Chapter Six: Learning the Ropes of Remainders & Shelf Maintenance

I'm three weeks into my internship and I'm still learning new things every day! Here's what I learned this week.

Day One

I spent all of today helping Jason with receiving remainders. As I mentioned in a previous post, remainders are books that booksellers can purchase at a wholesale price in order to sell them at a discounted price. For example, a remainder book might cost Changing Hands $1, so they can mark it up so that it is still less than what it originally sold for. Thus, though Changing Hands might be making less money off of these books because they're cheaper, they are getting a bang for their buck with very large profit percentages.

Receiving remainders is a lot like receiving normal books except remainders tended to come in fives and tens rather than just one or two. Also, remainder books can sometimes be in a little dirty or a little banged up from being transported, but since they are going to be sold at a discounted price anyway, Jason is more lax about condition. Although we did have to wipe a little dirt off of some books, in the same batch we received some books that were still in the box from the publisher and were in pristine condition.

Day Two

Today I was again working with Jason, although he didn't have much to do for remainders. It was kind of a slow day, so he had me help out with shelving for most of the day. Doing this has really helped improve my familiarity with the store, and because of this I've been able to help a few customers find what they're looking for (or direct them to someone else who can).

Next, Jason introduced me to section maintenance. In theory, all of the shelves are in the correct order, but because of browsing customers replacing books in the wrong place as well as incorrect shelving, sections can get a little out of order. I was put in charge of making sure the Philosophy section was in correct alphabetical order. This was only one shelf, but it still took me a good chunk of time. Even when you get all of the books in the proper order, you have to make sure that you fill any extra space by placing some books face-out.

I also got to help Jason replenish the mystery section on the sale carts outside. These carts hold hardcover remainder books that cost anywhere between $5.95 and $9.95. A good amount of these books had been bought throughout the day and there were some holes that needed to be filled. This task did involve a lot of walking back and forth between the outdoor carts and the indoor mystery section, but I still enjoyed it because I got to mix it up and put out some books by different authors rather than another book by John Grisham or James Patterson.

Finally, I got to help Jason out with checking the remainder backstock. The online inventory system that Changing Hands uses shows the quantity on hand (QOH) of a certain book, but it can't tell how many of those are actually on the floor. For example, Changing Hands might have five copies of a book on hand, but if all of those are in the back, they obviously won't sell. The job of checking the backstock is a two-person job, so Jason would call out the title of a book and I would search for it in the store inventory and tell him how many books the store has. He would then decide how many he should put on a cart to be shelved out on the floor.

Day Three

I started out today by meeting with Gayle, one of the owners of the store as well as my site mentor. We talked about some of the projects I could work on when I have down time. She also signed me up for subscriptions to the Shelf Awareness and Publishers Weekly daily newsletters, which contain the latest news about the book industry. From now on, I'll be reading these for around an hour a day as a part of my time on-site at Changing Hands. I'll also be taking notes on any questions that come up so I can ask Gayle. I'm really excited for this because I will receive a lot of information about the book industry that will help me out with my project.

After that, I spent the majority of my day doing section maintenance on the history section. The organization of the history section is a bit confusing because it's split up between U.S. History, U.S. Presidents, Ancient History, World History, Military History, and General History. And to make it more confusing, the U.S. Presidents section is ordered alphabetically by president; the Ancient History section is split between Egypt, Greece, Rome, and General Ancient history; the Military History Section is ordered chronologically by war starting with the American Revolutionary war; and the World History section is ordered alphabetically by country. Finally, on top of that all of the sections are ordered alphabetically by author within the subsections. So it was quite a task. The only part of the section I didn't get to was the Military History section, but I made it through the rest, stopping once to take a break and do some shelving for a change of scene.

Here are some pictures of my handiwork:

It might not look like much, but those shelves are (at least for now) in perfect order, the result of hours of work. It's safe to say I'm now a little protective of these shelves, but had to go through the disheartening experience of watching a customer pick up a book and put it back in the wrong place on a shelf I had just organized.

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That's all for this week! I'll be back with another post next week, but until then, happy reading!