Till total £192
14 customers
SATURDAY, 10 MAY
Online orders: 6
Books found: 6
The frogspawn in the pond has all but disappeared, and hundreds of tiny tadpoles have taken their place.
Till total £170.70
14 customers
MONDAY, 12 MAY
Online orders: 5
Books found: 3
After lunch I was accosted by a man in a cagoule with a terrible lisp, who came over to my side of the counter, uncomfortably close, and asked ‘Now, what do you specialise in?’ to which I replied ‘Books’, which was, I admit, fatuous. Predictably, he was not impressed and replied, ‘Do not be smart with me.’ In a pointless continuation of my previous fatuous comment I replied, ‘Why not?’ Needless to say, the conversation did not end well. In fact, he became so odious that I had to pull rank and make Nicky deal with him.
Till total £84.50
14 customers
TUESDAY, 13 MAY
Online orders: 5
Books found: 5
Clearly we have a problem with AbeBooks, as all today’s orders were Amazon, so I checked and our online stock with them has dropped from 10,000 to 450 books. I’ve emailed them to see what the problem is. I estimate lost AbeBooks sales to be about £100 a week. AbeBooks is the best place to sell more valuable books, and our average sale on the site is probably worth about £30, the equivalent to about six Amazon sales, so while we do not sell a vast quantity of books on AbeBooks, their value relative to Amazon is significant.
Two pairs of swallows have started building nests, one in the alleyway between the shop and next door, and another in the log shed.
At noon a customer tied his yapping terrier to one of the benches in front of the shop while he and his wife browsed. An hour later it was still yapping away. They didn’t buy anything. Shortly after they had left, a man with what appeared to be an eggcup taped over his left eye asked for books on ‘numerology’. I had to ask him what it meant.
Till total £107.99
12 customers
WEDNESDAY, 14 MAY
Online orders: 3
Books found: 2
At 11 a.m. a customer came to the counter with a pile of railway books for her husband. As she was paying, she told me, ‘Never marry a railwayman’, as though this might be something I had been seriously considering.
In the inbox this morning:
Dear owner of the most prestigious book shop in
Scotland,
I do hope this email finds you well.
I am an indie author of fantasy and paranormal stories, with three e-books currently available and a newly released novella, from my favourite of all places to write about, the ocean. Yes, I am one of those who believe in the existence of mermaids, or as I like to call them, asperini. This novella, The White Queen, is the first in the mini-series, Beyond Endless Tides, in which many asperini shawls [sic] strive for a secured future when they realise the worlds ocean creatures, large and small, are soon to die out due to the number of planktonia diminishing. Many of these shawls believe the key to their survival is to abandon the oceans entirely and live on land amongst the humans, or as they call them, nghozas. The only way to accomplish this is to mate with and become nghozas themselves. Not all asperini believe in this move and like Morg, strive to find another way.
It is forced upon Morg to mate with an nghoza but is fortunate to have with her a friend of her father’s who aids her escape. She knows where to find other asperini and soon makes her way to them, unsure of their creed with regard to the nghoza mating thing. To her delight she is accepted into a family, but when her old shawl turns up, there is nothing she can do but flee. Prior to leaving with the young male of the family, she learns of a mermaid (ligphur), the White Queen, who can see into the great ahead and may be the key to all asperini’s survival. Morg and Ethos, together, make the journey south to seek out the mystical ligphur.
I will leave it there for now, but if you’d like to know more please feel free to ask.
I am emailing you today for I’d be very interested in doing a reading at your venue, and have a book tour in mind, whereby I’d be in the area on Friday 19th September 2014. Is it possible to arrange an event for this date? I understand if I have left this email too late for this date, so please advise me on when best suits you. That is of course if you cater for unknown author’s [sic] like me.
I’d bring my own copies to the event for signings after the reading and of course, should you wish to purchase for your shelves, I will have some ready for you with a sale or return policy, at 35% discount of the lower list price. I am selling through Amazon’s Createspace at £4.99, and feedaread at £5.99, they won’t allow me to sell cheaper for number of pages.
I look forward to meeting you,
Best wishes
Sandy the tattooed pagan brought in three sticks and exchanged them for three books.
Till total £324.47
29 customers
THURSDAY, 15 MAY
Online orders: 2
Books found: 2
Today was a beautiful warm, sunny day.
The man who wrote the Observer’s Book of Observer’s Books – a bibliography of Observer’s books – came in and complained that our stock of Observer’s books was not as good as it used to be. After a brief count, I calculated that we have roughly 150.
Nicky came in to cover the shop today so I could drive to Dumfries for Anna to catch the train back to London. We stopped and had lunch with Carol-Ann and Ruaridh at Galloway Lodge in Gatehouse. Galloway Lodge is Ruaridh’s business. It is a large restaurant, and Ruaridh is a friend I have known since childhood. He is unrelentingly rude and offensive towards me, and always has been. Home at 4.30 p.m. to find Nicky being lectured by a customer about how she’d managed to train her cat to use the toilet like a human, even as far as operating the flush. Nicky’s expression was a wonderful blend of contempt and fascination.
Till total £75.50
9 customers
FRIDAY, 16 MAY
Online orders: 3
Books found: 2
Today was another gorgeous sunny day. Nicky was in again.
After lunch I drove to Glasgow to view the maritime history collection that the customer had mentioned last week. It was a warm, sunny day, and the house was on a beautiful, wide Georgian street in the West End of Glasgow. David (as he introduced himself) greeted me at the door and we went into an impressive first-floor drawing room, through the windows of which the spring sun lit up the room. The books were in twenty or so boxes on the floor, spine up. As I was going through them, David explained that his late uncle had been a naval officer during the war and had amassed the collection over his life. He also told me that he and his wife had bought the flat in Glasgow several years previously, when he had been offered a job that – in his words – ‘it would have been churlish to refuse’. I picked out the best of the book collection and wrote him a cheque for £700.
After I had left, I thought I ought to take the opportunity of being in Glasgow to buy myself a new pair of shoes, so I parked the van in the Mitchell Street multi-storey car park and went to House of Fraser. The van, I noticed, was just about the maximum height for vehicles in the car park. As I left (with a new pair of brown brogues), the barrier arm lifted to let me through, but – presumably programmed for smaller vehicles – began to descend before the entire van had passed through, and a chain on the barrier caught the back door of the van, ripping the entire arm from its housing. Mercifully, it fell off half-way down Jamaica Street, before I had reached the A77.
In November 2001, the month I bought the shop, an old man was browsing in the maritime history section of the shop. He came to the counter and asked, ‘When are you having the bonfire?’ Puzzled, I asked him what he meant. He replied, ‘For your books. I have never seen such rubbish. All they’re good for is the bonfire.’ This was my first encounter with a genuinely rude customer, and b
ack then I was still racked with insecurities about the shop, the stock and what I was doing. Fortunately, another customer witnessed the incident and, sensing my discomfort, stepped in and said, ‘Actually, this is the best maritime history section I have ever seen in any bookshop. If you don’t like it you should probably leave.’ He left.
Till total £127
11 customers
SATURDAY, 17 MAY
Online orders: 3
Books found: 3
Fiona, who has the shop next door, came into the shop this morning in a mild panic to tell me that they need an extra marquee for a live cooking demonstration as part of the food festival which is happening this weekend. Fortunately, I have a pop-up gazebo, which I bought for an event in the garden last summer.
Nicky and I went through the RBC list of people who subscribed last April and had not renewed their membership following the reminder last month. The club is shrinking again and is down to 137 members. Once we had sorted out who was in and who was out, we packaged up the books for this month and dealt with the postage.
Smelly Kelly appeared at the precise moment that Nicky had disappeared for her lunch break. I suspect her nose is now finely tuned to detect the advance of Brut 33 and give her enough advance warning to escape when he is approaching. Disappointed that she was not here, he reluctantly talked to me briefly instead. Apparently he is going into hospital next week for a hip operation.
A Northern Irish customer (an old man in blue tank-top) came to the counter with two books and asked, ‘What can you do for me on those?’ The total came to £4.50, so I told him that there was no way I could possibly give him a discount on books that were already cheaper than the postage alone on Amazon. He reluctantly conceded, muttering, ‘Oh well, I hope you’re still here next time I visit.’ From his tone it wasn’t entirely clear whether he was suggesting that my refusal to grant a discount on a £4.50 sale would mean that customers would leave in their droves, never to return and the shop would be forced to close, or whether he genuinely meant that he hoped the shop would survive through these difficult times.
One of today’s orders was for a biography called E. D. Morel: The Man and His Work. Author is F. Seymour Cocks.
Till total £119
19 customers
MONDAY, 19 MAY
Online orders: 5
Books found: 5
A customer came in at 10 a.m. and asked if we had anything on the surnames of Scotland, so I directed him to Black’s Surnames of Scotland. He looked at it briefly, then told me that it was ‘too comprehensive’. Once he had left, the shop was empty so I went to the post office and asked Wilma if she would mind sending the postman over later. William the surly Ulsterman completely blanked my ‘Good morning, William. Isn’t it a lovely day?’
When I returned to the shop, there was a young couple waiting at the counter with two boxes of books, all modern fiction in mint condition. They had recently married and were moving into their first flat together, and had agreed to each halve their book collections. The situation seemed charmingly old-fashioned. I gave them £45 for the books.
A customer brought a few books to the counter, including a very tatty facsimile of Burns’s Kilmarnock edition. The total came to £14.50 – no haggling. I asked him if he would like a bag, to which he replied, ‘Probably.’ I am quite certain that is the first time anyone has given that answer in the shop.
The postman arrived at just before 5 p.m. and collected the five sacks of random books.
Till total £110.99
15 customers
TUESDAY, 20 MAY
Online orders: 5
Books found: 5
Another warm and sunny day and Nicky was in, so I went for a bike ride with Callum in the afternoon on the mountain-bike trails in Kirroughtree Forest, about eight miles away. We both managed to complete the red circuit without mishap, unlike the first few times we rode it several years ago. For the first ten or so attempts, one or both of us would end up crashing into a tree, or misjudging a corner and ending up face down in a ditch.
Till total £217.50
16 customers
WEDNESDAY, 21 MAY
Online orders: 6
Books found: 5
All orders today were from Amazon, one of which was for a Patricia Wentworth first edition that should have been £50 but sold for £4. The discrepancy arose because of the price-matching software that comes with Monsoon, which is set to match the lowest price on Amazon. When we listed our copy it was the cheapest, but subsequently it had dropped to match another copy which had undercut ours. Occasionally, to try to steal a bargain, people put up fake listings of expensive books that they want, but with ridiculously cheap prices. They then wait for the price-matching software to kick in, and the copy of a genuine listing to drop to the price of the ghost listing that they have put up. They buy the book, then remove the ghost listing.
A customer who bought a copy of Pepys’s diary read the Einstein quotation painted on the front of the counter (‘Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not sure about the former’) and asked, ‘Is that a genuine quotation from Einstein?’ Apparently it is highly contested, and many people don’t think he said it.
After work I sat in the garden, watching the swallows and house martins swooping and looping.
Till total £309
15 customers
THURSDAY, 22 MAY
Online orders: 4
Books found: 4
The first customer of the day was an Australian woman whose inability to pronounce the letter T left me confused as to whether she was asking for ‘Noddy books’ or ‘naughty books’. It turned out, after I’d shown her to the erotica section, that she was after Enid Blytons.
It is a strange phenomenon that, when customers visit the shop for the first time, they tend to walk very slowly through it, as though they are expecting someone to tell them they have entered a forbidden zone, and when they decide to stop, it is invariably in a doorway. This, of course, is incredibly frustrating for anyone behind them, and since that person is usually me, I exist in a state of perpetual frustration. Anthropologists insist that it is an instinctive human response on entering a new space to stop and look around for potential danger, although quite what sort of danger might be lurking in a bookshop – other than a frustrated bookseller whose temper has been frayed to the point of violence by the fact that somebody is blocking the doorway – is a mystery.
Two customers asked what had happened to the spirals of books. The book spirals were large columns of books that were piled in a helix and coated with fibreglass resin. They stood on each side of the door into the shop. Last year some children tried to set fire to one of them – unsuccessfully, as the resin eventually cracks and the rain gets in. I have asked Norrie to make a new pair out of concrete in time for the festival in September.
Till total £324.49
20 customers
FRIDAY, 23 MAY
Online orders: 5
Books found: 4
Today was a cold and grey day, not spring-like at all. Atmospheric conditions affect the radio in the shop, which is tuned to BBC Radio 3. If there is damp in the air, it won’t pick up the signal. Today it spent most of the day completely silent, occasionally popping on for a few seconds of Mahler or Shostakovich.
There was another invasion of Lycra-clad septuagenarian cyclists this morning, most of whom bought a book or two, and who were flattering about both the shop and the stock.
After they had left, a customer came to the counter with a book, opened it, pointed at the £40 price label and said, ‘What price is this? Surely not £40.’ I explained that, yes, the book was £40. He dropped it on the counter, from where it bounced and landed on the floor, damaging one of the corners. He looked at it for a couple of seconds, then left without another word.
Most of the books sold today were from the collection of railway books I bought in Glasgow a few weeks ago. I wonder if word has got round the rai
lway community that the collection ended up here. The same thing happened with an ornithology collection that I bought from a collector in Stranraer last year. For weeks there were twitchers in the shop, and it only took a few days for me to recoup my investment.
Till total £281.99
18 customers
SATURDAY, 24 MAY
Online orders: 4
Books found: 4
Sunny and warm all day. Nicky was in. She has bought a job lot of 1,000 pens on eBay. They are horrible little red things, and she insists on bringing them into the shop, despite the fact that I have a box of far better pens. At the moment there are about a dozen of them in various locations about the place. I keep putting them in the bin, but she retrieves them and redistributes them throughout the shop again.
When I took the mail sacks over to Wilma, I said good morning to William and commented on the warm, sunny weather. He replied, ‘Aye, the rain won’t be far behind it.’
At 11 a.m. there was a talk about Robert Service, the Canadian poet, by Professor Ted Cowan upstairs in the drawing room. As with most of Ted’s talks, it was very well attended. Shortly after it had begun, two very smartly dressed young men in suits, with American accents, came into the shop and asked if we had a copy of The Book of Mormon. On closer inspection I spotted that they had black name badges with ‘Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints’ printed on them. Nicky was visibly suspicious of them, just as the cat is when a dog enters the shop. When they were just out of earshot, she said, ‘I dinnae like they people. They’ve got some very strange ideas.’
The Diary of a Bookseller Page 10