The Bookseller.com

8th January 2009

Lesley Agnew

Lesley Agnew is manager of the Children's Bookshop in Muswell Hill, north London.

36 hours of Potter

23.07.07

6 a.m.    (Friday)  Wake up before alarm.  Iron fabric for new window display – only decided on this yesterday – we’ll be blowing up 100 balloons.

7.30    Arrive at shop.  Do today's orders.

8.30    Chase school about sale-or-return books not yet returned; today is last day of term.

9.15    Student staff start blowing balloons.  We work in chaos.  Phone keeps going.  Zoe is in the window – packing it with balloons.

10.00    Bloomsbury email brings reassurance that Sainsburys are giving away 5 new HPs with signed bookplates left over from a previous launch – not signed books!  (So that's what "Win a signed HP & DH!" means!)

11.00    First Harry Potter delivery from wholesaler.  It’s been doubled (this will turn out to be a good thing).

11.30 Rep delivers some more HP bags.  Not enough.  So how shall we handle this? – hang onto them for some of the customers who’ve pre-reserved – or give them to the people who come in from the midnight queue.

12.00    Staff carry on blowing balloons.

12.15    Second delivery comes.  The driver has driven through probably the only flooded road in Muswell Hill to reach us.  Some of his packages are wet where water has forced in – but the Harry Potters are safe – they were above the flood line up on pallets.

3.00    Now I'm told the outside (the only) loo isn’t flushing.  Spend time standing on loo seat to re-fix lever to chain (yes – the antique overhead design, worthy of Hogwarts).  The Heath Robinson hooking-up works.  But we’ll get a plumber next week.  Now realise I’ve got cobwebs in my hair (scenic appearance for night? – no).

3.30    Realise we have no CDs in our delivery – distributor maintains we never ordered them – too late to worry now.

4.30    First eager HP fan arrives to start our queue – 2 upturned plastic crates for him and his mum (later on his sister) to sit on – Gameboy, provisions and other means to fill the time.

4.35    Journalist from Dutch radio arrives to interview me about HP, the big stores and the independents.

6.00    Regular staff leave – advise them not to drink too much before returning at 11.  Students and I (the door locked) start to unpack.

6.30    The assistant manager phones in to remind me we haven't put the HPs on the stock system.  (That would have been a nuisance; what if the till at midnight didn’t register the book?).

7.00    Leave shop.  No one else has yet joined the queue-starting child and his mum.  Are we going to have a decent queue?

10.50    Return to the shop.  Yes we have a queue!  In old-fashioned British way those waiting have actually assemble into traditional queue formation.  Start to hand out competitions – haven’t got quite enough pens and pencils – but people (bless them!) are willing to share.  Long suffering son-in-law sent out to photograph the queue.

11.45    Phone call from BBC Breakfast team.  They’d entered the wrong postcode in their SatNav.  They’re somewhere in Willesden.  Panic moment – how to get from Willesden to here?  Throw phone at sleeping partner to talk them through a route.

11.49    Angry phone call from someone in one of the flats above: why a queue, why so much noise?

11.50    Japanese film crew arrive.

Next hour or so:    COMPLETE BLUR.  Lots of family groups.  Girls who’ve grown up with Harry talking to the (now arrived) BBC camera.  LONG QUEUE outside. Copies of THE BOOK moving at great speed.  Characters from the book all around.  2 of our extra helpers volunteered for dog minding outside.

12.45    Second call from same neighbour upstairs: sorry. But it is a not-to-be repeated special night. Slight tinge of disappointment from call dissipated when 2 customers insist on paying the full cover price.  As a point of principle.

1.45    Last customer leaves.  Exhaustion imminent.  Arrange transport home for staff members.  Thank goodness for the extra copies of the book.  Still have some left for the morning.  And the loo’s still working.

6.30     Catch clips of articulate customers on BBC Breakfast.  Yes it’s us!  We’re on!

8.00    Return to shop and start to clear up.  Quick glance at competiton entries from the queue.  Not everyone did the who might die competition but the 178 votes (all on a write-in basis – we made no suggestions) include:

Voldemort  43

Harry himself  23

Snape  20

Ron  15

Hermione  12

        - and lower votes for 14 other characters

Reassurance for some when they get reading?

Sometime in the morning – messages brought in.  BBC Breakfast had done us proud: lots of clips from just after midnight and then Kate (and her daughter) in the studio . . . saw it on the video afterwards.  A third customer insists on paying full price.

I’d said it would all be over by noon.  Wrong!  The day keeps going.  The cause?  Perhaps it’s the weather.  We all need a feel-good event.  But it’s also an end-of-childhood thing!  That makes it momentous for the fans who’ve grown up with him.  We did have a daytime feel-bad moment.  Customer wants to return his new HP, but we have a no returns policy.  Might – looking at our lowering stock - have given way if he'd been able to give us back his HP loyalty cards.  He shouts to the rest of the shop: "Don't buy it here – get it at John Lewis for £5"  (What a good idea I almost think as I try to look sideways at the few copies we have left).  But we all need the sight of one dark cloud to point out the brightness a blue sky – not that the real sky had shown much blue over the last day or two.  And we kept on selling HPs.

6.00 p.m.    Close shop for the day.

For us, the support that came to us from lots of lovely, lively customers was the real thing.  Ones we’ve seen grow up and younger ones we hope will keep on coming.  What should we suggest next for them to read?

harry potter