Where do those books go
Archive: Online bookselling
Online business has been fairly good of late, good volume, selling more of the (by our humble standards) more expensive books.
But. And it is a serious but. There've been too many books we couldn't find. No discernable pattern. One I heard a customer mention having noticed on the shelf the day before somebody ordered it. I suspect the customer picked it up, decided she didn't want it and stuck The Bad Girl's Guide to Getting it All in science, cooking or … one day we'll see it. By then it'll be worth a buck if we're lucky. I know what I hope that bad girl gets.
Aside from making someone think we're unreliable and losing a little money it lowers our performance. On a few sites we sell on that could eventually get us suspended. Which could cost us a lot of money.
Sometimes owning your own business doesn't give you as much security as you'd like. Not that much does as cutthroat as corporations are nowadays.
Feel free to share your feelings about Where do those books go. 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: Octavia Arena on January 21, 2004 09:42 AM
May I say I can commiserate with this issue more than you could possibly imagine! Our shop is a cross between Sanford & Son and the Collyer Brothers. Daily we receive orders that I KNOW have not sold in store but are somehow not anywhere to be found. Our feedback on Amazon has suffered mightily for this (more due to my poor thought process that I'll find it soon and not just refunding the poor schmucks until after they've said “hey, where's my book/cd/video?”)