One Hundred Fifty Minutes and Change

    I run a bookstore. Sometimes, I am find myself reaching for topics to post on social media, including the store's website. One thing I do is frequently changing the site's color themes to match the current season/holiday. For example, I have had the site fixed up in sort of a beach scene. The header is red, with a happy, little sun graphic. The background for the main body is orange, while the footer is blue. I was supposed to have changed the theme over to back-to-school a few weeks ago, but I could never find the time. 

    See, I usually update the site every Friday. However, I've been late coming in the last few Fridays. Not overly so, but late enough that I don't have time to update everything that I need to change. In fact, I will probably have to go straight from summer to autumn without anything in between with the extra time I'll be getting on Labor Day. That way, I can change the theme and graphics without the hassle of the other changes I normally make on Fridays.

    What do I update every Friday? Why, I update the upcoming book list for the following week. When I first started, I just highlighted a few books coming out each week, going back tow weeks, for three weeks total. Then I started doing something a little different.  First, I went out to four weeks, shifting each week down one spot when I updated the list at the top. I also expanded the title list. Instead of just a few books, it grew to over a dozen per week.  The top picks are now highlighted in a special color tied to the current theme. However, the list of new books has grown to a few dozen per week. That takes up all of the allotted time to update the site, making it harder to make other changes.

    Now, you might be asking "Where do you get all of those book titles?" Glad you asked.

    Years ago, the store's major book distributor provided a list of street dates for major releases, predominantly hardcovers. Their list soon great to include almost every title that was coming out, regardless of being hardcover or not. They even allowed public access to this list for a short time after they left the retail market. Unfortunately, the distributor stopped providing this list years before they went out of business.  Fortunately, there is another book distributor.

    I can't really say how they do their listing. Instead of an easily printable list, they have an online listing, of all possible new products coming out. Instead of a few months, their list goes out to over year in advance.  At least is adaptable. I can shorten the list to just the forthcoming month. That's still thousands of products. For the purpose of my list, I just focus on the hardcovers. I narrow the list down even further, by price, language, and publisher. Even then, the list can get a little long.

    I come up with my list the last week or so of the month for the next one. I start by picking the best titles from the monthly catalog, and then making sure of the release dates.  (Occasionally, a book is listed late and put in the catalog for the following month, or a title gets delayed after the catalog is made.) I then get even more books by checking the online listings they way a mentioned above. Usually, I can narrow down the list to manageable number between one thousand and fifteen hundred books. I focus on the ones with firm street dates, prominently highlighted, so I can keep my search time down.

    This September is abnormal though. Not only are many of the biggest books for fall already coming out, but September has five Tuesdays this year. The biggest titles have street date releases on Tuesdays. This meant an extra week to go through. I had over twenty-two hundred books to go through yesterday. Instead of the normal hour-and-a-half to finish the task, I had to work around two-and-a-half hours to go through every listing. Sure, I skipped dozens of books, like an entire children's book series about dreaming about each letter of the alphabet. However, I had to keep checking other books to make sure they weren't re-releases or on a subject that wasn't appropriate. 

    The work wasn't torture, but it took a long, long time. It got a little crazy at the end, as I had to skip bunches of self-published works, just to find the major titles. Did I mention that the list is in reverse chronological order? The last listings were for the books coming out on September 1, next Tuesday. The time order just bugs me, almost as much as seeing how commas look after numbers in this font. 

    Later on today, I make out the final list that I will be putting both online and on a dry erase board in the store. See, I don't just look at street dates.  I also look at the covers of the book, and use them as inspiration for the in-store board. I've written about how I make up that board somewhere in this blogcast, I think. I would go over that as well, but I don't have the time.

Novel Ways to Ruin a Mystery Novel

    While I did major in English, most of the time that interferes with just reading for joy and pleasure. It is sometimes hard for me to enjoy a book as the critical analysis I've studied over the years just gets in the way. This just happened in the most recent book I read.

    I used to follow a series of cozy mysteries whose hook was that the protagonist had "visions" that helped her solve the crimes, although they frequently just got in the way. Although I loved that series, it had a habit of including a few more typos than a regular book, as well as various stylistic choices and factual inadequacies that a better editor could've helped with. The worst of these errors was when a background character claimed the wrong history about the origins of the board game 'Clue.' I couldn't be sure if it was to show the character's incomplete knowledge or if it was just thrown in as a way to connect with a later plot point in the mystery.

    That series kind of ended last year. While new books could come out later, the author has begun a new series with one of the supporting characters as the new main protagonist, although many of the rest of the cast is still around as well to pop in when needed. No visions, but the character has been showing a unique thinking process that wasn't seen previously. Unfortunately, the same editorial problems persist. 

    For example, one of the suspects brought in for the new mystery only goes by their first name, as a way to hide the ties to their father who is in prison. While everybody knows the man's name, no one mentions it. Even a news interview about the father's release from prison skips over the name entirely, at least in print. Oh, the name gets mentioned, but characters only react to it.  The real name is never seen in the text. The technique makes it feel like the father is very famous and the author doesn't want to get sued for using it, ever though the character isn't real. You could have used a totally different name. Fictional people can't sue.

    The factual mistakes might be worse. Based on the previous novel in the original series, where a baby is born and is celebrating their first birthday in the new book, it is late September/early October in New England. I guess that could be a good time to repot summer flowers, even if some could still be blooming. And a slightly rebellious older woman might choose to wear a white skirt to an event after Labor Day kind of makes sense. However, the third mistake almost made me want to stop reading.

    Two men comment about the post-game show they heard on the radio while on their way to a dinner. Although the timing is sort of loose in the book, the dinner happened on a Thursday, meaning the show occurred in the late afternoon. It is very unlikely that the NFL would've have scheduled an afternoon game on a Thursday. There are only two possible scenarios this might happen. The first is if the start time had to be moved up to avoid a major weather event, such as a hurricane or other tropical system. Based on the time of year and the two teams involved, the Titans and the Patriots, this seems unlikely. The other scenarios is if this was an international game. Brazil would be likely, although London, England is also probable, although this meant the game ended around midnight locally. If the NFL was playing in Brazil on a Thursday, they would've started it slightly later for a great US viewership.

    Now, I'm not saying it would be impossible for this game to be played at that time, but I had to stop reading for a while when I saw it. Fortunately, it was at the end of the chapter, but still. If the author needed to include a sporting event to be mentioned at that time, why not a baseball game? It would've made way more sense for a Thursday that time of year. I guess the author needed to include a tie back to Tennessee, for plot reasons that barely mattered.  It just irks me whenever a small line like this almost ruins a book for me.  I'm emotional enough as it is.

Why My Blogcast Post Is So Late This Week

    So, we closed the store extra early yesterday as the storm warnings started to come back in. My mom went to the bathroom, only to notice that the toilet was clogging.  Nothing major, but she instantly blamed the unit next door.  They have been the reason behind many plumbing problems at my store for many, many years.  The only thing this time around is that the unit is technically empty. It is currently being used for storage by an Amazon delivery hub. No one is ever over there for any great length of time. However, someone had been over there about an hour before any problems were noticed. I personally thought that the problem was a finicky toilet. If you don't hold the handle for the right length of time, it doesn't flush properly. As we needed to get home before the heavy rains arrived, we said we would handle things today.

    Numerous storm and tornado warning were issued on the drive home. We were there for about forty minutes before it started to rain, with another five to ten before the storms hit. Nothing too bad happened, although the electricity went off for a few seconds and a number of long siren blasts were heard. I still don't know why they went off. 

    Anyway, my mom waited until just before we were supposed to leave this morning to gather everything needed to work on the toilet. This not only caused as to leave over twenty minutes late, but we also got caught in the light rain all the way to Pikeville. She also had to stop for coffee, and there was a long wait. This was probably because so many people in the area were without power. The electricity did go off at the store, but it looked like it was only for a few seconds. We were about thirty minutes late. 

    After opening, she began checking out the problem. She asked for my help with the plunger after fifteen minutes or so. I gave a few quick plunges, and everything seemed to be better. She went on to see the shopping center's operating manager before cleaning the room up. This allowed me some time to check on my own things on the computer, but not to write my post. When she gets back, informing me that the plumber who works for the hospital that owns the center can only come after-hours, she asks me to try the plunger one more time before cleaning.

    I give it a few more plunges, when these paper towels suddenly appear. She had used them to clean the plunger, but left them inside. (She has done this before.) She begins to panic. Running around a bit, before she calms down enough to figure out how to get the towels out before they cause trouble. After another ten minutes or so, she asks me to plunge again, once the towels have been scooped out. I did so, but the water levels never did get back to normal, unlike the first time.

    My mom started calling people, after cleaning up the mess that included a puddle of water that appeared on the other side of the room, and she found some possible plumbers. She later talked to the manager again, after he came back from a break or something, as well as the Amazon delivery guy, who finally returned after his vacation. (He had a sub handling things while he was away.) The other unit was having problems too, even though I didn't even know it was being used. 

    Finally, someone should be over tomorrow afternoon to look at things. I'm still not sure what the real problem is. Whether my mom did something wrong and acerbated the situation, or if the unit just had another problem with our shared piping system. Whatever it is, this could be another time when my mom turned a minor inconvenience into a major problem, if somewhat unintentionally.

Buy the Book, in Fact Buy Lots of Them

    Last year marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of my store, Booknotes. We would have celebrated the anniversary, but there was a small chance that we would have had to either move the store or close it after a hospital bought out the shopping center where we are located. A few years after we opened, our closest competitor, Read More at Coal Run, closed. Last year, the Prestonsburg location of Read More also closed, leaving Booknotes as the only book store in the near area. Even without major competition, sales didn't change that much in the past year.

    Recently, not one, not even two, but three new book stores have announced their openings. In fact, two of them are opening up this week--one in downtown Pikeville and another in Coal Run (albeit in a different spot than where Read More once was). The third is planned to open in Prestonsburg shortly. All of this feels off somehow. After so long without any interest in the area, how is it three new book stores are opening up so soon of each other.

    There weren't any real rumors until their posts started popping up unannounced on my Facebook feed. Why the algorithm thinks I need to know about my competition so quickly is just crazy. What gets me is that other people started sharing these posts, and their posts have sometimes popped up on my feed as well. Some of these posts complained about not having a book store in the area, even though Booknotes has had a media presence from the beginning. I must admit that I would slip the occasional comment about the store, both as myself and Booknotes, whenever someone complained too much about such a false lack. Sneaky and a little underhanded, but I felt it was necessary. 

    Of course, I had to do a little research about the new operations.  Each store posted pictures of a new book shipment. For one of them, I couldn't recognize the company that the books came from. Turns out, it was a remainders reseller. Such businesses would buy the unsold products from other stores, and they would then resell them to somewhere else. While most of these books would have been kept in warehouses, some may have been actual stores, meaning that some products could be shopworn. Also, an order from such a place might not be of the greatest variety. Most of the books could be older, or of a limited variety of genres and types. Still, they are cheaper than many other places. Another picture showed just how few books that store was offering, as various objects filled up the otherwise empty space on their shelves.

    The other store has shown a slightly greater variety of books, many current or recent bestsellers among them. However, their picture of a book shipment was totally different. While the books shown weren't too old, the two romantasy novels shown aren't from this year. The children's book packed with them might have been, but there was no way to tell. Furthermore, the distributor I go through doesn't use that style of cardboard box anymore, and it is pretty much the only one used by independent book stores. My distributor also wouldn't pack such an eclectic selection of books in the same opening delivery for a new store. Back when I opened, they tried to keep each genre in its own box to make it easier to inventory and shelve. I don't know if that is still an option. Regardless, I find it suspicious. A later picture showed that most of their books are on one long bookcase, with other products filling out the rest of the space in their main showroom. There is also a special section for kids that also features toys.

    I've hear almost nothing about the third new store.

    At least my commenting has led to a mention of the local news when a feature on the new stores was shown. Considering that they had sent remotes to feature my store in the past, it was the least they could do. They didn't come back this time around, but they could have if they wanted.

    They really should.