Shopping and Name-Dropping

It is that time of year again, the time for holiday gift shopping.  Unlike many locations, Booknotes chose not to do anything special for 'Black Friday' this year.  We prefer to keep regular store hours that day.  Also, we weren't finished with decorating the store yet.  We always seem to take longer than necessary to finish up.  Someone, not the author, always seems to take their time in doing their part of the work.  Anyway, we aren't running an actual sale either.  However, we might be able to offer some special discounts on some of our products.  Furthermore, many of our books are already discounted: books of the month (currently cooking), older titles, special subjects.  We were hoping to have a big event by the end of the year, but this is looking unlikely at this time.  Adrianna Trigianni just published her latest title, Tony's Wife, but we won't be able to have her return by the end of the year, at least at this time.  We should have some signed book plates to apply to your copy. though.  Oh, the person who always messes up the decorating might be mentioned in the book's acknowledgements.  We have yet to independently confirm this though.  More on it when we can.  See you again in two weeks.

How to Read Greatly in America

It was recently announced on the PBS program, The Great American Read, the results of a months long poll. The winning book of that poll was To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  Time to get personal.  I have never read the book.  Oh, I have tried a few time, but I could never get into it.  There was just something a little too poignant about it.  Maybe I tried to read it at a time that I really wasn't into such deep thoughts.  I don't know.  All I know is that no one has been in asking about it, or any the other top choices.  We handed out dozens of free bookmarks to customers and browsers.  When we got a second batch of bookmarks, we even left some at a local library, mostly just to get rid of some of the excess.  For some reason, no one around here was that interested.  In all honesty, neither was I.  While I had many of the books and series that made the final selection list, I just wasn't able to keep up with the hype.  In a previous post, I even mentioned my trepidations about this entire project.  It didn't really help out here.  Just too many people don't do book stores anymore.  At least this one.  I don't know.  Maybe it is just my own feelings clouding the issue.  Things have been going not as good lately.  Sorry about the depressing turn.  Hopefully, the next post will be more upbeat.  See you in two weeks.

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.