Tomorrow begins the second month of Circle City Books’ existence. That’s the day on which I change the coding that I assign to every book when I price it. Until now, I’ve coded all my books “CC1” indicating that the book went on the shelf during the store’s first month. Starting tomorrow, and lasting for another month, the coding will be “CC2.” At some point I suppose, books that have been on the shelf too long will be sentenced to some kind of punishment: the bargain bin, execution, maybe a pep talk. In any case, the end of my first month finds the store still in business, and doing better than I expected. (I admit to low expectations.)
The time change has revealed to me a heretofore unknown problem. When the sun sets at 5:00 p.m., it means that the last hour and a half of business passes with my store cloaked in darkness. When I first opened it was light until closing time. But I have no neon light; no flashing sign; no spotlight illuminating my storefront. I do have lights in the window, but even with those on, it is surprising how dark the store looks from the street. People driving by wouldn’t know I am open. So this is one of the things that I overlooked. Sometime soon I’ll have to correct that.
