ARTY BEES BOOKS NEWSLETTER

10th May 2005

Well here we are again, it's over a third through the year already and we're only up to our second newsletter.

I'd like to say that this is because I've been sunning myself on a quiet beach in the Cook Islands, eating exotic fruit, and catching up on enough reading to make Customs believe (based purely on the contents of my suitcase) that I was emigrating in order to start up a Pacific branch of Arty Bees.
I'd like to say that, but I can't.
Which is probably a good thing considering Wellington Airports keep closing because of the fog.

However, lack of sunshine (and, strangely for Wellington, wind!) aside, we have been keeping busy and toasty warm, inside our two little bookshops, with stocktaking, author signings, SF conventions, lots of new books arriving, staff leaving, new staff training, the final emergence of our long awaited Online Catalogue, and not to mention the general hustle and bustle of day to day life.

So, first and foremost we finally have our Online Catalogue, well, online.
(Breaking news 31st May, actually we don't.... sorry, it'll be back soon.)

It's only our new books at the moment, which is no small feat in itself and which also raises an interesting point that we have debated about for some time.

We get asked on a daily basis why we don't have our entire shop contents "on the computer" to which the only answer is because it would be an impossible nightmare to get up and going, and unfeasible to maintain.

Ah, but Grasshopper, I hear you say, other shops do it…

Well, if you are talking about New Bookshops, all their books have a barcodes, ISBNs and other nifty things that mean you don't have to manually track every single book.
In fact they don't have to track every book anyway, because although they may have 60,000 books in the shop, they realistically probably only have about 6000 actual titles (ie stock lines).
And that's a conservative estimate of an average of 10 copies per title.
(Have you seen a Whitcoulls when the new Harry Potter comes out? — I think the scientific term for that many copies of the same book is "gazillions".)

Anyway, the point is that by entering 6000 titles into a database they have their entire inventory covered. And most of the time when they sell a single book or receive a new shipment, the database doesn't need to be changed as they are merely adding or subtracting quantities of existing stock lines in the database.
Sounds good doesn't it.

Unfortunately — or fortunately if you are not the person supposed to enter them all into a computer — we have over 60,000 books at each shop and they are almost all different titles.
To inventory our entire stock we would have to data entry all 60,000 different titles, because even when we do have more than one copy of a book, the chances are that they are two different editions, in different conditions, and have different prices.
And then, even if we did manage the initial data entry we would then have to keep up with all the books that came in during the course of a regular day.
Which can easily be a dozen boxes.
This already takes all day, plus a bit, which is why we all love the "no buying" periods we have at Xmas and stock-take, when we can catch up.
And then all the books that we sell have to come off the database as well…

And finally, there is very little point in having a database if you cannot find the book in question on the shelf. (Customers are lovely, but they do tend to make a mess and misplace things for us!) And our books would mostly have to be tracked manually as ISBNs and barcodes didn't exist 35 years ago, which isn't very old for a book.

Many of the Antiquarian and second-hand book dealers that have a lot of books online solve this problem by putting all the online books in a back room or warehouse where their walk-in customers can't see them. In fact some of them don't even have a brick and mortar shop, (I'm guessing their shelves stay very tidy!)

This means that they always know exactly where any given book is at any given time, but we like that our customers can see all of our stock. We don't want our walk-in customers to feel that we have special books put away for an exclusive market when they've made the effort to come in and see us.

So, there you go, the dilemmas of running a bookshop. And you all thought we just sat around and read and ate chocolate brownies all day didn't you…
And to those who are interested in number crunching, we currently have a little over 650 rare books and roughly 2150 new titles in our catalogue. The equivalent of a new bookshop with 30,000 books fully computerised.

And to anybody out there who does have a brick and mortar second-hand bookshop out there with all their books on computer, and it works, and they can afford the wages bill, please let us know how you do it!

Anyway, the computerisation debate aside, we did experience some technical problems that meant that all our rare and Antiquarian book collection couldn't be transferred in its current data state into the Online Catalogue, but we are still working on it.

Fear not though, gentle reader, for these titles can be accessed through Abe Books, (Follow this Link to our abebooks.com Catalogue) and if you would prefer to deal directly with us, simply email us with the Bookseller Inventory #Number and we can proceed from there.

Alternatively of course if you are a local you can also drop by and have a squizz in person, although if you are after a particular title, I would recommend phoning one of the shops to find out which branch the particular title is located at first.

As I said earlier we now have more than 650 of our most unusual titles online with Abe, with new titles going up each week generally, but remember that we have over 125,000 books between the two branches and we just love to go and look on the shelves for you, so please use our Query Page if you are looking for something in particular.

Where was I, ah yes, the long awaited Online Catalogue — it's still awaiting blurbs, and book cover images, but it's there and the response has been good so far.
So if you live too far away to spoil us with your company in person, just don't want to go out into the wintery weather or have an obsessive stalking relationship with your postie, give it a go. *

I know you are all very interested how our stocktake went, and I am pleased to announce that it went well.
Officially, we now have lots of books. And I mean a lot! We already had a lot of books, and now we have even more. Lots of books, plus some more for good luck. Some for the road so to speak…
I'd like to be more forthcoming as to actual numbers but I'm afraid it's a secret. **

Joking aside it did go well, and it was an opportunity to throw our lovely new staff members into the deep end.
Hamish who started in early March is doing splendidly.
April started in (ironically enough) early April, and is doing just as marvelously. She has come to us from The University Bookshop in Auckland and is not only a delightfully energetic and cheerful person, she's also not averse to a quick chocolate work break so we know she's going to fit in just fine.
And strangely enough we have since discovered that they are both sports fans, which means that our sporting aficionado staff numbers just doubled!
Finally Matt and Bern have someone to talk to about rugby and Jessica now has a new cricket buddy. (Of course the rest of us are just hoping that means they'll stop telling us all about it, but I don't like our chances. Already I've learned that some English team are coming to do something-or-other soon. I don't know what exactly, but apparently it's going to be really big. *** )

They are also in that early "still think they have to be nice to the boss" phase and haven't even objected about the prospect of having to wear a pinny ("apron" in Kiwi).
This is a new and cunning plan to cut down on how grubby we get, and will also help customers recognise who actually works at Arty Bees.
Some of our regulars are soooo regular it gets a bit hard to tell the difference sometimes, even for us.

Regrettably though, in order to get these exciting new minions we had to lose one of our existing staff members.
Our lovely Miki decided to start a new and exciting (not to mention warmer) life on Australia's Gold Coast, where she has a lot of family. We will miss her good humour and fabulous back-massages, and we wish her all the best. We can only hope that she'll be back to visit occasionally, at the very least for book buying holidays.

Other events of note in the last two months included a brief author signing by Orson Scott Card at Bizy Bees during Easter Weekend, while he was here for the SF Convention ICON.
The esteemed Mr Card very kindly signed our entire stock of his books, and if you get in quick I believe that there may even be a few left, but not many, so hurry.
This includes hardback first editions of his latest novel in the Ender series Shadow of the Giant.

Which pretty much wraps up this slightly late and rather lengthy newsletter, so take care and keep warm until next time.
Robynne.

* Arty Bees does not encourage stalking our valiant and friendly postal delivery workers. Back

** Actually it's not really. Approximately 127,115 between the shops, not including unprocessed stock. Back

*** Only kidding. Sheesh, even I know the Lions won the Soccer World Cup last year, they beat the Aussies right? Back

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