A family of four came in at 12.30 p.m. Each of them bought a book; each gave a different response to the question ‘Would you like a bag?’
Mother – ‘Oh, go on then.’
Father – ‘No.’
Son 1 – ‘Yes.’
Son 2 – ‘Only if you’ve got one.’
At 1 p.m. Carol Crawford appeared. I like to stock a few new books, probably around 150 titles that we buy from Booksource, a distributor of predominantly Scottish books. Carol is one of their sales reps. She is a charming woman, and we always chat about a variety of things before tackling the book business. Her son, who was just a small boy when she first started to come to the shop, is now at university. Until last year she would come armed with briefcases containing folders of book covers in plastic sheets, and order forms. Now she just has an iPad. She comes about four times a year, and deciding what to buy is a tricky business, particularly since customers no longer see the cover price of a new book as what they should be expected to pay. Amazon and Waterstones put paid to that, so once again I am in the position that – should I decide to – I could probably buy the stock I buy from Booksource cheaper on Amazon than I can from the distributor. I ordered two or three copies of about forty new titles on her list, mainly of local relevance, or written by people I know.
Back in 1899 the most powerful UK publishing houses agreed that they would only supply bookshops on the condition that the books were sold at the cover price and not discounted. Any breach of this, they agreed, would result in all of them ceasing to supply any books to the culprit. This was known as the Net Book Agreement (NBA). The system worked well for everyone until 1991, when chain stores Dillons and Waterstones emerged, dwarfing the small independents. They quickly realised that they could circumvent the NBA under a clause that exempted damaged books. Using a marker pen, they scored a cross onto the edges of the books they wished to discount. Occasionally I will still come across one of these when I am buying. Bitter fighting between the publishers and the big chains ensued, culminating in a ruling by the Office of Fair Trading that declared the NBA illegal in 1997.
One of the benefits of the NBA was that the financial stability of the market it created allowed publishers to publish books that perhaps had more cultural but probably less financial value. Without it, publishers are no longer in a position to take such risks, and consequently, although the number of books printed in the UK each year has increased, the number of titles has diminished: more copies of fewer books. The book market is now controlled not by publishers but by the buyers for Waterstones and Tesco and other ‘combines’, as Orwell would have called them.
Smell of cat piss is getting stronger.
Till total £111.50
12 customers
WEDNESDAY, 19 FEBRUARY
Online orders: 8
Books found: 5
Finally, a day without rain. Most of the day was spent packing the books for the Random Book Club and dealing with the Royal Mail’s neolithic mailing system. As the post office in Wigtown is closed on Wednesday afternoon I’ll have to go and see Wilma tomorrow morning and ask her if she can send the postman over in the afternoon to pick up the six sacks of parcels.
This morning I listed the book signed by Sir Walter Scott on eBay. There’s little point in listing it on Amazon or AbeBooks. Although AbeBooks has a ‘Signed Books’ section, this is not a copy of one of Scott’s own titles, so it would never be found on a search.
Four elderly ladies came in at 10.30 a.m. I was working at the computer with my back to them but could hear them speculating about where the craft books might be. After some discussion, one of them spotted me in the corner and said to the others, ‘Why don’t we just ask the lady?’
Norrie thinks he knows where the water is getting in and flooding the window display, and has offered to fix it.
I have reached the part in Any Human Heart where Logan’s son decides to name his band Dead Souls and Logan responds with laughter, telling him that Nikolai Gogol wrote a book of the same name. I had no idea, and felt as stupid as Logan’s son. It will be the next book I read.
Till total £24
4 customers
THURSDAY, 20 FEBRUARY
Online orders: 6
Books found: 6
Nicky strolled in at 9.15 a.m. (fifteen minutes late), looked at the clock and said, ‘Oh, is that the time?’ before throwing her bag, hat and coat on the floor in the middle of the shop and going upstairs to use the loo and make herself a cup of tea.
Till total £88
7 customers
FRIDAY, 21 FEBRUARY
Online orders: 5
Books found: 5
Today’s online orders include one of the most boring titles I have seen for a while: British Transport Film Library Catalogue since 1966. It includes such riveting films as ‘AC electric locomotive drivers’ procedures’, ‘Service for Southend’ and ‘Snowdrift at Bleath Gill’. Despite the popular perception that books about trains are extremely dull (the reputation of trainspotters as banana-sandwich-eating, anorak-wearing bores is probably in part responsible for this), they are among the best-selling books in the shop. Invariably it is men who buy them, and more often than not they sport beards. They are generally among the most good-natured of the shop’s customers, possibly because they’re delighted when they see the size of the railway section, which normally comprises about two thousand books.
A customer wearing yellow Crocs asked where the parking meters were in Wigtown. When I explained that there were none and that there are no parking restrictions, she looked completely flabbergasted and commented, ‘My God, this is wonderful. It’s like this place is trapped in a time warp of fifty years ago.’
I locked the cat flap last night when Captain came in. No smell of cat piss this morning. Anna may well be correct about the unwelcome visiting cat.
Till total £24.50
1 customer
SATURDAY, 22 FEBRUARY
Online orders: 4
Books found: 4
The first telephone call of the day was from Mrs Phillips, near Dumfries: ‘I am ninety-three years old and blind, you know.’
I went to value her books about two years ago – interesting collection in a very nice house. When I arrived, I discovered that she’d cooked lunch for me and her grandson, who was visiting. I had already eaten – a dry sandwich with an unidentifiable filling bought from the petrol station in Newton Stewart – but didn’t want to decline since she’d gone to the trouble. It was prawns in aspic. Today she was calling to order a book, Babar, for her great-granddaughter. She’s one of the few customers who still order books through the shop, rather than directly online from Amazon.
One of the shop’s Facebook followers came in to buy books today. She and her boyfriend want to move here and I overheard her whispering ‘Don’t say anything stupid or he’ll post it on Facebook.’ I will write something mean about her later. When I set up the Facebook account for the shop four years ago, I had a look at other bookshops that had done the same. The content seemed almost universally bland and didn’t really convey the full horror or the exquisite joy of working in a bookshop, so I took a calculated risk and decided to focus on customer behaviour, particularly the stupid questions and the rude comments. It appears to have paid off, and those who follow the shop seem to become more delighted the more offensive I am about customers. I recently checked to see who is following me, and a significant number of bookshops are on the list.