I should talk about something exciting like the wonderful baby shower Kim and I had (where we got to see HPS commenter Lisa for the first time since our wedding -- hi, Lisa), and we'll get to that in the next day or two, but for now, let's talk about my most recent lunchtime activity, which has been trying to figure out what handbell music publishers are doing the best job at selling music. (Because I would like to be a financial success as well as an artistic success as a handbell music composer, I thought it prudent to try to figure out this answer.)
How I did this: Jeffers Handbell Supply, for those not in the know, is by far the largest retailer of handbell music and, well, supplies -- they are the Wal-Mart of the Handbell World, except probably comparatively bigger. Every week, they post an alphabetized list of the top 40 sellers in their massive catalog from the past seven days. I took their past 51 list (they didn't have one for Christmas week), came up with a time-saving way to pull the companies out from these lists, and put all this data into a -- what else? -- Excel spreadsheet.
Anyway, probably no one cares but me, but I went to all the work to pull these numbers for my own purposes, so I’ll share them. Here are the number of times the following companies made it onto Jeffers' top 40 list in an average week (over the past year):
Hope Publishing: 15.3 Choristers Guild: 7.6 Lorenz: 5.6 AGEHR: 3.4 Alfred Publishing: 2.8 Beckenhorst Press: 1.6 Jeffers Handbell Supply: 1.0 (they also have a publishing wing)
(Boring commentary to non-handbell folks now follows.) Orderwise approximately what I would have expected, excepting the absolutely phenomenal performance of Hope; I would have guessed closer to a 5th place finish for them, and they simply demolished everyone. In fact, in general the top seven companies were much further spaced apart than I would have hypothesized -- I would have put Choristers Guild a few places above Beckenhorst, and they are, but I never would have guessed they would have had nearly five times the top 40 placements as the lower company.
Only seven other companies made any top-40 list, and all of them made at least a few: Fred Bock Music, GIA Publications (i.e. my publisher), Ring Out Press, Red River, Ringing Word, SoundForth Publications, and Shawnee Press. Red River was the only one I would have guessed a higher finish for, but that was probably skewed by me playing largely difficult music and them focusing largely on difficult music.
--- Local newscast weird clip of the night.
So it was sports on one of the local stations, and the sportscaster mentioned that Wayne Gretzky was going to become an NHL coach, and they cut to this clip of Wayne Gretzky scoring a goal. An open-net goal. I mean really, is there any more exciting clip they could have shown from Gretzky’s career than him scoring an goal with a pulled goalie?
i sincerely do not know what you are doing here. are you lost? were you
looking for your delicate calico cat, and did you follow her up two flights of stairs
to this room? she is not here. she was here, yes. we gave her a warm bowl of milk, we talked with her about campaign finance reform for a time, and then she bid us good day. i believe she was
going to the post office two blocks down, but i don't quite recall.
for surely you did
not find your way from prinsiana, the least traveled site on
the internet. if you did, though, perhaps you are looking for humor. perhaps you are looking for profundity. perhaps you are looking for answers.
i'm sorry, but you shall go naught-for-three.
