Confessions of a Bookseller

by Shaun Bythell

  The telephone charger is now only working intermittently, even when the phone is face down.

  Till Total £203.65

  7 Customers

  WEDNESDAY, 25 FEBRUARY

  Online orders: 7

  Orders found: 7

  Six out of the seven orders this morning were from Abe, which means that there has been some sort of communication problem between Monsoon and Abe. We sell some books online, mostly through a website called Abe (Advanced Book Exchange). It was set up by some book dealers in Canada, but sadly Amazon bought it in 2008.

  While I was eating toast, a customer came to the counter and said, ‘Three things: law, philosophy, spirituality.’ I complimented him on his numerical skills. He shot me a supercilious look and wandered off.

  A customer bought a set of bound Gallovidian magazines for £250. The Gallovidian was an illustrated quarterly magazine published in the first half of the twentieth century, and is a mine of fascinating information on all manner of subjects written, for the most part, by educated gentlemen of means. Collectors are fewer (and older) than when I bought the shop, but in good condition, copies of The Gallovidian are still desirable.

  Nicky dropped in to say that she might be late for work on Saturday. Once we had established that, the conversation took a predictably bizarre turn.

  Nicky: I’ve got two pals who are twins who’ve been giving Bratz dolls makeovers.

  Me: Twins? Are they identical?

  Nicky: Sometimes, aye.

  The telephone charger is not working at all now, and there’s barely any power left, so I called Vodafone and spent the next hour switching the accursed thing off and back on, changing settings but to no avail. They’re sending a replacement tomorrow.

  Till Total £293.99

  6 Customers

  THURSDAY, 26 FEBRUARY

  Online orders: 2

  Orders found: 2

  Glorious sunny day.

  The new phone arrived at 9.30 a.m., so inevitably I spent much of the day trying to get all my apps etc. onto it.

  Terrible back pain this morning, so I went to the chemist to buy painkillers and received what probably amounts to a hero’s welcome in the pharmaceutical industry. I had no idea what it was about until Mae, who works there, mentioned the article about the concrete book spirals in our local newspaper, the Free Press. After that a stream of people dropped into the shop to offer sympathy and support. Most booksellers suffer from back pain: the job involves a lot of lifting heavy boxes from the floor, and the inevitable consequence of that is damage to the back.

  Till Total £83.39

  7 Customers

  FRIDAY, 27 FEBRUARY

  Online orders: 3

  Orders found: 2

  Came downstairs at 8.30 a.m. to find a mess of feathers and a dead sparrow on the landing. Captain normally eats what he kills, but he’s so fat these days that I wonder why he bothers hunting at all. My friend Carol-Ann gave him to Anna and me about five years ago, and Anna dotes on him with a maternal enthusiasm that borders on the alarming.

  Online order for six-volume set called Canada in the Great War, nicely bound in red morocco. It sold for £170.

  After lunch I went to Vincent’s garage to fill up with diesel. Vincent has singularly failed to move with the times over the years, offering lines of credit for fuel which some people took advantage of. He’s an incredibly kind man. Recently he was persuaded to install a credit card machine, as people (tourists, mainly) who didn’t know that he didn’t have one were repeatedly filling up then having to drive off and get cash to pay for their fuel. The first time I filled up there after the machine had been installed, rather than turn his head away as I typed in my PIN, Vincent kept hold of the machine and asked me what my PIN was, then typed it in himself. He has subsequently learned that it is really for the cardholder to enter the PIN, but he still watches the machine eagerly as customers type their numbers in.

  Till Total £24

  3 Customers

  SATURDAY, 28 FEBRUARY

  Online orders: 4

  Orders found: 4

  Had a lie-in as Nicky opened the shop. At about 2 p.m. I was chatting to Nicky when a customer came to the counter.

  Customer: This book is £3.50. I want it for £3.

  [I could see Nicky gritting her teeth]

  Nicky: No, I’m afraid we can’t let it go for that. It’s £3.50.

  Customer: Hmm, well, if that’s the case then I suppose I’ll pay the full price then. Do you have something I can put it in, like a grocery bag?

  Nicky: Yes, you can have a bag, but we have to charge you 5p.

  The customer said no, muttered something about being ripped off, then produced a plastic bag from her pocket.

  Nicky revealed the Bratz doll which she’d applied a makeover to. It looks exactly like me.

  Finished Down and Out in Paris and London.

  Till Total £292.50

  21 Customers

  MARCH

  I must record that all booksellers are honest. I wouldn’t suggest anything different; not for the world. But some are more wide-awake than others. Many a time Mr Pumpherston lets a customer have a bargain, but he’s far too clever to tell him so: he always lets the customer discover it for himself, knowing fine he always does. This is the way to get good results.

  Augustus Muir, The Intimate Thoughts of John Baxter, Bookseller

  Augustus Muir is perhaps being unduly generous in his description of all booksellers as ‘honest’. There are crooks in this trade, as in every other, but few people enter the book trade with any hope of growing fat on the back of it. Perhaps that is what he meant: it’s not a business from which most of us who have chosen it expect enormous financial reward. The benefits come in other shapes. In his book Bits from an Old Book Shop, published in 1904, R. M. Williamson observed: ‘The few who make fortunes by bookselling are not to be compared to the many who make no more than a modest livelihood. The happiest men in the business are not the wealthiest, but the most contented, the men who love their occupation, who look on it as a high privilege to buy and sell books.’

  Oddly, though, it is when I’m buying books that I encounter the greediest people: the person selling his collection who will push to extract every last penny that they’re worth from the bookseller they’re selling them to, will inevitably be the same customer who will drive the price down to the very margin when he’s buying books. And while this is arguably good business sense, it has rather an unsavoury whiff about it. There’s no sense of fairness. Conversely, the customer who brings in books to sell and is happy with whatever you offer him will be the one who doesn’t attempt to push the price down when he’s buying books from you. Like Mr Pumpherston, these are the customers for whom I will happily round the total down from £22 to £20 without their asking, rather than those who demand reductions, pointing out minor defects, such as a small tear to a dust jacket. When I encounter these miserable fiends, my response is always along the lines of ‘Yes, there is a tear to the jacket – I factored that in when I was pricing the book. Why should I discount it twice for the same tear?’ This usually silences them, but they are the kind of people who won’t buy anything unless they feel they’ve somehow managed to negotiate a bargain. They are the worst kind of people to deal with, and I suspect that this is because, ultimately, it’s not about the paltry £1 they’re saving, it’s about power. It’s about them calling the shots, and, whether you’re an antique dealer, agricultural supplier or car dealer, it’s about the customer feeling that in the dynamic of the exchange they are in charge. They are the people who will demand a ‘bulk discount’ when they buy two books, who never tip in restaurants, who would boast about going on holiday to a place after a terrorist attack ‘because it’s cheaper’.

  As far as I can see, the trick with buying, if you’re a bookseller, is to be fair and consistent. If you acquire a reputation for ripping people off in this trade, word spreads quickly and your supply will dry up. I’ve walked away fr
om a few deals because a seller has wanted more than I have been prepared to pay, and on most of those occasions they’ve come back to me having tried several other dealers and been disappointed. Most book dealers are the same when it comes to buying, and I can honestly say that I don’t know any who would try to get away with paying a few pounds for a rare and valuable book.

  MONDAY, 2 MARCH

  Online orders: 7

  Orders found: 6

  Seven orders, all from Amazon.

  At 10 a.m. I had a visit from Jeff, the wild man who lives at the Doon of May – a sort of commune in a forest which he set up years ago. He is both a thoroughly decent man and very anti-establishment in his politics. He looked quite troubled and was pacing about a bit. It turns out that he’s been offered a considerable sum of money for the timber on the land he bought for his commune and is now faced with the problem of becoming a capitalist.

  There was a half-hour blizzard just after Jeff left. Captain was clearly unexpectedly caught out in it and appeared in the shop covered in snow shortly after it ended.

  After lunch a customer came to the counter wielding a book about embroidery and said, ‘I don’t want to buy this book, but I found it in the philately section, which would seem to me to be entirely the wrong place for it.’

  Till Total £68.99

  8 Customers

  TUESDAY, 3 MARCH

  Online orders: 2

  Orders found: 1

  Only one Amazon order, and no Abe orders again today, so no doubt Monsoon has encountered another technical glitch. With initial enthusiasm (which soon deteriorated into indifference, and has now become extreme reluctance) we began selling books online a few years ago. We use a database called Monsoon, through which we manage our stock, upload to websites and receive orders.

  An elderly woman asked, ‘Can you get that copy of Mrs Beaton down from that shelf and tell me the price and publication date?’ I did as requested, only to be told, ‘I have the same edition at home. Now I know what it’s worth.’ I’m going to introduce a time-waster tax.

  Till Total £39.49

  5 Customers

  WEDNESDAY, 4 MARCH

  Online orders: 1

  Orders found: 1

  Nicky was working in the shop today, so I drove to Glasgow to dump books at the paper recycling plant. Before I left, I asked her to clear the table and do a new window display while I was away.

  I arrived at the Smurfit Kappa recycling plant at 2.30 p.m. and dropped off boxes of books from the van into four large square plastic bins (each one can take about twenty boxes). The contents of the bins are emptied onto a conveyor belt, then shredded and baled before being sent to China or Birmingham for recycling, depending on the international price of paper.

  Nicky asked me to go to an architectural salvage warehouse since I was in Glasgow to find her some shutters, so once I’d finished recycling the books, I headed off there. Eventually I found the place, after much driving around, during which I accidentally jumped a red light. The salvage warehouse had plenty of shutters, and when I asked what the price was, they told me that they’re £75 per pair, so I called Nicky to see if she was happy with that price. She replied ‘Eh? What? Have they got the decimal point in the wrong place?’ I left empty-handed.

  Returned to the shop at six o’clock to find that Nicky had inflicted her customary chaos on the place, with piles of books on the floor, table and even under the table. In a radical departure from her normal behaviour, Nicky had followed instructions and created a new window display, which appeared to be a bewildering assortment of books on golf, cinema and politics.

  The combination of five hours’ driving and heaving the boxes out of the van hasn’t helped my back problems.

  The shop has seemed busier than usual this winter, possibly because it has been so mild. Most of our customers are retired and don’t like driving in icy conditions, but they don’t seem to be put off by rain.

  Till Total £61

  7 Customers

  THURSDAY, 5 MARCH

  Online orders: 3

  Orders found: 3

  Email this morning:

  Hi, I was wondering if you have any books by Paul Barton? I found them on the internet from Cube Cart. I do not have no credit card so I wrote this fellow last year explaining that I don’t have no credit card, asking how I can purchase these books. You know what he did? He sent my letter back didn’t even read it, put a bunch of silly nonsense on the outside of the envelope. Not even explaining, no apology, nothing. I think that is very rude! Sounds like he can’t be reached. He must be in jail or in some sort of institution. Do you know this man? I have emailed him several times, he has not responded. Maybe he might respond to you. Very odd! Thank you.

  I’m not entirely sure how many people would conclude – on receiving an unopened, returned letter – that the intended recipient must be in jail. Several far simpler possible explanations leap to mind, not the least of which is that the person who sent me this email probably ought to be in ‘some sort of institution’.

  Went into the garden to pick some greenery for a gardening window display and spotted that the chrysanthemum has started to flower. The flowers look gorgeous for about a day, then they begin to turn brown. The soil is too alkaline for it, but it struggles on into flower every year regardless.

  The shop computer rebooted overnight, and the anti-virus software has removed something from Monsoon, so now it won’t open. I have no idea if we have any orders. Emailed Monsoon, but they’re in Portland, Oregon, on the west coast of America, so they’re seven hours behind.

  Till Total £60.49

  8 Customers

  FRIDAY, 6 MARCH

  Online orders: 2

  Orders found: 2

  Nicky in. She has hijacked the shop’s Facebook page again and left this typically bewildering post:

  Good morning everyone!

  With a song in my heart, I skip in to work only to be berated for buying books off a customer for £45, whereas the

  BGC would have paid £175. Happy customer, happy me, disgruntled tube, sorry, I meant to say ‘boss’.

  BGC is Nicky’s current nickname for me, and stands for Big Ginger Conundrum. ‘Tube’, for the uninitiated, is a Scottish insult, the politest interpretation of it being ‘idiot’.

  One of this morning’s orders was for a book called Moscow Has a Plan, superb cover design, and I’m sure Mr Putin would be delighted with the title.

  Received an email from Monsoon with a Log Me In code so that they can remotely access my computer and fix the problem. Once again, owing to the time difference, this meant that the database was down for most of the day, which meant that Nicky couldn’t list our stock online.

  Till Total £64.34

  7 Customers

  SATURDAY, 7 MARCH

  Online orders: 0

  Orders found: 0

  This morning I drove to a house near Maybole (about an hour away) to look at a private library. The books were in a house that I’ve been to before, owned by a widow. The last time there was some excellent antiquarian material. Today there was nothing much of great value, apart from a 1753 copy of The Trial of James Stewart – for what is known in Scotland as The Appin Murder, the story on which Robert Louis Stevenson based Kidnapped. Stevenson’s father had picked up a copy of the same edition – possibly even the same copy – of The Trial of James Stewart in a bookshop in Inverness, and given it to RLS, and from that the seed of what would become Kidnapped was planted. Stevenson even obliquely refers to this edition of the book by calling his protagonist (the only important character not based on a real person) David Balfour: The Trial of James Stewart was published by Hamilton and Balfour.

  In the middle of the afternoon an ex-soldier called Adam Short came to the shop. He’s walking anticlockwise around the coast of the UK and has been going for 366 days. He needed a bed for the night, so we put him up in the warehouse, where he seemed delighted, despite the fairly rudimentary conditions. I can’t help t
hinking that timing his trip to be in the north of the UK precisely when the days are shortest and the weather at its worst might not have been the most sensible idea.

  Till Total £215.97

  17 Customers

  MONDAY, 9 MARCH

  Online orders: 3

  Orders found: 3

  I awoke to the sound of howling wind and rain lashing against the bedroom window. When I opened the shop, I noticed that the window was leaking onto the books in the display, so I grabbed some saucepans from the kitchen to catch the drips, then lit the fire and huddled over it for ten minutes in a vain attempt to warm up.

  Shortly after I’d opened the shop, a group of about eight youngish people (mid-twenties) came in and wandered about for an hour. Not one of them bought a book.

  Tracy (RSPB) came in at 10 a.m. to use the wifi. She spent the morning sitting by the fire looking for jobs.

  Till Total £55

  7 Customers

  TUESDAY, 10 MARCH

  Online orders: 2

  Orders found: 2

  At 9.30 a.m. a vast man in red cords marched into the shop and asked, ‘Tell me, is Whithorn open today?’ Whithorn is a town of similar size and appearance to Wigtown. It’s about 12 miles further down the peninsula. I’m still slightly confused about whether or not a town can be considered open or closed, unless it’s under quarantine.

  After lunch a couple with two young children came in. The children went straight for a book that came in last year, and which I recently put on a display stand on a table. The book is called Fausto, impresiones del gaucho Anastasio el Pollo en la representación de esta ópera, and was published in Buenos Aires in 1951. The fascination for children, though, is that it is an unusually tactile book. It is bound in leather which has been cured, but the hair from the cowhide hasn’t been scraped off, making it look like an animal skin, which of course it is. This technique produces what is colloquially known in the trade as a ‘hairy binding’.