Week 3: Short and Sweet

This week was a lot shorter than originally foreseen. Due to some unexpected circumstances I had to go to the German embassy on thursday to have my passport renewed. It expires in less than a month. Since it was Good Friday the following day, the week was a glorious three days short.

If my memory proves me right I spent about 90% of those three days making more showcards; sometimes as many as 16 a day, only to spend the remaining time doing the usual mind numbing mail outs. It is good to do a crossword at the same time or read The Bookseller, but unfortunately my conscience generally tells me to sit there like a mindless, unconscious zombie, trying as hard as possible to wear a smile on my face.

I think a lot of people conceive of me as being scary or having some sort of unspoken superiority complex. Angry arrogance is another description people seem to associate with me. Doesn’t matter, don’t care. (Damn, maybe it is all true after all?)

Wednesday was quite interesting I have to say. I helped Julie from the marketing department complete her Excel spreadsheet of books to be submitted to The Bookseller Buyer’s Guide. The Buyer’s Guide is a supplement of the regular magazine that appears twice a year. It contains the highlights of the spring/autumn list for publishers, chosen by The Bookseller and based on a variety of factors like saleability, originality, etc. This entailed entering ‘Biblio’ database and once again looking up Title Information on specific books (about 50 of them). This information then had to be entered into Excel and included ISBN, price, publication date, author and a general description. I did it quite quickly and most of the book descriptions could be taken directly from the Title Information on the system. Julie did recommend changes but as time ran out and I don’t feel like giving them a second of my own free time she had to do it herself the next day.

This was in some paradoxical way probably the best week I had spent at Ebury.

M.M.