed how often we are complimented by our "curation." Which is true, considering that all my titles are handpicked by me, rather than by some corporate algorithm. 

Put I've always been a bit abashed by the knowledge that I pay a lot of attention to the bestseller lists and to the inventory levels at the wholesaler. (Inventory indicates that they have faith in it and will be pushing it.)

But I've noticed lately that when it comes time to reorder, especially with the trade paperback editions, that I veer quite a bit from those two indicators, because I have own experience as to whether the hardcover sold.

For instance, this week I'm being offered the PB version of "How to Age Disgracefully." The inventory numbers are on the low end, but I ordered high because I sold the HC over and over again. 

So in the end, the more or less permanent inventory, or what I call "perennials," are most definitely handpicked and curated.  

For me, all books are good. Read a book? Good on you!

There is no such thing as a guilty pleasure. If it's whipped cream, what harm does it do? Read whatever you want, whenever you want. Reading one thing doesn't mean you can't read another thing.

When I first bought the store the impulse I had was to welcome all comers without judgement. I don't know that I truly respected comics (yet! I was totally won over within a year or so) but I respected people's predilection to reading them.  

But a store like mine? It ill behooves me to judge. It's almost the very reason for our existence.

On the other hand, if something doesn't sell? That's another story.

Anyway, I noticed early on that people were pretty picky about the terms they used for what they were reading. Books that I thought of as potboilers were considered "literature" by those who read them. People who read "romance" often didn't like that term. I never have figured out exactly what "historical" books meant, except as a label by the publishers.  

Roughly speaking, it's "literature" if that's what you read. 

The one area where I'm a bit of a snob is SF and Fantasy, but by now I'm so dated that I can't really judge what people consider good or bad. (In other words, I haven't enjoyed a lot the new bestsellers and award winners in the genre.) I burned out on fantasy long ago--and believe me, I read a TON of it in the day. 

Out of the best new SF series I have read lately, two of them were originally self-published: Dungeon Crawler Carl and We are Legion: we are Bob. Neither of them take themselves too seriously, but are strong stories and characters. I think it's interesting that the pipeline to new fiction is so constricted that the authors had to do it on their own, originally.

The third series I really liked was Murderbot, which also doesn't take itself too seriously. It's also a great TV series on Apple, which the store-crew gets together to watch each week, along with Poker Face. (So many IN jokes!)  

Anyway, I try to find non-pejorative terms for genres.  I mix SF and Fantasy together--it's up to you to be snobs about one over the other. (I put Romantasy in either regular fantasy or in the TikTok book section.

The TikTok book section is strictly a merchandising term and refers to a number of genres. 

I use the term "Rom-com" for the new version of romance novels. I stick in my historical novels section whatever books the customers refer to as historical (while the vast bulk goes into "regular" fiction.

Yes, I use the term "regular" fiction because I'm damned if I know which books are literary and which are not. 

That's totally up to the reader.  

Wildfire

That was an interesting experience. We had a wildfire just two miles away yesterday. Once I ascertained where it was, I realized it was area I'm very aware of. I don't think it was BLM land, but ranch land, so probably some isolated houses.

The planes flew so low over our house that everything shook. 

First the lights went out. I walked out the door and stood in the driveway to see if any my neighbors were doing the same thing. Cale, across street, confirmed the outage. (Cale is the neighborhood connector.) Met Jennifer from across the street and had my first conversation with her: she showed me an app on wildfires. Talked to Cale's wife, Kerry, who had let her kids up on top of the house to watch the planes. "Good for you," I commented. 

Our neighbors to the west of us came out; very private people, but managed to exchange a few words. I exclaimed, "We're doomed!  Game over, Man!" and the husband laughed. 

Uploaded the wildfire app, which took forever because we had about 1 and 1/2 stripes. 

Woke up coughing this morning, but it looks like they have it under control.  

Anyway, it started off as a "Get set" level of warning and then was downgraded to "Get ready," both of which seemed somewhat alarming.  Thing is, I have a tendency to think everything will be fine. If I'd been in one of the Twin Towers, I would have been one of those who stayed in my chair.

But then I started thinking what I'd grab if I had to run. 

Well, the Catbus is ready to go. I could pack a suitcase with some traveling cloths; my medications; my usual backpack with computer and notebook plus a few other business records off my desk.

Jennifer commented that her first thought was her passport. "I don't want to have to go through getting one of those again!" 

Linda has a file with most of the important info. But other than that? Not really much. Oh, yeah. The Cat. 

It just goes to show how little is truly necessary to keep going. And that a "go bag" isn't probably necessary as long as you have the important steps already mapped out and some kind of warning. 

A little excitement. Electricity went out around 4:00. Then airplanes came flying close over our house. Neighbors all out on the sidewalk, some with apps showing the Euston Fire only two miles away, with a "Be Set" to leave notification.

Around 8:30, electricity came back on, but still on a "Be Ready" notification. However, they seemed to be saying the fire isn't progressing, so...

 

For the first time, I'm going to be taking money out of my retirement account. The Catbus and traveling costs have caught up to me. But I'm 72, so holding off this long is pretty good. I'll still be earning for another year and half, but after that it's a fixed income, baby.

Linda been drawing out for awhile now. She's four years older than me and when she retired, she retired, by God.  And good for her.

 

I think maybe I've gotten a week ahead of myself, at least for PRH, Scholastic, Book Depot, and S&S. My reasoning is, while Ingram shows up on the week I order, other distributors don't until ten days to two weeks later. 

I was more or less able to parse it out this week. The important number is the budget each week. So far, I'm a little in the  negative after the first six weeks of keeping track with a rolling average.  Not bad. 

We're ahead in sales and earnings. We're going to be spending a fair amount on product through the summer so we'll need to a boost. But no one has canceled Summer or Christmas yet.

 

I'm going to open up to the possibility of taking people's comic collections, if they want to donate them. You know, find them a good home. Our "Dungeon" is now open for business, and I'm giving Dylan some extra hours to work on back issues. I want to keep him, and I think we'd coasted a little too long on collectables. It's time to be proactive. 

 

Out of the blue, Dylan asked me if he recommend anyone be a writer as a career.

Without thinking, I said, "Oh, no.  Don't do that."

Then spent the next five minutes trying to explain myself. But the automatic "No" kind of surprised both of us.  

 

Big versus efficient.

Because of my experience with debt in the first half of my career, I now deduct what I spend from the budget when I order it, rather than when it comes due. This keeps me in check. Sometimes it doesn't come due until much later, but I can always be assured that it's covered in the budget. 

Throwing the door open to Simon & Shuster, Harper Collins, and Scholastic has complicated things immensely. This on top of already ordering from Ingram and Penguin Random House. 

When I first started ordering, it was strictly from Ingram. I knew exactly what I was spending and when it was due. But the profit margin was frozen at about 10 to 15% less than I could get from the publishers. 

Now I'm juggling multiple invoices, arrivals times, and due dates. Each of these publishers have their own accounting methods and procedures. It's taking time to learn the quirks, but it should get easier.

The thing is: I know I have the money. Because I spent it when I ordered. So however confusing it all is,  we're fine. I just like knowing where I'm at.

What's happening is that I'm relinquishing the fine tuning that I'm used to doing. Instead of constantly monitoring the inventory level, I moving to keeping track of the budget. A constant flow of books is replacing specific orders. Because there are more books coming in, I'm not worrying as much whether I have a particular book.

I think this is the direction the store has to go, if I'm not involved. I'm a bit obsessive about having every single title I think we should have as quickly as possible. Because of that I'm willing to spend hours and hours checking, ordering, and putting out everything as early as possible. 

But I don't think other people can be expected to be this way. 

I've always said, the big chains stores aren't efficient--they're big. They compensate by not have specific items by having tons of items. 

In a minor way, this is where we are transitioning. A constant flow of good material will have to work to replace a fine turned monitoring of each title. Anything else will burn out anyone who doesn't enjoy the process as much as I do. 

I'm going to increase my public blogs. I think it's part of my "practicing for retirement."

I believe this is going to mean turning somewhat inward. So instead of meeting people in my store, I'll be doing more online. This, at a time, when Facebook is becoming fairly useless. So I'm going to ruminate more here, instead of doomscrolling, which I'm wont to do.  

Of course, this means perhaps revealing what a horrible person I am. I won't know I'm doing that, of course. I'll be trying to be reasonable, but if I'm horrible I'm horrible in ways I may not be aware of. 

 

Apparently, AI stories are starting to flood Amazon.

The bookstore owner in me says, "Great! All the more authenticity for my store. Come to Pegasus and get the real thing!"

The indie writer in me is sad. The vast majority of my sales have been online.

It appears to be the future, either way. 

State of the Store.

We're ahead of last year in the first five months by 20%. At this rate, this will be a record year. I don't know what to make of that. Especially with all the uncertainty on the national level.

Some of that is because I decided to go harder on making sure the store was inventoried to the very highest level possible. Some of that is the popularity of Pokemon. 

We've also tried hard to pay more attention to back issue comics, which really paid off this month. I've opened up the Dungeon room downstairs. It's not organized, but that's part of it's appeal. Instead of setting a price before the customers go downstairs, I tell them, "We'll negotiate at the cash register. I promise I'll try to be generous..."

Books continue to climb, though not quite at the rate they were for the first four years since Covid. Games and toys have more or less slowed down. I'm not trying terribly hard to goose them. I'm maintaining, at this point.

I believe I've made a lot of decisions that have turned out well. I went all in on Pokemon and Magic at a time when they seemed on the verge of becoming a fad. I'm willing to risk that it could all come to abrupt halt because I know that the product will still be viable years from now. Meanwhile, sales are rocketing. I've played this "shortage, FOMO" game before. Lots of experience and it's paying off. 

I've now got accounts with four out of the six most important publishers: the Big Five and Scholastic. I'm going to hook up with MacMillan as soon as I've figured out all the kinks with Simon and Shuster and Harper Collins. Their systems are somewhat antiquated, not entirely easy to deal with. But for the extra ten to fifteen percent discount, it's worth the effort. I think.

I'm trading ease and timeliness for discounts. But it will become easier over time, I assume. And since I'm now ordering a constant flow of books from different sources, I'm not sure the timeliness is quite as important, plus I can always order the "hot" current book from Ingram while waiting for it to arrive from the publisher. 

Instead of "practicing retirement," as Sabrina suggested, I seem to be fully engaged. 

I came home really tired last Sunday, and after resting awhile, I started ordering books. I realized that ordering books is relaxing for me. It's not a chore, I find it fun and interesting--and I can do so in a quiet, peaceful way. 

Everyone has work they like and work they don't like I guess. In helping Hannah with her store, I've realized that what works for me won't necessarily work for her and vice versa. Obvious, I suppose, but I do things that I absolutely KNOW work and I want to pass that along.

For instance, I figure that half the books we sell are books that are facing out: part of this is because the books are already hot and we want people to see them. But a large part of it is that seeing the cover is the trigger.

I asked Sabrina what percent of the books we sell are face out, and she said, "Maybe half...?" Which was the exact percentage I landed on. Hannah has decided she wants her books more orderly looking and who's to say she's wrong?

Anyway, feeling energized. I'd like to say I'm being cautious, but the very spurt we're getting right now can pay for whatever crash happens, so no reason not to keep being aggressive.  I'm 72 years old and I feel like I do this for another twenty years. But...time (and Sabrina and Linda) disagrees. 

Trying to get down to 170 for my yearly doctor appointment next week. Why it matters, I'm not sure.

170.4 this morning.

I was very disciplined yesterday. I'm more or less turning to my "Sandwich Diet." That is, I have a sandwich (300) calories at Noon, 2:00, 4:00, 6:00, with a salad (300) in-between (sandwiched, as it were.) I allow myself to switch out one sandwich for 300 calories of snacks. (I often am not hungry until 2:00, so I can skip the noon. Or I can skip the 8:00 one. The point is to not ever really get hungry. Two sandwiches within two hours of each other gets me through. 

This gets old pretty fast, but for a week or two, it's very effective. 

What are you trying to prove?

 

I'm 40% the way through a long book and I'm suddenly losing interest. 

Years ago, I tried reading The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The premise I took away from it was that if one was the own and ride a motorcycle, it behooves you to know all about how a motorcycle works and to be able to fix it yourself. And that should apply to all aspects of your life.

Hooey. 

Screw that. I just want to ride a motorcycle. If I want it fixed, I'll take it to an expert. And that applies to all aspects of my life. I'll earn my money in my area of expertise and pay people for their area of expertise. That's more or less the definition of an economy. 

So I'm reading the book, "A Walk in the Park," about a complete walk-through the Grand Canyon, something that apparently few people have done. The first part of the book talks about the geology, the wildlife, the history and other interesting stuff about the area.

But about 40% of the way through, it suddenly becomes Extreme Sport, and boy, that turns me off.  

There's a recent picture of the traffic jam at the top of Mt. Everest. Why the fuck would anyone want to climb Mt. Everest now? Inexplicable to me. 

I'm not interested in super-techies, or super athletes, celebrity culture, etc.  Normal life and normal living, that the life for me. For fucks sake.

Are Pokemon and Magic becoming a bubble?

The thing about a bubble is that it's very difficult to know. Almost by definition, you're inside the bubble. You have to do a mental jujitsu where you purposely place yourself outside the bubble, which is easier said than done. But I'm going to try.

There are distinct signs of a bubble. Increasing brands, increasing gimmicks, increasing prices. People hoarding product, speculators, sell-outs when offered, influencers trying to get everyone excited, and so on. 

But the biggest indication of a bubble is more intuitive. Simply put: does this seem completely off-the-wall, batshit crazy?

Thing is, you really DO know it when you see it. 

For instance, the housing prices in Central Oregon are high and are rising. But, whereas I just KNEW there was a housing bubble in the early aughts that continued to get crazier and crazier, I don't think prices alone are an indication of a bubble. I think there is high demand currently in Central Oregon, and while the market is obviously being manipulated to some extent, it's nowhere near as nuts as it was back then.

Prices pretty much need to double and triple and quadruple in a short time for something to be a bubble to me. For instance, in early 1994, I realized that my comic orders were double in cost than what I'd earned in retail the previous year. (In other words, I was ordering 4 times the product to fill the presumed demand.)

I should have trusted my instincts.

I'd already been through one bubble in the late 80s. Sports cards had doubled each year for four years in a row, and then--for us at least--it collapsed. That was my first bubble. I always say, everyone gets one bubble that isn't their fault. All bubbles after that are on your own head.  

After the comic collapse, I got pretty canny about how to deal with bubbles. We did very well with pogs, beanie babies, and the first incarnation of Pokemon, because I understand the dynamics and was able to benefit without being hurt. 

Since then, while I've seen hot product come and go, I don't believe we've experienced a bubble since.

So far I'm coming down on the side of Magic and Pokemon being very hot, but I won't be entirely surprised if the market collapses. The difference is, like comics, there were be a continued demand for Pokemon and Magic, though perhaps at a much more steady pace.

I'm good with a steady pace. If I have to absorb the overstock for the next couple years--or even let Sabrina get the benefit later on--we'll be fine. We have the resources to withstand a collapse. 

Meanwhile, I admit I'm just as much a gambler as some of my customers; I just have more experience at it.

Mr. Know-it-All.

I decided for my last two years of owning Pegasus Books that I'd stick to a strict budget per week for product. It occurred to me the other day that there should be a way to keep track of this. The term "running average" came to mind and out of curiosity, I looked it up.  

Turns out, there's something called a "rolling average," exactly what I was looking for. 

Now I've tried to stick to budget for 40 years and never really succeeded. The way I did it was set the budget, write it down, and subtract until it was gone. But that only accounted for that week. Any time I spent less or more, slid under the radar. 

And of course, I often spent more (and sometimes less) so that way of accounting didn't really work.

The rolling average is such a simple concept, I'm stunned that I didn't think of it years ago. (I realize how stupid this makes me sound...)

My point is: how much don't I know? What simple formulas am I missing? 

For instance, would I have ever figured out the Break-Even point equation on my own? (Fixed overhead divided by profit margin. duh.) I was sort of doing this crudely when I was handed the equation by the guy up at COCC. I've used that equation ever since. 

So I'm sure there are plenty of useful business tricks that I simply don't understand. It took me years to figure out how to measure cash-flow for instance. I mean, I sort of understood it instinctively, but never really put all the parts together. Basically, you can say this about everything I know about business. I understand a hazy intuitive version of the truth which is enough to help me survive, but not the precise mechanisms to make it easy. At least, not at first.

Such stuff seems utterly obvious in hindsight, but I have had to figure them out all by myself. (One of the first things I had to learn was that just because everyone else seemed to be doing something didn't mean it would work for me.)

Would taking business classes or reading business books have helped? Based on my experience with business books, I doubt it. Sure, every 100th idea would be applicable to what I do, but I wouldn't know which idea works until I've already experienced it.

I had that experience with the only business book I ever felt helped me: "Growing a Business," by Paul Hawken. But even then, I only understood the book's value because I'd already experienced many of the pitfalls he was pointing out. 

The business guy up at COCC said I had a "primitive sophistication." I think this figuring stuff out on my own stuff is exactly that. But I don't know what I don't know.

My basic approach has been to to simplify everything as much as possible. When I look out at the world of bookstores, it seems like everyone else is taking the opposite approach. I'm comfortable with what I'm doing and it's working well--the last five years have been the best years by far. 

I'm an old dog, and I'm not really looking for new tricks now. But I really wish someone out there could cut through all the BS that business books and classes put out and give newcomers the simple equations and procedures that would help them survive. 

My guess is that not enough small business owners would buy such a book. 

Because we're all "Mr. Know-it-Alls."