Grim is good for some

There's no doubt about it, we are living in tough economic times. Home foreclosures, job losses, you name it, we've got it. Lately I've been noticing though that not every business is suffering.

Yesterday a friend and I were chatting. She'd just read an article in the New York Times about the rise in sales of ebooks despite the decline of other goods and services. I asked her for the link to the story but she couldn't find it. Bummer. I've been really interested in this. Every month I get checks in the mail and I haven't seen a decrease in sales. Have any of you?

Oddly enough, I had the television on to MSNBC, my favorite news channel. They were running a segment about businesses that were seeing huge growth. One of those was BURPEE. They package and sell seed. More and more people are planting vegetable gardens in the hopes of saving a few bucks at the grocery store. Even Michelle Obama has planted a nice little garden at the White House.

More people are going out to bars and alcohol sales have picked up. Another business that is on the rise is CHOCOLATE. Not necessarily the pricier, top of the line stuff like Godiva but plain old Hershey's, Snickers, etc. Yep, things might not be good but I dare ya to take a Hershey's Kiss from a depressed woman! Not gonna happen. And apparently we're eating more of it.

Guess what else they mentioned!!! ROMANCE NOVELS. Harlequin is a company that announced rising profits and I'm sure the other publishers have seen the same. Now we readers and writers of romance already know that diving into a great book can take us away. We get lost in the plights of our favorite heroes and heroines if only for an hour or two. Must say it was very neat to see the racks of romance novels they showed on the segment.

In the year ahead, it will be interesting to see what we depend on most for our comforts in these grim economic times.

WAIT! I found the link to the NY Times article. Posting it late. Sorry.

New York Times Article