Cold Comfort Farms

Ten years ago, I was working on a farm in the middle of a cold Sussex winter, trying to push some huge metal wheelie bins up an ice-covered slope. After falling over several times, I gripped onto the bins as firmly as possible, only to discover that my hands had stuck to the freezing metal. It was not the best of times.

There were lighter moments. Occasionally, we'd stop for a cup of tea and see how long it took for the dregs of our cups to freeze once we'd tipped them on the ground. Meanwhile, in a nearby barn, some mice had taken the used teabags from our makeshift bin and turned them into a cosy little nest. 

I barely knew the people I worked with, but the grim, Siberian labour camp conditions created a sort of camaraderie.

When friends asked me what I was doing, I told them a half truth: I was setting up an online secondhand bookselling business, with a man called Pete. If they wanted to imagine a rarefied atmosphere of antiquarian books, that was fine with me. The reality was harder to explain and I'm not sure I even understood it myself.

It had all happened by chance. A few weeks earlier, I'd been approached by someone I vaguely knew who'd heard that I'd recently left an online bookselling job to set up my own business. Pete invited me to a local pub and, over a pint of Harvey's, produced a succession of Excel spreadsheets that showed how the two of us could make our fortune. My bookselling experience combined with his business acumen would be, he argued, be a winning combination. 

I wasn't convinced, but it was flattering to be asked and, after all, what did I have to lose? Pete proposed that we ran two separate, but linked, businesses, so I would still have the independence I needed, but with a guaranteed supply of books. I mulled it over that evening and said yes the following morning. 

The farm was 10 miles away, in the middle of the Sussex countryside and was owned by a gypsy family. For reasons I never fully understood, they all seemed to be called Billy and lived in a static home which was occasionally turned 90 degrees to the right or left, perhaps as a homage to their nomadic past.

Pete had sublet a barn from the family and had established a small business selling penny paperbacks, but had no idea what to do with all of the older, non-barcoded books. My role was to go through the stock, sort out the wheat from the chaff and find a way of selling the books online. I'd already done this in my previous job, so what could possibly go wrong? 

I soon had my answer. Several weeks of sifting through books ridden with mouse droppings in subzero temperatures took its toll and I developed pneumonia. I hadn't taken it that seriously until I saw the look on my doctor's face after she'd tested my lung capacity. It was time to stop. The rest of February was a write-off, spent mostly in bed.

By the beginning of March, I felt able to go back to work and found Pete in an ebullient mood. He had just bought a large van, which meant that we could move our stock around between different premises. All I had to do now was find a suitable location for my part of the business. 

How did one go about finding suitable properties to set up an internet bookselling business? I had no idea, but like any sensible person I tried Google and eventually found this.

After my spell in the icy gulag, the new site felt like paradise. The owner was a gentleman farmer whose wife ran a B&B for visitors to Glyndebourne and his other tenants included the official glovemaker to the Queen. Every time I opened the door, I felt of rush of pleasure as I looked at the view:

I could have quite happily spent my days sitting in this empty building, just looking at the view and listening to music. If only such jobs existed. Sadly there was rent to pay, so I had to start focusing on the nuts and bolts of the business. Literally:

It took two weeks to assemble the giant Meccano sets masquerading as shelving units, one nut and bolt at a time. It was indescribably tedious and if someone had told me that I'd have to disassemble it and reassemble it somewhere else, six months later, I might have felt like giving up.

Along with the shelving, there was the other minutiae to consider: postage, computers, printers, furniture, setting up a BT account, banking and stationery. Even something as simple as a packing slip required HTML skills that were way beyond my abilities, but somehow I had to learn. Gradually, it was beginning to take shape, but there was one thing missing: staff.

Fast forward to a month later and it was impossibly idyllic. I was working in a beautiful rural setting with two postgrads and a member of the cast of The Archers, which added to the bucolic atmosphere. We spent our days sorting through old books in a cosy little office, accompanied by the soothing strains of a French classical music station. What more could anyone want?

Sadly, it was too good to last. Our business generated a lot of waste and our landlord had made it very clear that he didn't want his B&B guests disturbed by the sight of wheelie bins, or woken up by any early morning waste collections. I couldn't argue with that. If I was in the land of Nod after a night's Gotterdammerunging, I wouldn't want a dawn chorus of "ATTENTION! THIS VEHICLE IS REVERSING!"

So far, I'd managed to use Pete's van to take our unwanted books away, but that took two hours out of my day. Also, Pete's bargain van was rather erratic and, without any warning, things would suddenly stop working. On one occasion, I was driving to a warehouse in Birmingham and discovered that the windscreen wipers weren't functioning. I pulled over and texted Pete:

"Got to turn back. The wipers aren't working." 

Pete quickly replied: "Is it raining?" I replied that it wasn't, but it might start raining at some point in the journey, in which case I'd be in a bit of a pickle. I think Pete thought that I was being an old fuss-pot.

The business model was simple enough. We received bulk deliveries of old, pre-ISBN books and sorted through them, identifying any titles that might be worth selling. It doesn't take long to learn which books have no value at all in the secondhand market - things like everyday bibles, old textbooks and Victorian poetry anthologies, or titles like Little Women, Reach For the Sky and anything by Walter Scott. 

Sadly, these books are sent off to be pulped as nobody wants them, particularly the charities who have just sold them to us as a waste product. If the books have nice covers, they may have a future lining the shelves of some faux olde worlde pub, but most will end up in places as unlikely as road surfacing material. In a normal one tonne delivery, anything up to 90% of the books end up being thrown away.

I resisted leaving my rural idyll for as long as possible, but I had to face facts: the business was generating too much waste for our genteel setting. I had to find a new home for the books. After a few fruitless weeks of searching online, I found this:

It was as grim as it looks in the photo, but it was big and cheap - perfect for a growing business. We could have as many wheelie bins as we liked and receive deliveries from articulated lorries. However, expecting my staff to work in a large barn, particularly as the weather got colder, was asking too much. How could I provide them with a decent office space?

Fortunately, I had a brainwave:

I won't claim that my garden shed idea matched the splendour of our previous office, but once I'd installed decent lighting, a couple of heaters and painted the inside a bright colour, it was tolerable. Perhaps we might have been contented there, but unfortunately things took a turn for the worse.

Impressed by the size of the barn, Pete decided that he'd like to set up a little sideline there and employed the first four Polish men who responded to his Gumtree advert. They were perfectly pleasant individuals, but had a penchant for drinking vodka in the morning. Once Pawel and his chums had reached a suitable state of inebriation, they would amuse themselves by performing stunts with a forklift truck (those things can move a lot faster than you might imagine). Occasionally, the forklift would almost crash into our office, veering off seconds before impact. 

To add insult to injury, they played Heart FM and, on one occasion, I had to listen to Adele  accompanied by the cry of a bull being sodomised by one of its stablemates in an adjacent barn. It was at moments like this, I wondered where I had gone wrong.

But in spite of my reservations, the business worked. The sales slowly but steadily grew as we added books to our inventory and received orders from all over the world. Having a global marketplace meant that even the most obscure book stood a reasonable chance of finding a buyer. In a bookshop, I strongly doubt that our 1920s book about UHT milk production would have sold, but online we found someone in Uruguay who couldn't wait to read it.

After a year, I thought I'd developed a pretty good business model. The overheads were low and the turnover was growing month by month. But I hadn't foreseen that there would be a number of obstacles to our progress. Here are five of the worst:

1. Animals

Being a townie, I was under the naive impression that we were the sole occupants of our barn, but I soon learned otherwise. From a robin's point of view, our bookshelves were just a suitable place to build a nest.

When the eggs hatched, we had to tread very carefully, hoping that we wouldn't frighten the mother away from feeding her birds. This meant that if any poor soul ordered a book near the nest, I had to cancel the order. Of course, I couldn't tell them why, so I had to invent a vaguely plausible excuse and hope that our rating wouldn't suffer.

After a few weeks, the birds flew away, leaving several pecked, soiled books as a souvenir of their visit.

The poor Poles who worked in the open barn also had to contend with birds defecating on their computer monitors and keyboards, which must have added insult to injury. 

In addition to birds, we shared our barn with amphibians:

But the most bizarre moment was when we saw a mink casually walk past with a rat in its mouth. The moment it noticed us, the mink jumped and let go of the rat. Seeing an opportunity, the rat scuttled off into a narrow gap by the door and hid. When we returned after the weekend, we found the mink lying dead with its legs in the air. Next to it, was a huge pile of rat droppings.

Our uninvited guests may have thrown the occasional spanner in the works, but overall they provided many comedic moments and I grew to love the absurdity of it. I also cherished the moments when a robin would land a few feet away and patiently watch me unpack my deliveries. Perhaps he was hoping for a bookworm.

2. Couriers

I thought I'd set up a foolproof system. Rather than faffing around taking parcels to the nearest post office, I'd found a courier who would do all the hard work. All we had to do was put the UK orders in one mailsack and international orders in the other, then someone would come and collect them. It all worked very well until the day nobody turned up. 

After a number of unanswered phone calls, I discovered that the company had gone bust. They had several days' worth of our orders in their warehouse and for the next few weeks, I began each day issuing refunds and apologising to angry customers. Our rating dropped as a result and fewer orders came in, which was probably just as well, as there was nobody to collect them. 

I learned my lesson and signed up to one of the biggest couriers in the country. They went bust too.

3. Gravity

For no discernible reason, our Meccano shelving units would occasionally collapse under the strain of our growing inventory of books. The metal would buckle to the point where repairs were impossible. It was very annoying.

Gravity also nearly led to my premature demise when this teetering pile of boxes was delivered. 

It looks harmless enough here, but when this half tonne pallet was five feet above me on the back of a lorry, wobbling menacingly, I wasn't terribly happy about it. The delivery driver didn't inspire confidence when he said, "Looks as if it might fall off, mate. Can you stand underneath and try and keep it steady?" Like a fool, I complied because I wanted to show that I was also a proper man, just like him.

4. Suppliers

Like couriers, suppliers can suddenly go into receivership without any warning. Even if that doesn't happen, they may decide that my few hundred quid a month isn't enough of an incentive for them to bother separating their old books from the new, preferring to sell them to a waste paper merchant.

5. Partnership

Business partnerships are tricky at the best of times. Pete and I were like Del Boy and Rodney. Pete was a geezer and although I liked him personally, I didn't agree with the way he avoided paying people to extend his credit. Occasionally, his 'entrepreneurial' approach would land him in deep water and more than once his business teetered on the brink of disaster.

I was definitely a Rodney. I used to worry if I was a day late with my payments and liked to do everything by the book.

Eventually, Pete and I reached an amicable separation, but continued to help each other out and share premises.

Without Pete's quest for global domination, I no longer felt under pressure to expand and decided to continue as a one-man operation. The business was at a level where it ticked over nicely and I was contented sitting in my small office, listening to music, sorting through the random selection of books that passed through my hands.

The job was a strange mixture. One part of it involved sitting in a warm, cosy office, listening to Bach and looking at antiquarian books. The other involved mundane manual tasks, like trying to push heavy wheelie bins through the muddy surface of a farmyard. The physicality of the work could be particularly draining - if you've ever had to load and unload one and a half tonnes of boxed books, you'll know what I mean.

But although the chores could be repetitive, the books themselves were endlessly fascinating, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. Although most of the stock was rubbish, literally, a delivery could yield all sorts of surprises, from a signed first edition by Siegfried Sassoon to a letter written by Paul Nash. 

If things had gone as planned, I'd probably still be in my cowshed now, assailed by weasels, toads and robins. However, a few years ago, my wife won funding from the local authority for our son to go to a school that specialised in teaching autistic children. As I was the only one who could take him there (and be on call to collect him if he had a wobble), my wife and I decided that we should swap roles. I tried to continue running my business on a part-time basis, but it didn't work and I very reluctantly said a final farewell to bookselling. 

Five years on, I am still at home, bored senseless and doing a terrible job at running the house, while my wife is developing a blossoming career as a freelance editor. Sometimes I fantasize about resurrecting Steerforth Books, even if it meant having to start from scratch again. But whenever nostalgia strikes, I remember the darker side of the job: the mud, the Heart FM, the near-death incidents, the rats and the back-breaking deliveries. 

And it still isn't enough to put me off. 

 

The Light That Failed

There are two parts to my job. One involves working in idyllic surroundings, with a view of the South Downs in the distance, listing quirky antiquarian books in a pleasant, weatherboarded office.

The other requires long periods of manual drudgery, sorting through huge deliveries of stock, trying to push rusting, back-breakingly heavy wheelie bins along muddy ground that feels like the shore of a tidal estuary.

Although they have lids, the bins still collect an extraordinary amount of rainwater and when I start to move them, they expel their brackish liquid from a small hole, like nervous sheep.

Next to the bins, there is a collection of odd machines, haphazardly mounted on planks. I have no idea what they are for:

During the last six months, I've watched the view from my workplace gradually change:

Autumn has clearly arrived and the late afternoon light is noticeably weaker. I now have to find my book orders by torchlight, as the solitary flourescent bulb barely makes an impression on the rows of shelves.

At the moment, I have a friend working with me. He has a regular role in a BBC radio soap opera, but when his character is going through a quiet period, he logs books with me.

I think he'd rather be acting, but it's good to have some company for a few days.

The temperature has been in the early 20s (or 70s, if you prefer) recently, but soon it will plummet and the books in the warehouse will feel like blocks of ice cream. I'm not looking forward to that. I can usually handle ten books before my fingers begin to seize up.

Yesterday I found a dead rat lying in a grass verge. I recoiled in horror and turned the other way, where I spotted a £1 coin lying on the ground. I lead a fairytale existence.

On the Edge

This time last week, I was congratulating myself on a month of healthy book sales. At last, it looked as if my business had recovered from the two months I'd lost to illness, earlier in the year. Little did I know that within days, it would all go horribly wrong.

I won't bore you with a lengthy account. The short answer is that my courier company decided to shut down my account, as a business that trades from the same farm as me owes them a lot of money. I have always paid my bills on time, but they wouldn't budge:

"Please be advised that as a business we are not totally convinced that there isn't a link between your company and ********."

I offered to provide evidence that I was a completely separate business, but their reply more or less said that they had neither the time nor the inclination to look into it.

I looked at the sackfuls of uncollected orders and wondered what I was going to do. An internet business can go down very quickly if its orders aren't fulfilled in time. Waiting until an account with a new courier was set up wasn't an option.

In the end, I took the only sensible option available: I bought an awful lot of stamps.

It has been a challenging few days, but I have taken my inspiration from a pot outside a neighbouring unit, where people throw their cigarette ends:

Like the weed, perhaps I will triumph over adversity. It would be good to find a courier that, like Steve Austin, is better, stronger and faster. One that doesn't routinely lose parcels and delivers promptly to the time-conscious Germans.

When things are difficult at work, I usually look forward to going home, but for the last few weeks our house has been taken over by two psychotic male kittens, pictured below:

(I should point out that the second kitten is not actually locked in the stove, but is merely reflected in the glass)

We have taken to hiding upstairs behind closed doors, while they demolish sofas, disconnect telephone cables and sit on our modem until it overheats. I'm not sure if getting two cats was a good idea.

On Saturday evening they became so manic, we ended up fleeing to the safety of Brighton beach, for a fish and chip supper.

On the subject of Brighton, I saw these beautiful magic lantern slides in Hove Museum yesterday. I was trying to explain to my younger son how miraculous they must have been in a world without cinema or television. He seemed to enjoy them as much as I did.

My older son remains in his room. He hasn't been out for nine months, apart from a few medical appointments and a trip to his grandmother's. My wife is very good and never loses hope, but I have felt mine slip away and feel desperately sad that he has lost a large part of his childhood.

Perhaps I need to distract myself with a hobby. I often find old guides to various pastimes, but this book, which I found last week, would probably only lead to more trouble:

The Downward Spiral

My book sales have been pretty awful recently. I'm not surprised, as I've felt too tired to do much since my appendix was whipped out, other than read Trollope and watch 'Breaking Bad'.

How long does it take to fully recover from surgery? My mother-in-law confidently asserted that it was one week per hour of surgery, but I'm not convinced.

This week I made a concerted effort to put some more books on sale. Fortunately, I've now reached a point where I have valued so many different titles, I can instantly identify the books that are of no value. This saves a lot of time, but the ratio of valuable to worthless books is still depressingly low.

If I open a box of random pre-ISBN books, I'm also certain that it will contain at least one copy of the following:

Little Women,
The Ascent of Everest
Heidi
Anything by Dickens
The Rose Annual
Variable Winds at Jalna, by Mazo de la Roche
Rogue Herries
The Pilgrim's Progress
A Famous Five book
A late Victorian 'penny dreadful', published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge
What Katy Did
Over two dozen Companion Book Club/Readers' Union hardbacks
A 1920s title about book-keeping
The Wooden Horse
Popski's Private Army
A reference book published by Odhams

Something by or about George Bernard Shaw
Heute Abend! Book One
The Wind in the Willows

I could go on, but I'm sure you'd rather I didn't.

Any title that isn't familiar gives a little skip to the heart, particularly if it isn't published by Rupert Hart-Davis (for some reason, nearly all of their books are worthless). Perhaps this will be the book that pulls me back from the brink of penury. I type in the details and press enter. It is worth 61p.

But sometimes I am pleasantly surprised:

This signed first edition by the author of 'Goodbye Mr Chips' was a refreshing change from finding yet another novel by Storm Jameson and sold at auction for a couple of hundred quid.

Even on a bad day, I can usually rely on finding a title that will provide some harmless peurile amusement:

(I wonder if they have cottaging in the USA? I only ask because I once had a terrible time trying to explain the concept of a public toilet to a San Francisco cafe owner. He assured me that they didn't exist in America, but this seems unlikely.)

I was also amused by these covers:

I can only suppose that a 'slapper' was something different then, but I find it hard to believe that the book I found yesterday - a 1930s Encyclopaedia of Sex by someone called A. Willy - didn't raise a smirk in the publisher's office.

I also find titles that provide surprisingly pertinent information. For example, after my recent rant about house prices ruining the 'dreaming suburb' of Teddington, I came across this:

"In some London districts it is reckoned that more than one quarter of the inhabitants change their address each year."

That quote from a late Victorian book called 'The Problems of Poverty' by John Hobson reminded me that London's population has been in a constant state of flux since the Industrial Revolution and that the seemingly unchanging world of postwar Teddington was just a brief interlude.

However, although it's good to find titles that interest or amuse, I need to derive an income from my books. Every month I have to pay for stock, plus the rent, postage and commission fees. Whatever's left over is my wage. Last month it reached a new low.

Between recovering from an operation and dealing with a child with 'special needs' (I hate that phrase, but can't think of an alternative), it has been a struggle to deal with a backlog of work. This month, I hope to make up for lost time and perhaps in the process, I may find some more gems.

On the other hand, I may just find books like this:

If the bookselling doesn't work out, maybe I'll become a nylon pirate.

The Virtual Bookseller

I'm feeling quite cheerful today, particularly as I've just been hearing about what an awful Christmas most of our friends have had. As Tolstoy observed in Anna Karenina, people are miserable for a variety of reasons, however there does seem to be a consistent thread running through most of the anecdotes I've heard: 40-something parents, squeezed between demanding young children and needy, elderly parents, several of whom have become too ill to return home and are still in Lewes.

My mother-in-law attempted to spend Christmas with us, but had to abandon her journey because of the appalling weather. She got as far as Victoria Station, which was apparently full of exhausted, folorn-looking pensioners, dragging wheeled suitcases of presents. In their ap-free existence, they were blissfully unaware that the entire transport network had been shut down.

Our Christmas was rather pleasant, apart from my growing conviction that I was going to die soon.

I'm trying to convalesce, but it's difficult. When you work for a company or organisation, sick leave can feel like a minor victory against the machine. But now I'm the machine and I can't afford to take two weeks off, so I've been making short trips to work to fulfill orders and deal with enquiries.

I'm relieved that I don't run a bookshop. I entertained the idea a few years ago, but was warned off by James Heneage, the former MD of Ottakar's. I'm very glad that I listened. I would have had to borrow money, either to buy an existing business or establish a new one and would have been servicing a debt in the face of declining book sales.

Selling on the internet is easy, compared to running a shop. I don't have to start work at 9.00 and no longer have to worry about window displays, bestsellers, promotions, local parking charges, bad weather, staff sickness, health and safety audits, cashing-up, cleaning, deliveries, Christmas opening hours, signing sessions or dealing with customers. I have no 'brand'. I just sell my books for a pound or two less than the next person.

If I work full time, I know that I will be able to cover the monthly bills and food shopping. If I put my feet up and start watching too many 1970s drama series in the afternoon, I'm confident that my bank account will go into the red halfway through the month, so that's my incentive to work.

I've noticed that each country I sell to has its own quirks. German customers can be obsessed with delivery times, but are scrupulously honest. Italian buyers often seem pleasantly surprised when the book actually arrives, as if it is an unsual occurence. Americans rarely leave feedback unless they are annoyed, which distorts the seller rating.

Some of them are also very sensitive to 'odors'.

I realise that it is rather offputting if a book smells and if I detect a strong scent of tobacco or mildew, I'll either bin the book or mention it in the listing. Unfortunately, judging by the comments I receive, a small number of books slip through the net, probably because my nasal acumen has been dulled by the cowshed opposite my unit:

Perhaps I should hold each book close to my nose and have a good sniff. But I don't fancy the idea of spending several hours a day inhaling spores and dust particles. I'm not sure what the answer is.

Britain appears to be the home of pedants. My actual customers are fine, but I occasionally receive strongly-worded emails from browsers informing me that my book listing about so-and-so is woefully inaccurate and that the real first edition was published with a blue cloth cover in 1872. Sometimes, the timing (usually sent after 10.00pm) and tone suggests that the author has had a few drinks.

Of course I don't like to make mistakes, but if the only existing record for a title is in error, I have no way of telling. I welcome politely-worded corrections, but take exception to the more pompous, boorish emails.

I'm also slightly irritated by the emails I get from secondhand booksellers, particularly the ones in block capitals that read: "PLEASE ADVISE BEST PRICE INCLUDING DEALER DISCOUNT AND 2ND CLASS POST."

In a nutshell, they want to buy a book from me for around £4 and sell it on for a markup. I've no objection to that. If a seller has found customers who are prepared to pay more, then good luck to them. But when they want me to give them a 10% discount, cheaper postage and pay by cheque (which requires a time-wasting trip to the bank), I become rather grumpy and want to say "Just buy the book, like everybody else".

Fortunately, most of the people I deal with, in every country, are thoroughly decent and reasonable (they are bibliophiles, after all) and the majority of emails are from customers telling me how delighted they are with their purchase. It's particularly gratifying when someone has been reunited with a much-loved book from their youth.

Perhaps the aspect of my work that I find most satisfying is when a book that was destined for the scrapheap - literally - now has a new lease of life, bringing pleasure to another generation of readers. My business is small enough for me to care about each individual order and I enjoy finding out why Mrs X in Wyoming has spent so many years looking for the 1927 novel I've just sold to her.

The other advantage of selling on the internet is that my working hours are completely flexible, which means that I can deal with my son's various problems without having to take time off. Sometimes a whole day can be lost to medical appointments or a sudden crisis, so it is useful to be in a postion where I can catch up at the weekend.

I often go to work on Sunday, but I don't like it. The building creaks and groans, with noises that sometimes sound as if someone is standing behind me. It's very M. R. James at times.

I mention M. R. James as if I'm familiar with his works, but apart from one short story and the odd BBC drama, I'm a stranger to his oeuvre; probably because I find it hard to become engaged with something I don't believe in. I prefer the more worldly company of Anthony Trollope.

On the subject of Trollope, again, I'll end with this anecdote, which I forgot to mention in my last post:

One day, Trollope was in his club and heard two men complaining bitterly about how annoying one of his characters was, in a story that was being serialised. Trollope tapped both men on the shoulder and said: "Gentlemen, I shall have her killed within the week."