A Hilarious New Memoir Reveals the Absurd Business of Selling Books Today

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From Quartzy:

Wigtown is a coastal “book town” in Scotland that features an Airbnb rental where bibliophiles can spend their vacation living out the romantic fantasy of running a bookstore. And indeed, according to Shaun Bythell, a year-round bookseller in the same town, it’s deeply romantic work: The evocative smell of books, mixed with cat piss; the customers who openly compare prices on their laptops to Amazon; the book-loving employees, always drunk or severely hungover; the orders for erotica titles such as Tokyo Lucky Hole; and the badgering of aspiring memoirists trying to find a publisher.

Bythell’s own memoir, The Diary of a Bookseller, is a hilarious read about a dreary year running The Book Shop, a large used bookstore in Wigtown. After a September 2017 UK release, the book comes out in the US Sept. 4 from Melville House.

. . . .

Bythell took over the store in 2001, at age 31. Starting in early 2014, he kept a daily journal of store happenings for one year. It’s a cheerfully depressing account of independent bookselling today—deadpan, ruthless, poignant, and at times, so charming it’s almost unbelievable.

Bythell’s main antagonist is also his only regular employee, a Jehovah’s Witness named Nicky. The two are locked in a weekly battle of mutual torment, Nicky moving On the Origin of Species to the fiction section, and Bythell retaliating by placing the Bible with novels. On Fridays, Nicky brings him dubious food scavenged from dumpsters—egg custard tarts she’s sat on, or expired packaged cake. One week’s treat “looked like something from a hospital clinical waste bin.”

The larger cast of characters in Diary of a Bookseller are so zany and absurd they would seem over-the-top in a 1990s movie about an indie record shop. There’s Sandy, the most tattooed man in Scotland, according to Bythell, who barters walking sticks for store credit; Smelly Kelly, the cologne-soaked man in dogged pursuit of Nicky, who has made it clear she’s not interested; and Eliot, Bythell’s friend who tends to discard his shoes somewhere in the store within 10 minutes of arrival.

. . . .

The circus aside, the book is rich with information about the business of bookselling, including a description of an ingenious online scam to reduce book prices. Bythell saves his deepest rancor for Amazon (though he uses it to fulfill online orders), which has hit him and other small and medium-sized used booksellers particularly hard. His contempt is made apparent one day in August, when he receives a complaint about a late book. Bythell goes to his parents’ house to borrow a shotgun and then shoots a used Kindle he bought on eBay for £10. (Footage of the target practice is admittedly satisfying.) He mounts the mangled e-reader in the store.

The Diary of a Bookseller doesn’t seem like it should work. Life at The Book Shop is boring. On a typical day Bythell might sell £200 worth of books, once as little as £5. But there is a soothing monotony to the rhythm of his days. Bythell somehow creates a sense of urgency in the nothingness, and readers may feel that if they skip even one day, they’ll miss some winningly cutting remark.

Link to the rest at Quartzy and thanks to Dave for the tip.

8 thoughts on “A Hilarious New Memoir Reveals the Absurd Business of Selling Books Today”

  1. Bythell is often as charmingly unlikeable as his customers, ridiculing them in the book and online. It’s not clear that he’s actually helpful. He routinely receives complaints about unfulfilled or switched book shipments. His employees appear mostly incompetent.

    Pardon me for not jumping on a plane to check them out.

  2. “Bythell saves his deepest rancor for Amazon (though he uses it to fulfill online orders), which has hit him and other small and medium-sized used booksellers particularly hard. His contempt is made apparent one day in August, when he receives a complaint about a late book. Bythell goes to his parents’ house to borrow a shotgun and then shoots a used Kindle he bought on eBay for £10. (Footage of the target practice is admittedly satisfying.) He mounts the mangled e-reader in the store”

    I’m confused …

    If he hates Amazon that much why is he throwing any business their way? Surely he and his clown car of employees can ship out the right book better and faster than Amazon!

    Shooting a kindle was just his hate of ebooks that he thinks are stealing away even more of his business …

  3. As someone who worked in a bookstore for a decade, albeit a chain bookstore (Waldenbooks), I can’t even remotely identify with this one.

    • As I recall I did quite a bit of book buying in Waldenbooks, B&N not so much, from the sounds of this guy you wouldn’t be able to get me in the store after the first look …

  4. …Eliot, Bythell’s friend who tends to discard his shoes somewhere in the store within 10 minutes of arrival.

    I have a four-year-old neighbor who does the exact same thing to my backyard. And his older sister sometimes leaves her scooter in my driveway. But their dad takes it upon himself to shovel snow off my driveway out of the goodness of his heart, so it’s all good. However, I’m not sure I want to read about an adult who has failed to outgrow the leaving-his-shoes-in-odd-places habit.

    I am amazed, though. I have worked with the public, but I’ve somehow never encountered the brand of weirdness these improbably annoying characters seem to possess.

  5. I’m so confused why a business owner who views their employee as an antagonist wouldn’t simply fire the employee and hire someone they got along with better. Kinda sounds like he wanted things to be as difficult as possible to make his book more interesting. And maybe the desire to be a writer instead of a bookstore owner was part of the reason bookselling was such a hardship for him.

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