On bookselling

From Bury My Heart at W.H. Smith's by Brian Aldiss:

Those were years of revelation for me. Every day brought new discoveries. I fell into books in my eagerness to catch up on all those years lost in the sun [military service in Burma]. History, psychology, philosophy, biography, literature, art: the bookshop became my library. When Sanders promoted me to buyer of new books, I ordered from publishers whatever interested me. I believed that if I filled the shop with books I liked I would have no difficulty in selling them.

That is a pathetic fallacy (and who among us, who have worked in bookshops, has not fallen into it?) because, as Orwell recalls in 'Bookshop Memories' (published 1936):

...the thing that struck me was the rarity of really bookish people. Our shop had an exceptionally interesting stock, yet I doubt whether ten per cent of our customers knew a good book from a bad one.

Almost everything Orwell has to say in this essay is still relevant to bookselling today - though here his habitual pessimism and misanthropy seem to have failed him:

Also [bookselling] is a humane trade which is not capable of being vulgarized beyond a certain point.

It all depends, I suppose, which point you have in mind.