One Week Away

Next Saturday, October 7, marks the seventeenth anniversary of the opening of Booknotes.  As of right now, we are not planning any big celebration beyond having a major sale, that has already started.  We will posting more information on it on our social media accounts soon.  Hopefully, next week's post will feature a major announcement about the store.  Until then, there is again little to mention here.  We should be posting pictures of the store as it is decorated for Halloween.  Good-bye for this week.

Scripting Posts: a Postscript

Another week goes by with little to talk about.  It can be hard coming up with new material for this blog every week.  We are still trying to get a handle on social media, especially when said media informs you that you haven't posted anything new in a few days.  Sometimes, there just really anything worthwhile to mention.  We barely even use some social media platforms anymore; others we ignore, possibly to our detriment.  Hopefully, we will at least have a lot of new pictures to put up, when we decorate the store for Halloween.  This will happen in the next week or so.  We also have our seventeeth year anniversary coming up, as well.  Both should provide for ample opportunities for posting.  We are writing and posting this week's blog a day early again, but we are not providing secondary links until our regular times.  We just wanted to get a head start on our work.  That is all for today; see you next week.

Apologies and Inconveniences

Booknotes is a small store; we only have the two owners working here.  This means that we frequently have similar schedules. It also means that we sometimes have to open up two or three hours late, or close an hour or so early to get to some appointments or to avoid bad weather.  This also means that we sometimes have to close the store entirely some days, if there is no other way to do something.  We try not to have the store closed more than one day a week, so that our customers can see us as often as possible.  We always try to leave a  message at the door, telling everyone about our schedule.  Since we joined social media, we have been posting our times there, too.  We always leave a message apologizing for not being open at our regular times and the inconvenience that it makes for our customers.  It  has become somewhat of a tradition to leave that message.  Rest assured, we try to never be closed more that one extra day a week, and to never open late and close early on the same day, or on back to back days, if it can be helped.  If we are closed on a Saturday, we try to update the website early; like we are doing this week.  Hope to be open the next regular Saturday.  Goodbye for now.

Falling into Autumn

The store has been decorated for fall, even if the picture we posted is sort of blurry.  We don't know what is happening with the digital camera, but we hope to fix it soon.  Anyway, we always do fall up at the store, possibly more than would be expected.  You see, we started business in October of 2000, and that has become one of our favorite designing times.  It also allows us to do up Halloween in a big way as well.  We will be posting more photos of the interior when we upgrade the decorations for that.  Unfortunately, many of the leaves in the window have already fallen from the invisible threads they were hanging from.  Because of all the material on the floor, it is almost impossible to go out there to place them back.  We will try to do so, however.  It is really a great time for the store, leading up to our anniversary next month.  We hope to have something planned, but you will just have to wait and see.  Until next time, goodbye.

Too Many Books, Not Enough Words

Usually, the Upcoming Releases board had between sixteen and twenty books per month.  This month, it had twenty-four,which is about as many as it can handle.  Currently, we plan on highlighting at least a dozen books per week on the site's Books page.  What all this means is, we will have a lot less time managing the blog because of all the extra typing we will have to do for other things.  Therefore, we will be cutting back a little on posts.  So, see you next week.

Lost in the Ramblings

There almost was no post this week,  It wasn't due to writer's block, there just really isn't much happening at Booknotes at the moment.  Nothing.  We might have a local author coming in for a book signing in the next month or two, but that is about it.  We can't even come up with anything interesting about the store that we feel people would like to read about.  At least we are writing something today to make our customers know that the blog is still going.  Hopefully, there will be something to really talk about next week.  Sorry about the rambling, but it cannot be helped.  Until next week, goodbye.

Encapsulating

I need to go personal with this one.  When I switched the store's blog over to the Blogger format, I left the original one to the other owner to use for reviews.  She reads way more than me (mostly mystery and romance), and could use the format better.  However, she hates to write, can't seem to have any extra time, and has a hard time understanding some of the nuances of the program.  This led me to use the store's Facebook page to start my own capsule reviews as a means to get more content online.  I trend to favor fiction in the fantasy/science-fiction/horror spectrum, with the oddball mystery or weird fiction thrown in.  Before I started, I set up some guidelines to keep my act straight.  First, all titles had to be recent, no more than six months old or so, with the occasional exception.  That way, they would still be fairly recent for customers to order if they wanted to get the book.  Second, the book had to be original, at least in format.  If a book came out in hardcover, but I didn't get a chance to read until it came out in paperback, I wouldn't review it.  This include compilations and reprints of older material as well.  If it had been available for a long time, I wouldn't review it.  Third, I must have read the entire book.  The other owner has a tendency to read the start of a mystery, check out the end to see if she guessed right, and then not read any of the middle.  I don't think that is fair.  I read almost all of a book that I review, skipping only a sentence here or there if it gets a little boring, but I still scan them so I can give a fair review.  The only problem is that I frequently get many books at a time, and at others, almost none.  This causes a delay of a week or more between reading a book, and posting its review.  This has meant that I get a few details wrong.  I am sorry about that.  Still, at least it provides content, will the promise of more on the way.  Until next week, bye.