I’m not sure how many of you view the comics industry, and whether you see comic stores as part of the bookstore family, but I feel that this is something that will have an impact on everyone. It will change, and is changing, the paradigm between publisher and storeowner in a drastic way.

Let me first talk about why comics being available to be distributed digitally is a big deal. For a long time comic stores in North America have been locked into what has always seemed to me as a monopoly. Diamond Distribution is the sole distributor of the big name comic books to comic stores across the continent. If a store wants to carry comic books, it has to order them through Diamond Distribution. These orders are placed up to 6 months before the actual books are published. This makes comic storeowners speculators, same as any other bookstore operator. They won’t know for sure whether a book will be big 6 months ahead of time. They have to look at trends (what people are buying…what titles are doing well…what authors or artists have huge followings lately) and guess. If they guess right, awesome, if not…too bad, so sad. There was an article here on bookshopblog a few months ago about the need to look at trends to forecast what books to buy.

Through the special DC and Marvel branded apps Comixology will release their books digitally on the same day the print edition comes out. This opens up a new way for customers to get their comics. A person should be able to wake up at midnight and download the new books even before the brick and mortar comic stores open. This is a big concern to comic retailers, as ebooks are a concern to bookstore owners. It cuts stores out of the equation entirely. Comic books can now be obtained from anywhere simply by purchasing them through the app.

I don’t see this as being too much of an issue (pun intended), though. Comic books as a medium are suited for print. DC has recently begun to release what are called Absolute editions of certain books or storylines. These Absolute Editions are printed on archival quality paper in hardbound editions with cardboard slipcovers. I own the entire run of a series called Planetary, yet I have still bought both of the Absolute Editions. I know that even if someone has a comic in a digital format, odds are they will at some point want a physical copy. Comics are not just for reading, they are for collecting, same as books. A digital copy, a thumbdrive full of files, can never replace a longbow full of comics or an Absolute Edition, the same way a digital copy, a thumbdrive full of ebooks can never replace a home library.

The comic book industry will continue to change in the digital era, just as all industries are being changed. The comic store simply has to accept that now than being the sole source of comic books, it now has to provide added value to the consumer as a means of bringing them into the store. Comic stores have always provided a sense of community. This is what I feel all store should strive for. If you provide your customers with a sense of community they will want to shop with you.

In the beginning, when we first started in the Internet Book business, we already had quite a few volumes to sell, but it became obvious that we neither had enough books or a wide enough range to do very well. What we needed was stock and variety.
Searching around in the used books section of our local libraries, Goodwill stores, op shops etc., we found very little of any great resale value and so we turned to Garage Sales.
Our very first was a winner. The owner had two boxes of books and was glad to sell them to us for $10.00. We got them home and researched prices and found very little worth entering. Enough to make a profit, but not enough to make it worthwhile. That is until we hit about 10 Books all on raising Rare Birds. We had no idea what we had until we saw the prices on “Bookfinder”. All were worth at least $20.00 and several were much more. And they were sold within a couple of weeks.
Now obviously we had uncovered the secret – Yard or Garage Sales.
But after a couple of months it became obvious that this was a BIG mistake. In the poorer areas the quality and type (and condition) was not even worth looking at. Middle income people seemed to have a ton of best sellers, but as we all know, there are too many of these on the market already. The affluent areas, although many had good books, also knew their value, so these was no help there either.
So we turned out sights on Estate or Moving Sales.
Our first was a Divorce/Estate Sale. Don’t ever get involved in these. We did two and they were the carbon copy of each other. First was that the atmosphere was murderous. Both couples hated their ex mates and anything we picked up was snatched back as they argued about the ownership or the price. Then they got into an argument as to why was their favorite book was being sold, which led to a fight as to whose fault the divorces was anyway. Both times we crept out unnoticed, before they came to blows.
Another shock came when we tried Estate Sales run by the Family. Usually there were differences of opinion on price. Quite often items were pulled from the Sale since “Mother promised me that,” and a Volume was taken out. Also there was the factor that every one considered everything underpriced and we got the announcement “Father valued these greatly, and I am sure he would feel insulted if we accepted this price.” Usually that was applied to 50 Volumes of Readers Digest Books that they would have have paid us to take away – avoid them like the plague.
We found one great one, where the Deceased ran a School for Jewish Children. We learned quite early that the best system was to go to these sales on the first day, size up what was there and come back at the last day day at the final hours. If there were still a decent number it was worth offering a low ball bid because by then the family was tired of the whole affair and wanted to get away from it all. But this one School sale was different. There was a very large amount of books for young children and we knew, with their age, thay were going to be winners. Sure enough, when we phoned, they assured us there was still most of the books unsold. It had been a wet weekend and the turnout was pretty low. Yes, they would take a low bid for the books, just to empty the house.
When we got there we discovered that the shelves of books we were eager about were gone. We were horrified at this and, when they saw our faces they assured us the books were still available, they had just thrown them in the dumpster. Well, quick as a wink we went to the dumpster, and there were the books, floating in the water from the wet weather. Not one was salvageable.
Depressed, we went back in the house and told them what they had done. Well their apologies were profuse and they insisted we took the remainder of the books free as recompense for their action.
When we got them home we were amazed at the prices and rarity of the collection we had. The were great. Mind you there was a lot of erasing of pencil and crayon marks and a few couldn’t be saved, but all in all we had got a tremendous deal.
Another disaster with one of these family sales was a house that had some lovely books, eminently saleable, and plenty of them. So we talked to the family and they were agreeable to a low bid on the remainder on the last day. We always made a habit of calling first because on two occasions we drove miles to pick up a remainder only to discover that they had decided to donate the books to charity, a waste of a whole day and a lot of gas. For pickups we used a gas guzzling minivan so you can imagine how we felt.
But accidents do happen and there is little you can do beforehand to stop them and this was the occasion for another one. A friend had offered to help them and had marked all the books with the selling price. How had he done that?, you may ask.
Well he got himself a roll of Duct Tape and ripped off a piece for each volume, stick it down hard and write the price on in black marker. How kind! Remove the Duct Tape and you took off the spine of the book. Oh joy.
But you learn. We attended a sale run by a professional and she gave us a lot of ideas. The house she was clearing was a Bank deal, and all the Bank wanted was an empty house that they could sell.
The Deceased was very well known Psychologist and there were lots of books on his speciality, as well as a lot of others. So we ended up not merely with about 500 pretty good books, an electric typewriter and lots of bookshelves. Quite a few of the books were signed by the Authors, other famous Psychologists who knew the ex owner so we had a real find.
What we thought we had learned was that only professionally run Estate Sales were worth attending.
Boy were we wrong. Some knew what their books were worth and either wanted that or they would do their own selling. Many tried to overprice. A few were out and out crooks. But most were honest but had no idea of books. You had to go to the site and and make you own decision. Even when they advertised “lots of books” that ould mean anything from one or two shelves to hundreds.
But we have made really good relations with about three Estate Sale operators and they always call or email us if they have anything decent. If we are at a loose end we call around to see what is going on.
But I can tell you some things to avoid. Estates sales or Moving Sales in “Yuppie” areas. Any books there are going to be best sellers or coffee table. Books that are stored in Garages.
What you need are sales in the middle income areas. Really affluent neighborhoods may have some wonderful stuff, but they know the value.
Always look around. I’ll never forget one where we bought all the books and a woman came up to us and asked if we had bought all the books. When we said we had she replied “Well you missed that one, pointing to a floor lamp that was supported by a book. Turned out it was a first Edition of “Tarzan of the Apes”.

[thanks to Beth Leintz for the images, she has many Estate Sales finds/stories]

This was the wild west, you see, out on the prairie, a few days travel from the Rocky Mountains. Mostly what was here was flat land and grass, and the grass was doing pretty well due to an un-typical run of wet years. Homesteading was going on, but most of the land was open range and supported cattle.

There was in this area a rancher named Mr. Black who had a big spread along the river. On his land was a railroad station, very handy for sending his cattle to market, and he could charge others to use the facilities. A group of entrepreneurs asked Mr. Black to sell them some of the land around the station to make a town. Mr. Black could not see the advantage of having a town smack dab in the middle of his cattle range, and declined to sell it to them.

There was collusion and there were meetings in back rooms. A Clever Plan was hatched. On a Saturday in May, Mr. Black was sent a telegram which demanded his presence in a town 100 miles to the west, and he rushed off. In another version of the story, he hurried off to get an injunction, since he knew they were up to something. Anyway, he was lured away. At midnight, the railroad sent a train with a flatbed car and a crew of men. These men were cowboys and drifters who had been promised ten bucks and a rip roaring party with a banquet and all the booze they could drink if they helped with this little job.

The men jacked up the railroad station on Mr. Black’s land. The station seems to have belonged to the railroad and they had been authorized to take it, albeit secretly, but it was on Mr. Black’s land, and all the items inside were not railroad property, so things were a little murky on the legal front. The men worked fast. They got it onto the flat car and brought it three miles west to a quarter section of homestead land previously purchased by our entrepreneurs. The men put the station down and went back for the foundation stones and outbuildings. Other men began building a siding near the new station location, even though it was Sunday. On Monday, a train full of speculators from the Midwest showed up, and the auction of town lots began. By the end of the day, tents were going up and there was a town, at least on paper. The entrepreneurs were very happy.

Mr. Black returned to find his station was not where he left it. He was not happy. The people who may have been even less happy were the family of his foreman, who had been living upstairs in the station at the time it was hijacked. Some versions of the story have them, and their belongings, tossed out at midnight before the station was moved, and some versions have them being hauled along, willy nilly, to the new location.

The town was named Lamar after the Secretary of the Interior, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, with the laudable goal of influencing the man to give the town a land office. It worked.

An author named Mary Peace Finley has written a children’s book about this story, which came out in May. It is called The Midnight Ride of Blackwell Station
.

Most of this is relevant later. Really.

This is Part 6 of Caro and Susan’s foray into the land of bookselling. Here are the earlier segments:

• Part 1, We Got Handed a Dream In the Discount Card Aisle
• Part 2, The Auction
• Part 3, A Name, Some General Background, and We Go Back to School
• Part 4, In Which we have a Haunted Bookstore
• Part 5, Your Basic Hobby Gets Out of Hand

Whatever you do whether online or offline you need to be considering your overall image.  All of these things need to be in accordance..  Do not limit yourself to the look of your website or your logo but also look at the fonts you use, your policies and how you interact with people both online and offline, ensure the language you use fits this same theme..  Having an email address that has your url in it looks far more professional than having a gmail or hotmail account.

I’ll take my business as an example.  The colours in my logo all match up with the colours in my website, I actually took a lot of time to ensure this was correct by looking at my logo in a graphics programme, picking out the html code for the colours and then searching through my css file to make all the changes.  That took quite some time as I first did it without reference to the html code and had to repeat it when I knew what I was doing, but when I got the colours right it was much easier on the eyes.

Contact details should be easy to find and there should be more than one method of contact.  My email addresses are all website addresses, they are not gmail or hotmail or something else generic.  They make me look professional and easy to contact.  I also ensure I have a phone number there so people can ring me should they choose this option.  I did have one customer who was fairly new to internet shopping and she choose to ring me and do everything over the phone rather than go through my checkout procedures.  She was very nervous and if I hadn’t had a phone number I would have lost that sale.  I’ve had other customers ring me to check if I had the book available and have been able to make sales that way as well.

Your domain name should be easy to remember or have your keywords within it or both. I chose my domain name without thought to either of those things so I’m behind the eight ball there.  It’s neither memorable (unless you know me well and even then people forget how to spell it) nor does it have keywords to make it easier for Google.  I have a new domain name in progress and while it’s great for keywords, it’s neither short nor easily memorable so I’m very sheepish with both of those.

In order to increase your web presence you should be commenting on blogs and forums.  Make sure your comments are polite and in line with your overall image as this is what will make people follow up and look at your website.  I tend to comment on book blogs and while I use my personality, I am careful with my wording.  I don’t swear or put people down, I encourage and try not to advertise myself.  I use my personality to do my advertising.

My personality is my image.  I use my wacky personality to the full.  When I’m working I’ll put on some music I like and tweet snippets of the words.  I’ve set it up so my tweets automatically go through to my Facebook account, my blog and my LinkedIn account.  Sometimes people reply to my tweets in any of these places and I try to go back and reply to them.  I won’t say I’m trying to make all my followers friends, but I am trying to make myself seem friendly and approachable.  A new technique I’m trying out with Twitter et al is to tweet a fragment from one of my magazines for sale with a link back to the appropriate magazine.  I’ve only just started doing this so I’ll be watching the results carefully.

When posting on forums and blogs you should ensure you have a good link back to your website and an avatar that matches your website.  That’s the one thing I do wrong on The Bookshop Blog, I have links but I don’t have my avatar enabled here.  I don’t have many graphics skills so I commissioned a friend to make them for me.  She does some lovely work and made me static graphics as well as animated graphics to ensure people understand I have more than one place to look at.  The animated graphic shows people they can find me on Twitter as well as indicating my blog, Facebook fan page and website.

If you’re doing all these things then you need to make sure your policies and FAQs are aligned.  In my FAQs I have a couple of questions which show my madcap personality.  Someone once asked me if I sell art, I have no idea why they asked me that question, it seemed a bit bizarre to me and I didn’t press them for details.  My answer is: No, I do not sell artwork. You would need to go to someone who appreciates art.  I’ve had a number of comments about this one, they all think it’s very funny.

When you’re preparing your business cards, letterhead or other paper work for other people to see, make sure you follow through here as well.  My business card is vertical rather than horizontal and it resembles a small bookmark, my mistake there is I completely forgot to put what I do on it.  I was talking to my printer about it a few weeks ago and she was horrified the mistake had made it through the proofing and printing process.

If you’re in a position of being seen by people you need to also think about your physical presentation.  I don’t mean you need a suit and tie but if you normally wear a tshirt, consider making it one that fits in with your business.  I’m trying to buy convention tshirts and tshirts about books so I can say I’m in uniform if anyone sees me in summer.  Winter could be easier as I can just make sure to buy a couple of sweatshirts with books logos.  I have a lovely shawl, it’s the wrong colour as that’s all I was able to get at the time but I’ve had a friend sew the name of my business on it using the correct font.  She only does one or two pieces of clothing at a time but you can get them done by a printer if you want bulk.

Some people will make you look at your car and ensure it is an appropriate car for your business and image and also ensure it is kept clean and tidy both inside and out.  They feel you have to make every part of your working life fit your image.  How far you go on this side of things is totally up to you.  If I subscribed to their theory I’d also have to bring my house and garden up-to-scratch, but fortunately, my customers never see my house and garden.

–
Suzie Eisfelder
Suz’s Space
Your online home for pre-loved books and part-work magazines
Website:  www.suzs-space.com
Blog:  suzsspace.wordpress.com
Twitter:  twitter.com/SuzsSpace
Facebook: www.facebook.com/PrelovedBooksatSuzsSpace

That’s great of course – but what are you going to do about those other books on the shelves that are no longer new, are being overlooked, and haven’t moved from their place in the last god-knows-how-long? Wouldn’t it be great if you could occasionally push those to the front too? Solve it this way: every month, select a particular theme, gather all the books in your bookstore that fit into your theme, and give them a special space in the middle or at the front of your bookstore.

Let’s say this month, you choose your theme to be… William Shakespeare! I’m pretty sure he takes up a large chunk of space in your literature section anyway, right? But I bet so do the old literature anthologies, books about Shakespearian films, adaptations, and criticisms – add them to your list! Now for the set up – displays are always important, because if you’ve caught the eye, you’ve definitely caught a potential customer. Your display could have frills, or a mannequin dressed up as Shakespeare placed near the table – and get him to hold open a book. Make a foam portrait of him and place it in your window, and perhaps you’d like to have a word bubble coming out of his mouth with something written in Elizabethan English – being unique and creative will always be appreciated. What you should also do is promote your theme by targeting the right people. Are there universities in your area? Schools? Do your research. Send word to the literature departments that you have a special discount on all Shakespeare titles, or that for a limited time you have a special offer (buy three plays and get one free, for example – and remember that offers and discounts always work wonders) and you’ll have students flocking in. What you could also do is speak to someone from the literature or theatre department and ask if they would be willing to come in to your bookstore for a short reading of Shakespearian poetry or part of a play. Maybe you can even get them to dress-up! Set a date and a time and promote it in advance by sending word out to your mailing lists, local newspapers, magazines, or xeroxing the news and distributing it around town.When people come in the night of the reading, be sure to take their contact details and add them to your mailing list

• chances are, they will want to come again, and will certainly do so when you send word of your next event.

The options are endless in terms of your themes – imagine doing all of the above with other figures like Da Vinci, or Van Gogh, or even Tutankhamun! Maybe your themes could be simpler, like cooking, or pet-keeping, or painting. Sometimes, your choices might need a little thinking-ahead – pull out your yearly calendar and like looking for specific national events, holidays, or celebrations. If it’s Christmas, then December is your month to promote books about gift-wrapping, Christmas cooking and Christmas carols and stories, while snazzing up your display with shiny decorations and foam that looks like snow. Easter? Add stuffed bunnies, baskets, and chocolate eggs to your display, making sure everyone gets an egg on the way out. Summer holiday season? Treat your tourists kindly with a colorful selection of guidebooks, national history books, and maps. Valentines Day? This means romance novels galore, books about sensual massages, marital issues, great sex, and relationship guidance, while planting love-hearts everywhere… you get the picture! Start thinking of how to move those old titles forward, what funky themes you think might interest and surprise your customers, how to spruce-up your displays, and always – always! – think ahead.

The story is basically about two brothers, Nick and Alan, being hunted their whole lives by magicians, due to a stolen talisman and the pair of siblings they try to save, one of which bears a demon’s mark, which means he is marked for death. Only the blood of a magician, which means, of course, that the brothers must face head on what they have run from for as long as they can remember, can erase it.

It is a fast paced read, which will keep teens on the edge of their seats and coming back for more. Mild humor throughout makes the characters easy to relate to as well as endearing. I’m particularly intrigued by the relationship between Nick and Alan. It is very believable and you find yourself rooting for them to work out all their issues and save the day. Their relationship with their mother though is a different story. I found it strange and tense. The siblings they help, Jamie and Mae, have an understandable relationship; she is very protective of her little brother.

This is the first in a trilogy of novels; the next one is The Devil’s Covenant. This story is full of plot twists and suspense. There is mild language but nothing risqué or questionable. I won’t give away the ending, but let me just say you will never see it coming. I was completely thrown. As in any trilogy, The Demon’s Lexicon leaves itself ready for the next installment full of loose ends and unending fragments of storylines and relationships. I actually think this would make an interesting movie series. This writer has tremendous potential for becoming the next J.K. Rowling. I am sure the series will be a big hit. Thank you Sarah for the gift. I will cherish it always.

PRESS RELEASE. This is my foundational campaign piece, and I write it carefully, with important facts in the first two paragraphs followed by lots of detail, including everything that makes the author fascinating and all the local connections that I can make. Whenever possible I like to send along a color—and colorful–photograph of the author. Once in a while I get a feature piece, including the color photograph. More often a quiet couple of paragraphs appear, hidden away and easily missed. It doesn’t matter. If you try this and are disappointed more than once, don’t give up! Publicity Rule #1: Never complain! Rule #2 (corollary): Appreciate any attention you get!

My press release also serves as an announcement sent to radio and newspaper community calendars. (Keep a current publicity address list and add contacts as you make them.)

ADVERTISING. For me this means the local newspaper. I run a boxed ad with my store logo, including the author’s name, latest book, and date and time of the event. There’s no point in having an event if people don’t know about it. The ads also keep your bookstore name in people’s minds, whether they attend a specific event or not.

BLOG. My blog, “Books in Northport,” currently carries a right-hand column feature of all summer author events. From time to time I write an entire post on an upcoming event or include a short reminder in an unrelated post. The press release is pretty objective; my blog is subjective, with my personal connections to the authors and/or feelings about their work as part of the story.

FACEBOOK. This works well to keep local people reminded of events at my bookstore–just a breezy line or two, sometimes with a link to a blog post. I’ll often get “Thanks for the reminder” messages on my status.

E-MAIL. I’m a member of both the local Chamber of Commerce and Friends of the Library, so the presidents of each organization forward my announcements to everyone on their mailing lists, and the value of these connections is incalculable. I also send e-mail announcements and reminders to a variety of reading friends and customers.

FLIERS. This season I have an 8”x11” flier on cardstock listing all my author events. As an event draws near, I xerox the flier for wider, less expensive distribution, circling in red the author nearest on the horizon. Cardstock and paper fliers are posted in the store, available for take-home, and distributed and posted in the nearby geographical area.

WORD OF MOUTH. Talk about events coming up. Don’t go on and on until people’s eyes glaze over, but mention what you have on the schedule and how excited you are. Your excitement may be contagious!

Pamela Grath
Dog Ears Books
106 Waukazoo Street
P.O. Box 272
Northport, MI 49670
(231) 386-7209
dogears@netonecom.net
www.dogearsbooks.net
http://booksinnorthport.blogspot.com/

Every so often I have been asked to donate books to send to exotic locations like Sri Lanka and Papua New Guinea and I respond with gusto. Beautiful sets of Britannica, maths and science textbooks that have suffered only from inbuilt obsolescence due to bi-annual updates, time life library books, exlibrary books, childrens’ non fiction, picture books; anything in good condition that I have an excess of that could be put to better use overseas I happily waved bon voyage to.

But I can no longer store books just in case someone contacts me for a similar scheme (though if someone knows of one leaving Melbourne Australia anytime soon let me know and I will accumulate some books for you). Any spare capacity has been long consumed by the endless parade of books that are traded in on a daily basis. Too many days of bring in 10 take out 2 have seen to that.

As books come in I am pretty good at culling the unsaleable. Books that were already populating the shelves I find much more difficult to cull, but don’t ask me why that it is. I used to leave the culled books on the window ledge at the front of the shop for people to take. It didn’t matter what I put out there, it went. What it didn’t seem to do was encourage those people to come in and buy from me. In fact one customer commented that people were leaving lots of books for me on the window ledge and while that was very occasionally true most of the time it was my trade in culls and the like. So my possibly misplaced generousity was being misconstrued as well.

Anyhow I got sick of it. I thought about the fact that people can only read so many books and that if second hand books are secondary goods then FREE second hand books would be tertiary books and why buy if you can get for free. Not even the charity shops give away free items they can’t sell. You might rather read Harlen Coben than Sidney Sheldon but if the Sidney Sheldon is free, well it’ll do.

Now I have reinstituted the $1 bargain trolley (being in Australia $1 is cheaper than most charity shops around here would sell books for). If books don’t sell off the $1 trolley then they go in the paper recycle. I very much doubt the charity shops around here would appreciate books I couldn’t sell for a dollar for the same reason I couldn’t sell them for a dollar. And the truth is charity shops are my competitors. How many people come in and set the scene with a “I usually buy my books at the op shop” or “ I got a copy of this at The Most Generous Charity in the World Shop for $2 and you are selling it for $8”.

The reality is there are far more second hand books in circulation that people who are ready, willing and able to buy and read them and although some might call it a crime against humanity or even the greatest moral, economic and social challenge of our time, for me sending unsaleable books to paper recycling is a better business decision than donating to the charity shop up the road or giving them away.