Robert Gray: 'How Pleasant... to Just Work in a Bookstore'

I had to laugh at myself for thinking I could embark on such a venture with no business experience whatever, but it felt like an instinct as powerful as a cow's instinct to eat grass. That is what made me laugh, the certainty that I was at the same time a little crazy, no doubt, and absolutely right that this was the adventure for me, godsent, in fact. Hatfield House: A Bookstore for Women was the name that came to me after dawn. --from May Sarton's novel The Education of Harriet Hatfield

Imagine what it would be like to be a bookseller. People seem to do that... a lot. For those of us who are, or were, booksellers, the fantasy is both understandable and amusing. It tends to lean heavily upon endless hours set aside for reading, book-lined shelves, sleeping cats, and engaging conversations with well-read customers.

Occasionally a reality check will leak to the innocent public via social media or a list ("14 Things Only People Who Have Spent Countless Hours Working In A Bookstore Understand"). Mostly, however, the fantasy thrives.

Those of us who've been in the bookish belly of the beast do understand there is something irresistible about the bookselling life. We succumbed to the siren song ourselves, after all. And it is fun to see the fantasy retain its hold on the public's imagination. After all, does anybody fantasize about opening an e-bookstore? Where would the digital cat sleep?

Sometimes, people get the chance to rehearse a bookselling life:

Indies First: On Small Business Saturday, independent booksellers host authors as honorary booksellers throughout the day to help handsell favorite titles, sign books, give readings and more.

AirBnBookselling: For £150 a week, guests at the Open Book in Wigtown, Scotland, "will be expected to sell books for 40 hours a week while living in the flat above the shop. Given training in bookselling from Wigtown's community of booksellers, they will also have the opportunity to put their 'own stamp' on the store while they're there."

Bookshop-sitter: In Big Stone Gap, Va., Wendy Welch and Jack Beck have put their bookstore, Tales of the Lonesome Pine, in the hands of strangers several times since 2012, when they first sought a bookshop-sitter to fill in while they went on tour for Wendy's book, The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap: A Memoir of Friendship, Community, and the Uncommon Pleasure of a Good Book.

In a recent article for the Straits Times headlined "Selling books is hard work," Corrie Tan recounted her eight-hour shift at the great Singapore indie, BooksActually: "A warm cat on my lap, my favorite book in hand, a steaming mug of good coffee, on-trend music lingering in the air, the intoxicating smell of new books--this is what I imagined owning a bookstore would feel like. I was certain it would be the most comfortable job ever. I was wrong.

"At the end of an eight-hour shift at independent bookstore BooksActually, my sore feet had turned to lead. I had notched up a score of paper cuts from folding brochures and flyers and opening paper bags. And, surprise, surprise, I didn't get any reading done.... As I limped home, I realized that being a bookseller for a day was like being a sort of literary weatherman, sussing out the mood of the room and reacting accordingly. Sunshine, rain, hail, haze--we were there to create an atmosphere where the written word could be best appreciated and find loving new homes."

As it happens, in 2011 I wrote a column with a similar headline ("Bookselling Is Harder than It Looks"), in which I noted: "They glance up from their reading to watch booksellers shelve a few novels. It's a beautiful, universal and almost ceremonial tableau.... They can't help but consider an alternative: How pleasant it must be to just work in a bookstore....

"Here's just a bit of what those customers nestled in their comfy reading chairs planet-wide don't see because you are doing your jobs so well: today's deliveries stacked up in shipping & receiving; cartloads of as yet unshelved books; sections needing to be culled for returns; returns waiting to be boxed and shipped; staff meetings; internal staff rivalries; scheduling conflicts or sick days that result in overstaffing/understaffing (whichever is the worst one that could happen at this particular moment); ordering to be done; bills to be paid (or strategically delayed); websites and blogs [and social media sites] to be updated; author events to be planned and executed....

"Part of the magic and mystery of bookselling is never letting customers see below the surface.... You chose this profession. If you're one of the best, it also chose you." --Robert Gray, contributing editor (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)

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