Working in a book store

Flay

So a after spending a few unpleasant months working a Sizzler, I've gotten myself a christmas casual job in Dymocks (a large Australian bookstore chain). And not a little supermarket bookstore either, but the biggest damn bookstore in Australia.

Anyways, I had my orientation today, and although I both love books and am very much excited that I've gotten this job, I'm not sure if I'm quite knowledgable enough. The majority of what I've read is fantasy, science-fiction or crime. I'm certainly not unwilling to expand my literary pallet, but these are the genres which have always interested me the most.

So, I'm looking for general advice on both working in a large bookstore, and expanding my literary horizons. One thing I'm specifically looking for are a few good book/literature blogs that will help me keep up to date.

Does anyone have any advice?

Aoi Tsuki

Tone your expectations down a little. You will get a lot of questions along the lines of "My friend told me about this book where the girl is a vampire, but she likes this guy who's also a vampire, but her boss is a werewolf who's also a witch and they have to fight a race of sex-crazed spiders--I think the cover has a lot of blue on it? Do you know the one I mean?"

Not to crush your dreams, but I've worked and spent enough time in and talked to friends who've also worked in bookstores, and the ratio of conversations about fun and/or great books you'll have with your customers, to conversations that make you want to drown yourself in a toilet bowl, is a bit low.

(To be more helpful than nay-say-y, I'm fond of Bookslut.)

firewaterword

I worked at Barnes and Noble for a few years. For the most part, no one gave a damn about what your tastes are. As long as you could alphabetize and count money, you were golden.

Just be ready to contain your inner rage after hearing something along the lines of "I'm looking for a book that was on TV, but I can't remember the name, who wrote it, or what it was about. The author was wearing a gray jacket, and he was bald - does that help?" for the 35th time.

But otherwise, it was a pretty kick ass job as retail jobs go -- I assume anyway. That's the only retail I've ever had to do.

Kelor

firewaterword wrote: »

I worked at Barnes and Noble for a few years. For the most part, no one gave a damn about what your tastes are. As long as you could alphabetize and count money, you were golden.

Just be ready to contain your inner rage after hearing something along the lines of "I'm looking for a book that was on TV, but I can't remember the name, who wrote it, or what it was about. The author was wearing a gray jacket, and he was bald - does that help?" for the 35th time.

But otherwise, it was a pretty kick ass job as retail jobs go -- I assume anyway. That's the only retail I've ever had to do.

And colour! Don't forget colour, they often know what the jacket looks like.

• It helps to familiarise yourself with some well known authors in each genre, since you will get people (and especially with Christmas coming up) coming in looking for gifts and only knowing what genre the person they are buying for reads or a couple of titles they saw on their bookcase. Titlepage is going to become your new best friend. Someone is looking for title that isn't on your system? If it's carried by one of the nine large distributor's within Australia it's going to be on there. Dymocks will definately have a login you can use and they'll teach you how it works.
• Indent titles. If someone wants a title that is listed as indent, it means the company you're getting it from needs to get it shipped across from overseas, usually from the UK or US. This means they're looking at roughly 4-6 weeks, sometimes as long as 8 for the book to arrive.
• Audiobooks. These are becoming more and more popular as time goes by, so you'll probably get some queries about these. Again, Titlepage is your friend, and Bolinda Publishing has a extensive catalogue.
• Since you're familiar with Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Crime just start to familiarise yourself with the other genres. They should have some catalogues at your work for reference, check out the Pan Macmillan, Penguin, United Book Distributors, Scholastic, Hachette, Random House, Harper Collins are probably the biggies.

They'll give you an orientation through the store, so take the time to check each section for the more prominent authors or series and wiki them up. If I have time I'll put together a quick list I have at work for you.

The other thing you'll find is quite common is parents or relatives looking for books for their son/daughter/niece/nephew/grandson/granddaughter. This sort of ties in with the above, but a good knowledge of children's authors will help you a lot. Or they've got a kid who's not into reading that they're trying to get into it. Find out what level the kids reading is at and once you've got a good idea of where they're up to suggest some titles. I deal mostly with kids, young adult and regular fiction in my job so I'll throw it in with the list when I post it some time tomorrow.

thanimations

Well, I'm a manager at a large national bookstore in the US, so I'll try to run down some tips that probably will apply to your situation as well. Obviously, the more you know about books the better you can help someone. Knowing what pastry cookbook to recommend or who wrote "Black Like Me" or other obscure things will always be better than only knowing James Patterson. That being said, you're not going to be able to learn it right away:

• Know what is on the displays at your store. Take the time every day to look through the sections and tables to see what is new and what has changed.
• Know what sells at your store. If your store does abnormally high sales in a category, like Teens or Military History, then you would do well to know that and learn accordingly
• Talk to the other booksellers about trends, what has sold in the past, et cetera
• Since it's a large bookstore, there is certain to be other people you work with that are "experts" in a section you know nothing about. Don't be afraid to partner with them in situations
• If you're given an opportunity to read at work, whether at the cashwrap, on breaks, or on a book loan program, use that to not only read what you like but also a few chapters from books you don't. Even a little taste can give some insight about a book you might not normally read

Other than that, you just need to familiarize yourself with your store's customer base and the available stock. You're probably not going to get a lot of customers looking for truly in-depth reviews, though if you can give one that's great, so just concentrate on what can help you sell the book.

Hypatia

In my experience working at B&N, the best thing you can do for yourself when you're new is to get yourself put on shelving for a while. Because you'll be stuffing the books onto the shelves you'll get a lot of experience and knowledge very quickly about what authors are where, what the popular books are (you'll be constantly trying to fit them onto the shelf), and what you're stocking. If you can stay on shelving for long enough you'll start to be able to know where to go to get the book and whether or not you've got it in without looking it up, and you'll start gaining some general knowledge about all of the major authors and what genres they write in.

As an addendum to that, the more displays you can help set up, re-stock, and take down the better. They always tell you to "know what is on the displays" but the reality is that there are too many displays to keep track of and too many books per display to really remember what's where all the time, especially since they're constantly switching the things. If you help to set up/re-stock/take down the display it's much -much- easier for you to remember what's on them because you had to lug the stuff there (or back) and had to play book tetris to fit everything onto the table/shelf/whatever.