In defense of Mid-List books.

First a little history and a definition of terms.

In the not too distant (for me) past (1992)  there were around 13,000 independent bookstores in America. These bookstores all ordered in advance, using their own judgements about what titles to buy with advice from reps and sometimes a media splash, though nothing like today.

Because of that, most books didn't have to be bestsellers to be profitable. You could sell a niche book that would find enough readers that it would turn a profit for the publisher. Out of these books, some would emerge as bestsellers. Those that didn't could be returned for credit.

It worked pretty well for mid-list books.

Barnes and Noble and Borders came and crushed the indies. By 2009, there were a mere 1600 indie bookstores left. What books the big bookstore chains selected to promote became the bestsellers and every other book an also-ran. Books became like movies: publishers looked for big bestsellers, umbrella books whose profits paid for all the other books. But the other books became fodder instead of stand alone profitable books. (Notice I don't blame Amazon. The damage was already done.)

Slowly, the indie bookstores are making a comeback(currently 3400 or more) ironically because they are still more likely to have an esoteric and curated selection of titles. 

But the big bestsellers dominate even here.  

We're a bit different. We really don't sell piles of new releases. Instead, I've tried my best to identify mid-list books that will constantly sell and try to always have them available. For as small a store as we are, we have a very high hit rate of having the title people are looking for.

I've never returned a book to the publishers or wholesalers. I sell them all or keep them.

For the longest time, pre-Covid, I wasn't even ordering bestsellers during the initial release. I'd wait to see what happened. Eventually, I made the jump but quickly found out that locals don't come to us to get the latest and the greatest. Having two or three copies of even the biggest bestsellers is usually enough especially since more often than not I could just reorder and get the book within a few days. 

For one thing, I didn't have a system in place to keep track of who wanted what and when. This was on purpose. While pre-ordering might seem like an easy thing to do, it's actually quite complicated, especially since you're more or less committed to delivering a book to the customer in a reasonable time when in fact you have no control of the supply or the timing of the shipping.

To avoid disappointing the customers, you have to put in larger, and sooner than you might like, orders with the publishers. This means, to reduce the risk, that you need a "return" ability. But returning books reduces the discount with the publishers. (Makes no difference with Ingram, but enough overall difference to make the whole procedure less useful.) 

When I look at the new release racks of other bookstores, I tend to have a mere majority of them in stock, somewhere around 60%. But when I look at the bestseller racks, we'll usually have more than 90% in stock. In essence, I'm waiting to see which books really do have momentum and then order them.

This means that occasionally I miss the boat. Ironically, the same titles I'm likely to sell out of, the other stores are also likely sold out of. They just sold more to get to that point. But to the customers, we're no more guilty of not having the hot book than the other stores are.

Yet, I'm fairly certain that we are matching a lot of these other stores in overall sales. My metrics for sales per foot and sales per employee and net profits are very high. I'll say no more, merely that we are doing very well. 

I think that I'm much more willing to identify and sell mid-list books that still have some life in them and to keep them in stock. I'm probably much more willing to reorder just about any books that sells in my store with the attitude that if it sold recently there's a damn good chance that I will sell it again.

This means that more of my weekly budget it tied up in mid-list books instead of stacks of new releases. Instead of ordering 50 copies of a hot new book, I can order 2 or 3 and then reorder 45 copies of books I've recently sold. Titles drop away naturally, either because a copy doesn't sell and thus doesn't necessitate a reorder or it goes out of print or it becomes unavailable for long enough for me to lose track. (The latter is admittedly an inefficiency.)  

I look backward a little more than most bookstores, finding titles that are still worthy, and surprisingly, these books often sell. I try to curate what I call "perennials." Books that sell again and again and again. One perennial will eventually outsell most bestsellers (and only a few bestsellers become perennials.)  So I I slowly but surely accumulate 50, then 100, then 500, and upward perennials, the sales start to flow. 

To me, this is better than gambling on new releases to the exclusion  of everything else. It also gives my inventory a uniqueness from other stores in my personal selection of titles. 

Obviously, I'm writing from my perspective, but I can tell you this--the results speak for themselves.  

Contrarian small business advice.

If I wasn't so lazy, I'd rewrite my small business book, "Small Business Survivalist Handbook: A Contrarian's Guide for Mom and Pops."  I wrote it on the fly, posted it on Amazon, and haven't looked at it since. I think I've maybe I've sold two copies.

I've learned a whole lot in the last fifteen years. I could make the book so much more insightful and useful.

For one thing, I've put a lot of my theories to the test. When Covid hit and we had to close down for awhile, I had two months to reboot the store. I took the opportunity to institute all the policies and practices that had been hit or miss in the previous thirty or so years. I stuck to my guns and waited to see what happened.

What's happened is that sales nearly tripled and we've earned more money in the last six years than we earned in the previous twenty-five years. More importantly, our profits quadrupled. 

When I wrote "Small Business Survivalist Handbook," I wrote it from the standpoint of, well, being a survivor, of being a scrappy underdog, but I didn't exactly claim success beyond that. I figured there were other people like me who weren't after a big score but simply wanted to be their own boss.  

I feel confident now that my advice would be good, that the average person who wanted to start a small business would learn from my failures and my successes. 

I recently wrote a blog (which I didn't post) that encapsulated the most important lessons I've learned: Seven Things Most Bookstores Do that I Don't do." I'd be willing to bet that there are very few stores that don't do at least five of the things I listed.  

If nothing else I should polish this up and insert it as either the prologue or epilogue of the book as it exists. It wouldn't hurt to go through and polish the rest of the book as well, though that could turn into a slog. 

But certainly, writing up my short essay and adding it would probably be immensely helpful.  

 

Interesting that there was so little reaction to "Things From Another World" quitting business. 

None of the usual. "Oh, that's a shame. I loved that place!" 

None of the usual. "Good! That place sucked!'

There was some non-nonsensical political comments on the TV website but that just goes with TV websites. Worst trolling I'm still exposed to. 

I guess I should be glad they changed the name from Pegasus to Things or everyone would see the wrong headline!

 

I happened to catch a reel with Springsteen and Melissa Etheridge singing Thunder Road and really liked it. So I put on the Born to Run CD in my car on the way to the store and Thunder Road sent chills down my spine for the entire tune, and did it again with Born to Run.   

A couple of days later I started watching The Burroughs on Netflix where Thunder Road plays an integral part in the overall plot.  

It being about old people, and playing a lot of old tunes, but Thunder Road was meant to get the old folk on their feet. Gotta say, I was 23 when I bought Born to Run, and it's my Deserted Island album, and I still  love the hell out of it.