In the week leading up to the Australian Booksellers Association 2018 conference, June 17-18, Books+Publishing is interviewing each of the five shortlisted nominees for Young Bookseller of the Year. In the second installment, Tim Jarvis, bookseller at Fullers Bookshop in Hobart, Tasmania, answered the question:
What are the top three things you wish you'd known when you were starting out in the book industry?
- That I don't have to read every book that comes in. (I read very slowly.) I still feel a professional obligation to have already read everything, but I don't feel so tyrannised by unread books as I once did.
- Who Richard Fidler is. My life would have been so much easier in those early months if I'd known "I heard about this book on the radio" meant "the author was on [ABC Radio National's] Conversations."
- Don't underestimate the value of display. As much as I like rummaging around on obscure shelves in the back room of a bookshop, and I like to believe that good titles sell themselves, I've learned that books really do sell faster when they have room to breathe.