T.V. versus books.

I'm reading at a two book a week pace so far this year, which is double the number last year.

I'm doing this mostly by avoiding junk and random T.V. I'm watching the 'scheduled' shows that Linda and I watch together, and avoiding everything else.

Mondays: House and Castle. (Sometimes Antique Roadshow).
Tuesdays: The Good Wife.
Wednesday: (Sometimes Nova.)
Thursdays: CSI. Las Vegas, The Mentalist.
Fridays: Fringe.
Saturdays:
Sundays:

We also watch Tru Blood and Dexter Boardwalk Empire and Spartacus when they're on. Linda and I are really looking forward to the Game of Thrones mini-series. (The Song of Fire and Ice series is, in my opinion, the second best fantasy series ever written...)

I'll tape the Bill Maher show, and watch the beginning and ending, and skip the 50 minutes of discussion in the middle.

Oh, and I watch Jon Stewart every night. It's how I get my T.V. news, now.

That's still a lot of T.V., but not as much as in the past. Without all the big cable series being currently on, it me quite a few extra hours to read or do other things.

(On the other hand, the Sunday New York Times takes me a couple billion extra hours to read...)

Short book reviews.

Short reviews:

Well, more like short impressions. Writing a thoughtful review is hard.

WORTH DYING FOR, Lee Child.

Kind of funny -- the previous book ended in such a way that you couldn't figure out how Jack Reacher survives.

Other than him having sore arms, this book just ignores that. Heh. That's one way of writing yourself out of a corner.

Once again, Reacher gets into trouble in his wanderings -- (it's getting to be more and more a 'reach' for him to find such trouble.) I think Child is at his best when he is writing about middle America, maybe a little stereotypical but very colorful characters, so I enjoyed this book.

SILENCE, Thomas Perry.

I've said it before, I think aPerry is the best lessor known mystery writer out there. This wasn't one of my favorites, but I enjoyed it. The guy writes a hell of a plot, and has a sneaky sense of humor.

THE MOURNER and DEADLY EDGE, Richard Stark.

These books are 200 pages long, and just the right length. Straightforward hard boiled fiction. They don't write them like this anymore.

No, really. They don't write them like this anymore.

BLACKWATER SOUND, James W. Hall.

This author is a little hit or miss for me, but this was one of his better ones. Beach bum, Thorn, is out fishing when an airliner drops out of the sky into his fishing hole. Can't completely relate to the fishing and boating ethos --

SIXTY DAYS AND COUNTING, Kim Stanley Robinson.

Washington D.C. is under water, and the rest of the east coast is following.

The third book of a global warming near future science fiction trilogy. I read the second book without knowing it was the middle, and I think it would've served me just fine. Robinson tends to do a little too much soap opera for my taste.

ANANSI BOYS, Neil Gaiman.

Magic realism, American style. I'm not sure why I held off reading this book for so long, because I love Gaiman's writing. This was a bit more humorous and light hearted than I expected, but sometimes that's the best kind of fantasy. I'm still thinking his comic series, SANDMAN, is his masterpiece, no matter how successful he becomes in the book world.

WARLORDS OF REPUBLICAN ROME, Nic Fields.

Already pretty much reviewed this earlier. Spoiler -- Caesar meets a bad end. Pompey loses his head.

REQUIEM FOR AN ASSASSIN, Barry Eisler.

New author for me, about the assassin, John Rain. I liked it enough to try another one. Not as geo-politically serious as the Dan Silva books, but similar in plot mechanics.

The morality of these characters is interesting -- a for hire assassin, is -- well, a strange person to root for...

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PETER AND MAX, Bill Willingham.

Set in the world of the FABLES comic book series, I'd have to say this is my favorite novel so far this year. Lots of fun, very imaginative and different.

But...I have to admit, I actually listened to it, rather than read it. It took three trips to finish the book, because I can only take so much of that at a time.

I must admit I enjoyed it.

But I'm still going to read my books, instead of having them performed for me.

Promotions are like Rogaine...

...the minute you stop using them, they stop being effective.

Eventually, unless you keep spending the money and slopping the stuff on your head, you're stuck with the hair follicles you got -- weak and sparse as they may be. And you are stuck with the business you got, weak and sparse as it may be.

This may seem like an argument to keep doing promotions, but I'm saying the opposite. I'm saying, get your foundations strong and quit wasting all your time and energy on the extras.

For unlike hair, a store can strengthen it's roots, and create new ones. That is, you know, if you don't waste too much money on promotions and advertising.

I seem to spend a lot of time on this blog trying to argue with common wisdom's, at least those that contradict my own experience.

The biggest of these is the effectiveness of promotions and advertising.

This time, I think I'll approach this from a different angle. I won't deny that these things can be effective -- but I will question the "cost" effectiveness of most. By cost, I also include: Time, Energy, and Space. By the time you include all costs, I figure most promotions are more trouble than they're worth.

About the only current promotion I do, is the Free Comic Book Day on the first weekend of May. This has been, by all outward accounts, a huge success. And yet, I could make a pretty good case that it has been mostly ineffective. I get a big turn out on that day, but I'll be damned if I can see that it has created any new regular customers. In fact, as far as my subscriptions are concerned, I can't think of one.

This event costs me several hundred dollars a year (the "Free" comics aren't free for me, just much reduced in price.) I usually am paying to have an extra employee on hand, as well. You know, to hand out the free comics.

It's fun and all that.

But effective?

My feeling about most costs involved in advertising and promotions is that you would do better to get new or better product, or do an improved everyday job. (And you can ALWAYS get better or new product, or do an improved everyday job.)

Any promotion you do -- signings, events, music, whatever -- are labor intensive, and can quickly become rather stressful and time-consuming. To me, they distract from the main job I do, which to sell product on a day to day basis.

Street events? Don't get me started.

I think the benefits of most promotions and advertising are illusionary, and foisted upon us small retailers by the purveyors and the users. I believe that some small business owners get so caught up in promotions that they forget to do their job.

And any effectiveness you do get, is at the cost of time and energy and space, which is just as precious as money. Maybe more so. I'll say it again: I think as many or more businesses quit because of time and energy issues -- stress -- as money. (Though they are all inextricably linked.)

Storekeepers start to get a glimmer that it just isn't fun any more, but they don't know how to get off the promotional bandwagon. Customers have come to expect you to entertain them. Product? Oh, yeah. They might buy some of that, too. As long as you aren't being TOO entertaining....

And I'm saying this after 31 years of business, with the last five years being my most profitable, and at a point where I feel my store is solid. Good location, good inventory, longevity -- all those things count.

Balloons and clowns and music? Not so much.


O.K. O.K.

I admit. It's a bit of an overstatement. Obviously advertising works for some people; obviously having events can be beneficial to your business. I would hate to dissuade anyone from effective promotions. But I'm arguing that that should come second, not first. What I read on sites like Shelf Awareness seems to me to be strongly in the other direction.

But I think it's the wrong focus. If you want to do special events, and you can afford them or have people in your employ that want to do them and you can afford the extra hours, and you have space and time and energy, by all means...

But ... if your fundamental business isn't working, it won't save you. Bottom line, you need to sell product.

What I've discovered over the years is a brutal truth: you can't beat cheaper prices with bells and whistles (including all the free events you want). You have to find other ways. Having something the other guy doesn't have, is the best way. Being in a good location. Having face to face contact, knowledge, and enthusiasm.

Customer loyalty is gained in a number of ways -- and all of them are good. But it's better to recognize that even loyal customers will buy elsewhere, frequently, without your permission....

Yet....it seems like every interview with a bookstore that I read on Shelf Awareness, when they're asked what makes them different, what is going to help them survive; they'll rattle off:
social events, coffee shops, e-book access, and so on and so on. Books always seem to appear fairly far down the list, if they're mentioned at all. Like they're an afterthought, instead of the whole ball of wax.

What happens is all these bookstores are told that if they are public oriented; a 'third space' for people to gather, to have writer's coming to the store, or music, or reading groups or....whatever...that it will distinguish them from the big box stores, or Amazon, or the Kindle.

But it hasn't worked. Demonstrably hasn't worked. There are huge independent stores who've done all the above, plus work online, plus serve coffee and crumpets -- and they've gone out of business. Small bookstores all over America who has thought of themselves as public service arena's -- have gone out of business.

Because, they in a sense, have fooled themselves into trying to buy customer loyalty by entertaining them, by giving them free events. And they've focused on that, because that's what every other indy bookstore is doing, or telling them to do. It makes them keep late hours, and adds to their cleaning bills, and adds employees and hours, and stress and what to keep track of and.....

It's group think at it's worse.

Because, based on the number of stores that have gone out of business, it hasn't worked.

Any yet, if anything, the indies are doubling down -- proclaiming even more public services and promotions and gimmicks. Because, all the stuff they've been doing hasn't been working, so they'll do twice as much of it.

Make no mistake, bookstores are in the fight of their life. But it's as if you knew that a tiger was coming your way, and instead of running and climbing a tree, or sharpening a stick and laying in a supply of sharp rocks, that you decided to distract the tiger by blowing bubbles.

You were told this worked by the guy the next valley over (never mind he got et.)

Look, if people are buying books because of price and convenience and selection -- it doesn't matter how many concerts you have, because when it comes time to buy a book, the customers will buy from whomever is cheapest, easiest and has the mostest.

So you have to realize that, and work around it. Instead of spending all your time trying to create a warm and fuzzy 'local' resource.

Great. But what about the books?

It seems to me that most indie bookstores have mistaken the promotion for the business. Promotion is ON TOP of whatever business you're doing, but it can't make up for a lack of business. So all that time, energy and money you're spending on promotion and advertising and coffee and tea, might be money you should be using to improve your fixtures, or your in-store service, or your inventory.

You know -- books.

It's all about the books.

It's my store, and I'll do what I want.

What the Utility of Extra points to, in my opinion, is the supremacy of product.

A store works if it sells product.

I spend most of my time trying to find, to afford, and display product.

I was just reading an article online that was talking about the future of brick and mortar stores.
It advised, more or less, that stores mimic the online experience, adopt the online techniques, bring online into the store.

The article advises that store tailor their business to the future tastes of the customers.

For me, this is exactly wrong.

I call that chasing the customer.

Instead, what I prefer to do, is create the setting, fill it with what I think is neat stuff, and hope that there are enough customers who like what I have that I stay in business.

It comes from the inside out, not the other way around.

Oh, I adapt the store to the response, but ultimately, the original impulse comes from me. That's what I like about it. I could sell widgets based on some sort of foreordained plan, like say a franchise, and that would be incredibly boring. Like working for someone else.

Nothing pleases me more than finding a really neat thing, getting it in the store, and then seeing that really neat thing discovered by the public. I can't tell you the number of times I've brought something in that no one has heard of, only to have a flurry of articles come out about that really neat thing that no one had heard of. And I have it. Already in the store.

In other words, my job is to find the really neat stuff, and then expose it and proselytize it, until other people also realize it's really neat.

I think the future of brick and mortars will be to create a unique experience -- to carry stuff no one else has, with a different focus and mixture. And that pretty much has to come from the owner. He has to seek out that material, find a way to afford it, find a way to display it.

Best-seller lists, are a great example. Everyone else has the same books. Probably at cheaper prices.

But a unique title, or author, or subject matter, or even cover -- something that isn't on the Amazon website unless you already know about it, physically present and talked about by a flesh and bone person. THAT'S the future of bookstores.

It so happens, that's the same response I had to the big chainstores. So ironically, many of the small mom and pop's are already doing what they need to survive the digital future.

Keep on being a real, physical, brick and mortar store -- don't try to copy the online experience -- go the opposite direction.

If nothing else, you'll enjoy it more.

The Utility of Extra

Time was, I would only order something for the store if I was pretty darn sure I could sell it.

Time was, I would only order in quantities that I was pretty darn sure I could sell.

Time was, I felt an item needed to have effective display space; that I didn't want it lost in the shuffle, at least on first arrival.

Time was, if an item had to be stored in the basement because it didn't sell and was getting shopworn, and was taking up space -- I considered it a failure.

Nowadays, I don't sweat it. It doesn't bother me to file a product and see it disappear into a wall of merchandise.

I don't demand absolute certainty that an item will sell.

I don't order so much on the basis of how much will sell, as price and availability.

I don't try to guess the customer's mind so much as fill the store with product I think is pretty good stuff, and maybe unique, and something that no one else is selling.


Extra -- sad to say for the landfills of America -- works.


Nowadays, I buy on an overall budget. If I'm doing a good job, selling enough, and getting a good enough margin, this budget might actually be more than I actually need to just satisfy current demand.

This is a huge, huge luxury, let me tell you, and is only possible because I already have an excess of product. The more I have, the more I sell. I throw ten items that might sell at you, instead of one or two items that I'm pretty sure will sell (which are among the ten items, by the way.)

I mean, I still use my experience and judgment and instincts to know what kind of extra I should buy, but I'm not afraid of the idea of 'extra.'

I think its basically impossible to measure the synergy of product -- the gauge the effect of one product on another. To actually accept not selling one thing, because that one thing might help sell three of another.

That said, I prefer small quantities of each item -- often, just one if I can get it. So by extra, I'm really talking about diversity. But...if I can get a good deal by buying caseloads, I'll do that too. I'm still kind of wrapping my brain around that.

This is one of those thought pieces where I'm just trying to figure something out, and not sure I'm making sense.

I just know that if you get enough 'extra' you tend to sell enough to get by; the long tail at work.

I had an interesting experience over the last two months.

In January, I decided to spend pretty much the entire 'extra' budget of the first two quarters;
that is, the portion of the budget that is beyond the basic ordering.

So I more or less ordered six months worth of games and books.

Sales did not go up.

In February, I didn't make any reorders, except to take advantage of "sale" product.

Sales did not go down.

The store is deep enough and wide enough, that sales have pretty much stabilized. Which in a way, has always been my goal. I don't miss the surges -- just like I don't miss the precipitous drops.

Tuesday tidbits.

Rango.

Charming movie, fun characters (half the fun is trying to figure out who all the flea bitten critters are), nice -- no great -- animation.

Not a huge number of laugh out loud moments, and not as deep and moving as Up! or Toy Story(s).

But a clever movie.

It's also probably the most self-aware, meta-movie I've ever seen.

It literally draws the frame of the picture twice. (And how about Clint's Oscars?)

***********

Yep. Not a good idea for the DA to go after the Bulletin.

Today's story of new Deputy DA hire Horton, who has lost property to foreclosure and still owes back property taxes.

I think the thing that bothered me the most is that he lives in Pronghorn. I'm sure he'll be looking out for the little guy.

**********

Come on, now. I'm pretty sure that Libya doesn't account for .50 worth of gas (17th largest producer).

Getting screwed again by the gas companies.

And those poor deluded Tea Partiers have been duped into going after government, instead of the real villains -- Corporations.

They own us.

**********

The freakin' Barnes and Nobel stock has dropped off the face of the earth. At this point, it's overkill. They were still earning a profit the last I heard. I suspect this is going to have to come back a bit. I'm just hanging in there, trying to avoid selling at the low.

**********

Wow. The highest selling comic title in February was Green Lantern #62, all of 71 K copies. I can't begin to tell you how bad that is. I mean, that's really down there....

**********

The writer of Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman, wants to hire Charlie Sheen.

As what, head zombie?

**********

Hack Bend is asking about the status of El Jimador.

I noticed that Wabi Sabi has moved into the space that was Maryjane's and that Maryjane's now has the same address as C.C. McKenzie.... So are they sharing space? This is minus one storefront, even if they are all still in business. Not sure how to specify that on my Comings and Goings list.

Anyone know what's going on?

Bookstores opening and closing.

POSTSCRIPT: I've decided not to do this. Unlike downtown Bend where I can see with my own two eyes who's opening and closing, this seems too muddy. Too many variations -- movings, consolidatings, expandings, changings, etc. to be clear cut.


It seems like just about every week, a bookstore is closing, according to the website, Shelf Awareness.

Then again, just about every week, a bookstore is opening.

I'm very tempted to start up a list of Openings and Closings for Bookstores, since no one else seems to be doing it. Only this time, a national list.

Of course, I don't think Shelf Awareness is making any pretense about being a complete accounting; there are probably stores opening and closing under their radar. Still -- it might be revealing.

I'm going to go ahead and start the list, and then post it at the beginning of every month; starting with March, 2011 entries.

I'm leaving the above as a permanent introduction:

BOOKSTORES OPENING:

Heirloom Book Company, Charleston, SC, 3/4/11.

BOOKSTORES CLOSING:

Emerson and Cook Book Company, Old Saybrook, Connecticut, 3/7/11. (38 years).