Month: February 2010

Handling offensive titles without causing offense

by

There’s certain words that would get you in big trouble if they were included in the title of a new book.  Unfortunately for rare book dealers, what was considered acceptable 50 or 100 years ago isn’t acceptable now.  This leaves the book dealer in a bit of a bind.  What to do with books that have racial slurs in the title or offensive cover artwork? Destroy them as hateful relics of ages past?  Hide them behind the counter?  Treat them just like any other old book?

While the safe option might seem to be to destroy them, in many ways this is worse than keeping them in circulation.  This whitewashes the past.  It sanitizes it and makes it easy to pretend certain things didn’t happen.  Things weren’t THAT bad.  Surely it’s being exagerated…

Read more

The Big Book Cull

by

While I am having my new website redesigned I thought now might be time to have a clear out. Get rid of the books that have been sitting there for, well some of them may have been there for a few years – don’t judge me, I just got busy!

Old books and old buildings make for "interesting" remodeling projects

by

Many used bookstores end up in, let us say, “interesting” buildings that present a challenge when it comes to layout.  They have lots of character… and floors that are often a bit off level, walls that don’t quite meet at 90 degrees, and other interesting issues.  Brand new buildings can have these issues too, but the sort of converted spaces that bookstores end up in often have multiple issues.

We recently decided to relocate some bookcases in the store and that was an adventure.  It turned out we couldn’t put the bookcase where we wanted because the slight slope to the floor meant the bookcase was too tall at one end.  Oops. It was off by a 1/4 inch.  We also moved the front counter at the same time.  That involved moving it around multiple times and installing it slightly off square to make it fit in an octagonal bay.

It doesn’t seem to matter how well you measure, you always have to wiggle fixtures around a bit to get them to set just right.  Even if you do get them in the “right” spot, you may end up moving them again shortly thereafter as customers interact with them in a way you didn’t intend, or something else crops up.  We moved another bookcase when we moved the desk and it seems to now be casting a shadow in the mystery section.  Fortunately we were planning on replacing that light fixture anyway, so moving it over 6″ won’t be a big deal…

But nothing has beaten the very first remodeling job we did at the store for sheer craziness.  It looked like it would be such a simple project…

Read more

Must-have books in your bookshop

by

Must-haves in Your Stock (II)

Part I of Must-haves in Your Stock

By HeeJin Lee

It’s great to hear from those of you who have also been thinking about your must-haves. One bookshop that carries an eclectic selection in addition to the regulars found in any bookshop is the City Lights Books in San Francisco. The American sister bookshop to George Whitman’s Shakespeare & Company in Paris (not to be confused with Sylvia Beach’s store by the same name; for an account of Whitman’s store and the relationship between the two stores, I recommend Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. by Jeremy Mercer) has a Beat Literature & History section, a Dada & Surrealism section, and a Green section. Check out the bookshop online here: www.citylights.com.

The next must-have category for me is:

  • Introduction to Korea
Korea Old Palace Buildings

While I came to the States with my family when I was young, I have maintained a strong connection with my home country. In the States, my parents and I used to count the number of English-language books on Korea available in bookshops or libraries that we visited. What started out as a childhood counting game has turned into a personal mission of sorts to share my fondness for Korea with others, all the more since I studied Korean Studies in college. In my bookshop, I plan to have a Korea section which would include language instruction books, travel guides, history books, and Korea-related literature (English-language works about Korea and works by Korean authors).

Despite my penchant for all things Korean, I have to admit that I haven’t read much Korean literature in English. So I jumped at the opportunity to read The Calligrapher’s Daughter: A Novel by the Korean-American author Eugenia Kim. Based on the life of the author’s own mother, the novel tells the story of Najin and her family during the Japanese colonization of Korea. Overall, I liked the book for the glimpse it gave into all levels of Korean society during the early 20th Century, as well as the authenticity of its storyline. I was particularly fascinated by Najin’s life at court in Seoul. Najin spends a part of her youth as a playmate to Princess Deokhye, the youngest member of the last Korean royal family, at a time when the royal family was desperately trying to hold on to their country through their traditions while grappling with Western-style modernization.

Read more

Improving Inventory Turnover in Your Bookshop

by

The Benchmark of Bookstore Sales Performance

By Louis Gereaux

Many of us who have become bookstore owners have a passion for books.  To live the dream as a professional bookseller, we also need to maintain a strong interest in the basics of the retailing business.  A foundation of the merchandising business is Inventory Turnover.  One turn is completed when all items initially on hand for that year have been sold and replaced by new items.

(Elsie esq./Flickr)

Keeping track of turnover of inventory can be a problem for the used bookstore owner because there will be titles which come into the store and then go out in a week, while other titles sit on the shelves for years.  Many of your titles are unique books that you may only have one copy of. FIFO and LIFO do not make sense in this situation.  Is there anything wrong with keeping a book around for several years until it sells?  A used bookstore is not a supermarket with food that goes bad in a short time.  Additionally, if the used bookstore owner received money for those books which sat around for years, what is the concern?

Your browser may not support display of this image. Whether it appears this way or not, the books that are sitting on your shelves are costing the business money – if not in dollars then in the time it takes to manage those books.  Most bookstore owners have limited space in which to keep and display their inventories.  That space could be better utilized with books that turn more quickly.  As an online business, much time is spent managing inventory and revising listings – time which is best spent on faster turning books.

Read more