The Diary of a Bookseller

THURSDAY, 13 MARCH

Online orders: 4

Books found: 4

Nicky was in today as she’s taking tomorrow off (Friday and Saturday are her usual two days). She began the day by complaining about the smell of cat pee again. I told her that it’s a stray, and that Mike in the co-op has borrowed a trap from Cats Protection and is trying to catch it. She still blamed Captain. Mike’s garden backs onto mine and Captain is as frequent a visitor in his kitchen as his cats are in mine. The stray has been spraying in his house too.

Eliot has asked me to help write a business plan for The Open Book idea so that we can work out if it can stand on its own financially. If it can, then it will operate under the umbrella of the Festival Company. The Open Book is a plan that Anna, Finn and Eliot have come up with: they want to take an empty shop in the town that has accommodation above it and give people the opportunity to come and run it for a fortnight so that they know what it is like be a bookseller. Finn is a friend from childhood who lives nearby. He’s an organic dairy farmer, and one of the wittiest people I know. About ten years ago he was co-opted to be the chairman of what was then the Wigtown Festival volunteer group. Within a year he had turned it into the Wigtown Festival Company, a charity (which meant it could access new funds), and transformed it from a few inexperienced but enthusiastic volunteers into a slick, professional organisation with full-time, paid staff. After a few years off, he is now back on the board of trustees. I thought I’d do some research for the business plan, so I googled ‘Run a Bookshop’. Ironically, top of the list is a book for sale on Amazon called The Complete Guide to Starting and Running a Bookshop.

In the early afternoon I received a phone call from a woman at Yell.com regarding my Yellow Pages advert and online listing. She asked me if my business was ‘located in Wigwamshire’, which she referred to as a ‘locality area’, and continued that she would give me ‘an example, for example’. She also described my Yell.com web site as having a ‘completely different look, but very similar’. To what, I have no idea.

Seven people brought boxes of books to the shop to sell today. As is often the way at this time of year, I bought more than I sold.

Till total £120

9 customers