Notes from a beleaguered book dealer

[dragatheimpaler]

I work in an academic used-book store, and these are a few of my favorite questions.

1. Do you have to buy these books, or can I rent them? Uh, no. We are a book STORE, not a library.

2. Where do you get all your books? From the book elves. They're kind of like the Keebler variety, only they all wear glasses.

3. Is everything alphabetical? Yes

Comments

[dafstar]

it's beige with 237 pages... do you know what im talking about?

[armelle]

oh my. funny.
selling books by the foot, i've heard of this being done by interior decorators who decorate for people who are rich enough to have a fancy library but are too stupid to actually read. >_

[paularubia]

Although we always rolled our eyes when decorators came in to buy their books-by-the-yard, it's a great way to get rid of odd volumes and absolute crap that you probably would have thrown away.

I visited a local Famous Estate a few years ago, and when I scanned the shelves of the very impressive-looking library I was horrified to see that almost every book was either a Readers Digest or Book Club edition. Yikes. (Dear Decorators: Some people do notice these things.)

[paularubia]

When I worked at Borders, a customer asked how the books were arranged on the shelf. I replied that we shelved them in ISBN order. Apparently my sarcastic delivery was imperceptible, because she seemed satisfied and went on her way.

[vkacademy]

Welcome to the bookseller group therapy journal. ^^

The saddest is when you tell someone "They are arranged alphabetically, by last name of the author," and they STILL can't figure out where Danielle Steel is. I think we should make "The Alphabet Song" an in-store music play.

[dyfferent]

Do you find in your shop that the bottom shelf is invisible? My customers refuse to look at any book beneath knee height. Instead their eyes scroll back up to the next bay, scooting right over their book.

And they get that dumb look when you pull it off the bottom shelf. Ahhh, there was a shelf, there? I had to bend? Why?

Browsing Height

[moosefluff]

It's so true! People won't look below a certain height! So, whenever I have a book I really want to recommend, I try to arrange it at an appropriate level so it's not to high or low.

Although, it would be really dumb if we didn't have shelves for the first three feet of the book cases.

I find book cases that are too high a little vexing, though, because invariably the book you want is WAY up there!