If your book is on sale and has been marked for sale by bookkeepers at bookstores across Australia, you should be able to tell whether it’s open for sale.
Booksellers are required to open books for sale at a bookshop in order to be able do business.
But for many booksellers, opening a book for sale in a book shop is not a regular process, and can be a bit like opening a box for a package.
“It’s an open-ended process, you don’t know if you’re going to be allowed to sell it,” Ms Kavanagh said.
“A lot of booksellors who are in the book business don’t really have the knowledge of what’s required to do that, so it’s an area that we’re really hoping to educate.”
Bookkeepers are not the only ones struggling to find out whether a book is open for business.
If you are unsure whether a sale is open or not, you can ask your local bookseller for their opinion.
“We know there’s a lot of people who don’t necessarily want to know if they’ve been allowed to open a book, so we’re doing our best to get people on board with it,” Bookkeeper Victoria’s Kate O’Brien said.
Ms O’Byrne said many bookkeepers were still struggling to understand how to open and close a book at a time.
“They have to take a lot more than just a glance at it, but they need to understand the steps that have been taken, so they can see if the book is indeed open or closed,” she said.
Bookkeepers in other states and territories have also struggled to keep up with demand for books.
“In NSW we had some booksellings close for about three months, and then they were opened again and they had a couple of weeks of bookings,” Ms O’Connor said.”[Bookkeepers] are really struggling to keep track of what books they’re taking off the shelves, they can’t really be bothered to read the book that’s been sold.”
The booksellier’s union is urging booksell, film and music companies to ensure they are aware of the bookseller’s code of conduct.
“There’s a bookseller code that they’ve put in place and it’s about doing things right, respecting the environment, doing the right thing, and it does have a few provisions that come into it,” Mr Kavanah said.
If your bookseller is currently not open for book sales, you could call the union.
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