reOpening May 7th

Grand reOpening set for Friday May 7th. Be there or... stop by later... that would be fine too.

We went down to City Hall and bought the business license, and got a parking ticket...

Then we went to the old Stanton location for final mopping up, everything's nice and shiny now. David loaded the vehicles.

Spent a few hours trying to change our address & phone number on all the myriad places they have gotten to on the interwebs.

cleanup on ...

Picked the online orders.

Took a small load to storage.

Went to the old shop in Stanton.
David was here.

We vacuumed & fixed some of the Stanton shop & took a overfull suv-load of boxes back to the new shop.
Shelved the Mystery mmpb's and the rest of the Horror.

Roughly stood the rest of the bookcases into their places.
The Long Beach Business Journal did a small blurb on our opening to come in this weeks edition.

39 up 26 left

Trying to paint over the car-sign didn't work so well.

39 bookcases are up, only 26 left.

Shelved the Fantasy mmpbs and some Westerns.

Took another suv-load of unpriced books to storage.

Did some shopping on the way back to the Stanton shop, and cleaned up a bit there.

&@% %@#*! CC processors

Free breakfast from Subway.

Cut-out & attached the last bookcase for the walls (down on the end of the north side).

Painted over the old address on the car-sign.

Took 2 suv-loads of boxes of unpriced books to storage.

Looked up & compared prices for a smaller storage unit.

Spent the morning dealing with the credit card processor.
TransOne Merchant Services (www.transonecorp.com 15635 Alton Parkway Suite #290, Irvine, CA 92618 Toll Free: (866) 370-1200 / Fax (949) 585-9698 / 1-800-789-8897) are the absolutely worst credit card processor we've had to deal with. Their agent (Ryan De Vitis - Regional Manager) misrepresented the contract he got us to sign, and they now refuse to amend or cancel the contract. They demand a $495 early termination fee, or we have to wait until November 2010 (thereby racking up $388 in monthly fees) before we will have the 'option' to cancel their 'service'. So very peeved at them. Chase was no help either.

Fantasy of Books

We shelved the Fantasy hardcover, and the last of the fiction mmpbs, as well as a few more mystery.

Hubbell was here for a bit.

Processed & packed the online orders.

LA Times Festival of Books 2010 - Day 2

Elizabeth George

Thomas Perry

BUZZ ALDRIN's line.

Duane Swierczynski

Mike Mignola

Nancy Holder

Michael Shea

Pam Grier

It was a bit disappointing that both Buzz Aldrin & Herman Wouk wouldn't sign anything but their recent book. It was more annoying that no one let us know right away, so we wasted a few hours in their lines first...
Overall it was a good show, but it looked smaller than usual to us, and did not seem to have as many A-list authors as previous years. Parking seemed higher, and the food vendor prices were just as outrageous, but the crowds were easier to get through, and we didn't need to run up and down the stairs a dozen times. We were able to meet almost everyone on our list, but our list was smaller than in previous years. Still, despite being a bit less than previous years, this has always been a good show, and this year was not an exception.


Ordered more postal supplies from USPS.

Picked & started to process online orders.

LA Times Festival of Books 2010 - Day 1

LAURA NUMEROFF

Gordon Korman

Huge pile of boxes stashed in the North Signing area.

Michael Connelly

David Shannon

T. Jefferson Parker

Larry Marder

Mary Higgins Clark

Neal Shusterman

Henry Winkler

The what are you reading wall at the end of the day.

DAVID SHANNON

We saw Shelley, Alicia, and Debbie wandering around during the day.