Random reminder

Press, 30 August 1977, Page 31

Random reminder

RED FACE DEPARTMENT

While one would hesitate to suggest that bo"'<shops tend to be a little slow in ordering boons specifically asked for by their customers, one must admit that, in order to obtain a copy of a book from overseas before it goes out of print, it is advisable to put in an order before it is written To this end it would be useful for New Zealand readers if authors could get into the habit of forecasting their work, perhaps a year or two ahead, to help New Zealand readers keep up reasonably well with their reading. In this way the follower of current writing would avoid being often an unwilling reader of history. It is not unknown, for example, to order a book from a Christchurch bookshop in May, visit it nine or 10 times and be Cold that the Auckland warehouse has still not sent the book down, and then be told in, say, December that the book is not available because the Auckland warehouse ran

out of copies in September. This is usually accompanied by an offer to order the book from overseas — but the customer accepts this only if he is sure that he is in a good enough state of mental and physical health to withstand the years of nailbiting, waiting and wondering this might well entail. There are exceptions, of course, and one such exception recently really was a stunning rejoinder to criticism of bookshops’ slowness. A Spreydon man, an incorrigible bookworm and an old hand at waiting for months for his books, received a card in his mailbox from a local bookstore saying that their files had regurgitated an order form which indicated that he wanted them to order two books from Britain-. The process of ordering had been delayed (computer error, staff reorganisation, the usual guff that businesses tend to put out when an order form has slipped behind a filing cabinet and reap-

peared embarrassingly during spring cleaning years later) and they wondered if he wanted them to go ahead with the order i.e. did he still want the books? It was such a long time since. he had ordered the books that he had forgotten that he had ordered them. But he still wanted to read them, so he sent a letter telling them to go ahead with the order, confident that it would be months, if not years, before the books arrived. The next morning’s mail proved him stunningly wrong, and it has stilled his customary complaining about delays. In his mailbox was a card from the same bookshop saying that the two books he had asked them to order from England had been ordered, had arrived, and were awaiting him in their Christchurch store. Since the postmark showed that this card had been posted less than two hours after he had confirmed his order, he regards it as prompt service indeed.