by Iris

While all ABC staff obviously looks very youthful and spry, some of us have actually been around for quite a while. Our Jitse is celebrating 25 years at ABC this year. A massive milestone! Read on to find out more about his highlights from the past 2.5 decades.

Hi Jitse, what is it you do at ABC?

What don’t I do? Sell books to customers, get books on the shelves, unpack books, pack up books, order books, reorder books. The main thing I currently work on are the ABC events, both in the stores and book sales on location. Aside from that I’m the buyer for the Graphic Novels, Manga and Animation sections in the Amsterdam store. And I do back office work with book orders and planning; all that boring business stuff that also needs to be done.

You’ve worked at ABC for 25 years, wow, congratulations! That’s a long time. How do you do it?

Thanks! ABC is such a great place to work, I still really enjoy it. First off, we have lovely customers. Book readers are such nice people to interact with. I’ve had so many great conversations about books and ideas at the store. Some people tell you all kinds of stuff when buying books, about their interests, about their lives, their friend and family. If you ask the right questions, they’ll tell you really intimate stuff. Not everyone, of course, sometimes there’s nutty ones as well, but even those conversations have been very, ehm, interesting.

Of course I love books: to read, as a medium, as an object and as a starting point for conversation. I grew up reading, everyone in my family would read to me as a child and I was a voracious reader in my school days. I wish I could read more, but I just don’t always have the time. Over the years I’ve come to see ABC as a crossroads of ideas, where readers, authors and every book industry person in between comes to connect. That makes this place special. And the incredible team I get to work with every day, a very special group of wonderful people that work and live together in a happy organized chaos of books.

Best experience at ABC?

Experiences enough! I always really enjoyed going to the Frankfurt Book Fair with the ABC team, where we would meet all the representatives and buy the stand remainders. That was hard work, but also a lot of fun. The fair was a great way to connect with the book industry people and scout for new books, and we would haul back a truck full of great new books to sell at the stores. We stopped doing that in 2020, but I had a great time doing that.

The first times we were at Dutch Comic Con was a great experience. I worked together with Rick Lightstone, that was a blast. He would call around and get all these big shot authors and artists over and we were selling tons of books. He was always talking about the rock opera he was working on, or tell some hilarious story. Rick never got to finish his opera, alas. We miss him dearly.

Customers returning to the store and thanking you for a book recommendation, that is gold. I once was in a sandwich shop and one of the employees recognized me. They ran up and said: “Thank you for recommending me that book on script writing! It was exactly what I needed to finish my script, and now I’ve sold it!”

What do you like to read?

Graphic Novels, especially sci-fi from the 1970s by artists such as Phillipe Druillet, Esteban Maroto and Moebius. There’s some really weird, freaky stuff from that period. But also Hellboy by Mike Mignola. That’s such a great series. I like weird fiction, somewhere on the edge of sci-fi, horror and fantasy. Stories by Thomas Ligotti, Jeff Vandermeer and China Miéville. But also The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas or The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa. I like to read books on history and mytholgy too, there’s so much to learn about the human story.

Best book you’ve read in those 25 years?

Watchmen by Alan Moore blew my mind when I read it, but that book is from 1987. If it has to be from this century, I’ll go with The Three-body Problem by Cixin Liu, that was a great read.

What will the future bring?

With the ABC team I aim to bring more book events to ABC, giving readers the opportunity to meet writers and artists, for people to connect and have meaningful conversations. We need more meaningful conversation in this day and age, as so many seem to misunderstand the other. To read is to shine a light on the darkness of ignorance.

That sounds profound…

Well, let’s have fun while doing it, we’ll see where it goes!