Bookselling mistakes

-
I've managed to survive as a profit-making bookseller for some years now, but not without the odd self-inflicted wound.  Of course I may well be inflicting others on myself even as I write, but I haven't yet realised what they are.

Overpaying for books does not help your profit margin
As I deal in the books I like to read myself, occasionally I get carried away because I see a book and I want it myself.  My most spectacular effort in this direction was a  copy of J A Allen's reprint of Stubbs' The Anatomy of the Horse. The seller no sooner mentioned it on the phone than I was practically biting her hand off; offered her far too much, and realised as soon the book arrived and I had come down off my cloud of excitement at seeing the book for the first time that no way was I going to make anything on it.  I didn't.  I had the book hanging around for 2 years because I was desperately hoping to sell it at the top of its price range.  I eventually decided that hey, maybe I should just keep the book myself, at which point it sold.




Not being precise enough on terms
I really crashed and burned with the person who sold me the Stubbs.  I bought a few more non fiction titles from her.  In my (then) terms, I said I would pay the postage costs for getting the books to me.  What I had not envisaged is that the seller would send each and every book separately, and by Special Delivery.  Of course I just had to swallow this and pay up, but I have been very, very careful ever since to specify parcel post and as few boxes as possible.

You will never sell anything if no one knows you have got it
If I catalogue regularly, I am less likely to shove boxes out of the way somewhere so I can get into my office, completely forget I have done so, and find them years later.  Some of last month's new stock, I am ashamed to say, fell into this category.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rollkur and the blue tongue

-
I've been meaning to write about this all week, but reading the exclusive in Horse and Hound about the controversy tipped me over the edge. For my non-horsy readers, rollkur is a training/warming up technique used by some dressage riders. It basically involves riding the horse with its jaw pulled in virtually to its chest, in order to increase suppleness. Patrik Kittel , a Swedish competitor in Odense was videoed riding his horse in this way. If you watch the video , you'll see the horse's tongue hanging out - blue. It takes a while before the rider notices this. When he does, he stops, puts the horse's tongue back in, and carries on. There are two things which bother me about this. Firstly, I am fully aware large sections of the dressage world, and some of its brighest stars, consider rollkur perfectly ok, but the FEI guidelines state this practice should only be for short periods, allowing the horse to rest. Patrick Kittel apparently rode the horse for two hou
Read more

Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes

-
Image
My friend Louise sent me this picture today. It's from a children's book with the rather wince-making title For The Wee Ones. I thought, when I read that (because I read the message before I looked at the picture) that the picture was going to be a typical winsome production from the school of artists who think (or who are paid to think) that the child is a thing sent from God and a blissful thing. They had obviously never met a child, and certainly not mine. I should have known Louise better. The artist responsible for Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes slipped this one past the editors. Just look at the poor, broken Mother Rabbit. She knows she has not the faintest chance of being listened to, and poor thing, she is stooped in the way of a mother to whom this is just the lastest in a long line of horror; with nothing good to come. And Archibald is obviously the spawn of the Devil. Just look at those eyes. He'll have the bed after he's finished the bedclothes
Read more

Dick Sparrow - 40 Horse Hitch, and Neil Dimmock's 46 Percherons

-
Image
Here's a clip of Dick Sparrow driving 40 horses. It's an amazing sight, particularly when the shot changes to show the team from the rear and you get the great incongruity of modern American corporate architecture as a background to the wagon and horses. I love the anticipation in the video: the sense of something amazing being just round the corner is palpable. Thanks to Christina Wilsdon for telling me about this world record 46 Percheron hitch (alas just stills) but you get the idea.
Read more