Robin Agnew
Today when I got to work, cursing the biting wind and blowing snow flurries, I hauled out our big plastic "sale" sign and bungee corded it to a handy tree. Every February we have a sale on all our new books - people look forward to it - and this year we added a big table of slightly older hardbacks for $3. They've been selling like crazy and have cleared some much needed shelf space.
My first call was from a woman looking for encyclopedias, specifically the "D" volume of Encyclopedia Britannica. As we talked it came out that she was looking for it to use as a prop on a movie set - Michigan has offered all kinds of tax breaks to movie companies and now all kinds of movies are made here. I explained that we don't carry encyclopedias but directed her to the PTO thrift store. She sounded young and not too sure what exactly the PTO was but I think I got her there.
As the day progressed I made all sorts of small sales, all adding up. One woman was looking only for books published by International Polygonics, a vanished small press that re-printed books that were a bit on the odd or obscure side. Happily for her she found quite a few. Another woman brought in her daughter, whose name, it turned out, was Ellery. While her mother browsed the true crime section, Ellery was amazed to find some of the (many, many) old copies of Ellery Queen Magazine we have around and I gave her a freebie. Maybe one of the stories will spark a new interest for her.
One of my first customers asked me if I'd heard of Dorothy Sayers? Trying not to cough rudely I took her to our well pawed over used Sayers shelf. It turned out she only wanted the ones about Harriet, and she'd read them all, but neither had she read any of Sayers' contemporaries. She left with one each of Margery Alingham, Ngaio Marsh and Josephine Tey - lucky girl.
Set up an event with writer(s) Michael Stanley. I heard half of the team talk about elephants in Botswana at Bouchercon and can't wait for the book club to get a load of him. He's totally charming.
Fielded questions about, and sold books by, Peter Robinson, who will be here next Tuesday. Even though it's a lunch time event, people are beyond excited, some even taking the day off so they can come and meet him. One of my book club laidies bought his new book and THEN asked "Does he write other books?" We tried in vain to get her to start at the beginning.
One of our book festival board members stopped by so we could review the programming we've done so far for our September event. This year our theme is "Culinary Arts" and it's taken over. We have other panel topics, including culinary mysteries, a panel that's proving difficult to flesh out but I have three lovely ladies signed up. We take a bit of a zen approach to programming - we see what interests us & then sees who's available. It usually works great - we're almost full for next September already.
And how was your week?
