the cost of selling

I go to one of the bookshops with a rather late batch of the magazine and a delivery note. It is late, and I am apologetic, so instead of just leaving the package at the information desk, I go in search of D, who is responsible for the poetry section. He's a poet himself, and we have published poems of his occasionally. We gossip about what's about, what people are buying. Cat Haiku, obviously. It's an opportunity for me to riffle through what he has new in stock ... There are magazines I haven't seen for a long time, such as The Journal (formerly ~ of Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry). He starts telling me about new books in; we get to talking about the Costa list, the TS Eliot list, which he regards as "predictable". We agree that John Burnside might have been included. He shows me Moya Cannon, Kenji Miyazawa. I buy half a dozen magazines I don't actually subscribe to (though I should) and when my purchases are totted up, they are over £50. D isn't even on commission.