forget avian flu, forget wilma, forget taxes

This is really depressing. I know all about book-stripping--I learned about the vile practice at a too-tender age because we roomed with Gavin the Bookseller. Knowing the truth doesn't make reminders of its details any less grim.

Bookseller chick makes a rainy Monday even more cold and cruel.


It’s strip or die, really.

So last Thursday, we stripped nine boxes of mass markets to clear out the bins: fiction, romance, science fiction/fantasy and mystery. No one was safe.

Each box holds approximately 48 books, so around 432 books were stripped that morning. The rampage continued through this week as more product arrived.

Those were 432 books that never saw the sales floor.

I would like to assure you that each title was represented somewhere, that there was at least one book on the shelf and one in overstock, but in the end I can’t.
I’m really not sure. Towards the end we were just guessing.

Comments

  1. Bookseller Chick4:07 PM

    It sucks, although I was being especially pitiful when writing that. Luckily some brave soul stood up at the conference my boss was just at and asked about another Returns list. Dead silence followed because it was the white elephant in the room, but rumor has it the company is now going to do something about it. Here's hoping,

    L

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kris Starr9:29 PM

    It's true, Kate. I was once a lowly bookstore peon, myself. And it was really depressing ripping covers off books. The booklover in me was highly offended. *g*

    Kris

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

more fun and hi-jinks at RWA.

To the Board of Directors of the Romance Writers of America: It has been brought to our attention, by several of our romance authors, that your organization no longer considers Medallion Press, Inc. a legitimate publisher according to your guidelines. We were surprised we did not receive official notification directly, but instead discovered it was posted on several RWA internet loops. Accordingly, we request this letter be published in its entirety in the RWR Report so all members may understand the nature of the process that eliminated Medallion as an RWA approved publisher. We will also send copies of this letter to all our own RWA member authors. We are dismayed you declared Medallion Press no longer a legitimate publisher. In July of 2004 we met all of your qualifications without incident by showing sales of 5000+ copies of USA Today Bestselling author Nan Ryan's The Last Dance. Several months prior to Book Expo America 2005, we received a call from your office alerting us to ...
Read more

No snark. Bad puppy. No. (Review stuff.)

A two star Amazon review on His American Detective: "Bodice ripper about gay men by a woman." and I'm longing to comment "don't you mean a waistcoat ripper?" God, no. Stop me. The reviews rarely rattle me any longer -- except when I spot a truth in a bad one. When that happens, I actually lose sleep. This means I still care about writing.  Speaking of reviewers and writers: A couple of days ago, a writer said she was tired of getting white ladies writing reviews of her books. She had an excellent point in the long run: her stories are meant for a particular audience and she wants them to resonate with those people and get more reviews from them.  But that first line was just....horribly obnoxious. I say this from my POV of course. Not a white lady who writes reviews -- but as a review grubber.   Anyone who disses any reader (especially ones that give honest reviews) deserves to be cast into the pit of being ignored.   ...
Read more