Today was one of the great, dreaded days of my year as a bookstore manager. I finally had in hand the book orders from all (and by all I mean most) of the instructors, for texts they want their students to have this fall. So I sat down at the phone and started placing orders, relying on my efficient and elegant Microsoft Xcel-based system.

And it went pretty well. I finished all the orders, I think (got to double-check tomorrow), except for the one publisher who put me in a call queue this morning until I gave up, and then put me in a call queue this afternoon when I tried again. I left my number on voice mail.

The most harrowing order is always Zondervan (last in sequence because it starts with “Z”). They have a fully automated ordering system which depends entirely on pressing the buttons on the phone dial. I ought to love it, as it involves no actual human interaction, but I think I fear numbers even more than I fear people.

It’s an odd phenomenon I’ve noticed in the last few years, that I never seem to experience particular satisfaction anymore when I finish a major task. Even when I complete a whole novel, I’m left with the feeling Flashman had at the end of Flashman at the Charge, when he’d finally made his way over the Khyber Pass to Peshawar, having fought, lied and skulked his way through fire, blizzard and carnage, to reach a British post at last, and all the official had to say to him was, “Very good. This is a customs post, among other things. Have you anything to declare?”

The reason for the dysphoria, of course, is that I don’t try enough new things.

Oh well. I can live without particular satisfaction.

Annie Frisbie, the Superfast Reader, sends me information about a scheme called BookMooch, a simple book exchange program. After joining, you list the books you want to give away on the site, send them to someone who asks for them (for which you get points), and then use your points to order books from other people.

Sounds like a conspiracy to take money out of writers’ pockets, say I.

You know, it’s one of the ironies of life. Writers depend on the sale of new books to make a living. We only get paid for that first sale. When I shop at Half Price Books (as I do more than anywhere else), and buy used books, I’m not showing solidarity with my comrades in labor, but profiting only the carrion birds of the bookstore.

However, as a midlist author, I just don’t have a lot of money to spend on new books (which are, I think, generally overpriced). Thus do I cut mine own economic throat.

A friend just told me she found a signed copy of The Year of the Warrior in a used bookstore.

I don’t really seriously imagine that everybody who’s bought a book from me at a Viking event, and got it autographed, fell in love with it and wouldn’t be parted from it.

But it still rankles.

Take physic, pomp!

The big dogs at Borders Group have developed a company network to get select books into the hands of their employees in order for them to recommend them to local shoppers. It’s the same idea you might see at a small, independent bookstore. You buy a couple things or shop there regularly, and the store owner says, “Hey, have you heard of On the Corner of Bitter and Sweet? It’s debut novel, like the kind you seem to enjoy, and I love it.” That’s called hand-selling. Publishers have given Borders credit for making the four previously selected hand-sellers into best-sellers.