What is bookselling? (Misshelved #1)
If you want to work with books, you have a huge pool of potential career options: author, illustrator, literary agent, editor, publicist, sales representative, designer, publisher, librarian, literary specialist. But perhaps the most idealized of these professions is bookselling. What better job for a book lover could there be than working hands-on with books every day, getting them into the hands of eager readers?
But what is bookselling, really?
Bookselling is a kaleidoscopic profession, in which each of its many panels reflects a glimmering, magical love of books … and of day-to-day duties that often overlap with each other.
In an independent bookstore, it is not enough to be a typical cashier. You must know, in detail, the books in your store: their contents, if they’re appropriate for such-and-such age group, would such-and-such person enjoy them. You must know how to shelve and stock the books as well as how to ring them out. You must tidy and clean as well as provide the emotional labor expected by customers, whether it’s helping a grandmother pick out books explaining terminal cancer for her grandson or listening to an enthusiastic customer talk about their large collection of cookbooks and all related hobbies for the umpteenth time.
And those are just the major duties of a frontline bookseller.
Let us not forget the receivers, tasked with sorting through giant boxes of books from publishers, navigating the arcane process of reporting publisher damages and processing returns, checking discounts and pricing and inputting invoice information correctly into the often-complicated or outdated point-of-sale system while often doing the duties of a frontline bookseller.
And what of the buyers, who sort through catalogs upon catalogs of titles from publishers, meeting with sales representatives, managing and studying their inventory, and reading books in their unpaid free time so they can best curate for their store? The managers, who must not only handle the emotional needs of customers but the emotional needs of their staff, a role with little support or educational resources? The event coordinators, the bookkeepers, social media coordinator—if such roles even exist and are not lumped into duties done by a frontline bookseller, or a buyer, or a manager?
When people think about bookselling, they think about somebody who loves books, surrounded by books, sitting and reading books. Bookselling is a passion career. Booksellers love their jobs.
That image is not wrong.
But it’s not right, either.
It’s limited.
Booksellers work in an industry that has romanticized their labor, and in doing so, has limited not only what a bookseller could be, but who a bookseller can be.
After all, if bookselling is a passion career, you must not be doing it for the money, because the work itself is its own reward — and so you exclude from its ranks anyone who needs to earn a living wage to survive.
After all, if bookselling is a passion career, you must want to master every skill and ability it requires and be capable of and willing to do what that takes — and so you exclude from it anyone who struggles with the physical or emotional labor necessary to achieve it.
After all, if bookselling is a passion career, you must love all of it, all of the time — and so you alienate people who struggle with their jobs and their bosses, who need more money or more emotional support or more educational resources or a more understanding work environment, but who find the romanticized industry attitude limits them in their ability to advocate for themselves and their coworkers.
Whether it’s through systems practiced and replicated by trade organizations or professional conferences, or individual restrictions imposed by bookstores, managers, or even booksellers themselves, the industry — despite its best efforts — can limit and hinder the progress of booksellers or bookselling communities.
Here is the truth: bookselling should be limitless.
If independent bookstores truly are community hubs, full of impossible worlds and imaginary adventures, a physical reflection of the stories in which anything is possible and goodness prevails, then bookstores should be striving to do more, be more, be better—for their communities, for their customers, and for their employees.
A bookselling career produces so many incredible moments. The ability and opportunity to connect readers to stories that change them is what motivates everybody in the book world. Bookselling creates those connections constantly, immediately, tangibly, and visibly — and it’s why it’s the dream career for so many.
But bookselling is work: hard work, important work, work that deserves to be fairly compensated, and work that can be improved in so many ways.
That improvement starts with us. Let 2020 be the year that bookselling reaches for limitlessness. Let 2020 be the beginning of change for the bookselling industry, the publishing industry, and the whole book world.
Let’s start that change right now.
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Welcome to Misshelved. In this bimonthly newsletter—meaning every other month, not every other week—I’ll be talking about the ins-and-outs of bookselling, what makes the job so special, and how we can improve the publishing and bookselling industries. Future topics will include how young adult publishing failed its actual target demographic, how the ideology that bookselling is a passion career is exploitative of and harmful to young booksellers (and how to fix it), and how we can make bookstores and bookselling more accessible for people with disabilities.
I hope you stick around. I hope you read. I hope you email me back with your thoughts. I hope you share these essays wherever you think people might read and enjoy them, and I hope you use them to challenge yourself and make your own corner of the book world better.
Happy reading, friends.
Nicole Brinkley has short hair and loves dragons. The rest changes without notice. She is the manager of Oblong Books and the co-chair of the New England Children’s Bookselling Advisory Council. Her opinions are her own. If you like this newsletter, consider supporting her on Patreon.
This essay was copyedited by Stephanie Appell. Read more of Stephanie's work at bookpage.com, where she is the children's and YA editor, or say hi on Twitter @noseinabookgirl. Her opinions are also her own, except regarding serial commas, when they are facts.