I know some folks think it’s wonderful to get galleys and I agree. But every so often I stand in my office amid the galleys and I want to scream, just a little. Over the weekend I was confronted by the sheer number of books I have in my house. I have galleys from 2009 forward, and that’s a lot of books.
\nGalleys are truly one of the best perks of working at a bookstore. I get these yummy books months before they come out. They’re like great secret candies. The problem is every season there seems to be hundreds of galleys. These galleys need a home, and often that’s my house. But before the land in my office they have a long life at the bookstore.
\nGalleys come into the store in droves this time of year. I just got a box of galleys for books that are coming out in November and December. I feel as if I’ve barely read the galleys for books that came out in January. We have a stack of boxes five feet high with all the galleys arranged by month, just through May. Each staffer initials when she’s looked through the box. So, now I’m stuck with boxes that have books that either they didn’t want to read, or have read and returned.
\nSometimes we take galley boxes to the store basement after everyone has looked at them. I’m trying not to do this, as the basement seems to be the place where things go to die. Because galleys can’t be sold, and I refuse to recycle or throw out books, the galleys can hang around for quite some time.
\nI literally had no place to put the newest crop of galleys anywhere other than my dining room table. After a week of that, I couldn’t bear it anymore. I took boxes from the store and cleaned out my office of any galleys that weren’t 2012. First, I moved all the galleys from the dining room table to the kitchen counter. While not my first choice for storing the books, it had the advantage of being in a place I wanted restored to its original use, so I knew I wouldn’t drag my feet on this project.
\nIt took my trips to and from the office to empty the spinner (we had one extra when we moved, so brought the store case home, a lovely benefit of owning a bookstore). Finally, I was done. I was looking an entire dining room table covered entirely by books. Elizabeth and I sorted them by age and then put a bookplate in them that reminded folks the books couldn’t be sold or placed in a circulating library (this step is the slowest part of the whole process). Then we boxed them up by age and labeled them for various schools, prisons and hospitals. I feel good about giving galleys to charitable organizations; they have limited resources and almost always desperately need books. The Ronald McDonald House is a great place for a box mixed with all kinds of books. Some for the kids and some for the parents. Six boxes later and we’re still not done with the young adult books, which seem to be 65% of our galleys.
\nI then got to set the spinner by publication month. I’ve left plenty of room for more galleys, but the case is surprisingly full already. It is so nice to have the all galleys in one place and thoughtfully organized. If I were truly organized, they’d be organized by publisher for every month. But honestly, I don’t have that kind of time.
\nSo, now as I admire my handiwork, the hardest part of this process is going to be choosing what to read, as there a lot of exciting books coming out this year. What books are you excited about this year?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I know some folks think it’s wonderful to get galleys and I agree. But every so often I stand in my office amid the galleys and I want to scream, just a little.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}