Christmas in October. or Early November

Although Halloween is still just a few days away, it is time to start thinking about Christmas.  Most of the new Christmas books for both children and adults are already out, although many places might not have them prominently displayed.  In fact, we already have a few ourselves that we won't put out until after Halloween.  We still have a few children's books for Halloween we want ti try and sell, first.  We have always had a great selection of children's Christmas books.  Every year, we would have a selection of older ones we still like mixed in with some new ones.  We have had a few problems over the years.  Last year, we had many special orders for a new tree shaped book that had a musical chip in it that played a song.  While we probably shouldn't have, we tested out the books to make sure they worked.  Not all of them did, even after we changed the batteries out (this was mostly done to books that were already being picked up).  We wound up having to return many of them, and hope to get replacement books that worked in time for Christmas.  Things worked out, but we aren't thinking about getting more musical books this time around.  There aren't any new ones anyway, that we can confirm.  Check our social media pages for pictures very soon.  Until next time, have a good Halloween.

Eighteen Years and . . .

This past weekend was the eighteenth anniversary of opening Booknotes.  Unlike many of the past years, we did nothing to celebrate the event.  Normally, we would have at least had a sale, but this year we didn't.  In fact, because the date fell on a Sunday, when we are usually closed, we did not even feel like doing anything special.  The past year has not been that good of one for us.  We weren't able to have any huge events these last few months, although there is an extremely small chance we could get Adrianna Trigianni back for her new book next month.  We haven't been able order new books as frequently as we would like to, either.  We are just not getting enough special orders anymore to do so on the same schedule we once did.  Just recently, Google announced that it was ending its social media platform Google +.  It was our first presence online, but we never were to really exploit the possibilities as we should have.  Our presence will continue there, even though we have removed some on the links to it on our site.  Truth be told, we are not sure how much longer we will be able to keep the store open.  We will be here through the end of the year, but we don't now how much longer after that.  We will continue as long as we can, as we are this area's only independent book store.  We greatly appreciate all of our customers support, and we hope to do so as long as we can.  See you in two weeks.

They Say It's Your Anniversary

Although this isn't our usual week to place a post, it would be remiss of us not to mention that it is our anniversary coming up.  On October 7, 2000, Booknotes opened for business.  It has been an unusual eighteen years, but it has been a pleasure.  In next week's full post, we will talk about what has been and what to expect from us in the future.  See you then.

It's Beginning to Look Like Autumn, Sort of

Well, we have started changing the look of the website again.  We are adapting the color scheme to a more autumnal palette.  We haven't gotten everything quite the way we want it yet, but that always happens when we do this.  We used to change the color scheme on a more regular basis, but for continuity sake, we kept the blue and grey scheme for a few months now.  Sure, we added a few images here and there, but for the most part, we have't been keeping up with the seasons.  One reason is that it is just so hard to find the original scheme after so many changes.  Also, we have been busy with other things, so site design went by the wayside, a little.  Hopefully, we will be going full Halloween by the time of the next post.  Speaking of the next post, it will be on the weekend of our anniversary.  Eighteen years.  Be prepared for some choice memories next time around.  Until then, see you soon.

Falling Behind, Falling Ahead

Hopefully, we will have everything done soon after this scheduled post is online.  Things have just gotten behind lately.  Part of that is the fluctuating wi-fi at the store.  Downloading has slowed down a lot recently, especially for pages with high interaction, such as graphics.  Wait times have increased by minutes.  Anyway, that is the reason why we haven't set up our YouTube page yet.  Uploading a five minute video can take over half-an-hour.  We don't know if that is typical or not, but we will be setting up the site using a different  connection, just to see if things speed up any.  We are also finished decorating the store for fall, not Halloween, that will be done later on.  The pictures of the store will be up soon too.  The digital camera just needs some more batteries before we can take all of them.  We don't know when we will be able to post them, but be on the lookout for them.  While the overall themes stay about the same on a year-to-year basis, there are some little tweaks here and there.  We will have quite a few more pics than we normally do, if all things go as planned.  Well, that's all for this time.  See you again in two weeks.

An Apple, or Three, a Day (or Every Other Week)

The latest edition of our 'Making the Logo' videos will be online about the same time this will be published.  We would love to have you see these clips here, but they are just a little too long to be part of the post.  We aren't really sure why.  So, you are going to have to check our Facebook page if you want to any of them.  But maybe not for much longer.  See, we are planning on starting a YouTube channel featuring not just those clips, but possibly other scenes of dry-erase marker art created by this author.  It would by under his (and by that I mean my) name.  It is just taking a bit longer than imagined to find the time to figure out how to upload everything and get things started.  We are just hoping that the upload times are better than there are for Facebook.  Each of the first two clips were around five minutes long, but they took over a half-and-hour to upload.  We aren't sure if it is our internet connection or if it is just the natural length of time.  Having a computer doing nothing but uploading for that long is not that helpful.  Still, it would get are messaging to a wider audience. We should have something up by our next regular update.  Check back then.

Where the Books Are, Seriously Where Are They

Last week, we received a very large special order.  The books weren't available from our primary distributor, so we had to go through our secondary one instead.  We have been using then since we opened, so we thought that there wouldn't be any problems with ordering through them.  The books were due this past Wednesday, but they never arrived.  We called the distributor to find to what the problem was.  It turned out there were quite a few.  Since it had been almost a year since our last order, they were slightly suspicious with our new order.  Admittedly, this had happened once before, but the problem was easily taken care of.  However, we had the further problem of going over our maximum order size.  Somewhere along the line, we were given a maximum daily order of about two hundred dollars.  This current order exceeded that, but a bit.  We had place an order that was above the limit before, but that may have been before the changeover.  Anyway, we didn't have that information in our records and the sales representative that took our order over the phone either didn't mention it or didn't know we had the limit.  The distributor had tried to call us.  Unfortunately, they were using the contact number we had set up before we had an actual storefront.  For some reason, they hadn't updated to the number we have been using for the last eighteen years.  This is the  number we used not only to call them for information, but the one we used to confirm our identity when using their recently discontinued  phone ordering system.  Why they weren't able to use this number is beyond us.  They finally emailed us, just before closing time the day before the books were scheduled to arrive.  The person in charge of our business email didn't get to read it until after we called to see what the problem was. (She had overlooked it because she didn't closely read the message header). They originally were going to have to look over our financial records, before they were going to release the shipment.  We didn't want that.  We also were unable to use a business credit/debit card to pay for the books upfront.  Finally, they released the books on our own account, but with the thinly veiled warning that a third party collection agency might have to be called in if we weren't able to pay. The customer had already paid us in full, so the money was available.  As of this writing, the books are in shipment and should be were soon.  We still use many services from this distributor, even though we may have problems in placing another order form them.  We will still use them for as long as we are in business.