Working in a Bookshop

(See also Wokring in a bookshop.)

1. Which

Bookshop

2. Where ... ?

Wpw, you want to make sure you work in a bookstore before you die. . . I don't know if you are a retarded middle-aged man or if you're a celibate woman who has more cats than friends but that is the saddest thing I have ever heard. Why don't you just buy a bunch of boxes, fill them with weights, carry them up and down a flight of stairs then pack and unpack them. What else do you want to do before you die? Get a few more hangnails?

I always wanted to have my own bookshop, till I got to know a fellow here in NYC who did. He had the nicest little shop on East 57th Street, with his lovable poodle Alexander, and actors and writers often dropped in (I encountered Rex Harrison there, in a bad mood, and Henry Morgan, who was charming). But he said it was a hard tough rotten miserable life. He pretty much talked me out of that ambition.

You don't sit around and read and discuss literature all the time when you work in a bookshop. You do tell customers where the latest Mitch Albom book is a million times a day. You learn to identify bestsellers by cover color. People insist they have just seen a certain book in paperback at another shop and your explanation that the book has only been out in hardcover for a month and will likely be in paper within a year is listened to with disbelief and an insulting air indicating you are a moron AND a liar. You listen to people tell you they could get every title in your shop more cheaply at Sam's Club. You learn the inner signifigance of the deep philosophy in science fiction and fantasy titles. You get lectures about why a certain author is or is not fantasy or science fiction and how only feeble minded idiots would mis-shelve them as dismally as you and your colleagues have. You sometimes get to handsell a book you believe in to a person who might actually enjoy it. You watch terrific books languish on the shelves and eventually get sent back to the publisher while Nicholas Sparks titles must be reordered bimonthly. You become expert at finding the most popular TV talk and news show sites on the web instantly because customers want "this book they were talking about on the Today Show, it was written by a general? Someone in the military anyway." You become accustomed to being called a liar when you tell someone a certain book is out of print. "It can't be out of print, (you are informed.) It was only published 5 years ago!" You learn every single day that (1) Amazon has it cheaper and (2) Amazon doesn't charge sales tax. I stopped typing this to ask my husband, who worked in the store I was hired to manage 6 years ago, what I had left out. He had this to add: Working in a bookstore is a fucking job. You're receiving, shelving, dusting, cleaning toilets, vacuuming, ringing sales. It's work. Also, books are a commodity like any other and many people in the book business don't give a flying fuck about books as books at all. (On the other hand, my husband and I met in this bookstore, so maybe you will find your soulmate!)

PJ do you still want the job? I too have secretly harbored this desire but I suspect the only rewarding things about it would be reading on slow days and trying to develop predictive talents re which customer will purchase which book.

I worked at a college bookstore during "buy back" - when students sell their textbooks back at the end of the semester. I have never seen so much anger - $120.00 textbooks are commonly bought back for, maybe, 20 bucks. One student hurled a book at the cashier when she told him the buy back price. (I retrieved, and kept it.)However, I EXCELLED at stocking and ordering the shelves, and thoroughly enjoyed that part of the job. Plus, I got all my textbooks for the next semester for free, by siphoning through the recycling bin.
Working at a used bookstore must be quite different from working at a store that carries new titles. Yes? No?

Also, I wish people wouldn't use "retarded" when they mean to be derisive. It's a cruel term. People with developmental disabilities don't like it either.

I've worked in both and found that the used bookstore, although harder in some of the bookkeeping details (green credit, paperback credit, so many systems...) is more of the dreamt-of book lover environment, with real readers and book lovers more numerous. I've also worked at both indies and chains.

When I was in college I had a course that required a textbook that was 70 dollars, and was never used once (not that I was lazy, but that the professor never assigned anything using it!). At the end of the semester, I tried to sell it back and I was told they had phased that book out and were not buying it back. Such a scam.

It is a big, gigantic scam. That's why I tell people to either work at the bookstore for buy back, or lurk around the dumpsters because a clever, shameless person can get all their textbooks for free this way. I assume there is a quasi legal way to get free books working for a chain store. Free is always good, right?

Thank you all for your input.

Out of the two, I am a retarded middle-aged man.

I'm not saying which shop in case they Google me, or whatever it is people are scared of.

I have already met my soulmate, but I'm hoping for a quick bunk-up in the store cupboard.

Yes, Sandy, I do still want it.

I am aiming to get through my whole masters degree without buying a book. Since I'm supposedly going to be working in libraries when I finish, I figure I should be supporting them now.

So no buyback horrors for me, just desperate late-night scrabbles at the short-loan shelves...

Rabin OTM.

This weekend i couldn't get a customer to accept that the "original" Little Red Riding wasn't a particular, never-specifically-identified color picture book. Every time i offered another adaptation of the story, she sneered, "No, that's a remake." She waved her hand to silence me when i tried to explain the Brothers Grimm.

Also, i had to endure an beatdown on how ashamed i should be for my godlessness for having the Da Vinci Code on the shelves, as it is a satanic heresy against the One True Christ.

Almost all of the people who work at the bookstore with me love books though, and have a wide variety of tastes. One guy has even gotten me into collecting first editions of certain titles.

Rabin
You are right on the money with your post. Working in a bookstore has its advantages and disadvantages like any job. You are working in retail, but you are selling books, which seems better to me. Plus all the free ones are good. But you will spend a portion of your paycheck, because you will want more and more as you spend time with new books. And people ask really dumb questions and treat you like a moron, even though everyone I work with has at least gone to college if not to grad school (though that is a statement on the vale of higher education right there). 'I was in here a few months ago and there was a book with a purple cover in the window. Where can I find this book?' 'I am looking for a book whose title I know, but author I don't know. The title is Dante's Inferno.' Anyway, I enjoy working in a bookstore, but I also am in the back (really upstairs) offices now, so I don't deal with customers.

I work at Waldenbooks. BEST JOB EVER!!!!!!!!! Plus the employee discount is 33% (: (oh and I get 33% off books and 20% of dvds and cds from Borders because they are the parent company)

But, like any job, it can suck if you don't have wonderful bosses or co-workers.

I worked in a Waldenbooks six years ago, and I wouldn't recommend that job to satisfy any romanitc ideas one may have about working in a bookshop. They are not in the business of selling books, but rather Preferred Reader cards. If a cashier doesn't make their quota, they are fired if the pattern persists for three months. Even if they are pleasant, customers like them, and sell many, many books (even point of sale items!) No, I wasn't fired, but this issue made working there very disgruntling, if that's a word.

Even independent shops are still in the business of selling, so there's not much you can do to avoid the pleasing-the-customer enforcement. Retail jobs are only fulfililng if you don't have to sell your soul to sell product. I do understand the romantic allure a bookshop job has, however.

I'd work at a bookshop again, if only for the employee discount.

I have worked in books for almost eleven years, starting part time in High School and staying on afterwards. I have run a big box bookstore and have worked as a clerk in almost every type of store imaginable (new and used).I now find myself a buyer at a fantastic independent store and I have never enjoyed work more. It is retail like everyone else has stated but I feel that there is a nobility to this profession, or a calling to it (like to the priesthood but without the pesky vows) if you will. I find that most of these people who bitc# about the job have worked for big box stores (these are bookstores like McDonalds is a fine dining establishment) or for people who do not care for books. It is different if you work with Booksellers and people who dig what they do.

I once worked in a well-regarded D.C. bookstore, and that one summer, uncoincidentally, is the only time in my life that I have ever seriously considered a career having nothing to do with books. As others have noted here, books come to feel about as special and interesting as cans of tomato paste when you're surrounded by too many of them too nearly arranged for too many hours of the day. And bookstores are a major home for failed writers, who are among the bitterest lot on the planet. Better than working at a grocery store or whatever, I'd imagine, but sadder, in a way, because nobody really leaves a job at a grocery store with a depleted love of groceries (since very few probably have such a love in the first place).

The technical writing business is also a great place to pick up failed or aspiring writers. At least three people in my department in work were writing novels while I worked in MegaCorp. One of them got an enormous advance and has had two novels published.

I can't get an agent. So I work in a bookshop instead and am not bitter at all. No sirree. Lousy successful writers. I hate them.

Just a suggestion: I get my bookstore jollies by volunteering a couple hours a week at our library system's used book store, which sells books that people donate (NOT old library books) to raise money for library and literacy programs. The stock is wide-ranging, to say the least, and the patrons are usually very sweet.

Having just read all the comments about Bookshops I can relate to them all. We have a great bookshop here, Waterstones, where the staff are wonderful, really helpful. My dream is to own a small bookshop, where I can have staff to run it and I will read all the new books and write recommendations for them. A bit like the bookshop in the film "You've Got Mail". Great film with books as a central character.