Saturday, August 28, 2004

The Book Sale (a.k.a. Make the Bad Books Go Away, Mommy! Make them Go Away!)

Today's book sale went much better than might be expected. In fact, it was very little trouble at all, apart from the whole matter of having to haul around all those boxes of books. I'd guess we had around 350 boxes worth of books to unload from the U-Haul onto the long portable tables we'd spread out on the community college lawn. They were arranged into rows of Fiction Hardback, Fiction Paperback, Children's and General Non-Fiction of both the paper and hard back varieties. We started doing this at 7 in the morning and were finished with the unpacking and setting up by 8:30 or so, just in time for the early bird crowd.

The early birds were the major headache we were anticipating, but they weren't nearly as annoying this year. We only had to tell them four times that we were not yet open and they therefore were not allowed to begin bum rushing the tables. Naturally, they weren't too happy about this.

"We can't even look at the books?" one lady asked.

"No, ma'am. We have to be fair to all the customers," I told her. It's no good letting them shop early, even if they aren't physically taking the books from the tables. They're still marking them in their minds for future removal, getting a head start on everyone else. Granted, this is nothing I wasn't doing as I unpacked the books, but I work there and am doing all the heavy lifting so I figure I can mentally earmark a few books.

After being warned off, most of the early birders slunk away to what they hoped we would consider a safe non-shopping distance (i.e. only four feet from the tables). There they continued to scan the books, studiously not shopping yet still moving along the table rows at a very methodical pace. Their de facto leader in all this was Mr. Smiley, second grumpiest old man in the world. He stepped in three feet from the tables as he very conspicuously scanned them, daring us to tell him otherwise. Whatever. We let him go, cause there's just no pleasing him with the book sale anyway. He firmly believes, and has in the past loudly stated to all within earshot, that Mrs. A hoards all the good books for herself. This isn't true, but even if it was true she would only be hoarding them for the library's collection, which is why the bloody things were donated to us in the first place.  He's also complained in the past that Mrs. A's dog was making too much noise, presumably disturbing his illicit early bird shopping.

The reason we are watchful of the early bird crowd is because last year a group of them gave us lots of trouble. The group in question was a family of used book dealers from another state who flock to weekend book sales to help restock their storehouse. They had arrived well before 7 a.m. last year spent the two hours before we opened the sale trying every trick they knew to get a look at the books early. Now, I can understand their need to seek cheap stock, but they're going to have to abide by the rules if they're going to do it at our book sale. We had to tell them to stay away from the tables several times and practically needed a whip to enforce the policy. Then, as soon as we opened, they descended on the books like ravenous birds of prey. They would swoop in and scoop up whole sections, which they carted back to their little nest of operations, where they could sort through them away from the prying eyes of other shoppers. They picked out what they wanted and returned only the detritus. When we caught on to their scheme, Mrs. A told them to cut it out immediately and do their shopping at the tables themselves. They continued to swoop in and take books, but not in the same quantities as before. They managed to amass several teetering piles of books that they still had not paid for by 2:45 in the afternoon. That's when we realized what their real game was.

See at our sale we charge $3 for hardbacks and $2 for paperbacks until 3 p.m., at which time we shut things down for half an hour to arrange the tables and shift books before reopening and charging only $3 per bag of books. These early-bird dickweeds had been planning to hold all their piles of books until after 3:30 and then buy them at $3 per bag. After all, why pay $3 for a hardback book when you could get a whole bag of them for the same price? They could have escaped with their entire hoard for under $25.

Once we realized this, Mrs. A told them that they weren't allowed to do that and that they had to either purchase the books they had gathered before 3 p.m. or put them all back on the tables and take their chances that they would still be there when we reopened at 3:30. The family figured it was a safe enough bet, so just before we shut down at 3, they put all the books back on specific tables where they could find them again quickly at 3:30. This was a mistake on their part, but their REAL mistake was in leaving the area for the half hour we were in siesta. We'd been watching them as they put their books back and so, as soon as they went to get some coffee, we dashed right to their "secret" tables, took all their desired books and seeded them throughout all the other tables. And some of the more noticeably valuable books we took and hid in the U-Haul, just for spite. They were not happy campers when they returned to their "secret" tables and found their chosen books missing. I'm sure they relocated quite a few of them, but they had to work for it. Then, as soon as they checked out, we put the hidden books back out for mass consumption at $3 a bag.

I know, we're bastards, but at least we're only bastards to bastards.

This very family of book dealers did come to the sale this year, but they behaved themselves. They sent their daughter in to case the joint before 3. She bought a few books at regular price. Then, after 3:30, the whole family came back and bought 8 bulging bags of books. They played fair, we played fair.


Other than the minor trouble the early birders gave us, the rest of the book sale went pretty smoothly and was a rousing success.

I found that my book radar was pretty strong throughout the day. At my request Mrs. C recently ordered a favorite childhood series, the Tripods Trilogy, by John Christopher, for the library's juvenile collection. Trouble is, the book supplier didn't have a copy of The White Mountains, the first book in the series, so they sent books 2, 3 and the prequel book (of which I was previously unaware). Just as the sale started, I happened to walk by the children's section and got a ping on my book radar. There, nestled among some juvenile paperbacks was a pristine copy of The White Mountains. In fact, it was the only one of the series to be found there. Providence.

Another ping came when I was doing some shopping on my own. I'd gone into the sale wanting to pick up some of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Shadow series and found the first book right away, pinging at me from the paperback fiction.

I used my ping to help find books for several customers. It's kind of like playing a big game of Memory, finding the books we've seen earlier like shape cards turned face down.

Other books I picked up included Stephen King's Dreamcatcher, which I wanted to read just to see if it is as bad in print as it was as a movie. I found a few of Brad Meltzers novels. He's been doing a damn fine job writing comics these days, so I wanted to see how his novels were. (Check out his run on Green Arrow from a couple years ago, available in trade paperback, as well as his current gig as the writer of the Identity Crisis limited series from DC. Good stuff.) And speaking of comics, I managed to find the trade paperback of Dean Motter's The Prisoner mini-series from the late 1980s as well as a Marvel Masterpiece collection of The Essential Dr. Strange. I don't even like Dr. Strange, but it was in great shape so I picked it up. The only other comic to be found was the Batman Forever movie adaptation, which I have no use for on several different levels, so I didn't buy it.

By 5 p.m., we'd sold eight tables worth of books out of probably 16 or 17 tables total and we sold another table's worth by closing time at 6 p.m. We let late stragglers come and have their pick of the leftovers as we packed them all back up in boxes to haul away. We didn't have nearly as many leftover books this year as we have in the past, but they still amounted to around 130 boxes worth in the end.

Now those of you who had near cardiac infarctions when I last spoke of us chucking all the leftover books into the garbage truck, take your nitro and calm down. This year we did things a little differently.

Sure, I've been trying to convince Mrs. A that we'd sell a lot more books if we'd just back a garbage truck up to the book sale around 4:30, with the usual accompanying BEEP BEEP BEEP sound. If customers really knew that the garbage was the actual fate of the books, I'm betting they'd buy quite a few more $3 bags worth and we'd have that many less to throw out. However, Mrs. A fears the uproar this would cause so she looked into other avenues.

Turns out, a lady who lives in the closest bigger city to us wanted to attend the book sale but was unable to make it on the day it was held. She wrote to Mrs. A and requested a private session to go through the books herself. Mrs. A refused this on the grounds that it was even more blatant an early bird move than most of the early birders attempt. The lady then said that she would like to be able to go through the leftover books. Again, Mrs. A refused as what the lady was requesting meant a tremendous amount of unnecessary work for us. In that scenario, we the staff would have to pack up all the books from the sale, haul them back to our storage location instead of to the garbage truck, unload them, wait a couple of days for the lady to drive over, then we'd have to go back, unpack them all, let her go through them, pack up what she didn't want and load all those boxes on the truck to haul to the garbage and unload again. Work work work. Mrs. A told the lady that if she wanted any books, she had to take them ALL off our hands as well as do all the loading work herself (or bring her own help to do it). We absolutely were not going to haul any more boxes of books until next year. Surprisingly, the lady went for it and offered to pay us $1 per box. At 130 boxes, that nets us another $130 bucks to add to the $3890 we made in the sale itself, pushing us over $4000 total. Plus, it's no more work for us and we don't have to throw any books away. Sweet.

May all future book sales go so smoothly.

D-MINUS: 5

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An employee of a small town "liberry" chronicles his quest to remain sane while dealing with patrons who could star in a short-lived David Lynch television series.