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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Aibu to do this in bookshops?

97 replies

Twinning1 · 03/09/2018 22:07

I love browsing bookshops and could spend hours looking at the shelves thinking about all the books i need to read.

I have a confession to make. Sometimes, In book shops, I make books I love more prominent. I’ve been known to make mini displays of them. Or move a copy to the bestseller display to fill a gap. If there’s a pile of them on a table, I separate the piles so it fills a greater area of the table. Don’t get me wrong... I don’t mess up my local bookshop but I might “accidentally” put the book back in a different place.

I feel somehow like I might make a tiny difference to sales (even if it’s just a few copies). My dh thinks I’m crazy but it really does give me great satisfaction that I might have helped a shopper find a hidden gem of a book that they otherwise might have missed.

Does anyone else do this? Aibu to give my favourite authors a little help every so often?

OP posts:
Fresta · 03/09/2018 23:07

You should get a job in a library!

paddlingwhenIshouldbeworking · 03/09/2018 23:12

A friend is an author. I always have to pull her books out and make sure they are in the right place. Its like an obsession. She's doing very well and really doesn't need my help!

Liquoricelake · 03/09/2018 23:14

"You should get a job in a library!"

No, please don't or poor Melvil Dewey will be turning in his grave.

SchadenfreudePersonified · 03/09/2018 23:20

Melvil Dewey?

MELVIL???????

I just assumed it was Huey Dewey - or possibly Louie Dewey - something Donald Duck related, anyhow . . . .

Toptheginup · 03/09/2018 23:22

Hey, I never thought about it that way @tr1,
Love a good browse in a book shop, order off amazon and sometimes the book isn't all its been cracked up to be.
At least in store you can scan through it x

AnduinsGirl · 03/09/2018 23:27

Laughing far too much at Melvil here....!

Enko · 03/09/2018 23:27

I used to hide a certain " strict" baby "guru"s (who can not ben named here on MN) books behind other books of baby educators who I felt gave a less guilt way to parenting.

Mine are between 14 and 20 and I still at times do so..

SpiritedLondon · 03/09/2018 23:32

I used to work in a bookshop ( independent) and although I don't do this is I do understand the impulse. My books at home are organised by category - classic fiction, contemporary fiction, interiors etc and I like to " feature" my new titles although I suspect I'm the only person who notices. Perhaps make sure you don't move your favourite titles out of their categories so the assistants have a hope in hell of finding it.

EBearhug · 03/09/2018 23:34

I have been known to do a bit of shelf tidying when I see the need, though I've never rearranged anything unless it was clearly out of place.

(I always had the neatest shelves when I worked in libraries.)

Gersemi · 03/09/2018 23:35

Just because you don’t think something is good, that doesn’t actually mean it’s rubbish

Yebbut some books, objectively speaking, really are rubbish. Jeffrey Archer, for instance. They deserve to be hidden.

jetSTAR · 03/09/2018 23:45

Here he is, Melvil

Aibu to do this in bookshops?
ReanimatedSGB · 03/09/2018 23:57

Back in the day when I had my book published (when there were publishers who wanted my writing and bookshops willing to stock That Sort of Thing) I used to go to bookshops and count the copies. And go back a week later and count them again, to see if anyone had bought one. And yes, I did put mine on top of other authors in the same category, and face out...

Anastassiabeaverhausen · 04/09/2018 02:40

@TheSmallClangerWhistlesAgain
That made me properly laugh 😂

Original poster
Twinning1 · 04/09/2018 06:01

The books I normally hide are considered rubbish by most. Books by powerful American politicians and famous parenting “experts”. Both of whom could lose a few sales and be ok Grin

This week, I made “ask me his name” more prominent on the shelf. It’s a story about a lady that lost her baby a few days after he was born. I’m part way through and it’s a lovely (yet emotional) read.

OP posts:
SchadenfreudePersonified · 04/09/2018 08:02

jetSTAR

WOW!

He's surprisingly dishy for one of Donald Duck's nephews!

Genetics is an amazing thing. Grin

And, of course, he invented decimals, which is always a bonus . . .

slashlover · 04/09/2018 08:15

You mean those books by American politicians which are usually quite high in the charts? It's not the author losing sales, it's the shop. I'll go into a book shop for a book I really want, but if I can't get it (they can't stock everything) then I'll go to Amazon. Book shops are trying everything to stay in business so losing sales is a big deal.

But well done for forcing your preferences on everyone else.

IamtheDevilsAvocado · 04/09/2018 08:22

I've rearranged books previously in stores...

Also with bookshops they usually can order and have a book in by the next day for collection... The same time difference in book to custoner hands as amazon

LakieLady · 04/09/2018 08:22

I will "face out" books that I really admire. I regard it as a form for grassroots marketing. If facing them out means hiding some sort of irredeemable shite, eg Jeffrey Archer, all the better. I'd never jumble them up though, that goes against all my instincts.

I actually thought this thread might be about sniffing books. I love the smell of new books, and some of them smell nicer than others. I have been known to have a furtive sniff of a book in a shop. But then I may just be weird.

LakieLady · 04/09/2018 08:32

However, if everyone always buys the cheapest online we will be gone in a few years, and only then will people realise the difference a good bookshop makes.

So true. We lost our lovely independent bookshop some years ago*, and I really miss it. Whenever we're on holiday, if we visit a town with an independent bookshop, I have to go and browse and inevitably buy something. Those books are all the more treasured because they trigger memories: whenever I see "The Trouble With Goats and Sheep" I think - Ross on Wye, while "Parrot and Olivier in America" is Falmouth.

*We lost our bookshop, at least in part, due to bloody incompetent insurance companies. It was flooded when we had bad floods in 2000. They were closed for over 15 months because of wrangles between the two insurance companies that covered the business and residential parts of the building. By the time it was sorted and they had reopened, people had got used to buying their books elsewhere and their trade never recovered. If they'd reopened in 4 months, like most businesses did, I'm sure they'd still be trading.

slashlover · 04/09/2018 08:59

Also with bookshops they usually can order and have a book in by the next day for collection... The same time difference in book to custoner hands as amazon

I don't have a bookshop in my town, so I go in when I happen to be in the area, not going to be in two days in a row.

Immigrantsong · 04/09/2018 09:04

OP I bloody love you! One of us!

SchadenfreudePersonified · 04/09/2018 11:31

I actually thought this thread might be about sniffing books.

Oh, thank God!

It's not just me, then? Bookscent is one of the most lovely aromas on earth . . . . mmmmmmmm . . . . boooooooksssss . . . .

How can anyone prefer a kindle to that heavenly aroma?

DGRossetti · 04/09/2018 11:38

One of Mark Thomas "100 minor acts of dissent" was to go into bookshops and move Tony Blairs autobiography into "true crime" ..

madamehooch · 04/09/2018 11:41

Bookshop employee here (chain but with each shop having responsibility for its own displays, recommends etc).
I would be very annoyed if you decided to do this in my shop. I (alongside many of my colleagues), have worked in the book trade for many years and the faceouts/table books are there for a reason, whether new releases, popular titles which are always asked for, books ordered in specifically for specially themed displays, or our own recommends. Assuming that you know better than us what our regular customers like is rather arrogant in my opinion. I'm not sure what you do as your own job but I'm sure you wouldn't like it if members of the public came into your place of employment and imposed their own systems because they preferred it to be that way.
I would agree with previous posters who also point out that this could make it harder to locate books customers ask for. You no doubt would not like to be left standing in a queue whilst I went off to find a book from the place where I knew it should be only to find it not there because you had decreed it to be somewhere else.

Inkstainedmags · 04/09/2018 11:46

I have an author in my family, and also used to work in a book store and I absolutely face out my family member's books. Leaving them in random places in the shop can be risky because although they may seem more promonent, if someone came in specifically looking for a copy and it wasn't where anyone expected to find it, a sale might be lost.