Saturdays
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A lot of the information contained in this
topic is, indeed, contained elsewhere in this document. This
topic was written at a later time, and from a new vantage point; after
we have sold a good number of BookAccents
accounts, and we have been in the bookseller business for almost four
years.
Why have I taken the time to write this
information? I
am a bit selfish. I
want you to succeed in the bookselling business. I
want to share our success and failures with you. I
want you to become one of our BookAccents
users. I
have found that many of our users have started a business for the first
time, and certainly can benefit from knowledge anyone is willing to share.
Unfortunately
I have seen some business go bust. Most
of the time I feel it was due to a naive misunderstanding of how to trade
and sell books. Others
have had such a narrow field of view that success was unlikely.
I am not saying that I know all of the
ins and outs, but we have been very fortunate and successful in selling
in our store and on the Internet. Since
we will not be competitors, I am happy to help you in any way possible.
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You know? if
you would visit our store on any week day, then again on Saturday, you
would swear that you are visiting an entirely different business. I
guess we planned it that way, but in any case, that is surely how it is.
During the week we have
a very steady parade of our week day customers. They
are typically middle aged women who buy tons of romance
and general fiction used books. This
is a good thing, don't get me wrong, but there is a vast, untapped market
if you settle for just one class of customer. Saturdays
are different. We
have kids, teens and men buying an entirely different product.
We have special problem,
that I hope you do not. Our
store is located where it is because we own the building, and opened our
store defensively. That
is, we had a significant amount of unused floor space, in need of a money
making venture. Our
building is located on the outskirts of a business park. It
is not in any type of mall. It
stands alone. It
does, however have a few thing going for it.
A reasonably good
amount of traffic passes each day, as we are on US 21 Bypass.
We are next door
to a credit union.
We have great parking,
and allow overflow customers from the credit union to park on our lot.
We quickly noticed that we were not as
busy as expected on Saturdays. Our
typical customers were not shopping in our store on Saturday. What
to do?
The obvious solution was to draw a different
crowd. We
tried a few strategies:
We started carrying
comic books and magazines.
We got started
on this venture as Ingram sent us a promotional that we would get free
magazine rack if carried a minimum of 4 copies of a certain number of
magazines and comic books. Better
yet, it was a no risk deal. We
can send back all of what we buy for 100% credit.
Unfortunately
Ingram does not carry all of the comic books that the comic fanatics wanted.
We would
need to get these from Diamond Distributors. You
must order at least a month in advance and no return credits allowed.
Even with
these tow distributors, were short many titles. The
only distributor in the South who carries these would not do business
with us unless they supplied ALL of the magazines and comics we carried.
Trouble
was their discount schedule its terrible, and it would be impossible for
us to sell their items competitively yet profitably.
All of this being the case, we decided
to carry everything possible from Ingram, and fill with what we could
from diamond. I
won't tell you the names I called the rep from the third distributor.
As of this writing, we have been selling
magazines and comic books for exactly one year. We
have over 300 titles in combination. The
magazines are a total failure. Even
though we can return all that we do not sell, there is a great deal of
labor involved in keeping us with the inventory and returning the unsold
copies. Additionally,
we have about two thousand dollars tied up in the inventory. On
the brighter side... since we need only return the cover our employees
get free subscriptions.
The comic books are another story. We
are still not making a profit on comics because we cannot return the issues
we do not sell, but we are getting closer and closer each month (to profitability).
We do,
however draw an entirely new clientele because of the new products. Unless
you have a great deal of spare floor space, I recommend that you do not
try either comics or magazines.
When we opened our store, almost 100%
of the books were used paperbacks. Because
of financial reasons, I'll bet that is your situation too. We
opened the doors with about 14,000 used books. Many
of these books were unsalable, and used just for fill. As
better stock was traded, we replaced the junk with these during the first
year. If
you are doing things right, you will soon have a large surplus of traded
books.
Because our customers were coming to buy romance and general fiction, it
followed that the books that were being traded in were also of those genres.
When males
customers would visit, they generally did not buy, as we did not have
the books in which they were interested. And
that is the worst thing that can happen... an new face, but no sale. He
won't return, and he will tell his friends "those guys don't have
any books".
This is bad if you are spending a great deal of money on advertising. You
are drawing, but not selling:
The cure for this
condition came as a result of fixing a different problem. I
think that you will find, most of your customers read authors, not titles.
When they
discover Nora Roberts, they want to read all of her books. Needless
to say, it is impossible to always have a complete used collection of
each popular author's books, so I started carrying at least one new paperback
of each title. When
a new one sells, we immediately replace the title on our next day's order
to Ingram. (BookAccents helps us
with this.) I know, you don't think funds are available to do this at
your business. You
don't have to do this all at once. Buy
a few at a time, but allow your inventory to grow over time. You
can completely stock Janet Evanovich for about fifty bucks. Even
at first when our discount schedule was poor, we bought five of each title.
They
turn over very quickly. This
was one of the best investments I have
ever made.
Sorry,I'm drifting off
course again. I
learned to use the "Forthcoming Search" facility on Igram's
Ipage. This
allows you to see a list of new title that are to be available "next
month" sorted by "demand". I
used this at first so that I don't miss any Nora Roberts releases, but
I soon found myself ordering other authors. I
started looking for men's , mysteries, children's and young adult titles.
Now, this is a very
important point. When
I first started onto the bookseller business, I visited quite a few stores
and talked with quite a few experienced booksellers. For
some reason, all of the stores visited segregated their new and used books.
It seems
as though the thinking was that those shopping for new books didn't want
to be bothered by used,, and visa versa. This
is hog wash. I
kept our segregated too... until I started running out of shelf space
which was dedicated to our used books. By
necessity we started moving the new books in with the used. Wow,
what an immediate improvement to sales! The
volume of new books increased by five fold... almost immediately.
But now for the best part. All
of the other (men's, mystery, etc) started selling. We
add new, desirable titles in with the unsalable, used books. Now
the new customers started buying books when they visited. This,
in turn, causes them to return (for trade) the new books purchased in
our store. Now
that machine is running better and better each month. This
also gives us the incentive to purge the junk from these shelves. Saturdays'
volume can now be huge. It
is almost as though we own two stores.
