The preorder promotion for Library Mascot Cage Match is off to a good start. Our informal (and fairly arbitrary) goal when we print a new book is to cover our printing costs with the preorder. "Then," as we think about it, "every copy we sell after that is pure profit!" After just three days we're almost a quarter of the way there. I know from past experience that when we announce a new thing we sell a lot of them the first few days, then it slows down, and picks up again near whatever deadline we set.

But still, we can't help but be nervous. We made more copies of this book than in any other printing we've done, and it took almost all our cash to do it. Our worst fear is that our readers just stop buying our books, for whatever reason. That's one of the reasons we worked so hard on putting Empire County Strikes Back in this one. We want to make sure all our fans have a reason to buy it. And that nonfans have a reason to pick it up.

Just to make us more nervous, we are close to the point where we'll have to reprint What Would Dewey Do?. That should be cause for celebration, and in a way it is. But it's also means spending more cash, this time on product that won't sell quickly out of the gate. But I can't even think about that right now.