Jump in non-US sales
Archive: Online bookselling
You may have pictured the used bookselling business as a rapid series of thrills and laughs. Often it is as exciting as plumbing and almost as gracious. Hence the slender posting.
Income has jumped back up the last couple of weeks. Some days we've owed much of this to that lovely group: people who don't live in the World's Greatest Country. Foreign ordered via ABE, especially from France were conspicuously higher. Makes me wonder if their European sites have either become more functional, better indexed by Almighty Google or they've been buying advertising.
2 · Posted by: Richard on August 4, 2004 02:16 PM
The folks who willingly misplace books are one of my greatest peeves. It is hard enough some months to keep our fulfillment level up to ABE's minimum.
I suspect being a religious book specialist makes for some interesting customers.
Feel free to share your feelings about Jump in non-US sales. Please stick to the theme of the entry. Disagreement is fine. Homophobia, racism, and kindred expressions of hatred will be deleted.
This site is one of my hobbies. I genuinely enjoy hearing from people and hate moderating or killing comments. Forthright disagreement is fine as long as it is civil.
My thanks,
Richard
1 · Posted by: I. Meadows on August 3, 2004 03:23 PM
“Rapid series of thrills and laughs”?!?! Well, there is the thrill I get out of the guy who thinks it his God-ordained duty to rearrange our books for us. Lost a few sales because of him, since I couldn't find a book sold online. Laughs? Oh, lots of our customers are quite literally “more Catholic than the Pope” and love to tell you all about it. They are kind of funny after they have left.
But all in all, selling used books is a lot of drudge work. It is not as glamorous as I once thought it would be, back when I was young and stupid and thought it was just about “loving books.” But I do love it. What else would I want to do?