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Too many books...
I'm physically tired. Another day sorting books.
Found a couple of good ones - a book from the Festival of Britain that should be worth around £18, a couple of 80 year old books about Hampshire and the New Forest. (only about £6 each because of poor condition).
Sold three in the £5-£10 bracket. One about Poole's history, a book of Benningfield's landscape paintings and a hundred year old book of church organ music (with some lovely hand-written notes in pencil by the original organist).
The catch is that the more we sell, the more we get. Both local donations and books coming in from the depot are up. Another five sacks of books arrived today, and that's not counting the two boxes that arrived since I was last in the shop on Friday.
Really, I only want to do one day a week in the shop - especially now the allotment season is starting. I'm doing the better part of two days a week now, and even that is barely keeping pace with the problem.
The shop is short-handed overall. We need more volunteers just to man the till, let alone help in the back room. I've put a note on the book shelf asking for another volunteer for the book team. Hopefully, someone will be interested.
I've recently taken over the children's books as well. I'm still getting up to speed on those. The trick ( as with most books) is to cull the books that don't sell after a reasonable period of time and see what those books had in common. The first few weeks suggest that condition is critical. Old, tired looking books are usually the ones left behind. Annuals are also very slow sellers (as they always have the year on them.) I think Beano may be an exception, but don't yet know for sure. I'm pricing the annuals (apart from Beano and its like) very low indeed to see if that shifts them.
The other slow seller in children's books is what I'm starting to think of as 'granny' books. They're the ones that grandparents buy because they liked them when they were young, or because they feel children should read the classics. But they don't sell to modern children.
Young adult isn't selling, even though I think we had some good books. I'm going to save these up for a while until we have a decent collection and then try a dedicated shelf of modern YA books rather than mixing them up with children's books in general.
I've found a very successful trick with mini books. Little ones like "Yoga for Cats" and pretty much any book under 4inches in height and intended to be funny/a gift. They don't sell at all on the book shelves, but are going like hot cakes since I put them out here and there with the bric a brac (colour matched with the china, etc.)
Found a couple of good ones - a book from the Festival of Britain that should be worth around £18, a couple of 80 year old books about Hampshire and the New Forest. (only about £6 each because of poor condition).
Sold three in the £5-£10 bracket. One about Poole's history, a book of Benningfield's landscape paintings and a hundred year old book of church organ music (with some lovely hand-written notes in pencil by the original organist).
The catch is that the more we sell, the more we get. Both local donations and books coming in from the depot are up. Another five sacks of books arrived today, and that's not counting the two boxes that arrived since I was last in the shop on Friday.
Really, I only want to do one day a week in the shop - especially now the allotment season is starting. I'm doing the better part of two days a week now, and even that is barely keeping pace with the problem.
The shop is short-handed overall. We need more volunteers just to man the till, let alone help in the back room. I've put a note on the book shelf asking for another volunteer for the book team. Hopefully, someone will be interested.
I've recently taken over the children's books as well. I'm still getting up to speed on those. The trick ( as with most books) is to cull the books that don't sell after a reasonable period of time and see what those books had in common. The first few weeks suggest that condition is critical. Old, tired looking books are usually the ones left behind. Annuals are also very slow sellers (as they always have the year on them.) I think Beano may be an exception, but don't yet know for sure. I'm pricing the annuals (apart from Beano and its like) very low indeed to see if that shifts them.
The other slow seller in children's books is what I'm starting to think of as 'granny' books. They're the ones that grandparents buy because they liked them when they were young, or because they feel children should read the classics. But they don't sell to modern children.
Young adult isn't selling, even though I think we had some good books. I'm going to save these up for a while until we have a decent collection and then try a dedicated shelf of modern YA books rather than mixing them up with children's books in general.
I've found a very successful trick with mini books. Little ones like "Yoga for Cats" and pretty much any book under 4inches in height and intended to be funny/a gift. They don't sell at all on the book shelves, but are going like hot cakes since I put them out here and there with the bric a brac (colour matched with the china, etc.)
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1. I tend to gravitate towards shops that have a designated children's book section or area. My favourite is the Loros charity book shop on the high street near us, which has a little cubby hole of a room set aside for children's books, painted a warm sunshiny yellow, with little chairs and a bean bag to sit on, and attractive pictures by local artists on the walls. I've /never/ been in that shop without seeing children sitting in there. And parents taking out their wallets. I think they also have someone reading stories once a week, but A prefers the library for that.
2. They separate out the 'granny' books as you call them, under the banner of 'nostalgic children' which seems to work quite well.
3. Another of my preferred children's bookshops (in Hay, as it happens) has a good thing on the wall suggesting books - an 'if you liked this, then try...'. They've done in on laminated card so that they can just stick an image of the suggested book (i.e. a book in stock) on with blue tack.
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'Nostalgic children's fiction' sounds like a good label. I may try that.
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