Went to the west office of FreshFiction (VR) and worked on the books. We’re still processing books from 1/4 and almost done so the arrival of another 97 just adds to the pressure. Processing means opening the packages, sorting by publication dates, entering into our systems: once for sheer number and offering to reviewers and secondly and more important, putting all the data from the book package into our database and thus the website. So conservatively we’re dealing with about 200 books with publication dates of 12/26 to 2/5 range.
Every book we enter needs to be checked to see if we have all the information about the book, summary, the books place in a series (or not), an excerpt if available or not, cover information, taglines. If we added videos to the mix we’d go nuts but that is definitely coming, I can see it. It’s hard enough prying the summary and excerpt from publishers and authors. I do NOT understand why authors don’t willing and eagerly supply the information on their websites or in the review packages! It only helps them, ah well.
After all the books are entered…actually while two of us are doing data input, and sorting books into publication date / genre bins, M is assembling the reviewer piles. Each reviewer has submitted a genre preference plus when they’ve been with us Mindy knows what they like and don’t like. She’s busy on her side of the room (and the hallway and even out into her family room) doing some kind of editorial magic with lots of sticky notes being put on books and asking us to hurry up with a book to take away from us. She’s so mean but it does keep us moving along.
Side-note, I never worked in a book store because I just knew I’d have to stop and read each book, it is NOT that much easier to run a book web site because I DO stop and read each book as it’s unpacked. Sigh. Good thing I have Mindy who is MUCH stronger at concentration on the task at hand!
So we trudge happily on, adding a little note to post-it notes on books, adding backlists to author pages, adding excerpts when we can find them, cursing and muttering at authors and publishers with lousy (to be kind) websites, exulting over books we want to read and adding to our TBR lists.
Then back to the processing. At the end of the day or five LONG hours we’ve added over 123 books, updated at least twice that number and I got ONE book to take home to read. DOPPELGANGSTER by Laura Resnick. It’s been reviewed and I love Resnick since the days of Laura Leone and her romances. I figure it’s my reward!
Pictures after unpack and before final processing:
We clean up after by putting all the books into reviewer assigned boxes, month bins, genre bins, Fresh Pick, and contest bins. All the paper materials is filed by genre and month and used HEAVILY by Fresh Fiction staff. They even have a dining room and hall cleaned up after we’re done.
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