Alternating Reality Books

There are a lot of folks complaining that their sales are down, the economic news is grim at best everywhere, people are being laid off, lives are being broken, homes are being lost, in general it is pretty darn bad out there.

The only problem with that doomsday scenario is that I am not seeing it on my Bookstore, we started diversifying in October of 2008, and since then we have not looked back as we are looking at 300% Y/Y (Year over Year) growth since February 2008, and are having our third month pushing over 1000 dollars in gross sales.

In the graph above are the raw numbers from my bookstore, we have consistently pushed well over 50 items sold since we started our diversification scheme to carry more items across more brand lines. And while there are a lot of mega sellers out there, or others that make in a day what we make in a month, we are still small enough for this kind of growth to matter. This gives us more money to sink back into the company to fuel more growth.

This also lets us expand into more expensive items, with our niche based on some of the Google searches that we have shown here, as well as watching what sells, cutting out those things that do not sell, raising prices and lowering prices were warranted we are having a great time selling on line. It is still fun, and the growth curve that we are enjoying in the midst of a down turn which some are calling a depression is frankly amazing.

Expanding our product line was the important part, if we had stayed with just books, we probably would not be here. There is a lot of desperation pricing around books right now with everyone on the way to the bottom penny book pricing. Picking the right items to sell based on scarcity, or based on a huge demand is one way of addressing the problems with growth in 2009. You can have a great time with it, but diversification and really good suppliers are going to help you out here.

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