Know what you want when you come into a book store.

[Mark Healey]

Most used book stores don't have a database of their inventory. This means that you have to know the author, title and subject of the book you want.

Today a woman comes in while I'm buying from one of our scouts (people who sell to used book stores professionally) and asks the girl (J) at the counter behind me for a book. She only has a vague notion of what it is. I heard the words "Jesuit" and "memory". As I continue going through the scouts books I hear the woman getting short with J. So I ask this woman if she is looking for "The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci" by Jonathan Spence.

This book isn't about Christianity or memory. It is the history of Matteo Riccis travels in China that uses a renaissance memory technique as a literary device in the narrative. In other words it's Chinese history.

What sucks is that that was the book she was looking for and we had it. So, Yes, I helped a customer and made a sale but I also taught her that you don't need to know what you are looking for when you come in.

[Soulstealer]

How did you manage to guess the book from that?

I covet your mental book catalogue, sorry about the SC but wow.

[Jester]

Most used book stores don't have a database of their inventory. This means that you have to know the author, title and subject of the book you want.

Generally with used book stores like this, I don't go in looking for a specific book. I go in to browse, see what I find, and make a few purchases, but to go in to one to find something specific? No, that is just asking for disappointment!

[sms001]

Generally with used book stores like this, I don't go in looking for a specific book. I go in to browse, see what I find, and make a few purchases, but to go in to one to find something specific? No, that is just asking for disappointment!

That's what I was thinking when I read the OP. But.... every used book store person I've ever had the pleasure of dealing with has had a simply phenomenal memory, so I'm impressed but not surprised by Mr. Healey.

In related news, some used bookstore natural law was suspended in my favor recently. I've NEVER in forty years of reading found the first book of a series in a used bookstore. Trilogy, anthology, whatever, it's always books 2, 3, 7, 9, etc. Bent on rereading Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy before the upcoming movie, I wandered into my local book joint and lo and behold - "The Golden Compass!"

[Mark Healey]

How did you manage to guess the book from that?

I covet your mental book catalogue, sorry about the SC but wow.

That's because I'm not telling you about all the times I've responded with "Duh, I da know".

Seriously, It's like those 'talk to the dead' type psychics. People don't remember the misses.

And I've shelved a bajillion of them.

[BookstoreEscapee]

when you work long enough with books it's interesting the things that will trigger a title to pop into your head, even when the customer seems to be providing the most unlikely-to-be-helpful information.

and on at least one occasion, "it's blue"** were the words that tied the other clues together and conjured the title to my mind...

**("I don't know the title or author, but it's blue" is a universal bookseller 'joke' that is sadly not a joke.)

[wolfie]

**("I don't know the title or author, but it's blue" is a universal bookseller 'joke' that is sadly not a joke.)

I guess you've heard about someone looking for "The Red Boat", and after much (unsuccessful) searching finding out that they wanted "The Ruby Yacht by Omar something or other" (meaning the Rubaiyat by Omar Khayam).

[Victoria J]

I have two whole books (here's the first) all about stupid things said in second hand book stores.

The first book had a whole chapter like a quiz where you had to work out what the customers wanted, from what they said. Don't have my copy handy (overloaded bookshelves) but I can remember some (answers in white) :

Easy :

The book that sounds like a dinosaur but is a bit like a dictionary. Roget's Thesaurus.

Worrying :

That nice book of bed time stories. Umm, the bookseller had suggested Arabian Nights but the customer wanted The Kama Sutra !

Impossible :

The whirlywashers. Washing machines - they'd gone into a bookshop looking for a laundrette/laundromat.

I don't know what surprised me more that people asked for things in such a crazy way, or that in almost all cases the shop workers had managed to work out what they were looking for.

I recommend the book to anyone who works in a secondhand bookshop, and anyone who likes books. I lent my copy to the women who ran the second hand bookshop near where I lived (sadly she retired and the shop closed, when we said we'd miss the shop she just said "I AM 70!").

Victoria J

[XCashier]

and on at least one occasion, "it's blue"** were the words that tied the other clues together and conjured the title to my mind...

**("I don't know the title or author, but it's blue" is a universal bookseller 'joke' that is sadly not a joke.)

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/fun/re...?date=20070903

[BookstoreEscapee]

I guess you've heard about someone looking for "The Red Boat", and after much (unsuccessful) searching finding out that they wanted "The Ruby Yacht by Omar something or other" (meaning the Rubaiyat by Omar Khayam).

Never got that one, to be honest. But I've had plenty of weird ones...

I have two whole books (here's the first) all about stupid things said in second hand book stores.

hehe, I'll have to look for that. I've seen a similar book I think but I don't remember the title.

I like this one, though: 'I like the Saturday Book. They're always so nicely produced, nice books to feel.' Actually, the feel of a book is a big part of the reading experience sometimes. If I have more than one version of a book to choose from I'll go for the one that feels better in my hand.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/fun/re...?date=20070903

hehe I remember that one

[counterjockey]

A few times now, used bookstores have saved my bacon. Every now and again I push a book on somebody so that they can see my thinking about this or that social issue ("Nickel and Dimed" and "Fast Food Nation," for example) or so they can get into this author I'd never heard of (Richard Yates, for another.) I don't go looking for books like these at the used shops so I can give them away. I go to the used bookstores because I've inadvertently perma-borrowed something to somebody, and I have to buy myself a new, um, I mean, another copy.

My current favorite find: a book on Noh Drama with several of the plays translated into english with the movements drawn out.

Noh, really?



Someone had to, it'd have been a sin to let that pass. I'm so sorry.

[napoleana]

In related news, some used bookstore natural law was suspended in my favor recently. I've NEVER in forty years of reading found the first book of a series in a used bookstore. Trilogy, anthology, whatever, it's always books 2, 3, 7, 9, etc. Bent on rereading Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy before the upcoming movie, I wandered into my local book joint and lo and behold - "The Golden Compass!"

I can't even find them in the regular stores. (Though I've never ever seen lack of Golden Compass.) I like to buy graphic novels the minute I hear so much as a whisper about an upcoming movie. So, I started looking for the first of Sin City series like a year and a half before the movie came out. No such luck. Also not at the library. Might could find it online, but I don't care *that* much... plus, I enjoy the challenge. ;P

My weird one right now is #2 of the Runaways TPBs... but not the regular TPBs, the cheap ones that are the size of a manga and printed on regular paper (as opposed to the, er, shiny kind?). I can't even find that online, but I know it exists because I can find #3-6. >.< I don't think I can even substitute it for a regular TPB, because I don't think they have the same issues.

Back on topic: If I worked at a used bookstore, I wouldn't have been so helpful, even if I did know what she was talking about. I totally agree with the sentiment that you need to know what you're looking for in such stores.

[Dreamstalker]

The store I work at now sells both new and used, shelved by author the usual way. Used are under a single code "U" + price. I've given up trying to remember which authors we do and don't have used.

Back when I was still working closing shift (that's something I do not miss), I got lectured by the owner. The previous day, a guy (Nervous Loner type under the canonical list of SCs, gods I hate him) had come in asking about $book in $series that he swore had been purchased not two months ago. I checked his purchase history back to the beginning of this year, and could find no titles in that series or by that author. Tons of used purchases though. I told the guy that there were no new book purchases of that author, but a lot of used ones and maybe he bought it used?

Turned out said purchase was made over a year ago (not my fault if you can't remember what you buy, I don't even know why that was worthy of a talking-to). Never did find out if it was new or used, nor how the owner was able to magic purchase info from 2005 from a DB that only stores info to the beginning of 2007.

[Becks]

Generally with used book stores like this, I don't go in looking for a specific book. I go in to browse, see what I find, and make a few purchases, but to go in to one to find something specific? No, that is just asking for disappointment!

Jester beat me to it.

That is exactly how I do my used book shopping.

[worddork]

The store I work at now sells both new and used, shelved by author the usual way. Used are under a single code "U" + price. I've given up trying to remember which authors we do and don't have used.

That's more than the book store I worked for did. We sold overstocks of the books that didn't sell in the big change store, and they were "organized" (in the loosest sense of the word) by category. ie all fiction on one side of the store, non-fiction broken up into histroy, biography, reference, etc, etc. The only way to for us workers to know where book xxx by yyy was to have been the poor shmuck who put it out there to begin with or who had just recently straighten the tables. That's right we were too cheap to have shelves, all books were stacked on tables.