Every year our supply (oversupply) of used books gets larger. We’re having a used book sale to try to reduce our supply.
All used books will be 20% off, whether you have a discount card or not. The sale includes used paperbacks, used hardcovers, used magazines, used gaming books, and bagged books.
Because we have so many used audiobooks, we will be selling all used audiobooks at $5.00 each, whether cassette or CD. The sale runs from Friday, August 27 through Sunday, September 5.
This sale will be for customers shopping in the store–it does not apply to mail orders. If you’re thinking about bringing in lots of used books to sell to us during the sale, expect a longer than normal wait.
T-shirts & Bookbags
We recently did a new print-run of t-shirts and bookbags. We were supposed to be restocked with t-shirts (with either Uncle Hugo’s on the front and Uncle Edgar’s on the back or Uncle Edgar’s on the front and Uncle Hugo’s on the back) in medium, large, XL, and XXL, in 7 colors: ash (gray), black, gold, kelly green, purple, red, and royal blue, but something got messed up–although we were billed for large reds with Uncle Hugo’s on the front, we received surplus XL instead of large. The t-shirts are $12.00 each through XL and $15.00 for XXL. The bookbags are heavy cotton, have Uncle Hugo’s on one side and Uncle Edgar’s on the other side, and cost $9.00 each.
When we ordered the new print-run of t-shirts, we thought we were almost out of the previous print-run; when trying to find a place to store the new print-run we discovered a large box with about 50 extra t-shirts from the last print-run with Uncle Edgar’s on the front. We suddenly have a lot more t-shirts than expected, so we’re going to mark 20% off the t-shirts during the used book sale mentioned above.
How’s Business?
By Don Blyly
The book industry is in turmoil. It seems like every few weeks there’s another announcement of 100s of people fired by Borders, as they try to cut expenses enough to survive. Barnes & Noble has announced that it’s for sale. Some commentators are speculating that the independents are likely to be able to survive after the national chains go under, as happened in the music industry. One commentator urged Amazon to buy Barnes & Noble, toss out most of the books to install print-on-demand equipment, and force publishers into the 21st century, with books only available as e-books or print-on-demand, thus getting rid of returns, warehouses, printing plants, etc. Comparisons are being made between Barnes & Noble and Blockbuster – dominant national chains that put lots of independents out of business, but now find that many customers are turning away from brick-and-mortar stores. Publishers are not only worried about being paid if big chains go bankrupt; they are also worried about loss of sales if customers are no longer able to browse for books in areas of the country where the chains have driven all the independents out of business.
One author who has had almost two dozen titles come out in mass market paperback recently told me that his current publisher told him that he and many other authors will no longer get mass market editions of their books, just hardcover and trade paperback. The chains have been buying so few copies of mid-list mass market paperbacks, and then returning them so quickly, that this publisher no longer feels that mass market paperbacks are profitable for many of their mid-list authors.
Dorchester Publishing, which has been in the mass market business for almost 40 years, announced that their September titles were already printed and shipping to the bookstores, but that would be the last mass market books they were going to publish. They had already purchased books through June, 2012, and we had already ordered books from them through November, 2010. After September, they are going to e-books only for all of their titles, with some of the titles coming out 6 months later in print-on-demand trade paperbacks at around $15 each.
We once again had to cut many titles from the Newsletter, mainly paranormal romances, game manuals, and true crime, and had to shorten the descriptions of many other books, especially kid’s and young adult (YA) books. The full listing of books and the full descriptions are on the website.
