Finally bought a scanner for the shop

Archive: Online bookselling

Customer traffic was much steadier this January 1st. A few folks came back for second helpings. One of the pleasures of the sale on my end is seeing people take away books that had been sitting on the shelves for over a decade.

We made more money than last New Year's Day but still not nearly as much as we were making a few years ago. The bank account welcomed the infusion of cash.

Finally bought a scanner for the shop so that I don't have to bring things home when someone requests a scan. I've been wanting to add scans of the more expensive books to the listings for sometime.

ABE handles attaching images to listings remarkably well. Just give the image file the book's catalog number, ABE does the rest. TomFolio's system is so cumbersome that we may not bother.

Bibliophile.net has just announced image support but I don't know the details. That will be very important: Bibliophile.net (headquartered in Switzerland) hosts and provides the database backend for Books Do Furnish A Room's website.

The first book I scanned with the new Canon scanner fooled me: it auto-cropped the picture perfectly. I just passed it along to Irfanview to optimize and save. But the second book cropped to the corner giving us a useless image. Book one was white, book two black.

The third book came out akimbo and blurry. But it was a very thick book, possibly letting in too much of the shop's florescent lights. I'll try covering the scanner with an opaque cloth. Not having to crop the photos would be a blessing.

Lots of experimenting to do. Wish I knew someone with expertise in using Canon's scanning software. Their support page is pretty useless. It was funny to note one of the questions in the scanner's FAQ: “The compact disc is dirty.” Well, clean it you ninny.