Therese Holland

Just another day for an Aussie book dealer

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Yesterday I made my most accidental sale of all time. Someone had emailed me earlier in the week asking for bank details so they could pay for a book, the eBay id didn’t ring a bell but sometimes people ask so they know ahead of bidding/buying whether you bank with some obscure building society that doesn’t have a branch in their town. Some people just won’t do any banking on line and I don’t blame them. On-line financial transactions have a certain degree of risk. From my perspective providing a bsb and acct no. is safe as people can only deposit not withdraw, so I blithely send her my details.

A couple of days later in my acct appeared a deposit for $9.32 with an eBay user Id. An odd amount indeed. $9.45 or $9.95 I would get but not $9.32. I checked my sales just in case, nothing. I emailed the sender asking if they were sure they meant to pay me. I duly got a message back saying no it was someone else and could I transfer it back? Of course I thought with a sinking feeling. Here is the rub. My bank has a security measure whereby I have to add the recipient’s account as an authorised transferee then I have to obtain an SMS code to approve the transfer. This works really well if you have a mobile phone, I don’t have a mobile phone. I was using my daughter’s old phone just for this purpose but had a strong suspicioun I needed to pay something to keep it active. Or at least charge the battery. It’s been months since I have done either. No problem. I would just call in at a branch and deposit it over the counter. I read the email again to check her account information. She banks with an obscure building society that doesn’t have a branch in my town. Okay, I thought, I’ll see if I can ring the bank and get them to change the mobile number to an active one belonging to an offspring. How about a Money Order the erstwhile buyer suggested. Hmm I thought $5 to purchase a money order and a 60c stamp to post back $9.32. How about I sell you a book instead? I suggested. Okay that worked. I had one she wanted and I have packed it and posted it off. The $9.32 gets to stay in my account.

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A Chaotically Quirky Book Shop

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I recently read a blog that described second hand book shops as possessing Chaotic Quirkiness. Aahh, I thought, that is a much better way to describe my shop. As in better that what a lot of passersby say, anyhow. It makes sense of why I piled books so high on the shelf in front of my desk that they toppled into the window in a book cavalcade. And stayed there. It looked awful. I always meant to tidy them up. I would drive past the shop going somewhere else and with a guilty glance vow to tidy them up the next morning. But as soon as I walked in the door of the shop all such ambition faded away, or more likely, just fell out of my head. Now I can blame the shop’s Chaotic Quirkiness controlling me.
Eventually my second darling daughter (who manages to avoid being affected by Chaotic Quirkiness) took pity on the cascaded books and climbed in the window and stacked them neatly.

...umm - no, not quite this bad (yet)

Directly around where I have my computer and cash register the books in the window are stacked head high to give me a little privacy from the people who liked to press their faces against the glass and stare at me from two feet away. Instead the passers by now all say “Oh I want the book at the bottom.” Even my local Member of Parliament told his aide that funny joke. I visibly restrained myself from grabbing the book (Robert Jordan’s Crossroads of Twilight) and running out and yelling “Hey Tony, come back, come back, I have the book you wanted ” A 3mm pane of glass is not a Cone of Silence.

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Have you experienced shoplifting in your bookshop?

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What do you do with shoplifters?

Bookstore ShopliftingThe first day I opened a young woman with a toddler asked to use the toilet for the little one. I acquiesced and as soon as she left the shop I noticed that some new books by Tess Gerritsen that she has been looking at were also gone. They had nice shiny white covers and were conspicuous by their absence. The visit out the back was a ploy to hide them in the stroller. I vowed to keep an eye out for her but she never came back. I think in hindsight she must have known I would notice they were missing as we had talked about the author.

Then there was the gentleman with a newspaper tucked under his arm; Friday afteroon without a word he strides purposefully down to the classics, pausing only for a moment then striding just as purposefully back out of the shop. Just long enough to tuck a book in with the newspaper under his arm. The next Friday he does the same, the Friday after that as he leaves I stand at the door and with baleful eye watch him cross the street to his bus. He doesn’t come back.

A young man is obviously drunk and tucking books under his denim jacket. As he leaves I say “Excuse me, excuse me” in an embarrassed tone. He is so obvious not even I could miss him. He immediately turns around with a sheepish grin and hands me back the books he has taken. “Please don’t come back” I say.

A young couple come in; they have the look of the drug users who come to the local pharmacy to get their methadone. They have been in before looking for true crime, last time they ended up spending $2 on a couple of magazines. My 15 year old son is helping me this day and pulls out eight books from a series they were looking for. As they leave ‘empty handed’ he says “Mum, I gave them eight books and they only gave me back five”.

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Mr Book it is the End of the Line for you

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I, like many other secondhand book shop owning hopefuls, came here by the hobby turning to business route. One of the handicaps of this background is that your love of books can make it difficult to to decide when a book is simply not saleable and it has to go. And then off course, once you make that decision, where does it go?

Every so often I have been asked to donate books to send to exotic locations like Sri Lanka and Papua New Guinea and I respond with gusto. Beautiful sets of Britannica, maths and science textbooks that have suffered only from inbuilt obsolescence due to bi-annual updates, time life library books, exlibrary books, childrens’ non fiction, picture books; anything in good condition that I have an excess of that could be put to better use overseas I happily waved bon voyage to.

But I can no longer store books just in case someone contacts me for a similar scheme (though if someone knows of one leaving Melbourne Australia anytime soon let me know and I will accumulate some books for you). Any spare capacity has been long consumed by the endless parade of books that are traded in on a daily basis. Too many days of bring in 10 take out 2 have seen to that.

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