The Diary of a Bookseller

JULY

There are two well-known types of pest by whom every secondhand bookshop is haunted. One is the decayed person smelling of old breadcrusts who comes every day, sometimes several times a day, and tries to sell you worthless books. The other is the person who orders large quantities of books for which he has not the smallest intention of paying.

George Orwell, ‘Bookshop Memories’

There is certainly still no shortage of people who darken the shop’s door with the intention of trying to sell worthless books. Most days, particularly during spring, will bring a fresh wave of them to the shop. On average, I would say a hundred books a day come through the door this way. Of these – again on average – I would offer money for fewer than 30 per cent. The remainder I would rather they took away, but often they are clearing out someone’s house – a dead aunt, grandmother or parent – and have no desire to have anything more to do with the books, so would rather leave them in the shop. In these instances, when dealing with the recently bereaved, the entreaty is often impossible to refuse. We used to stockpile these on pallets and sell them on eBay, but even that market seems to have dried up. What to do with this dead stock is increasingly becoming a problem for us and many booksellers.

Of the other type of person to which Orwell refers – the person who orders books without intending to pay for them – there certainly used to be such people until just a few years ago. Now we are rarely asked to order books thanks to the ease with which people can do it themselves from home. Or anywhere. Ordering books for customers was never a particularly lucrative exercise, but it was a small supplement to the shop’s income, and one that is now lost.