Friday, August 26, 2011

That was the month that was!

Well August is almost over, and I can only breath a sigh of relief. It's been a frantic month of activity: my Mum's 80th birthday saw two family celebrations (and of course lots of baking); I had two talks to local library groups and had the ongoing tedium of stocktaking, photographing and transferring book records to our upcoming new website. As my previous blog entry intimated, times are very tough in the bookselling business: bricks-and-mortar only businesses are finding it hard to compete with online behemoths so are going online themselves creating an even tighter market for booksellers like me who do both and are struggling to compete against those behemoths ourselves. Rather than wave the white flag I decided to fight fire with fire and boost our online presence with a new website which will also enable me to sell books direct, rather than (or as well as) through aggregators like Abe and Books and Collectibles. Like anything involving technology, the launch of the new site is taking longer than expected, but stay tuned!

The other long and involved chore this month has been the creation of a new catalogue, which I've been promising for months now. Until the new website goes live, there isn't going to be the usual link to the catalogue, so if you'd like to receive an electronic copy, please either email me or 'like' my Facebook page to be notified.