One of my observant readers noticed my statement regarding my being a part-time online bookseller to support my travels and my notice that the Online Bookselling Newsletter may be emailed a few days late, and wondered what I do with my books when I am gone. Specifically, she stated a personal interest in starting her own online bookselling business, but she didn't want to be tied down by a business and she didn't want to give someone else access to her home to conduct her business in her absence.

As an online bookseller it is really quite easy to take planned trips.  All it requires is that you notify the Internet marketplace that you want your inventory to be put on hold beginning on a specific date, or for a specific date range.  This can generally be activated within 24 hours, but I strongly recommend giving them 72 hours because some of them cannot seem to remove your books from the list of those available any quicker than that despite this being the age of computers and an ability to do it within seconds.  In my case, I sometimes only get a day's notice that I am going to support some airplane testing in some other part of the world.  When this happens, my son can access my account and process/ship my books until my vacation hold goes into effect.

Another thing that needs to be addressed is how to handle the questions that customers email while you are gone.  I personally set up an autoresponder in my email account to let my customers know that I will get back to them on such and such a date when I return from vacation or from my business trip, but my son also monitors my email and can respond to most things in my absence