Book Week

This is Book Week!

I don't send out new lists to my customers every week, more like every 2nd or 3rd, depending on when I can find enough to make it worth while. This week has been hard work. First, I have to find the books to sell. Then, I have to get all my lists in order, deleting the ones sold is the most time consuming. Next, I type up all the new ones, sometimes with brief descriptions. I 'publish' the lists and then the orders start flowing in. Hopefully!

I'm always amazed that anyone wants to buy any of my books. At first, I kind of imagined that everyone could search out second-hand books themselves and build their own home-library just like we did. But then I get emails from some of my customers sometimes that help me understand the type of person this service really helps. If you have little children or lots of them, it's hard to get out round charity shops and car-boot sales, jumble sales, book sales etc to look. If you live somewhere rural there may not be anything like this near you anyway.

After I get the orders I list all the books which have been ordered on different sheets of paper entitled Hist/Geog or Maths/Science etc and set off around the house to look for them. That can be harder than it sounds as I have so many now, scattered all over the place in odd corners. Sometimes, when customers are not specific enough about the title, I can waste a lot of time at this stage trying to figure out which book, which edition etc. Then I weigh the books and packaging and send the customer an email detailing final cost. When I receive their cheque I package the books off and post them.

So this week has been the getting, deleting, listing and publishing phase. The next few days will be the 'picking' weighing and responding phase.