Bookshops And Booksellers

I've written a few posts about bookselling which you can find here. I buy books from the big chains, the independents, online and from real, physical shops. There are all sorts of booksellers out there and most of them do a wonderful job. Support writers and spend lots of money in bookshops. It's the only way.

If you have a favourite bookshop or bookseller, whether independent or part of a chain, then post a link to its website here and I'll add it to my list. I could especially do with some bookshops which aren't based in the UK.


UK Bookshops And Booksellers

The Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green, North London, has a great blog called Open A Bookshop, What Could Possibly Go Wrong? A real delight.

Bookseller Crow is in Crystal Palace, South London, and has a blog (you might have to scroll down a bit to find the latest update) and an online shop.

The Children's Bookshop in Edinburgh is run by publisher Fidra Books, and has a very informative blog.

Joseph's Bookstore. Finchley, North London. It comes highly recommended.

Mostly Books, Abingdon, has a lovely blog.

Wenlock Books in Much Wenlock has a very quiet blog which is rarely updated but the shop is a real treat: it sells new and second-hand books, and dispenses cake on Saturday mornings. It's one of my favourites.


Online Booksellers

Most of the big chains have online bookshops: I'll leave it up to you to find those for yourself!

Here's Amazon in the UK.

This is Abe Books, which lists the stock of second-hand booksellers worldwide alongside a good search facility. It's particularly useful for finding obscure and out-of-print titles at good prices.

Snowsales

The rather lovely independent publisher Snowbooks is now publishing details of sales and returns on its new(ish) Snowsales blog.

Do you want to know how many copies of each title Snowbooks sold in December? How many returns bookshops made the following month? Or which bookshops return copies of a book one day, only to reorder them again a few days later (and what the environmental and business implications of this silly shilly-shallying really are)? It's all there. Each blog post takes the form of an overview with a spreadsheet attached, which you can download and examine at your leisure

All you have to do to read all this fascinating stuff is email Emma Barnes and ask for a password, so she knows who has access to her sales information. You can find out everything you need to know here.

How Bookselling Really Works

I've never worked in retail and only have the vaguest ideas of how bookselling works. Sally Zigmond has been kind enough to offer to enlighten us all, and has written a few pieces which I'm going to run here over the next couple of weeks. Here's her first.



Years ago I was reasonably high up in bookselling: I was assistant manager of a small branch of Claude Gill Books in Orchard Street, London. More recently I worked as a part-time minion in a tiny branch of Waterstone’s, but I’ve now left book-selling entirely. The business has changed drastically since I first started, but many of the basic principles remain.

When I worked at Waterstone's there was a system in place for A-core-stock, B-core-stock (and even C-core-stock for the larger stores), which were all marked up on the database. A-core-stock were the books we absolutely HAD to keep in stock, even if it was only one copy. The amount was determined by the store size. A-core-stock was revised from time to time and was the obvious stuff that every bookshop should have. In fiction, for example, it would be the basic classics and the top-selling books by the best-selling contemporary authors. The Harrogate store I worked in was the smallest Waterstone's in the country, and so didn't hold much B-core-stock: the staff consisted of one manager, one assistant manager, two permanent assistants (one of whom spent most of his time dealing with goods in and out), and a series of part-timers and weekend staff (after the takeover of Ottakars, the Harrogate Ottakars, being a much larger store, became the Waterstone's and 'my' shop was closed down and was replaced by a rather dreary Paperchase).

Store managers could order individually if they felt something would sell well in their shop and central buying hadn't allocated copies (local history, travel etc. being the obvious example). In our store we were asked to keep a note of any book we hadn't got in stock if several customers asked for it. We could order individual copies of course, but if there seemed to be a demand we would tell the manager or assistant manager who would then order more copies in.

As for self-published, POD or vanity-published titles, or any publisher who didn't offer us sale or return: their books would be listed on the computer BUT there would be four asterisks after their names which meant do not order even single copies even if a customer begs you to, because if you do and then they don't want it after all we'll be stuck with it forever and you will be in big trouble with the manager.



Sally Zigmond was for some time associate editor of QWF, a very well-considered literary magazine. Her short stories have been widely published; her novella, Chasing Angels, was published by Biscuit Publishing, and her first novel, Hope Against Hope, will be published in the new year by Myrmidon Books.