Refused veiwing of the new book

[6mmhero]

So when a fellow human being who is working in retail because that's the only job she can get follows the corporate line and does her job as trained because she can't afford to lose the job and knows she's replaceable, your reaction is to ruin her whole hour and possibly get her written up by giving her insanely unfair demands? Good to know.

+1 to this.

[TheDungen]

Some deterioration is the be expected when they have copies that are not sealed. The cost of one being worn out at the top (or front) is negligible compared to what you earn by letting peopel take a look before they buy it. And yes it is one copy. Why because if it gets worn people will look at it and pick the next in the pile, if they buy it anyway its a sale and the next one can begin being worn out from people looking, unless you think people take a worn copy and put it in the back?

The customer is not always right but a shrewd salesman let the customer be right because it pays out in the end. You cant force them to be reasonable but sometimes i feel gw is going in the opposite direction compared tot he rest of the marketing world. 5 years ago (or something like that) they was always considering the hobby and the community, today they act much more like a classic company, when the rest of the marketing world have moved towards what they used to have a focus on customer relationships.

[loveless]

I am seriously starting to think about having the sale copies of new books behind the counter on launch days and just putting one store copy out that the wastes of time can moan about in the back. I'm not so sure it would harm my business on the launch weekend, and after the first few days the whingers have gone away anyway so I can put the rest back out on the shelves.

Do it. Heck, I'd even put a "Store Copy" sticker of sorts on it - direct them up to the counter if they want to buy it. The customers that you want in the store are going to understand that - I would, at least.

[boogle]

i suppose asking is going to benefit you here, i asked my local GW manager if i could have a look at the copy that was on the till and he had no problems with it at all.

[ted1138]

So when a fellow human being who is working in retail because that's the only job she can get follows the corporate line and does her job as trained because she can't afford to lose the job and knows she's replaceable, your reaction is to ruin her whole hour and possibly get her written up by giving her insanely unfair demands? Good to know.

Back on topic, I worked in a bookstore for years that let people do whatever they wanted with our books (and they did... everything they wanted). It was a pretty good model, except for the huge amounts of RPL/damaged out books, the wasted hours spent on recovery, the hordes of customers who would use us to find new titles and then buy them on amazon, etc. Actually, that store went out of business and its main rival isn't doing too hot...

Yeah, I never got used to that when I lived in Maryland, book shops like Barnes & Noble and Borders, where customers would go take a stack of books and magazines into the in-store coffee shop, and spend the next two hours drinking coffee and reading them(us Brits are much too polite to do that).