Aren't readers great?

Had a customer ask for Balzac.

"You mean, Balllllll-zac, as in The Music Man?"

"Er, I guess. You should try Cousin Bette."

So, I think to myself, any good bookstore should have Balzac, so I order a Penguin copy.

I've sold two in two months. Which is pretty good.

Aren't readers great?

I think I may have to try reading this Cousin Bette, by Honore' de Balzac.

**********

Had a lady bring up a big trade of Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy.

"How much is this?"

"Well, we usually charge half the cover price," I say. I look and it's 5.00. "Oh....how about 3.00."

"That's not enough," she says.

(Contrast this to the woman who wouldn't pay the 1.00 minimum for a .35 cent book. She wanted it for .17).

"Well," I mutter, "If I had caught this I probably would've charged a bit more. But.....I quoted you 3.00 and 3.00 it is...."

"That is not enough," she insists. "I feel guilty..."

"Give me four dollars and walk away with a clear conscience...."

"Thank you!" she says.

Aren't readers great?

**********

Speaking of the Penguin imprint. Another customer told me of a deal he heard that you could get a truckload of every Penguin book in print for 14K or something like that.

I told him, I thought I'd heard of stores that do nothing but sell the Penguin imprint.

When I put Penguin in my distributor's search engine, I get over 5000 answers. (Many of these, are probably duplicates.) As far as I can tell, this is the only publisher imprint the search engine finds.

Meanwhile, in my never-ending quest to find room for books, I'm thinking I may just take all the black-bordered Penguin books and stack them on a single shelf.

Aren't readers great?

**********

One of the interesting things about the book liquidators is they are chock-a-block with classic books. I suspect this is because they have fallen out of copyright and they don't actually have to pay anyone for the titles.

Anyway, I'm thinking it's a no-brainer to order classic novels for a cheaper rate.

And the customers buy them, because they're happy to find a copy of Silas Marner, or Tristam Shandy, or Moll Flanders, or ....well, a world of classic literature.

Aren't readers great?

**********

Another interesting thing about the book liquidators is that they often have copies of graphic novels I've never heard of. Now I'm pretty up on graphic novels, so I'm not sure if these where never offered by Diamond, or I just missed them.

I could have missed them, because they are offering us 100's a month nowadays.

Still, like the classic books, I'm a sucker for any unknown graphic novel I can get for a lower price....

I figure there has to be someone out there looking high and low for these titles.

Aren't readers great?