Inventory Management

The Mysterious Workings of an Independent Bookshop

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I’ve been pondering and concentrating upon what I used to do all day as a bookseller. That aside, there was the slight difficulty of deciding which place of employment to remember–there were a few over the years, and each individual shop had its quirks and perks. Foul Play, a small well established mystery bookstore in … Read more

Picking which books to downsize

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If you’re in the used book business you shelves pretty quickly end up groaning under the sheer number of volumes you have available.  But sometimes the sheer volume can become an impediment to selling, especially with a physical store.  If you’re online only, the only person that has to deal with the piles is you.  In a store, if they piles get too large they can become difficult for customers to find what they want.  Sales slow because there’s too much clutter and too many choices.  There’s so many choices, people can’t decide what they want! and even if they did, they may be loathe to pull it out of the stack because they’re afraid it may fall!

So eventually, it comes times to prune down the piles.  But you don’t want to go about pruning them willynilly.  How do you pick what books to get rid of?

This becomes extra difficult if you listen to other booksellers.  What works for them may not work for you, even if they’re in the same town!  Great, their customers love this author…. you can’t give them away.  (though trading it to them for something you need may work…) You need DATA.  About YOU.

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