just been mooching around the charity shops, How annoying are some of their ordering?

[EnidBlyton]

Books in any old order are bad enough, not alphabetical, but one shop actually had the books in order of their colour
plainly ridiculous.
Tightlipped I paid
ought I to have complained?

Seriously?

I dearly want to hope you’ve been in my local charity shop (photo attached) because I dearly also want to believe that there isn’t more than one charity shop idiotic enough to order its books by colour!

Well they might sell more if the (fiction) books were in order of author's surname because it makes them easier to find.

I wouldn't complain but certainly make the suggestion.

It was quite a thing a few years ago to arrange books by colour.... but you're right, no reader would ever do that!
Outrageous behaviour. If you don't like how books look on a shelf get a bookcase with doors, or a kindle.

seriously, no of course i wouldnt complain directly, perhaps take the cowards way out and email/facebook

Definitely go back and point out that it would make it easier to choose a book if it was by author. I did and they looked bemused for a bit but eventually acknowledged that yes, it would.

OMG @ComtesseDeSpair - have they actually mixed fiction and non-fiction? I may need a lie down after seeing that, I feel all funny.

comtess, no it wasnt your local charity shop.
sigh, obviously more than one around

i did suggest in a different charity shop that ordering clothes in colour order is not the easiest way to find your size., they didnt like my pov

There's a charity bookshop near my parents' house where the novels written by men are shelved separately to the ones written by women.
It's a stupid way to organise books but to my shame I've never asked them wtf they are thinking!

What a silly idea! I've noticed it on a lot of "my stylish home" type photos but never in a bookshop

I've gone back to good old library books these days. I realised i get the same excitement I did as a child!

It's part of training believe it or not in some charity shops, likewise with putting the clothes together by colour instead of size. It's an attempt to make the shop more visually appealing and less messy /jumbled as this puts shoppers off. Unfortunately in most cases it just means noone can find anything!

I remember rearranging our bookshelves by colour a few years back. Took bloody ages to sort everything out (we had over 2000 books!).

When done it looked really depressing - lots of books have grey or black spines. DH and I both hated how it looked and it was bloody annoying having fiction and NF mixed up. I also have lots of books by the same authors so having them scattered was a nightmare when I went to look for something. We spent days sorting out to put it back how it was.

you're right, no reader would ever do that!

Ask any bookseller or librarian how often they've been asked for 'That book, the one with the blue cover..." I think it's a great way to order your own books - it looks great and it's easy to find them because most of us actually do have a visual memory. In charity shops however, it's less sensible, I admit.

It was quite a thing a few years ago to arrange books by colour.... but you're right, no reader would ever do that!

Tell that to most of the YA Booktubers. I'm not a fan but I'm quite grateful that they do it because iI've no interest in YA and it lets me know that the channel isn't for me and to look elsewhere.

Arranging not ordering

Sorting books by colour is crazy. We have general fiction and crime fiction, each section sorted by alphabetic order by surname of author. (Unless the D of E kids have been in and sort the Marian Keyes into crime fiction under M )

Non fiction is by topic - labels on the shelves - but not sorted within that section in any way. But there's not hundreds to look through.

“Pretty” charity shops usually have higher prices.

Enjoy the adventure!

My books are in no order, they sit on the shelves being books, not a colour coded decoration.

I was in a charity shop with DD some years ago that had sorted everything by colour. We gave up in the end and left.

I wonder if it's a ploy to force you to look at more stuff to find what you're looking for thus encouraging buys you might not have made otherwise.

I do agree it makes charity ships look less jumble sale like, but that's exactly what a charity shop is, so why try and be something else? It annoys me with clothing but books I tend to find are always mixed up in charity shops anyways so it wouldn't irk me if it was by colour rather than general dumped placement

Books in colour order is stupid - haven't seen that locally. Colours for clothes makes some sense, as long as they are then subgrouped by size. There are some colours I never wear and other colours I wear a lot so it helps. Would still prefer size then colour though.

There's a charity bookshop near my parents' house where the novels written by men are shelved separately to the ones written by women.

However some of the female authors are men and some of the male authors are women.

Always thought it was bad enough when they grouped clothes according to colour rather than size ... but books!?! WTF?!?

I did this on my personal wall of books about 20 years ago.. of course I'd read them all, and knew when looking for a book what colour I was expecting the spine to be (one of my useless memory facilities)... ridiculous in anywhere where someone's going to be looking for books that they don't know about though.

Mind you, my books have all been donated now - I'm afraid I've gone entirely digital (much to my MIL's horror - but I tell her, my phone is waterproof, so -when- if I drop it in the bath, it's much less of an issue than with a paper book)