The Only One In Ivy

Alas, the book gods said no. No, you cannot have a reasonably good collection at a reasonably good price. In fact, you can’t even have a reasonably good collection at ANY price. You are not in ivy, so don’t even think about clover, missy. The only living thing in ivy around these parts is the deer.

Yesterday’s trip to view the “collection” has to rank as the all-time worst ever. Before I tell the story you have to know that I always ask questions before we agree to look at books. Also, the first thing I tell sellers who phone is that I buy very little fiction and NO popular fiction. I also buy very few books with ISBNs unless they are significant and focused. In other words, I do not buy the equivalent of Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About American History In One Complete Volume. To be sure we were on the same page I even asked this owner a second time if the books were older and he assured me that they were. I asked, too, how many books he had and was told “a lot.”

So imagine my amazement when the second we walked in the door piles of novels -- Mary Higgins Clark, Stephen King, etc. – greeted us from both the floor and the table. The few old books included a handful of Harvard Classics, a libretto from the Metropolitan Opera, and four cheap novels from the turn of the century by a no-name author. There were probably a hundred items in all if you count a small box of Harvard classics and a partial set of Annals of America as two. Oh, how I hate when this happens, especially when the sellers are so nice and have two cute dogs and share my liking for the color blue. I hate being the bad guy who says, “No, I’m afraid these won’t work for me.” As always, they were amazed – stunned even -- that their treasures were found lacking. Eric, sensing my anguish, offered them fifty cents apiece for the fiction for store stock, but they declined, figuring they’d sell it themselves online. All I can say is, “Good luck” and I am not being sarcastic. I would bet the house that this will not prove to be a fun new hobby for them.

All the way home I lamented the whole fiasco and tried to analyze how it even happened. In the end I came to the conclusion that it’s all relative. I say older and he thinks they ARE older. Good grief, some of them are twenty years old! I say antiquarian and he thinks, yep, I got some of those too – those Harvard Classics are dynamite. I ask how many volumes there are. He thinks “a lot”. But what really is a lot? This time “a lot” was a hundred, though when pressed earlier he thought it more in the neighborhood of a couple hundred. One time "a lot" turned out to be about a dozen, but that was okay because the owner brought them to the store. And of course I will never forget the one memorable time when “a lot” meant 35,000 volumes. (Oh, to have THAT happen again!)

So what to do? Frankly, I don’t know. In the past I have asked for actual titles, but very often the seller doesn’t know any because the books were Grandpa's and they’re now at Aunt Gladys’ house and she lives the next town over. Even when exact titles are available it can sound promising and still turn out be an utter failure due to condition. Sadly, condition is also a relative thing. I say I need them to be in good to very good condition. They think, well, they smell a little bad, but old books smell bad. Just last week a woman told me that very thing and was confounded to find out that mustiness is not endemic to the species. I think that without alienating the seller before we even connect there’s very little I can do beyond what I’m already doing, which means of course that some days I’ll land in ivy and some days it’ll be scorched earth.

Like it or not, the price of doing business is sometimes having to say no to nice people with cute dogs who share your fondness for the color blue.

Book Acqusition Reframed

The holiday weekend is over and peace reigns again at
Garrison House Books. My oldest daughter, her husband, and the two little guys were here for the weekend, joined by my sister and her husband Sunday night, so we’ve been rockin’ and rollin’ over here! It turns out that Baby’s stage of development makes my enormous glass- topped coffee table a lethal weapon, so I had to bubble wrap the top of it – which, as it turns out, was easier to do than to undo! I wish I had taken a picture of it – it was quite the work of art.

Despite the high hilarity though, orders were severely lacking until late last night when a bunch arrived simultaneously from three sources. Most were for books so old I couldn’t believe I had ever owned such titles, but all proved to have been hiding, so at least there were none of those blaring (I know they don't make noise, but I HEAR noise when I see them) red cancellation dots that cause me to crash and burn on impact, thank God. I did sell two nice titles in the three figure range -- The Nazarene Gospel Restored by Graves and Prodo and The American Bayonet 1776-1964. , both on Advanced Book Exchange.

Overall my equilibrium has much improved, though worry still nibbles around the edges like a pack of silverfish. This is primarily due to the fact that I had an email last night from one of my favorite local sellers who has been in business far longer than my 13 years and he, too, bemoans the sorry state of book acquisition in northeastern Ohio. Add to this a conversation with two local dealers of non-book collectibles who second the emotion and the pack of silverfish could easily grow into a freaking army if I let it. One guy sells jewelry, the other decorative items from the Art Deco period through the sixties, and both say they are working harder than ever to procure less inventory. It seems counter-intuitive that during a bad economy this should be the case, but there you have it. Exacerbating the problem for booksellers is the fact that local libraries allow their sales to be pre-picked and estate sale companies know a lot about a lot, but not much about books and have reached the conclusion that all are worth their weight in platinum. As I am writing this I also just had an email from another local seller I like and respect complaining about -- you got it! -- the difficulty of book acquisition.

Exact quote: "I am, finally, not as optimistic about finding inventory."

Just in case the severity of the problem is not clear, we also have a picker who swings by once a week, but even he is not bringing in the sheaves, as it were. This is a guy capable of dazzling results, but lately he’s left me standing upright with no need for smelling salts. His best offering this summer? A nice three volume set on the history of Lake Shore, Ohio pictured in the photo on my previous post about the bookseller blues. It’s nice enough and I am happy with it, but I am not dazzled and I want very much to BE dazzled. Dazzlement becomes me!

So what to do? What to do? The first thing is definitely not to hang out in the Dark Place visited in my last post. Be proactive! As Professor Hill recommends in The Music Man (my favorite corny Broadway show ever), use the THINK SYSTEM. So I am doing just that and have decided that once Eric is done with all his September shows we need to hit the road. It’s time for the Great American Bookseller Road Trip.

P.S. The photo is of the Lethal Weapon, un-bubbled -- shot from above onto the glass which extends beyond the black frame and has angled corners. A gold star for anyone who spots my girl Emily D.