Why we carry what we carry, Part II

Ordering is both a matter of math and of intuition. 

The math accounts for most of your orders: I check the inventory of new titles and if the wholesaler has enough faith in a title to carry a large backstock, I am more likely to order. Every week I look over the coming titles and try to order what I consider to be the most important.

For us, that accounts for about 20% of our orders, while the other 80% is restock or books that appeal to me. I'm fairly certain this equation can be reversed for most indie bookstores--that is, most of the weekly arrivals in most stores will be the newest new book, and probably only 20% are midlist. I won't go into all the reasons for this again, but it seems to be our reality.

The intuition part is more fun. It's a matter of, "How clever can I be? What mix of books will both appeal to people and also make our store unique?"

Every store is probably tailored to the owner's interests, at least those still in charge of humans and not algorithms. We all have our biases and our favorites. The test, in a way, is to see if what your favorite is popular enough to sell to others.

Way back in high school speech classes, I listened to a senior expound on the idea that if you like something there's a good chance that others will like it too. That seems to be generally true. Not everyone, but if you aren't too far off the mainstream, enough to keep you going. Or more to the point--the average thing goes by without notice. but there's a good reason you like something enough to mark it.

So I trust my instincts. 

One of the first things I did when first buying new books is start getting titles that I remember liking. I've read a lot of books in my life and I've settled on authors I like, books I adore, and books that intrigued me. 

So that's a good start.

Then I started listening to the customers. I find that almost any book that a customer asks for is something that might be worth carrying. I have to be careful that it isn't something odd that only that one person likes, but you can usually tell. A little research will either confirm or raise doubts.

So I order that requested title and often it will sell to someone else as soon as it arrives and I have to order again in case the original customer comes back. 

I also listen to my quirks. I can't tell the number of times I've ordered something that I was fairly certain only I was interested in only to have a delighted customer find it. That's cool.

I'm partial to art books, for instance. They don't sell fast, but I still like having them around. They make me feel good. 

I guess the point of all this is to say that it's important to have product you can stand behind, even if it isn't the most popular thing around. That's what make it interesting. 

Why we carry what titles we carry.

I went into this a little with the last Pegasus Books post, but thought I'd add some detail.

Because for the first half of our existence we were a comic, card, game, toy store , it's been difficult to get most of the local population to understand that we've added so many new books. This affects what and how we order books.

To put it plainly, the locals don't seem to think of us when it comes to the new bestselling releases each week. As a result, I may sell, at first, one or two copies of these big sellers instead of dozens. We're not the type of store where you will find stacks of the same title. 

The thing is, I can always order more.

What I find is that I will indeed sell the bestsellers, but more often to tourists and newcomers to Bend. Not sure why that is, but that seems to be the case. Fortunately, downtown Bend attracts exactly those customers. 

By luck and happenstance, the main wholesale book distributor (Ingrams) has a warehouse in Oregon. If I order a title before noon, I will get it the next day. So I'm only one to two days from replacing titles. My strategy is to carry smaller quantities of each title knowing I can quickly replace them.

Do I miss sales? Probably, but the other side of this equation is that I'm rarely left with any overstock. So few are leftover that I don't actually ever send books back. 

In other words, I try to be timely and efficient. Get what sells and keep ordering it. 

The other reason I don't send books back is that I get a higher discount from Penguin Random House, the biggest publisher in America. PRH and the publishers they distribute, account for about a third of all the books I order. Unfortunately, the PRH warehouses are back east so it takes a week to ten days to get a shipment.

I'm constantly weighing whether to order on a timely basis from Ingram or a higher discount from PRH. 

Because we don't churn new bestsellers like most bookstores, I try to make up for it by having the broadest selection of books I can, with an emphasis on what are termed "mid-list" books. In other words, instead of having twenty copies of this moment's bestseller, I'll carry a couple and then have eight other titles instead. Broad and thin inventory. 

This allows me to experiment with lots of titles. I cast the net as wide as possible. I'm constantly on the lookout for a midlist book that will sell. When I find one, I add it to the perennials that I keep in stock. 

This also separates Pegasus Books from most corporate stores and even most indie bookstores. We carry a selection of books that is unique to us.

For instance, we have strong SF/Fantasy (as might be expected), Horror, Mystery, and Classic books sections. Lots of YA graphic novels (as might be expected), and even Western and Romance novels. We're considerably more genre oriented than most bookstores.

But we also carry the more literary books--indeed, we probably experiment more with titles than even those stores that specialize in them. 

I admit. I want to be taken seriously as an indie bookstore, while at the same time, I want to seem quirky and unique. 

Frankly, I don't think I can help it.