Шон Байтелл - The Diary of a Bookseller

One of the benefits of the NBA was that the financial stability of the market it created allowed publishers to publish books that perhaps had more cultural but probably less financial value. Without it, publishers are no longer in a position to take such risks, and consequently, although the number of books printed in the UK each year has increased, the number of titles has diminished: more copies of fewer books. The book market is now controlled not by publishers but by the buyers for Waterstones and Tesco and other ‘combines’, as Orwell would have called them.

Smell of cat piss is getting stronger.

Till total £111.50

12 customers

Online orders: 8

Books found: 5

Finally, a day without rain. Most of the day was spent packing the books for the Random Book Club and dealing with the Royal Mail’s neolithic mailing system. As the post office in Wigtown is closed on Wednesday afternoon I’ll have to go and see Wilma tomorrow morning and ask her if she can send the postman over in the afternoon to pick up the six sacks of parcels.

This morning I listed the book signed by Sir Walter Scott on eBay. There’s little point in listing it on Amazon or AbeBooks. Although AbeBooks has a ‘Signed Books’ section, this is not a copy of one of Scott’s own titles, so it would never be found on a search.

Four elderly ladies came in at 10.30 a.m. I was working at the computer with my back to them but could hear them speculating about where the craft books might be. After some discussion, one of them spotted me in the corner and said to the others, ‘Why don’t we just ask the lady?’

Norrie thinks he knows where the water is getting in and flooding the window display, and has offered to fix it.

I have reached the part in Any Human Heart where Logan’s son decides to name his band Dead Souls and Logan responds with laughter, telling him that Nikolai Gogol wrote a book of the same name. I had no idea, and felt as stupid as Logan’s son. It will be the next book I read.

Till total £24

4 customers

Online orders: 6

Books found: 6

Nicky strolled in at 9.15 a.m. (fifteen minutes late), looked at the clock and said, ‘Oh, is that the time?’ before throwing her bag, hat and coat on the floor in the middle of the shop and going upstairs to use the loo and make herself a cup of tea.

Till total £88

7 customers

Online orders: 5

Books found: 5

Today’s online orders include one of the most boring titles I have seen for a while: British Transport Film Library Catalogue since 1966. It includes such riveting films as ‘AC electric locomotive drivers’ procedures’, ‘Service for Southend’ and ‘Snowdrift at Bleath Gill’. Despite the popular perception that books about trains are extremely dull (the reputation of trainspotters as banana-sandwich-eating, anorak-wearing bores is probably in part responsible for this), they are among the best-selling books in the shop. Invariably it is men who buy them, and more often than not they sport beards. They are generally among the most good-natured of the shop’s customers, possibly because they’re delighted when they see the size of the railway section, which normally comprises about two thousand books.

A customer wearing yellow Crocs asked where the parking meters were in Wigtown. When I explained that there were none and that there are no parking restrictions, she looked completely flabbergasted and commented, ‘My God, this is wonderful. It’s like this place is trapped in a time warp of fifty years ago.’

I locked the cat flap last night when Captain came in. No smell of cat piss this morning. Anna may well be correct about the unwelcome visiting cat.

Till total £24.50

1 customer

Online orders: 4

Books found: 4

The first telephone call of the day was from Mrs Phillips, near Dumfries: ‘I am ninety-three years old and blind, you know.’

I went to value her books about two years ago – interesting collection in a very nice house. When I arrived, I discovered that she’d cooked lunch for me and her grandson, who was visiting. I had already eaten – a dry sandwich with an unidentifiable filling bought from the petrol station in Newton Stewart – but didn’t want to decline since she’d gone to the trouble. It was prawns in aspic. Today she was calling to order a book, Babar , for her great-granddaughter. She’s one of the few customers who still order books through the shop, rather than directly online from Amazon.

One of the shop’s Facebook followers came in to buy books today. She and her boyfriend want to move here and I overheard her whispering ‘Don’t say anything stupid or he’ll post it on Facebook.’ I will write something mean about her later. When I set up the Facebook account for the shop four years ago, I had a look at other bookshops that had done the same. The content seemed almost universally bland and didn’t really convey the full horror or the exquisite joy of working in a bookshop, so I took a calculated risk and decided to focus on customer behaviour, particularly the stupid questions and the rude comments. It appears to have paid off, and those who follow the shop seem to become more delighted the more offensive I am about customers. I recently checked to see who is following me, and a significant number of bookshops are on the list.

Till total £227.45

14 customers

Online orders: 3

Books found: 3

It was a depressingly wet day when I awoke, but by 9.30 a.m. the sun was blazing. The Polish builders arrived to remove the leylandii hedge and replace it with a new stone wall. After they had cut down the hedge they decided to set fire to it, blanketing most of the town in thick, acrid smoke. For much of the day I could see people staggering past the door of the shop, coughing and swearing.

Till total £277

16 customers

Online orders: 4

Books found: 4

Sandy, the most tattooed man in Scotland, brought in some walking sticks he’d made. We have an arrangement whereby he gets £6 credit in the shop for each one he brings me. I then sell the sticks for £10 each. They sell well – probably one or two a week – and he adds a label with the name of the wood and some local lore about it. His taste in reading is mainly for Scottish folklore and ancient history. He is a pagan and lives near Stranraer, but comes over once every couple of weeks with a friend and makes a day out of his trip to Wigtown, going for lunch or coffee and browsing in the shops. He is incredibly affable, always good-natured and invariably has something interesting to say. Best of all, he loves winding up Nicky.

At noon I made a sandwich, and Anna and I headed off in the van with fifty or so cardboard boxes to the old farmhouse near Stranraer. The grizzled farmer in his damp tweed cap met us again and took us back up to the house where the old couple had lived. It was even more filthy than I remembered. Anna and I started boxing the books and ferrying them to the van. The lonely cat gasped a cracked ‘meow’ every time we passed it, then resumed its wistful stare out across the flooded fields full of cattle with their backs to the driving rain.

As is often the way with clearing books that have been in the same place for a long time, by the time we were finished we were comprehensively covered in dirt and cat hair – a facet of the genteel art of bookselling that people rarely imagine. I paid the farmer and creaked off down the potholed driveway, the van grinding slowly under the weight of the load.