NABC Store Manager's Diary — August 8, 2026 (Sat)

There was an event today starting at 2:00 PM, and the speaker and the MC were scheduled to meet at 1:00 PM at the café "River", so I came to work before 12:00, an hour earlier. The forecast had said cloudy, but the sun was still strong and the second-floor gallery where the event was held looked like it would trap heat. Today's event was a lecture by Mr. Makoto Kumagai, author of "The Birth of Poet Noriko Ibaraki", which was recently published by Fubai-sha. We expected just under twenty attendees, but sign-ups increased during the last week and we ended up with 26 people. That left the venue almost full, and the back seats (near the windows) must have been quite hot. I kept thinking we should stop holding daytime events in midsummer. I'm worried because on the 15th next week there's another daytime talk by Nijino Noran. Since it was a Saturday afternoon, customers kept coming into the shop — even for a small bookstore like ours — and I couldn't just leave them and go up to the second-floor gallery to listen to the lecture. I didn't want to miss the chance to talk with customers, so in the end I only gave a brief greeting at the start of the lecture and couldn't hear the content at all. I had organized the event because I wanted to hear it myself, so it's really disappointing. Still, it was good that the number of participants exceeded expectations. One thing that surprised me was that the author's books, including signed copies, sold well (about ten copies) — although that doesn't mean everyone bought one. These days, even at author events, books often don't sell as well as expected; after paying a participation fee, people may be reluctant to spend extra on books. Meanwhile, other books by Noriko Ibaraki (and related titles) hardly sold at all. Maybe I should have asked the speaker to mention recommended poetry collections and related books during the talk. This year is the 100th anniversary of Noriko Ibaraki's birth, so I want to make sure we have them properly in stock. I'm looking forward to the diary book that didn't arrive in time. By the way, there are two signed copies of Mr. Kumagai's book in stock. Come to think of it, I realized we hadn't stocked any books by Nankichi Niimi — what a shock! I ordered a few picture books and story collections.