Nitpicky kind of day...

Today I took another stack of books I've pulled off the regular shelves (NOT the separate shelves I have set up for BOOK FAIR MATERIAL -- IE: Good stuff) which I was considering possibly taking to the book fairs with me. Mostly Picture books to fill out my boxes (mostly because I haven't been processing many NEW stock of picture books lately, as I'm working through the Military History stuff).

Since I have a rep. as a children's picture book person, I NEED stock to take along to fairs. Hence the trip through the regular shelves. I only got through the O's (I have the books shelved alphabetically by author -- I KNOW dealers all have WILDLY varying ways of shelving books. It's mind-boggling actually, the number of different ways and completely individual reasons why each one is BETTER than the other). I do have to try and get back to the rest of the alphabet before the first trip.

But the thing is, I went through most of those books today and updated my descriptions, condition information, etc. All the nitpicky stuff that needs to be done. I found some weird things that I had written back a few years ago. Some of the books have been around for at least six years. So updating is a good thing.

In the process, I got side-tracked into researching about four of them. MAN that pulls time away from other things. But I learn.

I learned that the copy of Richard Scarry's Babykins and his Family is a 1st edition, not the 1st edition thus that I noted. Also, I learned that copies of the book are not around.

I learned that a Commonplace Book is basically a book of all sorts of things the publisher things are interesting shoved into a book -- in this case, to show off a bunch of different typefaces and is a cool object for typographers.

I learned that I am going to have to READ the Gormenghast series -- not just try to sell a 1st edition of it. I found an excellent overview of the books by starting with Wikipedia and following links. Cool stuff. Not sure I'll like the books, but they sound FASCINATING.

Oh, the things you learn when you're nitpicking your day away.

Of COURSE, I STILL haven't gotten any new data entry done since Monday. I'm VERY FAR behind on getting the stack of new material entered to take to the book fairs.

I might even have to LOWER myself to entering just the author / title / date / publisher info in my database and putting the books on hold until I can update them after the fairs.

Funny story about that though -- I did this exactly once so far. Last year, in desperation, I entered just the basic info in my computer and put the books for sale at the fair. Boxed them up with the express idea of going back and fixing them AS SOON AS POSSIBLE when I got home.

That was SEPTEMBER 08. Guess what I found when going through my boxes for stuff to take this year...... you guessed it. Books that STILL didn't have updated entries.

AND, to if that wasn't bad enough (well, actually, it was a good thing as I would be embarrassed to sell something with zip description on it) the books were STILL ON HOLD!

Great way to sell books. DON'T LIST THEM WHERE SOMEONE CAN FIND THEM...

Ha.

Will I do it again? I hope not. But.... there are two weeks left before the book fairs & I have STACKS of books to enter.

Back to nitpicking.