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.