Every book must earn its place in here

Why every used bookstore you've ever been in is almost overwhelmingly full of books.

First-time shoppers at the used bookstore where I work are easy to spot. They always pause in the doorway, with their mouths open and their eyes wide. They say things like “whoa…” or “wow!” and then, without fail: “there are so many books in here.” And they’re not wrong.

The store is shaped like a shoebox; long and narrow, and lined all the way around with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that are perpetually full; any book that is purchased is almost immediately replaced by one from the stacks, which is what I call the row of books piled up on the floor in front of the bottom two or three rows of shelves.

In the centre of the room, there’s a series of rectangular tables placed end to end, each of which holds two tiers of knocked-together wooden boxes about four-inches deep. This system worked pretty well in the late 80s, when the store mostly sold paperbacks that were all the same size, and could be displayed spines-up; now, the books are bunched up into alphabetical rows of uneven height and size, like kindergarteners lined up for a field trip.

I need a step stool to pull out anything from the centre of the second tier, as would any customer who is well under six feet tall, and so there are at least three, maybe four, plastic two-step numbers placed in strategic locations around the perimeter. There are also ladders of various heights, but these are strictly staff-use-only; one of these is held together with bright red duct tape emblazoned with a warning, in wavery black Sharpie: DO NOT USE.

Under the tables, there are heavy duty plastic bins and milk crates full of books. But if you’ve ever been in a used bookstore, anywhere in the world, you were probably already imagining something like that, right? Used bookstores are always crammed full of their wares and it’s for a good reason.

Used bookstores are unlike indies or the big bookstore chains, which typically display their stock very attractively, with a luxurious amount of elbow room around the tables and within the aisles. Beautifully arranged displays like that require both staff time and storage space for overstock, and our store has very little of both—just barely enough of both, if we are being perfectly honest, but we don’t have the funds available to buy more (yet). I don’t have stats to back this up but my gut tells me, our store is not unique in this regard.

But also, even more saliently—the space is rented, and rent is calculated by the square foot. When G, the owner, told me the figure, my jaw dropped. “That’s why this place is so packed,” she said, “every book in here has to earn its place.”

By that she means, she can’t afford to take in books that won’t sell, and empty space, however pleasant, does not make rent money.

I didn’t take this photo, because I can never remember to take photos when I’m actually in the store. This photo is of a secondhand bookstore in Germany, but it could just as easily be our store, you know? Photo by Waldemar on Unsplash

“There are basically two types of books in here,” she explained. Category One is our bread and butter, the books that come in and go out on a very regular basis. These are the wildly popular, prolific authors—think James Patterson, Nora Roberts, David Baldacci, Danielle Steel. These books are priced more modestly but the profit is made on volume. Category Two is the books that come in more rarely, and sometimes take a little longer to sell, but are sold at a higher price. These are the classics, the beautiful coffee table books, the mint-condition newish releases, the collector’s editions, the box sets.

However, the longer I spend in the store, the more I’m beginning to sense the presence of a third, more amorphous category, which I think G. might admit to if I asked: these are the books she takes in because she has a good gut feeling about them, or because she senses that otherwise, they’ll be chucked in the dumpster, and she can’t stand it.

These books that do not belong on our Never Buy list (more on that later) but are not clearly members of one of the other two categories, either. Perhaps they were once, or once aspired to be, mass market bestsellers like the titles that dominate Category One, or one of the more critically acclaimed literary works that belong to Category Two, but now, it’s not quite clear where they fit. Many, if not all, of these books are now out of print (or OOP, an acronym I find delightful, despite its meaning).

I can’t say I understand the reasoning behind every single title she chooses to keep. And while I’m pretty good at not voicing these thoughts, I have very little control over my facial expressions. My eyebrows, in particular, lack discipline. “What if this is the last copy we ever get?” she says sometimes, as my forehead wrinkles over the cover of one book or another. “I had to take it in.”

Even if I don’t see the appeal of the book itself, I am entirely sympathetic to this impulse. I understand the desire to preserve a book, to appreciate its intrinsic merit in part because the wider world is not, currently, recognizing it, and to take a chance on it. Actually, scratch that—I’m more than sympathetic to this impulse, I’m grateful for it, because I know it drives her hiring decisions as well.

I’m not sure exactly where I’ll fit in here, over the long term, but I know I’ll find and earn my place. I can’t quite explain it, but I’ve got a good gut feeling that I belong in here.