QUALITY CONTEST GOING ON RIGHT NOW

What does my logo for Quality Chess remind you of? A famous movie, book?

Quality Chess has some great books but their logo (not depicted here for obvious reasons) is pretty lame... so this one was put together by me and son and it certainly is, unofficial. The guy holding the chess King hostage is a bad boy, but then, some of you knew that.

Drop me a line and tell me where you think this idea came from and if you are correct, you will get $3 off of your order AFTER a current order from you to promote Quality Chess books... that is, a coupon will be put into your order to be used on your next order. This offer expires at the end of this year.

Now, speaking of weirdness, I got a piece of email advertising Black Friday specials for chess where "prices were slashed on our most popular items." Think about that! That is anti-marketing. Anyone in business for more than 10 seconds knows you don't slash prices on the stuff that rockets out the doors with no effort. And if it is truly popular, they already own it.

I guess it is for those who wish they had THESE "gems" but have just not gotten around to forking over the dough. That means Rybka is discounted (I am OUT of them!), and stuff I had that was once hot is gone or stocks are limited. For example, I still have a few copies of Seirawan's CHESS DUELS.

As some of you have no doubt noticed, I've been issuing catalogs piecemeal because if I sent everything in a PDF (one PDF) your email box would choke like a dog eating horseradish. So I break it down and in order to get some traction, I often offer a time limited discount which the vast majority do not take advantage of. (Guess what? I get offered deals like this too, and I take advantage of about 1/3rd of them--non-chess).

TODAY WILL BE INSANITY. Black Friday? I suspect so. I know 1-2 people who get up when it is still dark (4 a.m.) to get ready to go to the stores, whip their credit card out, and buy crap their kids wouldn't need in a month of Sundays (or, Fridays). I expect the parking lots of the bookstores to be filled today also. I look at the restaurants and movie theaters out where my Borders is and they are filled most weekends and many week nights. Yet I keep hearing about this recession thing. To wit... a couple years ago I was in Chicago taking some training courses. I walked from my hotel to Michigan Ave. where the Apple store was... unbelievable... lines zig zagging out this huge store out to the sidewalk. White packages, white boxes, iPods and everything else. Clerks roaming through the store nowadays taking orders... (next paragraph).

Update... some of you know that Microsoft has put together 7 stores within a few doors of Apple Stores. According to a MacNN report today of one particular store, the Apple store was killing them! Why? It's what I try to do here from Iowa: diversity and products no one else stocks because they are exclusives. In the last 2 days I have gotten requests for Buckley's Practical Chess Analysis (which is OP at the moment, but it will come out again in 2011). I was asked if My Search for Chess Perfection is available on the Kindle. (No, not yet, not anytime soon.) I am also out of "My Search..." in the book printed edition. I offered this to resellers in round about ways in the past month and they sat on their hands... so apparently they are satisfied with selling Everyman Chess titles no one wants.

It's a crazy business... but I invite you to continue coming to this Blog Site... in anticipation of my new web site... which is still being worked on. I hope there you will find a different type of chess business and an informational one which I don't think will be duplicated anywhere else until... I get copied like MS copies Apple. One way I avoided that in the 90s is that I made my catalogs SO BIG that my competitors just couldn't take the time to make theirs that big... besides, one has to know something about the products they sell to be able to write all those descriptions. If you take a look at the Quality Chess Catalog sampling I just put out, you will see what I mean. For customers a "description" of "Wow, it's great" is not enough.

If you haven't seen the Quality Chess catalog because you were too busy with turkey/ham, mashed potatoes, etc. and it slipped through your hands I will send another upon request. Special prices good through this coming Monday night, Nov. 29th (I mistakenly put Nov. 28th on the cover--I have been off a whole day this month.)

bob@thinkerspressinc.com