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The weirdness of being a bookseller right now (at least for me):
No handselling. That's honestly the best part of the job. Chatting with customers, putting books in their hands, having them come back and tell you they loved it need the second in the series.
No handselling. That's honestly the best part of the job. Chatting with customers, putting books in their hands, having them come back and tell you they loved it need the second in the series.
Handselling can be done over the phone or through email but it's harder to do and takes longer. It also renders book covers useless if you're on the phone. Spending the day only answering the phone and replying to emails is exhausting.
I spend more time answering emails like, "I found your email on your website, can you please tell me how to order a book?" or "Where's the book I ordered 10 minutes ago? I paid for media mail shipping, and it's not here yet," than I do selling books.
When I get home, I'm way too tired to read, even if I had the focus to read anything. I've got a stack of galleys that are 2 months old at this point. I have no clue when anything's being released because all the pub dates have changed anyway.
There are no galleys coming in for a lot of reasons. Publisher warehouses are closed or operating with limitations (which is understandable), while some publishers are using this as a way to go to digital galleys only (which is NOT understandable).
(Side rant: It's bullshit that publishers expect us to read and sell their product but don't think it's important enough to send physical galleys. Asking booksellers to purchase expensive devices to make publishers money and advertise their product is bullshit)
There's also the learning curve of virtual events. Luckily booksellers are a helpful bunch and are willing to share tips on virtual events, but it was a lot to figure out on the fly. There's an expectation from customers for stores to still deliver entertaining content.
We're getting to "host" authors we couldn't before. Geography & tour budgets aren't issues anymore. We're able to reach thousands of people with a virtual event. But that's not selling a ton of books, which is hard for a store that relied mostly on author events to pay the bills.
Virtual events add another layer to the calls and emails. Because now we're trying to play tech support for customers who don't know how to use Facebook. Plus the stress of being on camera to interview authors while hoping there aren't technical issues while you're going live.
I haven't even talked about trying to shout through the door that customers can't come into the store, or having to ask people to back away from the door when you're trying to put their package outside for pickup.
Or the stress of trying to figure out when to reopen the store or how to do it safely for customers and staff. The stress of having to repeatedly say, "I'm sorry, we don't know when we're opening back up."
I'm lucky. I've been able to go to work and get paid. We have an amazing community that is rallying around the store. I still get to do what I love in some capacity. Being busy is a blessing right now. I don't want this to sound ungrateful in anyway. Everyone's trying to adapt.
I think we've been able to adapt fairly well, and fairly quickly. But some days it's a lot.
