Skip Week

I have to admit that I am kind of looking forward to a week without new books. There is a lot of work getting ready for the new shipment, from updating pull lists to moving the shelves to make new spaces for new titles and moving the new tags. Now, it is mostly routine for me now. Tuesday at 4pm, make the holes and move the shelves. 6pm start moving the new tags. But it is still a good bit of work that I have been doing every week for, gah! 165 straight weeks. So a week off is a bit of a break. Oh and the chaos that is New Comic Day. A week off of that will be nice too. I will be nice just to have a big ale. And it gives everybody a chance to get caught up on their reading.

Now don't get me wrong; I need new books every week to stay afloat. As of Saturday morning, over half of my sales for December were new comics. This is a trend the past few months. For the longest time New Comics were in the 40-45% range.

New comics are probably the hardest part of my business. Ordering correctly is a bit of a bear. Anticipating drop-offs or growth. Figuring out which new books are going to be hits and which are stinkers. I am doing the December order right now and it tough as well because for some DC books, the most recent data I have is for Blackest Night tie-ins. Will they sell at their higher level because of the cross-over or will they drop back down to their prior level? Or will it be somewhere in between. I guess somewhere in between and hope I'm not too far off. And Marvel now has all of the Siege tie-in issues. How much will this affect books like New Avengers and Thor? I'm sure there are some "Event" people who will pick them up because of Siege, but how many. They are (or were in the case of Thor. How do you NOT expect a drop-off when you title an issue Giant-Sized Finale? Kind of like yelling "Everybody Off!!!")

It is fun to read the comments on The Beat's Sales Chart analysis and see people commenting about retailers don't know how to order and that is the reason for the large drops in titles sales. I always laugh and want to reply, but I know it would be screaming into the wind. There are 2 Black Widow mini-series out right now. Exactly what sales data should I use in figuring out how to order them? I took a wild guess. Then you have the fun where one sells well and the other not at all. How do you plan for that?

Well, this went off on a bit of a tangent. All in all, next week should be a little more low key for me and I am looking forward to it.

Stress

I am ready and prepared for the stress of the holidays. Do I have the right product in the store? Will people come? Even the family stress. Will she like it? Will it come in time? The stress I was not prepared for was the "Not Being in the Store" stress.

I have to go to my Sister-in-Law's wedding in Texas this weekend. I did everything I could to get out of it, but family harmony prevailed. The stress comes from the fact that it is 3 weeks before X-Mas and I will not be in the store to: 1) let customers know that their special orders have come in, 2) let people know that I have something they are looking for coming, 3) make recommendations that go along with what they are buying and 4) various other things that only I can do. I am not the be all and end of comic retailing, but in my store, I am the only one who knows what is going on. There is no way I could leave notes that would make any sense.

"This guy, who likes Buffy books, asked about the Buffy lead figures that came out. If he comes in, show it to him. No, I don't know his name, but I'd recognize him if he came in."

So, my fear is how much am I going to lose in sales by being gone this weekend? I fear that it is a lot, especially in the unquantifiable way. No one who will be working here will have access to the Diamond site to see if something is available (I'm not giving anyone access to my account. That could be very very bad).

It is such a crucial time of year. And no one understands my concerns.

Gah. Hopefully it will all be ok.