Miscellaneous

The NYT bestsellers aren't my bestsellers

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The bestsellers on the used market aren’t necessarily the best sellers you see on the New York Times list or on Amazon’s hot list.  Often they bear no relation to each other.  However, statistics on the used market can be devilishly difficult to come by.  And of course, it’s all relative too.  The bestsellers in a small New England town where I am may be totally different than what sells in a shop in the heart of London.  But “what’s your bestseller?” is a question I get asked a lot by people considering getting into the book business.

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Love the computer, hate the power bill

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computerIt’s the rare bookseller now a days that doesn’t use a computer for at least part of their operation.  There’s still a few die hards that won’t touch them, but the majority have a computer of some sort, and many shops exist only because of the computer.  As wonderful a tool as the computer is it does need power to run it.  With a little proper maintenance and some hardware improvements, you can shave some of the cost off of using this tool every day.

A little power management can shave a good chunk of change off your utility bill, especially if you have multiple machines!  Other areas of your operation like heating or lighting may account for a much larger portion of your electricity bill, but if you’re in a rental space, you often have very little control over these.  And if you’re online only, the computer really is your main power draw.  Thus why I chose to focus on this element, as its the most universal one for booksellers and you’ll have the most control over it.  (and much of what’s mentioned here can be used for dealing with other equipment)

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The bookshop was like a vessel that carried me down literature’s great road…

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…back to my youth when I began to realise that reading was not just something you did to gain knowledge, it was a profound devotional act, a reaching to the mystical beyond. As a teenager, gazing into my local bookshop on cold windswept winter evenings became a sacred act. It gave me a rarefied feeling that I was standing on the threshold of revelation.

Bookstore Tourism

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I’m a practicing bookstore tourist. Wherever I travel I look for a bookstore to visit and talk to an employee about what she recommends or what is selling at the store. I’m not a book collector in the sense that I’m focused on a certain type of book, my goal is to find new books and to make a connection beyond the usual tourist conversations.