Appearances can be deceiving.

Appearances can be deceiving. I'll often have a customer tell me how well another store is doing, but when they tell me why, I just have to shake my head.

Some of the indicators they are using to me actually indicate the opposite.

From inside a small business, it looks very different.

If you understand the metaphor of the Tortoise and the Hare, you need read no further.

(Note: I'm not saying I'm any smarter than these other businesses -- I made all the same mistakes, but because I didn't feel like I had any options I hung on to my business for dear life, and thus survived learning the hard way.)

O.K. Let me tell you about five businesses. Let's assume all of them start with 4K in overhead, including a payment for themselves; sales of 12K; and a profit margin of 50%.

So all these businesses start with an extra 2K.

The First business takes this money and fixes up their business. They get a state of the art Point of Sale system. They get new carpets and fancy fixtures. And so on.

From the outside, they appear to be prospering.

The Second business takes the money and buys a new car, new business clothes, goes on business trips at the drop of a hat, installs a full-time manager.

From the outside, they appear to be prospering.

The Third business takes that extra profit, and lowers their prices and rewards their customers.

From the outside, they appear to be prospering.

The Fourth business expands. They take over the space next door, or they open a second location.

From the outside, they appear to be prospering.

The Fifth business takes half of the surplus and buys more inventory. Since he had more than 60K in inventory, a thousand a month is barely noticeable. He sets aside the other thousand for a rainy day.

From the outside, it doesn't look like he's prospering.

Then comes the day when sales take a dive. And that DAY ALWAYS ARRIVES sooner or later.


Which of these businesses is going to survive?

Yep, the one that looks like they weren't doing much of anything.


Of course, no business is just one or the other. We are all a mix.

But we all have the same basic fundamentals. Location, overhead, employees, cost of goods, etc. etc. Those fundamentals can't be got around.

Rumors, portents and omens.

I have a friend who's looking to buy a house in the 200K range. He said, every time a house dribbles onto the market, it's bid up in price.

That's just crazy. And wrong. There have to be 1000's of houses in the Bend area that are eventually going to become available. But if the pretend and extend is only allowing 50 houses on the market at a time, and 75 buyers build up, then it looks like there is an inventory shortage.

It's being manipulated, obviously. I think it's systemic -- a slowdown from top to bottom. Everyone seems to understand that the longer this plays out, the longer they can keep their jobs. The longer they can stretch the process, the more money they can squeeze from underwater householders.

I don't believe the foreclosure crisis is anywhere close to resolving itself, despite noises from the local real estate businesses.

These guys are relentless and it's their business, and those of us who doubt their spin just kind of get tired of contradicting it. We eventually raised our eyebrows, shrug our shoulders, and say, "Whatever."

But I'm trying to keep up the good fight.

The idea that the shadow housing crisis is resolving itself in 2011 is equivalent to the ridiculous idea in 2007 that there was no housing surplus. Both statements could be back up by statistics -- and both statements are ludicrous to anyone paying attention. People still bought houses in 2007 based on the real estate assurances, though by that time people like me and BEM and Paul-doh and Buster had been blogging about the bubble for a couple of years. Then they bought houses in 2008 and 2009 under equally manipulated statistics.

People are amazingly naive. But a market depending on naive people isn't a good market. Just using Oregon statistics, for instance, as proof is being disingenuous. Bend isn't reflective of the Oregon real estate market -- we look more like the Las Vegas market. When Bend walks into the Oregon room, it drops the net wealth by a significant percentage.

My own impression is that not much has really changed in Bend. Rumors make me believe that whatever surplus money was floating around is drying up. There are times when you just have to trust your gut, no matter what the vacancy rate is, or what people are saying.

It reminds me a lot of the mid-80's when people would open businesses in Bend with great fanfare, only to fall the heavy weight of a depressed town a few years later. Eventually downtown scraped together a viable group of businesses, but it took nearly a decade. It also reminds me of when sports cards sales started to fall off the table in my store, while --by all appearances -- they were selling like gangbusters elsewhere. But my gut said it wasn't real money, and my gut was right.

Just so this won't be all my "gut" as proof, I give you the following from Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis blog from yesterday. The headline:

"Mortgage Default Notices Surge 33% Nationwide, 55% in California, 200% by Bank of America; Corresponding Jump In Foreclosures Will Follow."

His analysis:

"Housing will not bottom in many areas as long as there is a mile-high stack of foreclosures in the pipeline. Thus the faster forecloses increase the better. The bad news is this process will still take a long time.

Those numbers are distorted by various delays, yet even with the pickup in foreclosures, it may takes years to get back to normal."


I don't bring this all up so that you'll climb to the top of your roof and jump; it's meant to be a friendly reminder not to get ahead of yourself, buckle up, wait for true improvement before you do anything foolish.

The Bumpy Road.

"Home Prices Seesawing." Bulletin, 9/15/11.

Check out that graph; up one month, down the next, up the next, down the next.

A "Bumpy Road" graph is what I'd call that. If you could imagine the arc of your tires on a bumpy road, that's how it would look on a graph. Doesn't really tell you if the road is going up or going down.

The very epitome of bumping along the bottom.

Another headline trumpets that foreclosures are falling, but another headline talks about how stricter standards make it difficult to get a mortgage.

Look, I understand the desire to try to see a pattern in all this. As a retailer, I look at my month to month sales and try to get a read on the future.

But, really, I know better. For instance, I'm about to have three months in a row higher than the previous year, but...I'm not reading too much into it. It's mostly about bumping off previous lows.

My best advice to everyone is quit looking for a recovery. I think we're a long ways from that. And --believe me -- you'll know it when it is really happening. It's not really happening.

In the past market slowdowns (admittedly, I'm talking slowdowns in sales of product lines in my store) the sales didn't seem to recover until after I'd given up looking for them to recover.

Because by then, I'd gotten on with things, I'd found other ways to do my business, instead of forlornly waiting for things to change.

Have read all the DC New titles so far.

I've read all 26 of the new DC titles that have been released so far...

Which means the whole enterprise is either doomed or a wild success. Because I'm not the normal audience. I usually read really offbeat material, and it usually gets canceled. These are mainstream titles, and I liked them. Not sure if that bodes well.

Then again, I think the normal audience will like this, and I liked quite a bit of it.

Turns out, fresh continuity starts maybe what are needed after all.

I'm not a big superhero fan. My taste tend toward independents, or even more toward Vertigo titles and Icon titles; that is, non-superhero adventure, horror, fantasy, and S.F., with a mix of western and thrillers and so on.

But I found these 26 titles easy to read.

I have to say, if you had told me in advance that I would read all 26 titles without quitting any of them, I would have thought that was impossible. I have a low tolerance for superhero fights that seem senseless, but they had very little of that here.

Some of the stories, like Superman in Action, and Batman in Detective, and Hal Jordan in Green Lantern, pulled off the neat trick of being fresh starts, but not having to explain the well-known origins of the characters.


I'll give you the order in which I read them; which shows my interest in them, and then the order in which I liked them after I read them. But the 'like' rankings are kind of arbitrary, and I could probably easily switch the middle around without much difference.

1. Animal Man. (#9)
2. Batwoman. (#16)
3. Frankenstein, Agent of Shade. (#6)
4. Swamp Thing. (#11)
5. Red Lanterns. (#10)
6. Action Comics (#15)
7. Detective Comics. (#22)
8. Batgirl. (#4)
9. Men of War. #23)
10.Grifter. (#17)
11.Deathstroke. (#1)
12.Green Lantern. (#7)
13.Justice League. (#5)
14.Stormwatch. (#21)
15.Resurrection Man. (#2)
16.Batman and Robin. (#19)
17.Suicide Squad. (#20)
18.Demon Knights. (#3)
19.Superboy. (#24)
20.Green Arrow. (#18)
21.Mister Terrific. (#12)
22.Static Shock. #13)
23.Batwing. (14)
24.Justice League International. (#8)
25.OMAC. (#26)
26.Hawk and Dove. (#25)
27.Legion Lost. (#27)


I think I was disappointed in Men of War, Detective Comics (nice art, not so great storytelling), and, despite their relatively high rankings, Swamp Thing and Frankenstein. Some of these were good, but I was hoping for great.

I was impressed with Static Shock, Mister Terrific, Justice League International and Resurrection Man, which I didn't expect much from. And despite their relatively low rankings, Batwing and Red Lanterns.

I expected much and they pretty much delivered on Green Lantern, Action Comics, and Justice League.

The middle titles were pretty arbitrary in ranking -- pretty much everything from 10 to 25 were pretty good.

I liked a lot of the titles in the middle that would seem kind of low ranked; for instance, I thought Batman and Robin was good, but I've ranked it #19. Same with Batwoman, Grifter, Stormwatch, Grifter, Suicide Squad and so on. All pretty solid B grades.

Didn't care for Omac, Hawk and Dove, and Legion Lost -- the last of which had too many unknown characters for me -- but even it, managed to do a better job of doing explaining the Legion characters to me than usual.

The top five? Well, my usual taste for horror and science fiction seem to enter here -- I like the straight ahead action story telling of Deathstroke for some reason, but to be #1? I just enjoyed it the most, though quality wise, there were probably some better titles. Resurrection Man was an interesting concept well executed; Demon Knights had fantasy and magic; Batgirl, good old-fashioned storytelling; Justice League, great art and good story.

I can see myself continuing to read all of the titles, actually, at least for another chapter or two.


Sleeping on it, I realize that the "like" rankings are terribly arbitrary. Swamp Thing and Men of War and Detective were pretty good -- I just hoped for more. I could easily switch most of these titles around.

What happens is, I'm ranking them one by one, and suddenly I find myself ranking the second half and thinking, "This title was actually better than being ranked 19th, but I picked 18 titles before it. So be it."

I'll leave the ranking in, for the blink first impression, but advise you to make up your own minds.

Again, I was impressed by the overall quantity of the whole effort.

Game of Thrones, 2nd viewing.

My son, Todd, and my brother-in-law, Dave, were over to the house on Sunday and Monday and we watched the entire Game of Thrones, which I had been saving up for them.

What struck me on the second go around was the quality of the dialogue. Most often pithy and clever and at the same time philosophical and even deep.

Got me interested in what people were saying online about G.of T. and started reading reviews, most of which were positive, but a few which were so out of line as to make me despair.

I keep thinking that people have woken up to the fact that there are some well-written fantasies and science fiction that compare well to the best literature.

But you still have the old nerd cliches in the reviews -- so off base, I have to wonder if the reviewers even read the books? Most of the criticisms -- such as "powerless" women were turned on their heads by the end of the series.

Oh, well.

What chance do comics ever have of being taken seriously? Ever?

Magazine sales drop in half.

According to Media Daily News, Sept. 13, 2011, sales from newstands of 68 mainstream magazines have dropped by nearly half, from 22,019,953 for a six month period in 2001 to 11,562,028 for a six month period in 2011.

"So what?" you say? "We'll just replace replace them with digital magazines?" you say?

According to the article: "...digital newsstand sales remain fairly low."

Sales of digital from Time Inc. Magazines was a grand total of 600,000 in August. Conde Nast were 105,000 in the preceding six weeks.

There are, of course, subscriptions but you have to think that they undergoing the same pressures and declines.

Even if the math is skewed, even if some figures don't correlate exactingly, the trend is pretty obvious. I assume, as well, that digital is cheaper. I don't know what kind of revenue they can generate from digital ads (obviously if they have a fraction of the paid readers, the rates must be much lower.)

Again, I hear everyone saying, "So What? We'll just get our information free."

Except who is going to pay for the administration of the magazines -- the hiring and paying of writers, artists, editors, cartoonists, etc. etc.?

What news are the aggregators going to aggregate when the source material disappears? Who pays the guy to go across the country to get the real scoop? Across the state? Across the city? Hell, who pays them to go across the street?

Free is not much of a motivator for work. At least not quality work.

I have the same questions for books, and games, and comics, and even -- eventually -- music.

How much of the free that we are getting is already parasitic on ongoing systems? What happens when they disappear? Who produces the material?

Those who wish the downfall of the comic shops or bookstores or record stores, or who mourn them without supporting them, or who just don't give a damn, seem to believe that they'll just get the source material from a different delivery system.

It seems to me that less than a million cheaper digital downloads won't pay for the same material that tens of millions of physical copies used to pay for.

What if the source material can't be produced under a different delivery system?

To me, it isn't about the delivery system -- it's the payment system, and if digital doesn't pay, who produces the material?

People who do it for free, I guess. Or for minimal return.

You get what you pay for.

Gwyneth Paltrow's brain.

SPOILERS:

Went to see Contagion, and really -- how can I spoil this? I mean, the movie is about a plague and people are dropping like flies.

The first one to drop is Gwyneth Paltrow.

They're doing an autopsy of her, and they saw into her head and peel back her face with all kinds of drilling and squishy sounds and the entire theater kind of rears back in horror and a bunch of us laugh uncomfortably.

So the two doctors peer into Gwyneth Paltrow's brain and the more senior one says, "Wow. Step back. Now!"

"What IS that!!" the other doctor asks in horror.

It's Gwyneth Paltrow's brain, I can't help but think.

A few more people are laughing and I'm thinking, "What's with the Gwyneth Paltrow hate?"

But the way the screenplay has it, she has been cheating on her husband so all that squishyiness and horrible bone drilling is totally justified.

I mean, it is Gwyneth Paltrow.

Hey it's special! And so is this - and this - and this....and

"Once my CD's start skipping, they seem to just keep skipping...what is the story with that?"

"I don't know. I converted all my music to digital long ago."

"Oh."

"What....you have CD's?"

Pause.

"You know when you're dialing a phone number, and the dialer sticks....what is the story with that...?"

**********

Diminishing returns? The Duck Race used to get tons of press, now it's barely mentioned. On the other hand, they had 17K ducks. It's duck pollution.

**********

Another bike race in Bend? Really?

**********

Smoke gets in my eyes.

My eyes swole up last night. (How come there isn't a word, "swole"?) Which means that wherever that fire was, it was in area with sage. 'Cause I'm allergic to sage.

Then again, maybe the smoke was thick enough it didn't matter.

**********

I'm not feeling quite so guilty about running out of the first week of DC 52's. Apparently, virtually everyone is out.

We retailers are all assuming they'll be offering us second prints, but no word yet.

The problem? Just in the month between my original order for Batman and now, for instance, my subs just about doubled. That doesn't even begin to cover the number of issues I'd like to have out for sale.

But I couldn't get any more copies even though I tried 3 weeks in advance!

I think DC blew it. Apparently, it's O.K. for me to order 3 to 4 times normal numbers (my cost 1.50 to 2.00), but DC can't be bothered to do much of an overprint (their cost about .15 to .20.)

Actually, it's worse than that -- because there were less DC titles in the order than normal, and because I concentrated on the New 52, my average increase was probably closer to 5 times normal on most individual titles.

I've said before, any time you are forced to increase orders by double or more, you are in dangerous territory. It is essentially gambling on public interest, that all the promotion will work, when there is a long history of promotions barely moving the needle.

But I did it -- not just double but by 5 times.

And DC, from what I can tell, despite all their bold talk, gambled nowhere near as much.

P.S. I should probably mention: I've only received the first real week of comics -- there are still 3 more weeks of New DC to arrive, and there will be copies of almost all of them out for sale on the usual Wednesdays. It's just that, so far, they've only been lasting a few days....

9/11. I was out of touch.

I must have been one of the few Americans who spent most of that day not knowing it had happened.

I was spending a few days in the emptied house in Crescent City of my recently passed away mother-in-law. No radio, no T.V., no internet. Neighbors were all all strangers and lived hundreds of yards away.

I spent the morning finishing reading Lord of the Rings --which was going to be a movie in the near future.

It wasn't until the middle of the afternoon that I called my wife.

Who told me the Twin Towers went down.

"Oh, you're exaggerating," I said. "You mean part of it fell off, don't you?"

"No...they are both gone."

I still didn't believe her. As I was driving home, I got the eerie sense that every car had it's radio on and we were all living in the same moment. Even on the road, there was a sense of oneness that I can't explain.

And when I finally saw the footage on T.V. it put lie to any idea I might have had that reality couldn't live up to imagination. In my wildest imagination, I didn't see what I was seeing on T.V.

I'd been listening to the radio, but I just didn't get it.

Anyway, yesterday MSNBC ran real-time coverage of the events, so ten years later I finally got a sense of what everyone else went through.

How did the oldtime booksellers manage?

Google makes a bookstore workable, these days.

People give you just enough info to get online and find the correct book.

I've been wondering how the oldtimers used to do it. I suppose in some ways, personal knowledge would've given the advantage to a knowledgeable independent bookseller, versus a chain. I remember the bulky "Books In Print" volumes that a store would have had to constantly re-buy every year or so.

The following is not to make fun of a customer, but to illustrate why it can be so hard sometimes to find books.

A woman asks for the book "Geisha Girls," by Sara Lee.

I'm thinking that's not quite right, but I'm not sure, so I look it up on Google. I find nothing but entries about pastries and books with Geisha in the title. (Which only makes me hungry and horny, heh.)

Then she mentions the author also wrote "Secret Fan..."

This one I didn't need to Google. "Oh -- you mean, Lisa See! Snow Flower and the Secret Fan?"

Lisa See = Sara Lee.

Then I get distracted by another customer and don't get the chance to look up 'Lisa See' and 'Geisha Girls.'

After she left, I looked up Lisa See on Google and she also wrote a book called "Shanghai Girls."

I mean, this sounds like a parody, but it happens all too often. People conflate words and names and titles and so on...

Google can usually iron out the differences, given enough clues.

Betting against yourself, Barnes and Noble?

Poor Barnes and Noble. Do they realize how many people conflate them with Borders? Borders made tons of mistakes, that probably doomed them long before e-readers had any effect.

I was talking to someone the other day about how B & N seems to be adding more non-book product as time goes on; toys, games, knick-knacks of all kinds. "That's what Border's was doing at the end."

"And it put them out of business," the customer said.

"No -- it was a symptom of the fact that their books weren't selling enough, not the cause. They were desperately looking for things to sell to replace the lost revenue. Barnes and Noble is more or less showing they have no faith in the long-term prospects of books. (Never mind the irony of a kiosk of Nook e-readers in the front of their store.)

Meanwhile, independent bookstores are fairly constantly going out of business and almost always blame e-readers, these days. I think that's just a convenient excuse. For one thing, bookstores have always been difficult, and there has always been a large turnover. Interestingly, for all their talk of adopted new technologies -- when I talk to bookstore owners they often have the most ''traditional" of mindsets. Books have always sold a certain way, and therefore they always will. (And then they talk about "adding" the new technology....)

I don't actually believe the e-readers are putting bookstores out of business yet -- unless you say it was the straw that broke the camel's back. On a scale of 1 - 10, I'd say the original "You Got Mail" giant chains, hit with an 8 impact. Then Amazon hit with an 8 impact. I also think that the effect of Walmart and Costco selling books has had a major, mostly unacknowledged impact: I give it a 5.

E-books? I give them a 2 so far.

But then again, if you've already had the dread epidemics of the first three, the little touch of flu from e-books might be enough to kill you.

(Actual book sales would confirm what I'm saying -- sales of books really haven't dropped anywhere near the extent that most people assume.)


Meanwhile, when DC announced their New 52 effort, I suspect that half the internal focus, maybe more, was on the digital outreach.

But now that the comics have actually begun arriving, almost all the media attention and sales and general interest has been in the actual COMICS.

Jim Lee, mucky-muck for DC and artist for Justice League, is famous for holding up a single sheet of paper, showing it edgewise to a room full of retailers, and saying something to the effect of "These are current digital sales...."

The physical copies of the New DC are going to be selling in the millions. I suspect the actual paid digital will be tiny in comparison.

But everyone will tell me digital is inevitable, that books and comics are doomed.

I don't think so. I'm staking my business on the idea that for at least the next 5 to 10 years there will sufficient interest in physical copies.

I think Barnes and Noble is betting the opposite, which means they are betting on their own demise; their leap toward e-readers is an admission that they think their brick and mortar stores are doomed. I think betting against yourself is a sure way to lose.

I know you're all just secretly dying to read comics.

When I read all the comments on digital comics, something becomes very clear to me. The majority of comic readers believe that the general public would read comics if:

Comics were cheaper.

Comics were more accessible.

Comics weren't juvenile.

Comics weren't in comic shops.

Comics were in newstands and bookstores and Walmart.

Comics were more like they used to be.

Comics got more with the times.

Comics were collectible.

Comics were educational.

Comics could get the right license: Twilight, Harry Potter, etc.

Comics dealt with adult subjects.

Comics were for kids.

Comics were made for women.

And the latest magic solution: Comics were digital.

And on and on and on.

I've got news for everyone. The general public doesn't read comics because they don't want to read comics. There is a flat out bias against comics -- an unreasoning dislike, or disinterest, or misunderstanding.

Period.

I think it's almost exactly analogous to Opera. If doesn't matter what Opera does -- most of the public won't listen.

Period.

The comic art form is fantastic. (As is, no doubt, Opera.) Many of the stories are adult and educational and directed toward women. Many shops have fantastic presentations. Comics are often offered at a discount. Comics have gotten megatons of publicity from the movies. You can get comics online right now, at zero or cheap prices. Everything the comics readers think OUGHT to be done, has been done at one time or another.

But the general public doesn't want to read comics.

Period.

We can win people over ONE at a TIME. There isn't going to be a sudden shift of interest just because they become available through the internet.

In fact, I've come to distrust the "Exposure" argument. It doesn't really ever seem to be effective. I'm assured that if we expose Downtown through special events, the public will come back later and spend money. We all thought all we needed was for movies and T.V. to expose comics. If sports cards are sold in the mass market, it will expose them to the general public and they'll come to the specialty market when they become collectors. And so on.

Almost always, it either doesn't work, or the opposite happens. Instead of gaining new customers from the general public, we lose our customers to the mass market/digital.

I know the corporate overlords don't care who buys comics from where, as long as they sell. But in the long run, they need a savvy mix of local shop support and some mass market presence that doesn't KILL the local support. They haven't ever managed to do that -- because I pretty sure they simply don't understand the importance of the local shops. A sale is a sale to them.

Until things stop selling.


Postscript: We have gotten one of those rare overall boosts to sales that happen every decade or so -- like a large wave, but which will recede slowly until we are back to our starting point. The DC titles will probably sell better for at least a year, which is nothing to sneeze at. But my main point that we gather true readers one by one, I think mostly stands.

Time, date and stamped.

As a corollary to my earlier post.

Much of what I'm currently trying to learn, is how to handle material that isn't time, date and stamped.

When I bought the store, in 1984, I'd have to say at least 90% of the material I sold was brand new, that very week or month, and was replaced by the next week's material, and then the next.

It was a gambler's game; trying to gauge demand in advance, trying not to sell too quickly or too slowly.

I didn't know any other way.

Sports cards would come in, sell for awhile, and then move on. This week's comics would come in, sell for awhile, and then move on. I'd order a bit extra for the back stock, which was pretty much dependent on whether the product became popular enough to be wanted after the initial selling period.

This lingering interest actually dwindled over time, as the sports card and comic companies came up with more and more material, and the back stock sold less and less.

What a minute, I hear you thinking, aren't you a collectible store?

Well, you won't hear me using the word "collectible." I don't much believe in that market. It's one of those misconceptions the public has about a store like mine. Oh, at first, I could sell older cards and older comics. But even at the peak of comic collecting, I'd have to say that maybe only 10% of my sales were back issues. There was a glory season for sports cards that lasted a few years, but then faded.

Basically, back in the day, I'd have a Micheal Jordon rookie in my case so I could sell you lots of packs of cards. I'd have a Silver Age Spider-man on the wall to sell you this months issue.

Eventually, this older market moved online, almost completely.

If the new material isn't selling sufficiently, there just isn't a market for the old material. I know, it's counter-intuitive, but there it is. (Or more to the point -- if the new stuff isn't selling, there is no money to buy the old stuff.)

SO..... once in a while, I'd look at an art gallery, or a gift store, and think: "What would it be like not to have to buy new, unknown material every week?"

There is a built in advantage to the time, date and stamped model. Yes, it's gamble, but you have clientele who have to come in on a regular basis to buy the material. You have regular type regulars. So you create a subscription service, for comics, which more or less locks the customer to your store. (Until it doesn't...) The store becomes a destination store, and people off the street really probably can't relate much to all the new stuff.

Of course, the ultimate "dated" material are fads. Like ramped up to a factor of ten.
It's stuff no one has heard of one day; something they just have to have the next day; and something they want to unload the next day.

After learning some hard lessons from the cards and comics bubbles, I became a bit of maestro at fads. I was a genius at Pogs, and did pretty well with Beanie Babies and Pokemon, too. Fads are easy to sell, hard to get -- so the temptation is to order way too much and get left holding the bag. (Interestingly, I haven't had a good fad since Pokemon peaked at Christmas 2000. Which is unexpected since I had seven solid fads in my first 15 years.)

But I think needing to order in advance all the time, material you haven't seen yet, based on yesterday's trends is ultimately a very dangerous process. It really is gambling, and no matter how good you are it, eventually you are going to get it wrong.

What I really want to do is sell material for it's own inherent value; comics for reading, books to read, card games to play, toys to play with, and so on.

I don't mind the 'collectible' idea, as long as I don't play up the speculative investment value.

I want to sell material that has a shelf life, whose intrinsic value is always there.

About the time I came to this conclusion, most of the comic world came to the same conclusion. We'd all been burned by the idea of selling comics in plastic sleeves that no one reads. So we pushed the reading of comics, the writing and the art.

And it revived the comic biz enough. About the same time, more and more comics were being collected in graphic novels -- so if I sold a really good story, a Sandman or a Preacher, I could reorder it again and again.

(Sports cards, on the other hand, were a lost cause and I slowly phased most of them out. They are still time, date and stamped dependent -- but that's not the way I play it.)

I started bringing in toys that had some long term interest, and boardgames, and finally books.

Books and boardgames can be time dependent, if that is the market you pursue. But I feel like Amazon and Barnes and Noble and Costco can do that better. I can pick titles that there is always an interest in -- but which people won't think less of me if I don't have it in stock.

I want the latest great game, but it's more important for me to have Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne. I want the latest book, but it's more important for me to carry Catcher in the Rye and On The Road and No Country for Old Men.

This is the material I'm talking about when I say I want the right numbers at the right time.

I'd say about half my sales are still time and date -- new comics, new magic, new books, toys and games.

But the other half has become much more predictable, and I like that.

Bend is seasonal.

Always a bit of shock when the Fall season begins-- the foot-traffic drops off dramatically.

Makes it almost restful.

I'm always happy when the busy season starts, and yet not at all sad when it ends.

Got a bunch of paperwork done yesterday, and today I plan to do a sweep of the store with the broom, dusters and vacuum cleaner.

I try not to order very much in the first two weeks of September. So spot shortages tend to develop, but like I said, the compensating factor is that there are less people in the door to notice.

The book buyers who just want that one book are much more noticeable. They come and leave.

So far, since July, I've done a pretty good job of keeping my orders at appropriate levels. If I was doing a perfect job, I'd have plenty of stock of the best-sellers, and cash left over. Instead, my best-sellers inventory is filled just enough, with not much cash leftover, which means that the less efficient parts of the store are still dragging them down, which means I still need to refine my ordering process.

I mean, it's better -- probably better than it has ever been, but not quite self-sustaining yet.

In theory, I order everything correctly, and always have the right product in the right numbers and never miss sales, and everything is self-sustaining.

An impossible goal, I know.

The self-sustaining, efficiency goal has been my focus since July. Up until then I was still adding more inventory to my product lines, which a different process altogether. When I'm building, I purposely buy stuff that I don't know how well it will sell, stuff that I know won't sell fast but is cheap, and so on. Not efficient at all. But it builds the inventory, widens the choice of product, which usually gets rewarded enough to make it possible. And it's more data -- which of the new games and titles will sell?

I decided in July, however, that it was time to spend more time refining the process, and making those efficiency improvements.

The fall season will be much easier to manage in that sense, compared with summer and Christmas, which tend to be bigger, more chaotic and unpredictable.

This is probably one of those subjects that fascinate me, but bore the hell out of everyone else.

I should have gone wild and crazy.

A small kerfuffle over on the comic industry bulletin board between stores who ordered enough of the first 52 #1, Justice League, and those of us who didn't.

Part of it is the difference between big shops and little shops -- big cities and small towns.

Part of it, is some of us do better with Marvel than DC.

Most of it is: Hindsight is 20/20.

Here's the thing. Ordinarily ordering between 1 and 5 extra copies, after my subscribers have told me what they want, is more than enough to cover demand. But a prominently placed news story could easily bring in, oh, 20 extra people. The difference between 2 extra copies and 20 extra copies is immense, when you multiply by 52 separate titles.

I can't tell you the number of times we've been assured by the publisher that their title will be a hit: that it will get tons of support.

But it's not up to them. It's up the zeitgeist. Whether or not the story has a hook that appeals to the media. And that you just don't know until it happens. More often than not, it doesn't.

The black plastic wrap "Death of Superman" I could have sold hundreds; the white plastic wrap "Return of Superman", I still have hundreds of copies left.

I've been burned way way more times than I've been rewarded by 'over' ordering.

But I felt I had really ordered quite a bit. Overall, about 2.5 times normal DC numbers. Much higher than that on the marquee titles like Detective, Action, Batman, Wonderwoman, etc.

For Justice league, I ordered about 5 times the normal numbers, and slightly more overall than my best selling DC title of the last few years, Blackest Night #1.

Sold out in two days.

The interest didn't seem to start peaking until a few days before arrival. I put in a reorder two days before it showed. It went to backorder, but I felt I had put it in early enough to have a reasonable chance of getting filled from the copies they hold back for "damages and shortages."

I started hearing disturbing rumbles, so I put a back order in online, and also called my rep and tried to put an order in of the 2nd print.

They put out a notice saying we had until "Friday, Sept. 2" to make our second print orders. Normally, that would mean they would take those orders and use those numbers to make their print run.

I ordered a day early before the deadline -- and they were sold out.

By now, I've ordered extra copies of the second week-- not crazy extras, because remember I still have only seen the sales on ONE title -- and I'm not at all sure that the first day will be the only good day. Media attention will fade and so on.

Still, I make increases in my orders for the entire month, probably increased overall by 15% or so.

Wednesday premiere of the first real week was yesterday. 13 titles. By the end of the day, half the titles were sold out.

I get online to order more copies of next week and the week after.

They are sold out not only next week, but the week after -- AND the week after!!!

I've had exactly one day to gauge true demand, and it's too late.

Gamble or go home, is the message here.

Remember, I've ended up ordering 3 times the normal numbers, and it isn't enough.

Sigh.

No one ever went broke selling out, right? But man do I hate to disappoint customers. It makes me look and feel incompetent.

I really think DC messed up. My cost for a comic is roughly half. Their cost is something like 15 cents per comic. Once they paid the artist and writer, their cost is the ink and paper.

I ordered 5 times normal numbers of Justice League, and it's pretty obvious that DC probably didn't published more than another half the orders they got. Pathetic.

This was THEIR big idea -- and they couldn't even take a risk at printing say, double the ordered numbers?

When they saw what was happening with the first week's sales, they couldn't up the print on the third and fourth weeks?

There is suspicion that they are actually TRYING to drive customers to digital.

But what's interesting is, there has been little talk about digital. It's all been the physical copies that has gotten the demand, which to me says a lot about what's really happening.

I mentioned the media effect on sales, and one of the other retailers put a poll up asking how many non-regulars had been in to buy the comics.

But that is missing the point. If the big push had been flop, a whole lot of my regulars would have started passing on the titles. Once they understood it was a hit, they actually started buying MORE.

It's a bit of hoarding, frankly. Suddenly they covet a comic because they are afraid they can't get it -- whereas, if they could get it, they wouldn't want it.


Looking back, I can see where the problem is.

I put a sheet out that asked my customers which titles they would be interested in -- and I got a huge response. Yes, No, or Maybe, were their options, and to get them to take the time to fill them out, I assured them that they weren't committed. That I was just trying to get a gauge of the interest level.

I signed up all my regulars for titles that they either said Yes or Maybe.

Now, ordinarily, when I sign my customers up for a title they didn't specifically ask for, I get about a 90% success rate in them accepting the title. (I'm pretty choosy about when I use the "optional" technique.)

I figured, since this was a "soft" survey, that I'd get probably an 80% acceptance rate.

So if the venture had been a big flop, chances are that I would have gotten between 20 to 30% of the comics back. If it was a moderate success, I'd get about 15 to 10% back.

I'm getting virtually none of the titles back, so far. These "optional" titles had been part of my equation in trying to judge how many copies I had out for sale. The problem is, the commitment on the part of my customers was "soft" but my commitment was "hard." I pretty much have to stand by it.

They'll be offering us second prints, I know, eventually, but even this has been a mess.

And even with the wild success of the first two weeks, I'm still concerned about over reacting and ending up with tons of the 3rd and 4th weeks. Because, that has also happened a lot in the past.

You don't stay a retailer for 30 years without being careful.

But sometimes, the wild and crazy guys get rewarded.

Writing is easy. Writing well is hard.

I've learned again, after 30 years.

Writing for me is easy -- writing well is hard.

I don't know how it is for other writers. But that's the way if it for me. I think earlier in my life , I simply plunged into the process, not really knowing what I was doing. It was a series of starts and stops and reboots, and throwing stuff away and completely starting over again, and rewriting the same damn page 2o times (On a Typewriter!!!!) I didn't have any kind of system. Writing -- and rewriting and more rewriting -- and writing, all of it was mixed together.

So the process was all messy and muddy and I think I stepped on my own toes a lot.

So...this time, I'm trying to apply all those lessons I learned back then. Finish the first draft, write the jigsaw puzzle as it comes to me, find a balance between inspiration and knuckling down and writing without inspiration.

I think the work habits are terribly important. I could get away with being so stupidly inefficient with my time 30 years ago because I was unemployed, and unengaged with people, and I thought of myself as a writer, and if I flailed around, so what? That was writing.

I know the point will come when it will start to get messy -- I may have reached that point this weekend, but until that moment is for sure, I'm going to try to stick to my writing plans.

I'm trying to impose order on the chaos that used to be my writing process -- without stepping on my creative flow.

Way back, I figured out my writing process was self-defeating and I tried to figure out systems of dealing with the problem, but most everything I came up with seem to block my writing. Especially things like "outlines."

So, I've got a rough idea of doing this in three major layers.

1.) I write the first draft and brainstorm. Just write it and see where it goes.

2.) Second draft will be trying to pull all the brainstorming and snippets and continuity together, while at the same time improving the writing. Try to add depth to the characters, descriptions and mood.

3.) Write a third draft where I concentrate on smoothing out the rough edges, making it seamless and flowing, and trying to polish the writing.

I'm still in the first stage, so I'm not sure whether I can achieve the second and third stages. Like I said, I think it will probably get messy the further into the story I am.

Well, I'll be...

Someone other than me wrote a column in the editorial pages of the Bulletin against having so many downtown street closures.

He makes good points, all the way through.

It will be interesting to watch the reaction.

A Writing Vacation.

The following is very long, and probably boring to anyone who isn't interested in the nuts and bolts of writing. I just spend 5 days and 4 nights out of town -- writing.




I'm writing this on Monday, August 29, but I want to keep a record of this adventure.

This coming weekend, Linda's church is having what they call "Bend Institute" which is a region wide conclave. I generally don't see her during this yearly event except early in the morning or late at night, and even then I think she worries that I'm being neglected and pulls herself away from her friends.

So I got it in my head to head out of town and stay somewhere for a few nights and concentrate on nothing but writing.

Writing, writing, writing. Nothing but writing.

We stayed at the Geiser Grand in Baker City last year around this time, and what I remember is how soundproof the walls were and how tall the ceilings and just a general feeling of comfort. I also tend to do my best writing out on the road, or in the wilderness. I'd have five hours or more to think about my story and pull off the road every time I get a brainstorm.

So I booked a room for five nights.

It feels incredibly, sinfully luxurious. I've never done anything like this.

So I'd BETTER write. Do lots of writing to justify it all.

I'm going to spend a bunch of time in the room, and if not there, I'm going to jump in my car and explore the surrounding countryside.

I have to rent a refrigerator, and I'm thinking -- don't laugh -- of buying a really small, cheap microwave and smuggling it into my room. Maybe a couple nights of room service. But at least I can try to save money on food.

It's a liberating feeling to get out on the road. So that will be fun in itself.

I don't worry about getting bored. I'm very comfortable by myself. And the idea of being able to completely lose myself in the story is kind of exciting.

So I'm going to keep this diary and see how it goes.

**********

Tuesday, Aug. 30.

Complete and utter buyers remorse.

What a crazy thing to do. I mean, I'm already getting a fair amount of time of; it's not like I'm currently overworked.

So if I'm going to do this, it really does need to become a writer's working trip -- not a vacation.

I won't have a cell phone; I rarely if ever go out of town without Linda. But it's a writing trip, so being incommunicado may not be such a bad thing. I'll just remind everyone to e-mail me.

***Later.

I've decided to shave off the last night, Tuesday, so I can come home that day and attend writer's group. 4 nights is enough; I'm freaked out enough by that. If I shaved it anymore, though, it would defeat the purpose which is -- to clear the decks. To think about nothing but the story.

If I take a book, it's going to be a mystery so as not to interfere with the flow. (If I took Dance with Dragons, I'd probably spend all weekend doing THAT.) My plan right now is to drive around the countryside on Saturday, and then hole up in the motel room the rest of the time I'm there. Something like that.

**********

Thursday, September 1, 2011.

Linda reminds me that it was ten years ago around this time, I took my last vacation by myself. We know this because I was out of touch during 9/11. Didn't even know it had happened until I was heading back to Bend.

So hopefully, I ain't some kind of harbinger.

I did end up cutting the last day, even though I realized that writer's group has a two week gap between Tuesdays this month. Oh, well. I will be back in time to put out the 13 new DC titles that will come in this week. Will be in the paper tomorrow morning, so it's become a big deal.

**********

Friday, Sept. 2, 2011.

Took my time this morning. (Still fiddling with my Pandora, and just taking my own sweet time.)

Went to Red Carpet South to fill up and wash my car, and had the idea of getting some fresh donuts at Richards. Big mistake. Took forever to get anywhere. A harbinger.

Finally got on the road out of town at 2:25.

Then the traffic was horrendous. Horrible. Worst I've seen. This leaving on Friday of Labor Day weekend may have been a big mistake. But with Linda having a weekend off, I didn't have any choice.

O.K. Gave myself until Prineville to decompress -- which isn't happening, because, as I said, the traffic is really bad. I'm hoping east of Prineville it will be better.


Stopped at Book and Bean in Prineville -- which has wi-fi. From here on out I'm incommunicado. The following will be written on my computer without wi-fi.

O.K. I'm going to get serious about writing, now. My goal from here until Baker City is to try to figure out the plot to the rest of the book. I'm going to do this by talking to myself -- hey, probably no one there to see me. Literally talking to myself.

So anyway, the ideas started flowing only 30 minutes out of Prineville, but I think they STARTED flowing because I knew that I couldn't be interrupted; my subconscious was saying, “O.K. You can brainstorm all you want. Nothing will get in your way.”

I think maybe I was afraid that once I actually started on the trip, that I would be dry of ideas. I needn't have worried. I just started flowing with ideas; having to stop every few miles at the roadside. (which got a little strange when I would pass an ultra slow car, and they would go by me, and then I'd pass them again, and so on.)

I also think I must be really starting to get serious because for the first time, some of my ideas are going to necessitate complete re-writing of earlier chapters. But not completely contrary, which they also could have been.

I think I've worked out the thematic structure of the book --which may change as I actually write it, but I need the structure to start. I've decided that I need more characters; or to flesh out earlier characters.

Characters + settings = plot. How they interact. Too few and the plot is thin. Too many, it's too complex and confusing.

**********

I've gotten to the state park outside John Day for a rest stop. I was going to have dinner, but I've been so slow on the road, I think I'm going to push on through.

Going to hit Baker City around 8:00 or so, which means I spent about an hour on the side of the road writing.

After about John Day, though, I pretty much quit brainstorming because I had enough on my plate.

I could almost say this trip has already been a success. But writing 3 or 4 or 5 or more chapters would be great. I do believe this book is going to get finished.

***********

O.K. At the hotel. But the internet connection keeps dropping, so I won't be writing my book stuff on the cloud, but on the computer.

A little inconvenient, but I can wait until I'm home to transfer it.

************

Saturday, September 3, 2011.

I take it back: being dropped in the middle of writing something is super super annoying. I'll be writing on computer memory, so it's O.K. But in this age, not having reliable wi-fi sucks.

What I like about this hotel is the solid feel of it. It feels made of real material. It doesn't shake slightly when you walk, you don't hear random noises from next door. I can't explain it -- you don't realize most buildings aren't solid until you actually stay in a solid place.

My parents house up at the end of Roanoke Ave.was the same way: solid. It stayed cool in the summer, it had a sense of realness that most places I visited didn't seem to have.

What I'm talking about is a real sense of wood and stone and building material. Like they used different materials altogether.

Anyway, the Geiser has that; which is why I chose it to write, because writing comes out of thin air, and to be enclosed in this solidity feels right. It also helps, there is a sense of volume, coming from the very high ceilings.

Anyway, enough of that.

Later:

Turns out, I'm not quite ready to close myself off in my room. Wandered out in the morning, checked out Betty's Books down the street. Introduced myself and we had a nice talk, but no where near as extensive as I'd like. Just skimming the surface. Nobody likes to talk about business the way I do.

I went out of Baker City, found a country road, and just followed it to a dirt road, and then followed it up into the hills. Hit a rock quarry on top, and turned around and found a place about halfway down the hill.

Going to try to write.

So I wrote about half a chapter, and went back to the hotel.

Been here a couple of hours, and getting now where. The actual writing seems hard. I'm distracted by the noises in the hallway.

So, I managed to write about 6 pages by 8:00. Not exactly rip-roaring. I'm feeling fuzzy headed, which might be from driving for 6 hours yesterday, and then waking up a little early.

I think I'm starting to realize – again – just how hard this is for me. Now I'm dealing with the difficulties of plotting, which is important. Up through the first 8 chapters, I was kind of oblivious. Now it's landed on me like a ton of bricks. How important it is – how tricky it is to pull off.

Plotting means I have to introduce the right characters at the right time; not as easy as it sounds.

Meanwhile, I'm having trouble making the evil seem immediate. I'm trying to fix that with the chapter I'm writing right now.

I'm not sure about the quality of the actual writing, either, but have decided the plotting is more important right now. The moving the plot forward. Progressing. I can always try to dress up the language later.

I consider today a minimal success. I was hoping for more.
Sunday, Sept. 4, 2011.

Yesterday was not as productive as I thought it would be. I did manage to write 6 pages – or the equivalent of a chapter, but I guess I had illusions of going on a tear.

My head was just really foggy from the drive, I think. I wasted a lot of time on Pandora again.

So today, I'm going to change the rules.

I'm setting myself the goal of one chapter.

No listening to the iphone.

No T.V.

And most of all, I staying in the room for the whole day. If I have to pace around, or sit in the corner to think, or lay in bed and nap, that's what I'll do.

One good chapter. That's all I'm asking for.

O.K. Right off the bat, I wrote 4 pages by 10:00.

Going to take an hour break and contemplate.

Back at it. Another new earlier chapter. Many of the things I'm writing on this trip are inserts into the early storyline. So far, nothing that really contradicts what I've written –thankfully – but additions to. I need more characters, more good guys, and especially more bad guys. Now that I know where the story is going, I see I have to go backward and lay the foundations.

I never knew this, because I haven't tried to write a book in the last 20 years set in real time – but cell phones make plotting a whole lot easier. Heh.

This if more like it. 6 pages by noon.

I'm going to try for another 6 pages.

Then push the issue tonight, and drink a little beer, and see if I can write some more....(later -- drinking beer is USELESS for writing. It's a trick that used to work, but doesn't anymore.)

All right, 9 pages during the day. Almost all of it is buttressing earlier chapters. Nothing wrong with that. Needed to be done. Fascinating how it all fits together. I know I'll have to do rewriting, but so far nothing too structural.

Late afternoon, finished a new chapter, about 6 pages, so I've done over 15 pages today.

So, this trip has been a success already. Especially the working out of the plot. And, well, the commitment to finishing. I think that's what this trip was all about, actually. A statement of commitment, because I could stand to have spent this money and not follow through. It's a bit like burning the bridge behind me – there is no retreat.

Monday, Sept. 5, 2011.

That's more like it! I wrote 18 pages! About 8 pages were progressing the story, and about 10 pages were going back and laying foundations in earlier chapters. What's kinda cool is how these foundations slot into existing material without totally disrupting them.

Having my doubts about my writing, again. I think I won't know if this is a book I'm proud of until the final write. The last rewrite will pay all, I think. It's where I probably make the story readable or not.

I was tempted to head home today, but the thought of Labor Day traffic made me stay put. I'm pretty sure I'll have a hard time matching yesterday's output -- much of that had been figured out over Friday and Saturday, and the well is dry right now.

So I'm at 24 pages as of now.

But I'll try to write about 10 pages minimum, to justify the cost of another day. If I can write, say 6 pages on the way back to Bend on Tuesday, it will mean I've written 40 pages. Not bad. My wildest ambition was to get 50 pages done.

But even more importantly, I worked out the plot details -- which I was worried about.

Turns out, my sub-conscious was probably working on that.

Monday, Later:

I think the maids here think I'm a really weird person, not leaving my room for two days. It is pretty weird, but then writing a book is a weird thing to do. It isn't routine, or it has to become a new routine. You just have to do it. A writer writes. It's what separates the writers from the wanna be writers.

A strange plot development. The bad guys are 'sacrificing' pets. So I have the good guys building their army out of “humane society” members and the shock troops are PETA. This isn't a comedy, really – a little whimsical, maybe. But this could be a little much.

By this time yesterday, 10:00 in the morning, I'd already written 8 pages.

Going to sit in the armchair in the corner and try to think of an opening.

I managed to write about 8 pages by 6:00.p.m. Obviously not the torrid pace I set yesterday. I'm thinkin may four more by bedtime.

They aren't stellar pages of writing. But I'm past the point in this book were I can wait for inspiration. Sure, I could take a couple years to wait for each chapter to come naturally– but I doubt I could keep my attention directed that long.

So I'm at the stage where I need to move the plot forward.

Interestingly, I seem to moving it forward mostly by dialogue, and by “Then they did this and then they did that” action. Not ideal, but getting somewhere at least.

I'm not sure how all the pieces of the puzzle will fit, yet.

Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2011.

I'm heading home today, sometime around 11:00. I'm going to take my time, pull off the road whenever I get the urge, try to write about 6 more pages, though 16 pages would be cool too.

All in all, it was a successful venture, but no one I'll probably repeat. I was especially pleased to plot out the book, but the second half of the book had been a bit of a blank before I left. The number of pages I wrote was adequate, though if you factor in the cost per page, it was a little expensive.

But it worked best of all as a gesture of commitment. I'll be damned if I'm not going to finish this book after making all this effort.

But I really could have accomplished about as many pages at home. The distractions -- T.V. and phone and radio and internet, were all here as well. The Hotel noises were inconvenient -- why do people feel like it's O.K. to slam doors at 7:00 in the morning?

The traveling part seemed almost more important than the stopping part. That's when I was heavily brainstorming.

Was all ready to go by 9:30. Thought I slept well, but feel really groggy. Anyway, since I didn't need to check out till noon, I sat down for an hour and wrote a copy of pages.

Stopped along the Powder River outside Baker. I love that name, it's so Westerny. Like “Shootout on the Powder River” kind of Westerny.

Am sitting on the banks of the river right now. Not inclined to write fiction, however. I thought I'd get to the Holliday State park, about 45 minutes out, I think, before I get serious. Like I waited until Prineville.

O.K. I'm realizing I had that wrong. The park is closer to John Day than I remembered.

So I stopped at Dixie Campground, instead.

I've been mulling over plot. For one thing, I've been advancing plot through dialogue, which is different than the way I used to write. Back when I wrote my first books, I think I was a little afraid of dialogue and used it as little as I could. I did more description and mood back then. (which I still intend to add to this story, later.)

I also am realizing that I might have trouble gettting the actual plot to fit into the thematic structure I came up with. For one thing, I must be getting more sophisticated, becaue I never thought in terms of “thematice structure” back in the day. In fact, is that even a thing? Well, it is for this book.

I think it's important that the plot come from the characters, and the plot become more important the the theme, as much as I like the theme.

I also have a big “reveal” at the end, which I'm not certain will be big enough of a reveal, but there it is. Once some ideas come along, they are hard to get away from.

I just have to trust that the plot will conform eventually to the overall theme and vice versa.

Difference is – I had no idea what to write when I left Bend, and I have a couple of possible threads I can pick up now. Still, I'm going to try to get myself to brainstorm about the bigger picture, since that seems to work so well while driving...

The drive home has mostly been about plotting the book, not so much writing. Drives just seem to be conducive to that.

The book has really gone in a slightly strange direction. Unexpected.

Here's what I don't understand about other writers. The book I write is the book I write. I can't outline it in advance – I have to discover what the book is about. Which usually happens about halfway through – and then, the book is pretty much what the book will be. I can change the details but not the overall outline.

As it happens this time around, there haven't been any major plot developments that make mincemeat of the earlier chapters.

Anyway, these 43 pages added to what I have, are about 100 pages. I figure I'm roughly 2/3rds of the way through. So 150 pages for the first draft. I underwrite on my first draft, so the second draft will probably double that and take about the same length of time. I'll be trying to deeper develop the background, the characters, the mood, the descriptions. Trying to line up the continuity, but added, usually and sometimes subtracting. Trying to flesh out the writing –

Once I'm done with the second draft, what I'd like to do is print it out and have a few people look at it from an editing standpoint. Then do the third draft. In fact, I might even contemplate the 3^rd draft as what I put online.

Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2011.

Finished up with 43 pages and the outlines to the last third of the book.

This is the weekend my little venture turned into a book.

My wonderful wife sat and listened to all 43 pages last night -- how cool is that. Linda said she loved it, and that I had layers of depth to what I had written.

So all in all, a successful five days of writing. Not so much a vacation, as a working holiday.

The publisher of Rolling Stone is a smart man.

This interview with Jann Wenner was published was back in July. My comments were made a couple months later. I felt the writing was a little clunky, and I thought I'd try to fix it later, but in the interests of clearing the deck, here is my reaction in all its clunkiness.


A while back, I bookmarked this interview, because as I started to read it, I was so surprised to find an industry insider and 'expert' who actually agreed with the way I've been thinking about digital, that I knew I would want to take the time to analyze and comment on what he's saying.

It's an interview in AdAge with Jann Wenner, founder of Rolling Stone, entitled: "MAGAZINE'S' RUSH TO iPAD IS 'SHEER INSANITY AND INSECURITY AND FEAR.'"

Let me say, I think that everything he says about magazines goes double for book publishers, and triple for comic publishers.

Only part of the article is concerned with digital, so I'm going highlight those parts and comment on them.

Ad Age: Independents who might have once started a magazine are tempted now to do a website instead. But big magazine publishers have found the web to be so difficult. You can build this audience but it's flighty, the ad rates compared to print are abysmal and the competition a click away is essentially infinite. What should print magazines be doing online?

Mr. Wenner: The most important thing a magazine can do online is maintain its brand and be very strong in terms of delivering on that brand. And then link it to the magazine in such a way -- or at least this is going to be our strategy -- link it to the magazine in such a way that it does things in the same field with the same brand and the same point of view, but not things you can do in print.

O.K. The way I parse this is, Jann is saying that a website should be used to direct readers to the magazine instead of the magazine used to direct people to the website.


Mr. Wenner: Now I think that you can build both successfully -- make the whole experience more exciting for your print reader and vice versa -- and then it's easier to sell to advertisers, I think, packages as well as the raw sheer buying that they do for tonnage.


Now you'll notice that he's not saying ignore the digital, but use the digital to make the whole package stronger. Reinforce the brand name of the publication.

Mr. Wenner: But I think it's a mistake to think that you should put your magazine itself online. As you point out, there's not enough audience, the numbers are not there for ad sales, you're not going to get a lot of money on that.

The magazine business, or at least the leaders of the magazine business, have been struggling for a long time, they've invested millions upon millions of dollars because they've had their heads in the sand about this whole thing. And maybe they're figuring it out now. We never have gone that route. We've just been making money.

What he's saying here, I think, is that if the magazine is strong enough, that is if you tend to your own garden, make your product strong, people will come to you -- instead of you chasing them online. Spending everything you got on a will-o-wisp.

Mr. Wenner: The challenges are different to different kinds of magazines. News magazines, magazines that have high frequency and news, are going to be challenged, heavily challenged, not just by the internet but by the whole 24-hour news cycle which has just been getting enhanced. Cable has been really supercharged. So it really impacts magazines like Time and Newsweek and so forth as we can clearly see. And they're struggling to find what it is they can do in this age.

Magazines that depend on photography, and design, and long reads, and quality stuff, are going to do just fine despite the internet and cable news. Because in those areas there's a real advantage to getting a print product and having something you can hold and that of course is portable and has a luxurious feeling and is comfortable and immersive and you can spend time with it and it's organized for you.

All right. For you doubters, he's admitting that online has an advantage for short form and or news cycle type situations. But for longer form, and/or publications that are heavy on photography and design, the physical is still better. ("Long Reads" = Books: "Design"=Comics.)

This is his judgment, and it's my judgment too, but I know in talking to others that most don't agree. I'm just glad to find someone else with a proven track record who thinks this way.

Ad Age: What's your take on selling magazines on the iPad and other tablets?

Mr. Wenner: It's the same pretty much as I've said about the web. The tablet itself is a really fun device. Some people are going to enjoy it a lot and use it. Some people aren't. On this plane one person's traveling with a tablet, one's not. There's a certain trendiness to the thing. And it's a great thing. But is it a good magazine thing?

It's a good magazine reading device, absolutely. And where it becomes more convenient to read the magazine on that, that's got the advantage. But that's more convenient only if you're traveling, if you're away from home. Otherwise it's still easier to read the physical magazine, which is widely available on newsstands, at airports, and everywhere. You can still subscribe to get it and get it on time. You still get all the value of the magazine.

I don't think that gives you much advantage as a magazine reader to read it on the tablet -- in fact less so. It's a little more difficult.

Wow. I can barely believe he said it. The reading device is somewhat convenient he says; it's trendy; some people will use it and others won't. It isn't necessarily as superior reading experience. All this I agree with totally.

Except, I don't even think it's that much of an advantage on travel. This is a point of disagreement with most people I've talked to, but really: I think people overestimate how much they actually read on trips. I read a lot, but usually on a four day trip, I can get one book read. I mean, I don't go on vacation to read, mostly. I could see reading twice that much, maybe. On a week trip you might need, oh, two books. On a month you might need three or four -- but will probably have opportunities to find books in that much time. Anyway, I mostly don't buy that a reader is All That Much More Convenient...

Mr. Wenner: From the publisher's point of view I would think they're crazy to encourage it. They're going to get less money for it from advertisers. Right now it costs a fortune to convert your magazine, to program it, to get all the things you have to do on there. And they're not selling. You know, 5,000 copies there, 3,000 copies here, it's not worth it. You haven't put a dent in your R&D costs.

So I think that they're prematurely rushing and showing little confidence and faith in what they've really got, their real asset, which is the magazine itself, which is still a great commodity. It's a small additive; it's not the new business.

DUDE! Like, I totally agree with this. I think the book and comic publishers are rushing into a format that may not work at all, or may only partly work, and are showing signs of panic. That if they just maintained the quality of their product, they'd be fine for years to come.

Ad Age: Well, you think for now, or you think forever?

Mr. Wenner: Oh I think down the road. Who knows how far down the road -- years though and possibly decades.

Ad Age: Not months.

Mr. Wenner: Not months. Decades, probably. People's habits will shift, they'll make improvements in the delivery system, the screen will change, it will get lighter, whatever, and new people growing up will find that as a habit. But you're talking about a generation at least, maybe two generations, before the shift is decisive.

Look at the music industry as an example. I think it's split about 50-50 between CDs and digital delivery. There is a place where there are extraordinary advantages in the distribution delivery system. Otherwise the products are indistinguishable; there's no difference in the physical products as there is here.

And yet it's still a generational shift going on. And we're far away from that. We have a much different and more unique product than just the CD.

Surprisingly, this is where I might disagree with Jann a bit. Not because I don't think in the ordinary course of events that it might take generations, but because I believe most other publishers will push the issue. It will come down to places to sell, and where the focus is, and if they remove too many benefits from the physical in pursuit of the digital, the customer will have to follow.

I do like the way he points out that even in the music industry; which is much more of a digital kind of format, CD's are still 50% of sales. From what I've read, sales physical books have not actually dropped all that significantly, though they have certainly stopped growing.

But again, I have to disagree with him a bit on the effect of even small drops. I don't think the bookstore distribution system can take much more abuse, frankly. The publishers seemed determined to throw out the old model, even it is currently working better than the digital model.

What I'm saying is -- and I think Jann is saying, that if the publishers would continue to publish, that it would be a long time before digital took over. I just don't think they publishers are going to show that kind of commitment.

As I found with sports cards, the self-destruction of an industry doesn't mean you have to follow them. You just have to find other things to sell and ways to sell them. I kind of expect to be in business long enough to hear publishers "regret" the moves they making now.

Mr. Wenner: ...While paper, printing and all that are expensive, we still get a nice profit margin, far larger than anything I can contemplate that's in the foreseeable future by using the iPad as a substitute. As long as people want the magazine product we'll deliver it. I think that's going to be for a long time to come.

People cherish it. There's something to hold onto. It's everything that I said or we said in that ad campaign for magazines.

Sort of what I've been saying about books and comics. "People cherish it. There's something to hold onto." People like possessing the physical object. And again, he reiterates that the physical product makes more money than the digital; you know, except for Apple.

He talks about how insecure publishers are giving into Apple prematurely; basically throwing away the basics of publishing for very thin results online.

Jann then goes into all the things that the music industry did wrong, and he should know. But he ends those observations by saying something I've been saying all along:

Mr. Wenner: But the lesson for magazine publishing business is not to rush like the music business should have done, because it's a different product. Music is really easily reducible to digital. There's a different beat to it.

Be attuned. Get ready to make the moves. Be adept at moving quickly to the changes. But to rush to throw away your magazine business and move it on the iPad is just sheer insanity and insecurity and fear.


Right on! (Hey, it's the Rolling Stone, man.) I'd like to repeat what he just said:

"...it's a different product....to rush to throw away your magazine business is sheer insanity and insecurity and fear."

I think that is exactly right. Unfortunately, he seems to be the only publisher out there who knows it.

Ignore the digital.

I wrote this a while back, and rereading it, I realize it is somewhat confusing.

On one hand I'm saying, ignore the digital and keep selling the physical product.

On the other hand, I'm saying, don't just double down on comics or books alone. Diversify, do a bunch of different things.

So in some ways, I'm agreeing with the blogger who makes the case we can't compete with digital, therefore were should concentrate on what we do best. What I think he gets wrong is the idea that we should somehow be "pure."

I don't know if that is clear, but here goes:


There is a article by a well-known comic blogger who makes the case that, in these challenging times, comics shops should double down. Become even more of a comic shop. Instead of trying to do a bunch of things badly, do the one thing you do well even more. Find those unique aspects of your store that the customer can only find in your store. Be the reliable niche.

Sounds good, right?

I think it is exactly wrong.

First of all, I've seen declining other industries try to double down, and it doesn't work. Sports cards are -- as usual -- a good example of what not to do. Sports card shops who tried to do nothing but sports cards didn't survive, mostly. Even sports shops who brought in memorabilia didn't survive.

Some shops who brought in comics and or games did survive, but they mostly survived by becoming comic or game stores.

Secondly, those "unique" items he's advising you to play up, that will make your customers come back? Usually, another way to put it is, -- unique or niche just means there isn't enough money in it for the big guys or the internet to bother with.


Wait a minute. Didn't I declare that I was going to double down on physical books and comics, rather than move into digital?

That's different. I'm doubling down on the idea of the physical brick and mortar store, and the physical objects within. But I'm not sticking to just one product.

Maybe because I've been in a town that -- for the entirety of my career -- just wasn't big enough to give me a decent living as a comic shop alone -- or a bookstore alone -- or a game store alone, and so on -- I've had to try something different.

My solution was to bring in six or seven product lines, only one of which is primary. Comics have been my primary product, and I still do about 50% of my business in comics and graphic novels.

What's happening to these comic shops this guy is advising to double down is -- they are becoming more like me. Unable to make a living doing what they used to do. But doubling down will only work for the very biggest shops, in the very biggest towns, assuming they can pick up market share from declining stores.

The rest will have to find a solution more like mine; selling more than one product.

Sure, you may not be able to do six or seven sideline products as well as you can do a single specialized product. But you can do the best you can. The compensation is -- because you aren't the primary provider, you can carry the easiest and best of each.

I carry games, but I can pick the best-selling games. I don't need to provide game space, or host tournaments, or carry every kind of game there is.

I carry books, but I can pick the best-selling books. I don't need to have author readings, or special events or serve coffee and crumpets.

I carry toys, but I can pick the toys that work for me. I don't have to have samples to play with, or carry row upon row of common toys.

I carry cards, but I don't have to carry every brand, or every type of supply. I can carry the supplies that sell best and have the best margins.

And so on.

In all these cases, you might say I'm not doing as good a job as a full game store, or a full card shop, or a full bookstore or whatever. I'm doing the 20% that makes the easiest 80% of the sales. I'm not trying to carry the other 80% of the product, that makes 20% of the sales.

But if I carry five products that make 20% of the possible sales; it adds up to 100%, right?

Plus I can constantly adjust to actual sales; if a game takes off, I can bring in more copies. If a book becomes a best-seller, I can bring more in.

I'm thinking that a general store -- a pop-culture general store -- is probably the proper model for the future. Sure the local general store doesn't have as much hardware as a hardware store, or as much food as a grocery store and so on, but it serves a purpose for a small community.

That's the way I'm thinking of my store. As a general pop-culture store, that you can reliably find good product in more than one pop culture areas. Books, new and used; card games and boardgames and role-playing games; toys; comics and graphic novels; sports cards and non-sports cards; and posters, t-shirts, buttons, magnets, stickers, and so on.

If I concentrated on just one of those aspects, I might do a better job in that one category.

But I probably wouldn't make enough money to survive.