You have to acknowledge problems before you can correct them.

A major comic retailer (link at bottom) recently posted a column about the troubles with periodical comics. These are obvious, long-running problems that only seem to get worse. Too many titles, too expensive, too much duplication, too many variant covers, and on and on. Basically, DC and Marvel using gimmicks for short term profits at the cost of  long run growth of monthly comics. 

Everything he says is totally true and obvious. It doesn't mean comics are dying, or that there isn't great stuff being done--it's just pointing out things that could be corrected.

As usual, there are trolls (anonymous, of course) who attack this message. They call the retailer a whiner and accuse him of turning off customers by his complaints. 

I call these guys Quislings. They are basically the "love it or leave it" crowd.  Dummies. Attacking the messenger doesn't help anyone.

These anonymous trolls say they are retailers themselves, (I have my doubts: in fact they sort of out themselves by suggesting that cutting back to a one person store is a solution) but if so, they aren't long for this retailing world. They are part of the problem. I suspect their anonymity is an unconscious admission of their own doubts.

Simply put: you have to acknowledge problems before you can correct them. 

Or even more to the point, by not acknowledging the problem you aren't going to make the necessary choices to survive. Putting on blinders and sticking your fingers in your ears and humming a happy tune isn't going to help. 

I saw this exact same phenomenon in the downward slide of sports cards, pogs, beanie babies, and every other product line that has ever crashed and burned. There were always warning signs: there was always the possibility that the problems could be corrected. 

But,..the more problems, the more deniers. The Quislings only get louder the closer to the end,

Funny thing is, no one is paying attention to all this retail stuff anyway, except other retailers. 

In the end, if you see a problem, you try to fix it. The Quislings only muddy the waters, give excuses, and cover for the Big Guys. In the end, it's they who suffer consequences. 

https://www.comicsbeat.com/tiilting-at-windmills-293-whats-wrong-with-the-periodical-comics/?fbclid=IwAR1b6yFoMbxTF5C2X7BJg4fMGhaYy0OubbcER_8KqPzzghoCh2hHs1HBaV0 

I used to be so in touch with the marketplace that I knew of the possibility of competition before it happened. I once took a a guy out to lunch for the sole purpose of talking him out of opening a shop. It was a smaller town then and I probably had a monopoly on most product I carried. A monopoly that I probably really needed. I swear for that first decade or two the store existed through sheer stubborn force of personality.

Nowadays, competition can open and I might not be even aware of them for three or four months! I've tried very hard to diversify to a point where I'm not dependent on any one product line. But in backing away from the intensity I've probably stepped out of the loop somewhat. 

Which is totally OK and mostly on purpose. I realized at some point that the store wasn't really functional until it could exist without that intensity--what I call "heavy lifting." Whether sweat or time or tears or energy or blood or space, the store needed to be able to function without using every bit of it up. 

I have the ability now to adjust to present circumstances. If a product line stops selling as much as it once did, why it frees up money to spend on other product lines. There are always improvements to be made. If you're in the middle of a desert and your horse is dead, stop kicking it and get a camel. 

Almost all the business advice I read or hear is wrong. Which would explain why most businesses fail. 

When I went up to COCC for some small business advice, I got an adviser who really knew what he was doing. He gave me some tips, some good advice, and some help getting a loan. 

It wasn't until years later that I realized how lucky I was. The guy was a real expert, with experience and common sense, whose advice was tailored to my circumstances. I wish I could remember his name to thank him.

As I commented on the parking garage post, God help us from bureaucratic experts who are in fact idiots. Real experts are rare and a godsend. False experts are numerous and a pox upon us all. 

Automation is not always an improvement.

The parking garage payment system was stupid from the start. 

They improved it a bit, but the exit gate kept being broken. Unlike what they're saying in the newspaper, I don't think it was because people wouldn't pay but because they couldn't figure out the way to Get Out.

 

They've gone to some kind of scanning license plate, pay upon leaving, credit card only system.

 

Also extremely dumb. 

 

I predict continued broken gates until they build a wall. Very friendly. 

 

Was paying the guys to go around and check by hand really so onerous?

 

Get this: the original system was to pick up a ticket upon entering. To leave, you had to go the the exact opposite corner of the garage, to a room that even I didn't know existed, redeem it there. 

 

You then had to go back to your car (which could levels away) and present the redemption at the gate. 

 

For the first few months, every time I parked I'd see some poor, lost soul wandering around with a ticket in hand. I'd give them quick directions, and wonder why the designers hadn't put the redemption station near the exit. 

 

Then, months later, they put finally put the redemption station near the exit. But the exit gate was almost never down, because people STILL couldn't figure it out and would break the gate just to get out. Every night upon leaving I feared I get behind some poor lost soul who was stuck behind the gate, cars piled up behind them, and so on. It would have been a lot worse, but the gate was always broken.

 

There were no gates the entire month of December, for instance. Automation is a great savings, eh?

 

Meanwhile, we still have parking people walking around downtown giving tickets who could easily cover the garage.

 

God help us from bureaucratic experts who are in fact idiots. An "expert" who is truly an expert is a rare godsend. An "expert" without real life common sense are numerous and a pox upon all us.

 

 

The Christmas Carnage.

Putting the store back together after the Christmas Carnage. Oh, it was horrible. The humanity! Oh, the humanity!

Once I start filling holes, I can't stop. I mean, there are always holes--that's what happens when you sell something. 

Stop buying! You're creating a hole!

I'll probably end up with more books than I had entering Christmas. In my first years of business I did what probably most people would do: I stocked up for Christmas and Summer and cut back during the slow months. 

At some point, I figured out I should be doing the opposite. During the busy seasons, people will buy whatever you have in the store. In the slow seasons, inventory is all that much more important. People are much more likely to be looking for a specific book.

Now, I've never thought people looking for a specific book are the most important buyers. I tend to cater to people who stumble across books (plural) they like. Amazon and B & N are more likely to have a specific book. But if I start carrying an author or a series that people like, I will usually go all in. Rather than have twenty different series of books with random titles in the sequence, I'll carry perhaps a few less series but with as much of the sequence as possible, concentrating especially on the first half dozen titles, and filling in as best I can.

So if I'm going to carry Vonnegut or Bukowski or PKD or Chuck Palanhniuk or Murakami or any other well-loved author, I'm going to carry as many as I can, all of them if possible. This fits with the constraints I have for space because I can horizontally double stack dozens of Agatha Christies or Louise Penny or Lee Child books in the same space that would hold only half a dozen books stocked vertically. 

I've gotten very good at using the space I have for maximum effect. 

So what ends up happening is that I get as stocked as I'm ever going to get even in the slow times, so that when I go into the busy months, I'm already there. 

I enjoy all this. It's fun to figure out what books I can carry, it's fun if they sell. 

I find that my own taste really seems to work. If I get a hankering for carrying Edward Gorey books or Frank Frazetta art books or want a section of Euro Style graphic novels by the likes of Mobius or decide to carry the random Van Gogh or Freda Kahlo or Pre-Raphaelite artist, then almost inevitably, someone will come in and be excited by their find. 

I can't be a snob, because no matter how esoteric I think something is, someone will always come in who knows exactly what I'm offering. It very reaffirming.

Anyway, as much work and expense filling the holes is, it's also fun and challenging. 

I'm expecting over 20 boxes of books today, and almost as many tomorrow. 

I will beg Arno, my UPS driver, forgiveness.

My friend, tech-wizard Aaron Leis, was at our house and noticed the stacks of book order sheets spread out over my desk and said, "That looks like a lot of work."

"Not really," I say. "I mean, it is, but I like doing it. Just ordering books I learn all kinds of new things, find all kinds of new connections." Wave my hands vaguely.  "All that."

How fortunate the person whose job's most tedious aspect is fun to them.

2022 at Pegasus Books.

I always love doing the end-of-the-year reckonings at the store. It clarifies where we are and where we need to go. I'll be somewhat vague about totals, but nevertheless I'll be honest about how things are going.

Overall, we were up 3% this year. But to put that in perspective, 2021 was a monstrous year for us: we were up 56%  from the previous high total in 2020. So to be able to do even better than that is impressive.

We would have been up 7% if not for the last two months of the year. We started to see a slowdown in November, which continued though not as far down in December. 

We were down 6% at Christmas, which for a corporation would be serious but for our small business is more of a rounding error. We managed to save (for taxes) exactly the same amount as last year, plus extra. When we reinvest the extra saving, our inventory will be back up to normal. 

Can't do much better than that, I think. 

Books and Graphic Novels are now about 2/3rds our total sales. I've tried to keep them as separate categories, but over the last few years that has been become almost impossible. I order a huge number of GNs through my book distributors and I tend to categorize them as books when ringing them up. 

What we've basically done is overlaid the equivalent of a second store over the existing one, while maintaining the same overhead. 

But that isn't to say that comics, games, and toys aren't also a critical part of the store. Probably the difference between break-even and actually turning a profit. 

Things are probably going to get tighter from here on. Overhead is definitely going to increase and I do believe there were be a recession in the coming months, but if budgeted properly, this shouldn't hurt us too much. We are well above the break-even point these days. 

Downtown is doing great, and the customer count continues to grow. More and more customers are discovering our book selection, and that is a welcome thing. We've probably reached peak capacity as far as inventory goes, but we can continue to  increase the quality of what we carry. 

In other words, there is no reason to make major changes. 

Most importantly, it's fun these days and I'm hanging in there as long as I can.