FRIENDLY LOCAL GAME STORE: A REVIEW

I am extremely pleased by the ever growing (albeit in absolute terms the numbers are still very small) list of game and gaming related, non fiction (and not actual game) books: I'm a collector and I have patiently amassed a good number of books about gaming from the '70s onward (from A Gamut of Games onward). Among the recent offerings that I most enjoyed I want to mention Art & Arcana (history and art book about Dungeons & Dragons), Empire of Imagination (a Gary Gygax biography), Rise of the Dungeon Master (another Gary Gygax biography cum creation history of Dungeons & Dragons but in graphic novel format!) and You Are The Hero (a history of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks). But there was and there is virtually nothing about the business side of games and gaming, even in the past. I have collected every issue of the great Game Merchandising magazine I can find and of the Model Retailer magazine with the Games section (whence Game Merchandising was spun off): they provide an amazing insight of the games industry in the '70s and the '80s and I read religiously the Comics & Games Retailer magazine till its a demise. So when I saw in Game Trade Magazine a solicitation about Friendly Local Game Store by a games retailer, I was immediately sold and I promptly ordered a copy. 

Friendly Local Game Store is a 172 pages paperback written by mr. Gary L. Ray, founder and president of the Black Diamond Games store in Concord, California (USA) - very old hands can remember that Dave Hargrave of Arduin fame had a store in this very city. The book is published by Gameplaywright, a publisher that has various essays on gaming on its list (for example Things We Think About Games). It currently retails at $ 24.95 on Amazon USA (£ 22.22 on Amazon UK) while the e-book is of course cheaper. The book is pleasant to read and well organized, with chapters on 'how to' (and 'how not to do') things interspexed  by personal memories of mr. Ray, some of them quite candid (bank troubles, anyone?). I was so engrossed that I read Friendly Local Game Store in one day.

Mr. Ray, this is the very first thing I want to stress, is not a preacher wanting the reader to open a game store. On the contrary, he wants the reader to pause and ponder very, very carefully before embarking in such an enterprise. The startup costs, albeit not huge, are significant (he gives an amount of $ 125.000 as startup capital needed, I started with much less by I knew virtually nothing about retail nor the people bankrolling me for the enterprise), the hours are very long, the salary you can give yourself quite small, albeit at the beginning, and even if you manage to complete successfuly the 'five year plan' you could manage to gain more money and benefits, with less work, in a lot of other careers. More, there are financial risks that involve you personally, for example to guarantee loans and credit lines: you could use your house and, if needed, your cars too. So the decision to open a game store is not to be taken lightly... or alone. If you, the aspiring game store owner had already a job, especially a good one, and a family used to the security that such a job entails (albeit there are other breadwinners in the household, the lifestyle will surely be hit) they must be consulted and be onboard or life might get quite... complex at home. So, Friendly Local Game Store wants the reader to very seriously consider everything before even thinking to committing to such an endeavour.

A warning

Friendly Local Game Store is not a book for aspiring online only retailers. The book is about opening a brick and mortar game store. If you plan to do that, going online only because that's the way of the future, this is not the book for you. 

Assuming the aspiring game retailer is not scared by the difficulties and the amount of money involved, Friendly Local Game Store gives a lot of advice on almost everything (the subject he never covers is taxation but this is a very specialized field better left to professionals): finding the startup capital, choosing a suitable location, acquiring stock, finding the right fixtures, promotion, running events and more. This is solid advice and we did some modifications to our own store following mr. Ray suggestions, with satisfying results, with more action to follow. Albeit I have a 20 years old retail experience, I never ever ignore advice from experienced people (I regularly read the "Rolling for Initiatve" column on Icv2.com ). In some areas Friendly Local Game Store is quite more vague: for example, we get no list of US distributors and no suggestions how to deal with them and what idiosincrscies they could have and the subject of e-commerce (THE question for retail, from big chains to microenterpprises like mine) gets just some passing remarks. But overall mr. Ray gives great advice I particularly liked the parts about gaming spaces in the store and how they should be used - in a nutshell, nothing is free and if customers want to use such a space they must pay. More, the store is not forced to have a gaming space, it's a choice (quite a costly one, when not using it you are paying for hosting empty tables and chairs).

Overall evaluation

Friendly Local Game Store is a great primer for anybody thinking to launch herself or himself in the business of game retailing. You can surely read many books about retail, even microretail like opening just a modestly sized store, and I suggest you do so to get the absolute basics (I shoud have done that in 1996 and 1997 but I didn't and this costed a lot). But this is the only book about game retail, a category with a big number of idiosincracies and peculiarities, written by somebody who actually does it and not some kind of consultant or author great on theory but minimal on experience. I recommend it heartily,