Todays early bird SC!

[HYHYBT]

SC: No! It's called Titanic! Oh, I know it doesn't have all the romantic stuff in it, that's made up, but it's a real book, the movie was based on it! I want to read the original novel.

Here ya go, Wreck of the Titan. Written I-forget-when, but long before 1912.

[TYFSOK]

One time a woman demanded a copy of the book that George Lucas based Star Wars on. I showed her the novelizations, but no, those weren't good enough -- she wanted the ORIGINALS! And the originals for episodes 7, 8, and 9!

[trunks2k]

I always enjoyed the customers that couldn't remember the name of the book or anything about it, but knows for sure the cover was "insert color here". If I had a nickel for everytime I heard that I could buy a hard cover book myself!

I think what I'm going to do is make a new database for books. Besides the normal categorization, part of the categorization would be by the color of cover, the color of the lettering on the cover, what picture may be on the cover, etc. It would also be categorized by thickness of the book, so the customer can hold up his/her fingers to the screen with the approximate width and the databse would filter out anything not within a certain range of that distance. On top of that, it would be searchable by "that author," by filtering by authors who have sold a certain amount of books, as well as filtering by "just came out" which would filter out any books that's older than 5 years.

I think I'd make millions.

[Imogene]

One time a woman demanded a copy of the book that George Lucas based Star Wars on.

Didja take her into the movie section to hand her the movie "Hidden Fortress"? (I think that's what it's called... been too long since I thought about it... *goes to check on IMDB* Yup.)

[norrina]

woman comes in saying I want a book I saw on GMTV this morning, did you see it? (I'd been working since 7, it starts at 7, no I havn't)

"Oh right then, I don't know who wrote it or what its about but its got a helicoptor on the cover and it was on TV this morning, do you have it?"

When I worked at Books-A-Million (regional chain bookstore), our system had a section where employees could pull up all the books discussed on Oprah. Quite a handy tool.

[Pagan]

I had some old fart wondering why JRR Tolkien hadn't written anything new now that his books were these great, big movies. Kept ranting on and on about it. When he took a breath, I told him (with much amusement) that there weren't ever going to be any new books by Tolkien. He asked why not? Well, sir, he died 30 years ago. So, unless he's learned to write from beyond the grave....

Seriously, the books for Episodes 7, 8, & 9?! We had some dork insisting that the movies would be out soon since Mr. Lucas has them in a vault somewhere. Even tried to tell us that Episodes 1, 2, & 3 had been filmed years ago. Completely ignored the fact that Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman couldn't have been in them if they had been!

And here's a good books one: "Yeah, you had a book with a red cover over here 3 or 4 months ago. Where is it now?"

How could you not know about the Titanic being a real ship that really sank?????

[Seanette]

I had some old fart wondering why JRR Tolkien hadn't written anything new now that his books were these great, big movies. Kept ranting on and on about it. When he took a breath, I told him (with much amusement) that there weren't ever going to be any new books by Tolkien. He asked why not? Well, sir, he died 30 years ago. So, unless he's learned to write from beyond the grave....

Death doesn't seem to have stopped V.C. Andrews.

[skeptic53]

I think what I'm going to do is make a new database for books. Besides the normal categorization, part of the categorization would be by the color of cover, the color of the lettering on the cover, what picture may be on the cover, etc. It would also be categorized by thickness of the book, so the customer can hold up his/her fingers to the screen with the approximate width and the databse would filter out anything not within a certain range of that distance. On top of that, it would be searchable by "that author," by filtering by authors who have sold a certain amount of books, as well as filtering by "just came out" which would filter out any books that's older than 5 years.

I think I'd make millions.

Ask any pharmacist, pharm tech, nurse, or doc how many times they've hear this: "You know the one... it's a little white pill..."

There is a database like you describe, for pills. You can search by color, shape, and imprinted letters/numbers.

http://www.drugs.com/xq/cfm/pageID_1...1/qx/index.htm

[JustADude]

When I worked at Books-A-Million (regional chain bookstore), our system had a section where employees could pull up all the books discussed on Oprah. Quite a handy tool.

Holy... WOW! Someone actually made a tool to deal with stuff like that. Shame they couldn't expand it to every major show.

[Lulu]

Tolkien writing from beyond the grave well hey, it's not stopped many other authors has it

As for the databases all us booksellers should have, there's a very useful one run by The Bookseller magazine here in the UK, it lists all the titles used in the media that week by the name of the programme they were on That thing is a work of genius for those "It was radio 4's book of the week!" moments

[Mixed Bag]

Ah yes, red books...memories of similar pre-hack queries:

'Someone asks about a certain song on a certain CD, but they don't know who the artist is, or what the song is called, but tell you it says something about "Love you baby".'

'They ask for "that one video game where you're a guy, and you run around shooting things, and you get points, and you go through levels."'

[varmintjane]

When I worked at Books-A-Million (regional chain bookstore), our system had a section where employees could pull up all the books discussed on Oprah. Quite a handy tool.

I used to work there too and that section was freaking awesome. They also had any book discussed on the Today show too.

I did have some annoying girl come in one day looking for something vague. I only found a few in the computer search but none of them were what she wanted. That wasn't good enough for her even after I took her over to the section where something possibly related could be found. I did find ONE book that had what she wanted but it was one of those coffee table art books that cost $50. I offered it, said I could order one of the ones we didn't have in stock, but she said no. I apologized and went back to my register. Then she went to the OTHER cust.service desk and asked for a manager (I heard the page).

She complained to my assistant manager that I wasn't good at customer service and blah, blah blah she works at a gym and she knows what good customer service is. My manager came over, told me what she said and told me not to worry about it and made fun of her. But yeah, what did she want me to do, pull it out of my butt? I never thought so many stupid people would come into a bookstore.

Oh AND our store was connected to a mall. What fun that was.