A lot to ask, I know.

One things for sure. I underestimated how long it would take my critiquers to finish their reading of the manuscript.

Maybe they haven't started. Who knows?

I think it was a terribly unfair thing to ask of them, now that I remember. It's hard enough for me to do it, without asking others! So I've learned my lesson. I'd hate to lose friends and customers because of it.

Anyway, I've heard from all three, and they all say they are still working on it. I'm not sure if they want me to let them off the hook. I certainly offered, at least one of them.

So we'll give it until whenever they get around to it, and I'll just starting working on the second book again.

Daily paces.

I've decided to keep track of my daily paces.

The goal is to average 10,000 paces a day.

So far, it turns out that on a couch-potato day off, I don't get much past about 3500 steps. On a medium day of doing errands and such, I get to about 6000.

On Wednesday at work, with the new product arriving, I reached 10,000.

On Thursday, without new product, I reached 8000.

Does that mean I work 20% more on Wednesdays? I can tell you, it feels like that. I mean, on Thursday I did a bunch of cleaning and vacuuming and stocking, but I still came in at 2000 less paces.

I didn't sit down at all on Wednesday, and for a very short period of time on Thursday. I've purposely not put a chair that would allow me to sit at my computer, cause I think standing is good for me. So I stand all day, and my guess is that I'm making constant steps in small doses.

So my goal will be to look at the step count after dinner, and go for a walk to reach 10,000.

Pretty modest goal, actually. Inconvenient, but necessary.

FREE COMIC BOOK DAY !!!

Time for the annual FCBD.

This has really turned into a wonderful event. I've told my crew to just have fun with it.

We're starting out with 3 comics per person, which is a little less than in the past, but we've been wiped out the last two FCBD's. You might want to get there in the first few hours.

These are really good comics, created for just this event. Avengers, Star Wars, Batman....the best, plus lots of smaller publishers.

Come on in! We open at 11:00. Till 6:00.

Bulletin fodder.

"Bend's Projects to Get a PR Push." Bulletin, 5/4/12.

Government hiring a public relations firm to sell the public on policy issues seems --- wrong.
If the policy has merit, it should stand on those merits. If it doesn't, trying to hustle the public into thinking it has merit is a bit of a con.

I really don't like them spending public funds on advertising.

It would seem to be the job of the government officials to convince us of the merits of their decisions. Not a P.R. firm.

**********

"Commercial Land Sales Show Signs of Recovery." Bulletin, 5/4/12.

When commercial land sells for "50 to 75% lower" than during the boom, should that be termed a "recovery."?

**********

"Tetherow Could Get Hotel." Bulletin, 5/4/12.

I'll believe it when I see it.

"No one knew that 2008 was coming," said Joe Weston..." (Tetherow developer.)

Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.

Lots of people saw it coming. I prepared for it in my business. I started blogging about it in 2006, (go ahead and check, it's in the public record, eh?), and I was far from the first.

I've decided that whenever anyone uses this excuse, they need to be called on it.

Bullshit.

**********

"A Judicial Trend in Lending." Bulletin, 5/4/12.

Look, I just don't buy it. Lots of stories online, especially on the local Bend Economy Bulletin Board, about the shrinkage of inventory, the decline of foreclosures, blah, blah, blah.

I'm not going to even try to marshal the evidence, because I know how much overhang we had, and I very much doubt it has been winnowed down much.

I think the whole situation is being manipulated by the banks to a fair thee well. (If I was trying to buy a house, I'd be pissed about the lack of choice in affordable housing.)

I think it will be obvious to everyone when a real recovery takes place, and that it's years down the road.

My personal Killer App.

It's not complex.

Before I went to Baker City last year for my writing trip, I casually mentioned to Linda that perhaps I should get a "cheap and simple" cellphone. I needed for my guys at the store to be able to get ahold of me, if I was going to take longer trips. Linda being the aspirational geek she is, bought me an iphone. Which was a bit of overkill.

She's been jealous for year.

To compensate, she bought herself an ipad.

She unilaterally decided I needed an ipad, too. What I think is really going on, is she wants the new ipad, so she can give me the 'old' ipad and get herself a new iphone at the same time.

So I can see some utility in an ipad, being able to carry it around in my backpack and all.

Meanwhile, I pretty much parked the iphone over the last year. Forgot to carry it mostly.

The recent problems with Dad, and the need to be available, finally impelled me to slip the phone into my pocket and carry it everywhere I go. So there's the killer app -- to make me available to people who need me. The only other thing I tend to use it for is to google stuff while watching T.V.

A lot of technical overkill.

Anyway, Linda technical ambitions overreach her technical skills, and she spent most of yesterday trying to transfer info, and programs, and passwords and all that other stuff, which drives me crazy. Which drives her crazy, and she comes to me for sympathy and, well, I have none.

"Well, you KNOW how I feel," I say, unsympathetically.

I have confidence she'll figure it out eventually. I'm sure I'll end up using the ipad to do some writing. Internet surfing. But, again. It's probably technical overkill.

Jigsaw puzzles.

I've ordered 60 jigsaw puzzles to start with.

3/4th of them will go to Linda's store, and 1/4, mostly likely duplicates, will go into my store.

We're getting a roll-up mat for an ongoing puzzle (anyone welcome to contribute) to be displayed on Linda's table. We'll buy a piece of clear plastic to put on top when it isn't being worked on.

Why am I doing this?

I think I like the retro feel of it. Boardgames have proven to be really fun to carry, and who knew? I mean, you'd think electronic games would have completely doomed boardgames, right?

The same retro feel can be attributed to comics, of course. But also to books, and collector cards. All physical objects, none of them beep or flash or bit.

The second reason is that I can have a full product line for a relatively low investment. This is pretty rare in this day and age.

And third, the games are stack-able, and take up vertical rather than horizontal space. This is why I originally tried board games and why I continued to carry boxes of collector cards -- because they are stack-able.

I don't have trouble selling things. I don't have trouble affording them.

I have trouble finding space to show them. So product that is stack-able has an edge over other kinds of product I can carry.

I have to laugh at the suggestions I still get that I take up some horizontally challenging job like having "play space" or having a "coffee shop" or any other harebrained ideas that most bookstores seem to fall for.

It's all about the inventory, baby.

Avoiding the best-seller lists.

I've gone from avoiding the best-seller lists because I knew I couldn't afford them, and because I knew that the mass market had those bases covered to -- actively avoiding the best-seller lists because I'm continuing to see double digit increases in new book sales.

I'm convinced that's happening because, not in spite of, paying no attention to "best-sellers."

I was talking to a customer yesterday about why some products just keep on going, while other products die off.

I said, for a small retailer, the biggest danger isn't online, but the mass market.

I know this runs counter to the common wisdom, but let's look at some of the evidence.

First of all, if you asked me, as an independent book-seller, which would result in higher sales for me -- the disappearance of Amazon, or the disappearance of discounted books in Costco, Walmart and Barnes and Noble, I have zero doubt I would pick the mass market disappearance.

Secondly, of all the product I've had, the two product lines that I've retained the most customers are comics and magic.

Both of these are available online, easily and cheaply.

But both of these have a small presence in the mass market.

Which would seem to prove to me that the Mass Market entry into any of my product lines is what causes the disruptions, not the online. Online in some ways is just a more glorified version of what was always there -- mail order.

It's that "Extra Step" of ordering online and waiting, that allows me to continue to sell product in the here and now. Instead of driving 20 minutes and buying from another local store. (Frankly, they'd be better off buying online, saving the time and gas, but people are pretty unaware of all that, for some reason.)

What the hell. I can extend this reasoning to everything in the store. There are well-established online sites selling Euro boardgames, you can get every single carefully selected and curated offbeat or quirky book I carry online, you can get every toy I have online.

But you can find almost none of it in the local mass market. Therefore I can sell them.

It may be nonsensical, but there it is.

The same is not true the other way around. If you asked the mass market which they'd rather disappear, Small Retail or the Internet, you know which they'd pick. In fact, they'd laugh at the thought that Small Retail was any threat at all.

So I'm cheering for the big old bully Internet to thrash on the old big old bully, the mass market.

April results.

Our tenth straight month of year over year increases. Except for two months during this period that barely beat the previous year, all the rest have been double digit increases, indeed most of them over 20%. This month we were 25% over.

I attribute this mostly to being fully stocked. It's a virtuous cycle -- good sales allow me to carry the good material which result in good sales.

Traditionally, mid-April to mid-June are off season and slow, but there are some things happening that I'm hoping will overcome that this year.



COMICS: Comics are still seeing increases, in this case 21%, even though the New 52 continue to fall off, trending back to the median. But I think they gave the whole industry a boost that is still happening. The Avengers movies probably won't result in increased sales (though I sold some Avengers graphic novels yesterday) but combined with the Free Comic Book Day this weekend, I hope they'll spark some interest.

USED BOOKS: I just started separating these from overall book sales. Continue to surprise me in that they only account for 15% of books sales.

SPORTS CARDS: Down a little this month. A couple of box buyers can impact this category.

CARD GAMES: Up a tremendous amount. 2. 5 times over last year. But I think last year was an anomaly, being so low. Still, Magic continues to sell and we're getting a new wave on Friday, so again, I can hope for a good May.

GAMES: Down about 7%, but still very healthy. I took my focus off a little, but am starting May off with a huge order of product.

NEW BOOKS: Up by 37%. So far this year, we are up 25% overall.

TOYS: Way up, by about 2.5 times. I've made a real effort this year to revive my toys, sports and non-sports cards, anime and manga sales. I had been so focused on New Books and Boardgames, that I let them fall off a little. So far, the Toys have responded to the new attention the most...So far this year, we're up 30%.

GRAPHIC NOVELS: Up by 25%.

I feel like the store is firing on all cylinders. Obviously, I'm delighted that New Book sales continue to increase, that Boardgames are strong, and that my focus on the smaller categories is starting to payoff.

This is exactly the sales level I've been shooting for -- before the boom, and after. During the boom we shot way over this level, but I knew at the time it was a bubble and didn't expect it to continue. To reach this level when the economy hasn't recovered yet is very encouraging.

I see my job right now as building strengths on the strengths, and shoring up the weaknesses.

"Horrible and Terrible are the same thing," Tyrion says.

I had horrible, terrible dreams last night. End of the world dreams. Me as an old man chipping at arrowheads while my savage grandchildren play nearby -- type dreams.

I know where they came from: the 4 hour Frontline documentary about the financial meltdown.

It made it clear that nothing has really changed, Wall Street is back to its old (new) tricks, and that another disaster is inevitable. Greece is essentially bankrupt, so to is probably Italy, Portugal, Spain, Ireland...et.al.

Obama blew it by making Geithner is Treasury Secretary. In a nutshell. Apparently, they bonded and thus lies the fate of empires.

Made me want to pull my money out of the stock-market; buy some shotgun shells, a year's worth of canned food, and seed stock.


But -- it also made it clear how extraordinary the lengths to which the government will go to keep the whole edifice intact. I'm thinking they've kicked the can down the road. I'm waiting for a clear sign before I do anything panicky.

Before Watchmen or not Before Watchmen.

A long discussion over on The Beat about the ethics of carrying Before Watchmen.

Alan Moore feels that he was screwed by DC with his original contract, and has been very vocal about DC using the characters that he invented to make money. Especially, The Watchmen. He had his name removed from the movie, for instance.

So there are a few comic shops that are actually refusing to carry the title.

There is also the long history of both DC and Marvel more or less leaving the creators of their money-making titles out of the financial loop. Jack Kirby, being the prime example -- a co-creator with Stan Lee on most of the major characters. (Especially pertinent right now, The Avengers.)

As a retailer, I have to make decisions all the time about what to carry and what not to carry. Certainly, if I believe a comic company has acted badly, it weighs into my decision.

But if were to try to cut every title where the creator was treated unfairly, I wouldn't have a store. Going all the way back the Siegel and Shuster, the creators of Superman, and then on to Jack Kirby, and then Alan Moore. But really, if you get right down to it, just about every company character ever created has made money for the corporations that was not shared with the creators. They signed work for hire contracts, but more to the point probably never expected that one day, a Billion Dollar Movie would be made of the Avengers. A lowly comic book.

I also feel an obligation to my customers. It isn't up to me to make the buying decisions for them. Sure, when I make choices of what to carry and what not to carry, I'm making that decision -- but in the case of a major title, something that will be sold just about everywhere and which will be in the media, it would be a pretty arbitrary decision for me not to carry the product.

I feel badly for Alan Moore, but don't feel that I can decide not to carry what might be one of the most significant events of the year.

Perfect gardening weather. Is dangerous.

I was digging through my yucca's, and I felt a really sharp pain in my little finger. A thorn or bristle had hit a nerve. But there was nothing there. Then I wondered if I'd been bitten by something.

Anyway, it hurt all day, but it never got red or swelled up, but looked normal. It just hurt.

Arthritis? I wondered.

Woke up this morning and it was itching like crazy. So, yeah, I poked a nerve with something. But there isn't a mark on me.

(No -- I don't wear gloves. Gardening with gloves is like making love with a prophylactic...)


Anyway, I've decided to garden every day, at least a little, and like last year try not to burn myself out doing it. I'm starting on the side of the house, the place I usually get to last every year. Out of sight, out of mind. But it's also the worst place to work in the hot weather, so it makes sense to do it now, even if it isn't as satisfying.

The yucca's in the berm on the other side of the house have proliferated, so I'm going to transplant some to the other side and see if they take. They are the least maintenance plants I have.

I enjoy the process of gardening, but at the same time, I wish I had a magic wand and could get the garden the way I want it.

Looking for reasons, after the fact.

The article in the Bulletin this morning about Bend's water being the reason for all the breweries.

I kind of doubt that.

I think we got Deschutes Brewery here pretty early in the game, and that encouraged a couple of other big breweries, and we've had a bunch of spin offs since then. It would have happened with or without the water, but it certainly sounds better to point to the water.

I have the same problem when I hear the common narrative that downtown Bend's revival was inevitable. Because of the river, the "old" (?) buildings, the street layouts.

As it happened, I was here through the entire process, and I can tell you it was never inevitable. It was much more happenstance and luck than people realize. It was even touch-and-go there for a few years, that we wouldn't fall back. Timing was a big part of it. Things gain or lose momentum for what seem very small reasons at the time, but they are tipping points.

But it's always nice and easy to go backward and fill in all the best reasons that something happened.

That pretty much confirms it.

Linda and I went for a drive yesterday afternoon, and ended up in Prineville. We always check out the bookstore there.

They'd done some rearranging, bringing most of the product, including toys and games into one side of the store, and having an open floorplan with tables and with the coffee bar in back of the other half. It looked nice.

They were increasing their used books, but were planning to continue to carry new books.

Anyway, they had some of the 'Melissa and Doug' brand cribbage boards and chess sets, and I've been thinking about carrying those for several years. I hesitate because I once carried five or six versions of those games and must have had 50 people turn their nose up at them. See here's the problem -- if I then have 200 people over the next three or four years ask for them, I can't help but remembering those first 50 people.

Generally, things like that don't change, sadly. It's a case of people being too picky for their own good.

Anyway, the guy in Prineville informed me that 'Melissa and Doug' company was discontinuing cribbage and chess and backgammon and go and all those games.

Which pretty much confirms that they are a hard sell.

Bodycount!

Linda and I went to see "Safe" the new Jason Statham movie.

For some reason, Linda really likes him; she turned to me in one of his movies and asked, "Are those real muscles or are they digitally enhanced?"

It was a fun movie. Very violent. It reminded me of a study I once read that said that people are more likely to become more violent after a movie in which the guy inflicting all the pain is doing so righteously, instead of the righteous guy being the victim of the pain.

Well, in this movie, they set up the travails of the young Chinese girl and the disgraced cop in the first part of the movie, so that when they finally turn and fight it is very satisfying....

There were a couple of actors who I barely recognized. The clean cut bad guy is the actor who plays the lead in Hell on Wheels, and the Chinese bad guy is the goofy sidekick on the show Grimm. Completely different in personalities. Acting, eh?

But one thing I want to know.

Bodycount!

I want to know bodycount! (Checking Google, be right back...) O.K. Apparently no one has done it yet, but it's got to be in the hundreds.

Garden walkabout.

Did my first real garden walkabout today.

Pretty late in the season, I know.

I've been dealing with Dad issues over the last few weeks, and the week before that we had family in town. Besides, my garden for whatever reason seems to run a full month behind everyone else's garden. Though the weeds are certainly flourishing.

This year I was intending to be more of maintenance year. Last year I spent quite a bit of time clearing away space, and buying plants.

I'm not terribly happy with how the plants I bought have done. But that is kind of the point. My intention is to have enough variety of plants that I can pick from the survivors which flowers to subdivide and plant elsewhere. (Instead, I suppose, of trying the fix the soil so that the plants that don't survive will do better...)

I think I'm going to give everything another week or two to come up, before I decide what to save and what to spread. Maybe do some weed pulling, and the lawn will need to be mowed soon. I'd really like to get it fertilized this year -- I meant to last year, but I never seemed to have that nice 3 day stretch where I could spread the fertilizer and let it set in. Temperatures have to be at a certain temp and there can't be any rain. Just never seemed to have the right 3 days.

I think this will be a more leisurely year for gardening. Just kind of duffer around the garden.

Gardening and writing are a fine combination, too. I can mull the story, and if anything occurs to me, I can walk over to the patio and use my laptop. I'm really looking forward to it.

I suppose I may get started this afternoon, despite the cool temperatures.

Moving product around, every 6 weeks.

I almost can't read retail advice anymore.

My store seems to have stepped outside the mainstream. What seems to work for others, doesn't work for me, and vice verse.

For instance, today there was a bunch of discussion on Game Industry Retailer board about moving your inventory around every 6 weeks (or more often!)

Now I'm always moving things around, in a natural organic way. I call it morphing. Over the course of two or three years, the store will look different. But moving stuff every 6 weeks just to move stuff? Yikes!

All I can think, is they don't have much stuff.

I had Paul, a regular, in yesterday and he started seeing toys and things he had never seen before. It was like blinders had fallen away, and he kept saying "How long have you had this?"

So there's the rational for moving things -- to change the look so that the customers eyes don't automatically pass over them. But then again, what Paul was seeing for the first time, I wasn't too worried about selling -- to someone.

I guess my excuse is, I've packed the store to such an extent, that a customer who is actually open to a new experience is almost BOUND to find something interesting. And to people who have never been in the store (a significant percentage in my downtown tourist zone store) everything is new. I have actually said that to myself: Carry so much stuff that they HAVE to buy something.

Seems to be working. It's a matter of diversity, and depth, and the ability to pay for a lot of material that may not be noticed or sell for a long period of time. But which eventually everything sells. (Yes, I have a few yellowing toys on the wall, but I kind of like to have a few things around that harken back a decade or more, as background. It's part of the overall "feel.")

The way things sell:

I got a "Back to the Future" DeLorean car toy in a few weeks ago, and I must have had 20 regulars pick it up and say "Cool." It took a couple who were in town for a wedding to buy it. That seems to be the usual story nowadays. Either the locals buy it, or a tourist does.

Space is my biggest concern these days.

I'm currently looking at carrying jigsaw puzzles -- and also financing a jigsaw puzzle section in my wife's store.

Why? Because they are stack-able. I can carry a significant inventory in a small footprint. A credible inventory isn't too expensive. And it adds to the diversity of the store, yet another thing to snag a passing customer.

My plan is to put an ongoing puzzle on the round table at Linda's store, and have a stack of puzzles on the bookcases in the gardening section parallel. There is a lot of unused vertical space in my wife's store. (Vertical space is the ONLY space I have left.) Probably buy a round plastic cover to the puzzle when it's not being worked on. (It's near the children's books, so that's a concern, but you can't make omelets....)

My technique is to bring in a product line, streamline it, maximize it, simplify it, add the sales to the total and check to see if I'm "there" yet. Rinse and repeat.

Books and boardgames have put me over some threshold, which I'm really happy about. The store is obviously complicated, what with having comics, books (new and used) games, card games, cards (sports and non-sports), anime and manga, toys, t-shirts and so on and so on.
But that seems to be the price I pay for being in Bend, which isn't as cosmopolitan as it likes to believe it is, is still a relatively small town. Tourists make the difference.

But even though I have reached a viable threshold, I'm not quite ready to say I'm done. Products have a way of becoming obsolete, and it wouldn't hurt to have another couple of product lines in the pipeline that I'm tinkering with.

Does not compute.

A guy buying some used books.

"That will be $4.50," I say.

"Here's $5.00," he answers. "You don't charge enough..."

"What did you say?"

"You don't charge enough..."

"I'm sorry, I don't think I quite caught that."

"You don't charge enough...."

"I think I heard you say something, but my brain couldn't process it."

"You don't....charge enough."

"I don't...................what was that again?"

"You don't charge enough."

I look over my shoulder. "You talking to me?"

"You don't charge enough."


Anyway, that's the way I think the conversation went.

The long point is missing the point.

It's amazing how most discussion of business models mostly talk about the ruthless efficiency of the market, and how that must be good. Good for the customers because of cheaper prices.

Almost never talked about are issues of fairness, or of simple right and wrong.

I fall into this trap myself. I try to argue the long point -- telling people not to just look at A or B, but to continue to follow the chain of logic to C, D, and E. To look at the overall consequences, instead of the short term benefits. Of course, most people's eyes blur at the 3rd or 4th degree of complexity.

But the long point is missing the point.

When I'm really trying to say, "Hey, just use the Golden Rule. Be fair. Think about whether something is right or wrong, not just if it's efficient."

Right now, I can see some of you rolling your eyes. "Didn't your momma tell you 'Life isn't fair?'

Yeah, she did. But she didn't sound happy about it.

I can hear others of you saying, "Oh, there's your Calvinest streak again, Duncan."

But when did discussions of fairness become taboo? Is the point of life to accumulate the most goods for the cheapest prices? Or to acquire what you need in a fair and thoughtful way?

Of course, that probably makes me naive. Or a socialist commie pinko. Probably.

Because, you know, considering the moral ramifications of policy is somehow really dumb.

"Ethical dunces."

So I'm struggling to come up with something to write about this morning.

Do I comment on the asinine real estate blogs who trumpet "Best Time to Buy!"?

Do I talk about how surprised I am that the Deschutes Commissioners actually issued a default on Pronghorn? Or what that means? Can they just take the money and not build the hotel?

Do I observe the obvious headline, "Economic Analysts are Wary of Mixed Signals." Well, duh.

But at the back of my mind is an incident that happened at my store yesterday, that I really want to talk about, but which probably doesn't make me look too good.

I was talking to a couple of young women, one of who had just been published in a book of essays about comics, and which I had special ordered for her. It was a very esoteric title. But I thought to myself, that I would order another copy for the shop.

She was from Seattle. I asked her if there were any "good" comic shops near her.

"Oh, it's a mixed bag. There are some really good ones, and some really bad ones. Dirty. The one I go to is really dirty, but they give a really large discount."

"Don't you think you ought to give your business to the "good" comic shops, rather than going for the cheap?"

She just looked at me like I was a dunce.

"Actually," she says. "I buy from a guy who delivers comics to me, who doesn't have a store."

"Well, you know." I said. "About 45 cents out of every dollar I makes goes to overhead: rent, electricity, insurance, employees, taxes. This guy is buying comics wholesale and not paying any of those things."

Again, she looks at me like I'm a complete idiot. Now, I'm not naive. I know that in this age of internet just about anyone with a website can maintain he's a retailer, and get wholesale discounts if he or she buys enough. Nothing is probably going to change that.

But it was the look in her eye that set me off. She didn't argue her point. She didn't have a point. She was laughing at my concern. She didn't have a clue. She couldn't give a damn.

This is a woman who wants to be part of our wonderful industry. But who can't be bothered to support the exact kinds of shops that would be most likely to carry her book.

"You're a F%@king moral idiot!" I said loudly and walked away from her.

I regret using the word "F@#king." I regret raising my voice.

But I don't regret the "moral idiot" part.

It's my wonderful customer relations that's gotten me so far, obviously.

Last chapter.

Read the final chapter last night at writer's group.

That's the second book I've read from beginning to end at the group over the last 30 years.

In effect, they thought the previous chapter should be the conclusion, and this one ought to go into another book.

They had quite a bit of criticism.

"So let me get this straight," I said. "You just want me to be deeper, more consistent, with a stronger plot and deeper characterization. Is that all?"

Somehow, my ego isn't affected by this. I'm not sure why. There are all kinds of confidence, and I seem to have the confidence that I can somehow, someway fix it all. My feeling is -- "Oh, you just wait, I'll make this a good book despite all ya." Which is unfair, since they've taken the time and effort to try to help.

In other words, I think I can accept the criticism and act on it. And have faith in the end goal.

But all thoughts of me being finished any time soon are gone. I figure I've got a lot of work to do.