Goals2

This website is heavily under construction! Minor details may change at any time. Items will always be added to this, as I go along. But the major things I am working on now, will be more or less settled when this text no longer exists here.

It is a goal to start selling books.

Actually, I have no idea how to run my own business. I know a person has to save up a year or more of operating funds and have that in reserves. I know it can take 100% of ones time and effort to get it off the ground. I am researching what to do, and how to do it.

Right now I think it would be nice to have a bricks and mortar book shop. I do not have room in the house for much inventory at the moment. It is my understanding that rents are high. And people in our area don't seem as interested in buying used books because of the economy. We do have a local used book shop near us. She sells a wide range of used books. It might be too much to have two used book shops so close together.

I have a ton of questions. I would like to learn how I would find out how much money I would need to open a shop like I want. It would be great to know how to write up a business plan. How would I go about researching the information I would need in such a document? I have no idea how to find out if there is a market for such a shop. That sounds like demographics. I don't know how to research that.

If I were to get this book selling business up and running, I want to specialize in used books having the following subjects:

[depending upon the situation, I might sell some new books too]

books and materials for writers;

how to write--

novels; plays [theatre]; movies; drama; radio drama [radio plays]; short stories; for radio; for television; what is called, "Christian Fiction", novels and other "fiction" which have a Christian world view; and how to teach children to write.

"Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend". (Proverbs 27:17

It would be great if I could have a bulletin board with notices and such for writers. I know I have been looking for a, "writer's critique group," or, "writing circle". The bulletin board could be a nice thing for people looking to organize, or find, a critique group.

language instruction books; dictionaries; grammar books; etc.

non English language books; you know, stuff to read once you learn the language; [so long as I know what the subject of the book is-- there are some subjects I would not want to sell].

It would be a great thing to have available in the shop, ephemera for all these subjects. Maybe, bookmarks in all kinds of languages. Stencils in various alphabets. Writer's materials-- notebooks, journals and other stationary items for writers.

I studied Russian a while back. I didn't get too far along with the lessons. I needed a teacher. I just remember what it was like trying to find study materials in a language with a "different" alphabet. This was before most people had the Internet. (1980's / early 1990's) It still isn't always easy to find books and materials in order to study languages. A person might not know where to go to find such things.

Another dream is to be able to sell non English language typewriters. (And British typewriters.) This may not be too realistic though.

I would also specialize in Christian used books, but there is already a book shop in our area which specifically sells those.

The reasons I want to specialize in these subjects:

I don't know of anyone with a shop exactly like the one I want to set up. There may be one in another state.

When I went to write a radio drama in the early 1990's, I encountered similar difficulties. I had to learn how to write such a thing. I did not know how they were formatted and what a script looked like. At that time I managed to find a text book from about 1940 for people wanting to work in radio. It taught people a bit of everything from the technical and engineering end of things to a bit of the writing end.

There wasn't too much in there on writing for radio. When I got on the Internet I found more resources online which are very modern. But most of the true, "how to write radio drama," books I find are printed prior to 1950.

If you listen to radio drama from Europe (see BBC Radio 4) you will know that the world has moved on. Radio has changed a great deal since the 1930's and 1940's. So too has radio drama. But the basic elements of how to write a good story for radio haven't changed. The old books still have their place.