Cooking Up Change

(Okay, let’s see how long it takes me to recreate the blog post I just finished and was ready to upload when I accidently hit the delete button with my elbow. On the clock – ready, set,GO!)

Technically, I’m on vacation.  That is, if vacation means sitting in front of the computer swilling black coffee while rain drums relentlessly against the window pane. My books are offline and will be until Monday, but I am working like a speed demon continuing the job of weeding and pruning my online inventory. I began this last year, as you may recall, but got distracted by buying the collection-on-the-truck and getting ready for the book fair. Today, however, I picked up the pace in earnest due to a few events of the past two weeks and a couple realizations.

The first thing to dawn on me (again) is that the prices of even nice books are being set by the people who know the least about them. Of course many established dealers (me included) have old stock that’s seriously inflated but, that aside, some of these new prices are still truly ludicrous. Having just finished the Akron book fair it’s clearer than ever that online pricing is crazy on both ends of the spectrum. Anymore even the better sites are so strewn with shoddy listings the pages look like fire sales. It seems to me these days that quality books don’t even belong on the third-party  sites anymore. Their  emphasis is on pricing – never mind condition, special attributes, research etc.. All they care about is moving the product. I’ve decided that unless a collectible book is extremely specialized it will never be introduced to the internet except on my own site. As hard as it is to get anything good these days I’m much less inclined to fork over high commissions on  three-figure books.

My second epiphany is this: to stay profitable I need to be ruthless in dumping old stock. There’s no point in keeping a listing for which I cannot reasonably expect to get $20 and I don’t even want too many of those. With rent to pay on multiple sites, commissions which often are based on the purchase price INCLUDING shipping, sites which refuse to pay a decent shipping price (I’ve ditched all of those), acquisition problems, escalating prices for inferior books at sales, and the cost of mylar jackets and shipping materials, it’s impossible to win on the low end even if I discount my time. Besides, the only truly controllable thing on the list is supplies and that’s where I draw the line. I know I’m on the very high end when it comes to time and money spent on repairs and wrapping materials, but that’s a choice I will not compromise. Being the bookseller I want to be requires more of me, not less.

I haven’t been out to any traditional book sales since last fall, so I’d sort of forgotten how they can make me as sour as an old pickle. This time even my favorite library accomplished  it. The night of the preview for this usually good event we were third in line which was great except for one thing --  five seconds before the sale began the lights went out and it was canceled. That meant  we had to haul back up there the next morning (far) in a monsoon, but at least we landed  fifth in line. For awhile. After the scanner stampede not so much. It didn’t matter – I know that, but I am fed up to the eyeballs with rude, crass behavior which I can hardly relate to this profession. We ended up being  the only people in the specials room, though a fat lot of good that did. The books were fewer in number, not nearly as desirable as in the past, and priced much higher than normal. I understand that the Friends need to make hay out of whatever they get, but that didn’t mean I loaded up. I bought just a couple things there and found one very good ephemera item in the regular room. On the way home we bought five books at an estate sale, one of which was better than the best from the sale.

Onward then to Bookstock last Sunday, a Michigan charity sale that can go either way. One glance and it was obvious that both donations and quality were way down while prices held steady. But that’s not what got me all riled up. The crowd was not nearly as big as normal and it seemed that most of those wielding scanners were newbies. Not only were they champion sprinters, but had no compunctions about  mowing down competitors. On the bright side though, the feeding frenzy was short-lived  once the reality of $4 (and higher) hardbacks hit like a tidal wave. They couldn’t fathom such a thing, especially after they’d paid $20 to get in! The good part was that after they’d rummaged through the tables and stirred up the stock they left behind a first American edition of The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook from 1954 which I found  lying face-up on a table.

But here’s some examples of what we overheard in line. It might help you understand why I am so disheartened by the state of online bookselling in 2013.

Exhibit A: “I just stick my  earphones in my ears and listen to my music while I scan. Easiest damn job I ever had.”

Exhibit B: “I travel all over the country buying books. The worst people  live in Connecticut.” 

When asked how long he’d been in business this one  replied,  “Six months, but  I’ll tell you, I’m fast – in and out. All I want is 50 good books today and I’m gone.”

Hmmmmm. Really? Define “good.”

But there you have it -- the state of electronic bookselling in 2013. As much as I detest it maybe in a preverse way this stuff does me good. It’ll either change my online game or I’ll go offline permanently and sell only at the mall and the book fairs.

Either way it beats a state of stasis.

(P.S. it took an hour.)

Fair Trade

 

 The last time I wrote I was in a smoking hot lather over the breaker from the estate sale and the remnants of what were once gorgeous books. But the past couple weeks have been so busy getting ready for the Akron Antiquarian Book Fair and then – finally!—exhibiting my books at the fair this past weekend that my mood has elevated considerably. Friday and Saturday, in fact, I floated around the John S. Knight Center like an iridescent bubble. Never mind that my feet were screaming from having worn heels for two days and flying around that cavernous space countless times in them -- I was in book heaven! Not only did we sell a lot of stuff, both books and ephemera, but we also sold some pricey things, including the $700 Frank Lloyd Wright portfolio of 100 drawings pictured below. That one departed first thing out of the gate which gave me a few momentary qualms until I realized that the reason it had been under the bed for so long is because I wanted it to sell at the fair. It would have been a nightmare to ship and  of course the buyer would have been from  Outer Mongolia which would have incurred postage so high a mortgage would have been required to pay it. All it took was the mental image of me lugging that thing to the post office, beautiful as it may be, and – zap! – no more angst.

 

For the last three years at the fair I enjoyed the company of my booth neighbor, Jim Best, The Bookman of Kent, but this year a bum knee kept him from setting up. He did show up to man the front desk and give his talk about the worth of old books, but he couldn’t possibly set up and break down a booth even with help. I thought it would be weird to have a vast gaping space next to us, but as it turned out, we didn’t have one. Two very charming young people who opened a book and antiques store in Akron four months ago had the confidence,  knowledge, and  style to set up an eye-catching booth featuring both books and what is known in the antiques trade as "smalls". I have a hunch they did well too. Eric and I between us bought enough stuff from them to have paid the lion’s share of their booth rent. Of course we wanted to give them a boost, but we also genuinely liked what they had, so it was a win/win. Their business is Books and Bits and I have a good feeling about it. Young people like those two are what we need, not only in our aging organization, but also in the book business as a whole. I so hope we can nurture them to take an active role once they get in the groove with their new store.

Speaking of young people, one of my best sales was to a young person, probably in her early 30’s. She selected a $125 book about the history of Cleveland and a VERY rare item that's a cross between a book and ephemera about the Cleveland Discount Building priced at $175 and asked me if I could do better if she bought both. I easily lopped $25 off the Cleveland book, but gulped at the idea of taking less for the rare one. While I was thinking about it she began telling me how much she loves old books and paper and how it’s her goal to build a significant collection of Cleveland history. Call me a pushover, but just like THAT, everything in me shouted, “DO IT!” Young collectors are the lifeblood  of this busines and there standing right in front of me was one who recognized something special when she saw it and really, REALLY wanted it. I discounted it by another $25 and made her day. But you know what? It made mine too.

 As if that wasn’t enough warm fuzzy for the day a second one came along about a half hour later. Last year I bought a four volume leather bound  set  of Don Quixote published in 1795 in Dublin, Ireland. They were very nicely kept and I really loved them, so I set them back for the fair. But once again my heart kind of sank when a man picked them up and headed in my direction. Maybe I really didn’t want to sell them after all!

“These are SO great,” the would-be buyer said. “II’s my birthday and I want to get them for a birthday present.”

I gazed at him and immediately recognized “that look” – the exact one I no doubt had  the day I bought them --  and a sudden rush of happiness enveloped me. One again, it was okay. I put them in a bag and wished him a Happy Birthday.

I’ve thought about all this for a couple days now and I think it helps explain my growing disinterest in selling online. Of course I will still be doing it, but for me it’s about the people. Nothing can compare to seeing that delight I know so well myself and knowing that my work made it happen. It’s also knowing that the books or paper I just sold will be appreciated and cared for.

In these electronic days that’s no small matter. I need what I do to have meaning too -- and, thankfully, the fair reminded me that it does.

(First picture was taken in my booth. I am sitting in the foreground with my back to the camera)

Breaking Up

 

My friend Nancy informed me Sunday that I have not written a blog post in a MONTH. I feel terrible about it too, but this is book fair season and I am on the publicity committee for the Akron book fair which is just two scary weeks away. In addition to doing more things than you want to read about, I have been trying to bring the dormant NOBS Facebook page back to life. I did make some moderate gains fairly quickly and we’re now at a point where it’s starting to breathe on its own. But here’s the kicker – I’ve been performing CPR  for three weeks and have more “likes” on it than I have on my own  page which I’ve been babying  for two YEARS. But let’s not go there, okay? It’s too depressing.

I’ve been thinking of you guys (if any of you remain) because of something that happened last weekend. I’ve told you many tales of various estate sales, but never have I even brushed up against this topic which was brought to my attention by a sale I’ll still be talking about when I’m in the home for dotty booksellers.The ad in the paper did not mention books, but did state that there would be a lot of vintage prints. I’m not really a print dealer, but I have sold some in the past, have some in inventory, and figured a selection of nice botanicals would be excellent for the antiques mall. Not much good book stock has come my way of late, so I felt compelled to give it a go.

Immediately inside  the door I spotted tables full of prints all packed in banker’s boxes, but with enough room to easily flip through them. Since there were so many I took a detour over to a side table where I found and bought two turn-of-the-century photo albums, one a gorgeous celluloid and the other velvet with raised metal grapes, vines and leaves on the cover. Both had shiny gilt edges, working clasps, and lots of photographs, both cabinet size and carte de visite. Just as I finished getting those written up and began seriously browsing the botanicals one of the estate sale women came over and asked if I’d seen the books yet.

I told her I didn’t  know there were any books whereupon she lead me into a room which at first glance dazzled me -- and I am not using that word lightly. Antiquarian books of uncommon beauty graced every one of the tables against the wall, many lined up in a row, others lying down face out.

“Oh, these are  beautiful!” I exclaimed. “Perfect!” What was also perfect was the fact that only one other person was in the room looking at them.

But as soon as the worker departed the one other person turned to me and said, “Every one of these books is compromised. All those prints out there …”

Came from the books on the table. I knew it before he finished the thought.  Their owner had been a breaker who bought the books with the idea that the individual plates were worth more than the book as a whole. There they were – The Apples of New York, The  Pears of New York, a fine binding book about butterflies, others about birds and flowers … Terrible. Truly, truly terrible. Every books was in shambles. The guy who alerted me turned out to be a seller with whom I spent a lovely sale sharing the bounty of a great home library last fall. We recognized each other and suddenly were  two mourners keening at the grave.

“There must be three thousand dollars worth of books here if they were whole,” he said.

I agreed.

“He probably sold the best of the prints and what’s out there is what he couldn’t get rid of.”

I agreed with that too. Certainly not all plates in the same book have equal value. In fact, later when I finally looked at them it was clear that most  didn’t pack the  graphic punch I’d seen in other copies of some of those books. My seller friend had nailed it – the guy sold the best and this was the rest. So. Was it worth the desecration? Financially I don’t know. Ethically? I would say not. Of course it can and, will be, argued that if you buy a book it’s yours to do with whatever you like. True enough. But this is also the point where I trip over the notion of absolute ownership. To me a finely made  book is a living thing. It’s the heart and soul of the author, illustrator, designer and publisher as well as of the continuum of people who read it, loved it, gave it to someone, treasured it for years, hoped someone else would enjoy it too. So, no, from that perspective it doesn't even skirt ethical. If the books were badly damaged it would be an entirely different matter. In that case to salvage the plates would actually be heroic. But I can find no saving grace in  tearing  up exquisite books for personal gain.

Later, while I flipped through the boxes of prints I thought of something that happened years ago when I was a fairly new seller. I had a modern reprint  – a very nice one – of Peirre Redoute’s  The Most Beautiful Flowers. A guy called on the phone one afternoon and ordered it. While I was taking his information he casually remarked that he intended to break the binding and sell the plates.

“Did you just tell me you’re a breaker?” Of course he did which is why I put my pen down. “Because if so I am not selling this book.”

“Guess I shouldn’t have told you then.”

“Guess you shouldn’t have,” I replied. “But I’m glad you did.”

A  hundred dollar sale bit the dust that day, but only temporarily. Eventually the book found another buyer who appreciated it for what it was. And yet to be totally honest, while l was thinking about this I spotted a couple nice fashion plates in one of the boxes. It crossed my mind that since the deed was already done somebody might as well enjoy the spoils.  I’m not sure I really believe that though. Maybe I do, maybe I don’t, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to directly reward the breaker.

So, in the end, I passed.

P.S. The photo above is of a portfolio of prints designed for framing.

An Altering Experience

 

Sales are slow everywhere so I gave myself over to the lure of art this weekend in hopes it would save me from the obsessive inner voice which tells me repeatedly that the bookseller gig is up. Though as I told my friend Mary on Friday, to hear me tell it it’s BEEN up for sixteen years, yet somehow I’m still here inspite of it!  At any rate, I headed for the basement yesterday morning with a small damaged book in hand – A Study of Poetry by Mathew Arnold who is perhaps best known for his hauntingly beautiful, but ultimately despairing poem Dover Beach which laments World War I.

I only remember the last stanza, so here goes:

Ah, love, let us be true to one another!

For the world which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams

So, various, so beautiful, so new

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

If THAT wouldn’t convince you to stick your head in the oven I certainly don’t know what would. And yet I chose my images for the book in an almost meditative state with those very words looping endlessly through my head. I’ve tried making an altered book many times, but every time I failed and gave up, anguished to the soul over my own shortcomings. But now that the Altered Book Group of Cleveland is coming to the book fair I so much wanted to make a small book as part of the door prize and now – a miracle! – I have. (lots of pictures below)

I think the fact that the book I chose to use was about poetry helped me a great deal. Almost right away I latched on to an  odd, random memory, part of which isn’t even mine. In November, 2003 Eric and I took a getaway trip to Hocking Hills in southern Ohio not far from Athens. If you asked me for a memory of it I would have told you about the charming cottage in the woods, the candlelight dinners and the spectacular jacuzzi. But from my viewpoint on the basement floor I saw the image of birch trees and immediately transported myself to southern Ohio in the dark of winter's night. Though Eric and I hiked several miles there one day and every night made the trip by flashlight from cottage to restaurant, I truly don’t recall seeing any birch trees. I also remembered standing at an echoing cave drunk with the beauty of a circle of young Mennonites singing Amazing Grace, a heavenly chorus of young voices calling out in the wilderness. So clear was this image that it took me several minutes to realize that it never happened. Well, not to me anyway. It’s my sister-in-law’s memory, not mine. Yet somehow the poem I wrote in response, in part, derived  from its imprint.

The other thing that came to me as I sat on the floor filtering through hundreds, if not a thousand, images, was a color, a persistent, deep, glowing purple. Ah, yes. THAT I knew. It was a reminder that there was a time when I seriously practiced meditation. Whenever my chattering mind – the Buddhists call it “monkey mind” – finally settled down I would slip into a heightened state of consciousness,  announced  always by an intense purple light burning behind my eyes. The color was so brilliant it seemed  like a purple flame. Endlessly it rushed forward, receded into a deep black void, and then exploded again in a burst of molten amethyst. To this day I associate the color purple with the stirrings of the soul. The purple page too sprang almost effortlessly to life.

I tell you all of this because it was such bliss to make this little book. You’d think I would want to keep it since there may never be another, and certainly not ever one that captures these precise two threads that connect me to my past. But I made it to go into the gift basket for the door prize and that still feels right to me. Not only is it a fitting memento of the 31^st annual Antiquarian Book and Paper Show, but it feels good to pass on something made from so much joy.

Fair Work

It’s cold in northeastern Ohio today. Even the ducks agree, though why it’s comfortable to dangle duck feet in freezing water is one of nature’s mysteries. And yet that’s exactly  what the feathered ones are doing as I look outside the back door. The lake is a mirror of ice except for two liquid ovals, one larger than the other, but both resembling a duck convention. I guess it’s the duck equivalent of the  main show and the  shadow show, a thought which reminds me of the New York City ABAA book fair and “the shadow show” held at a different location during the same weekend. Dealers in town for the big event can rush over to the shadow show, load up  on goodies, and then rush back to the Armory in time for the main attraction. With any luck they can also cash in on a morning’s shopping.

Okay, okay, I KNOW. I have book fairs on the brain these days. But the annual Akron Antiquarian Book and Paper Show  will be held at the end of March this year which means I’m in high gear with planning and PR. The date of the show fluctuates with the Easter weekend, so this year we have less time to pull  it together. I hinted sometime back that we’d had an awesome idea which tanked, consequently forcing us to fall back on Plan B. But of course even Plan B (which I personally love more than Plan A) couldn’t be counted on without risk of a later meltdown. Except – drumroll please! – there will be no meltdown because we actually managed to pull it off. Yesterday I got the good news that The Altered Book Group of Cleveland will exhibit their gorgeous artwork at the fair and be on hand to demonstrate and talk to fairgoers about this sometimes controversial art.

Personally, (and this comes from a woman who wouldn’t give a nickel for an e-gadget) I am waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over the controversial part. Our hired  PR guy likes it though because of the potential buzz, so I’m rolling with it in case he can squeeze some action out of it. But really. In today’s crazy e-book world people are hauling books to the recycling center by the boxload. My bookseller buddy Andrea who has an open store in Akron finds piles of them outside  the door of her shop every morning. So if an artist wants to take some common or damaged book and transform it into something more than itself far be it from me to have a hissy fit over it. I love using found items for my own little projects, so in my view  the altered book may well be the ultimate  found object. An altered book can be beautiful, astonishing, and/or thought provoking, but each one  is made of something found even if it’s “just” wisdom, grace, and raw talent. I saw one at a gallery that turned a religious book  into a strong statement about violence against women. Whether you liked it, or you didn’t, you certainly never forgot it and part of that was the creative way found items were used to express the intensity of the artist’s feelings.

Ever since last summer when I spoke at Highland Square Library where I  met  a group of young adults who blazed with excitement over the book as object I have felt as though we are turning an exciting corner in the future of the book. Oh, I think traditional books will still be important to a greater or lesser degree (I fervently hope so anyway),  but the book as art is already becoming a revolution. Artists and writers experiment not only with altered books, but with books started from scratch. They make handmade paper, test new  bindings, write stories and poems, and keep handmade journals with or without  decorated pages. But like medieval monks gilding and illuminating vellum pages with the colors of the earth’s glories today’s artists turn the ordinary “stuff” of 21st century life  – even digital images – into something extraordinary.

And THAT’s why I wanted the Altered Book Group of Cleveland to be at the show this year.

P.S.Thank you to my two new followers. I just found you today!

Two Booksellers and A Truck

As I write this my garage is packed with plastic bins of books, all bought last Monday from a semi-truck. I promised I’d tell the story of how they got there, so here goes. It’s not especially dramatic, but then again I never in fifteen and three-quarter years in the business bought books from a truck, so there IS at least a novelty factor. Of course the day we made the deal was probably the “noveltiest”. Retrieval day a week later not so much. It’s January in northeastern Ohio which means the air felt like the breath of a Nordic war god huffing and puffing to blow down Britain. By the time we transferred 85 plastic bins of books from the semi-truck to our own truck my toes felt (and looked)like ten frozen grapes. I’m not complaining. Well, maybe I’m complaining a little after climbing four giant ice-slicked steps into the semi, especially given the fact that the second to the last step required a gargantuan two-foot haul to the top!I think I’m entitled to at least a small whine over that. I'm not exactly an Amazonian woman.

But getting back to the beginning – a couple weeks ago an attorney came into our store and inquired as to whether we would be interested in a semi-truck full of books. Eric is game for anything. He’d retrieve books from a donkey cart stuck in a Central American rain forest. So of course he told her we’d love to see them. I, on the other hand, responded with a mixture of excitement and skepticism. Before you tell me it’s not possible to be both excited and negative at the same time, I assure you I wasn’t. I see-sawed back and forth between the two emotions for three days. Depending on who I was talking to it sounded either fun and fabulous or stupid and a waste of time. Interestingly enough, It didn’t turn out to be either.

I don’t know what it is about us. Whenever there are a lot of books ranging in condition and subject from superb to landfill located in a less than charming location the Universe sends them to us stamped Express Mail. This is the fourth time I can think of that we encountered a hoarder situation, but I’ve also probably repressed a couple minor ones. Anyway, the previous owner had the semi-truck in the backyard so when the house got too crowded with the various other things he collected he stored the books in plastic tubs, stashed them in the truck, and there they stayed until he died. His interests were pretty varied, but if pinned to the wall I’d say the primary ones were these: art glass lamps, collectible canes, music and musical instruments, horses, horse racing, book collecting, gambling, guns, antique and vintage cars, home building and, oddly enough, interior design

.The good thing about all of this was the fact that the very best books – and there actually were some – had managed to escape confinement in the truck, though the truck itself was less problem than the way it had been packed. Several good titles landed in the dumpster because their owner had stood them upright in the bin and crammed many more upright at a diagonal around them. Several ended up so warped you could have used them to carry in kindling. Fortunately, we had access to a large on-site dumpster which the attorney understood we would need, but this also meant that every bin had to be opened, winnowed, and repacked. We went from 130 bins down to 84 in five hours.As you can see form the photo above, we have them home and neatly stacked. I’ve already been through not quite half (there are some more down at other the end of the garage by the doors too). But I’m in this operation deep enough now to know that despite the junk and the low end stuff I would never buy individually we will still do fine. Primarily this is because we have a unique three-tiered situation which makes such buys work for us. The best items (which right now amount to just two bins) will go online. The next tier will go to the mall and the rest to the store. I wished on an entire constellation of stars that every book in every box or bin would end up being mine so I can breathe easier for a few months about inventory. But clearly it’s not going to happen.

In order to get the goodies, however few in number, I apparently need to WORK.

P.S. Blogger is still not acepting pictures normally. I had to WORK to get his one here and was reluctant to push my luck with more. So if, and when, it gets fixed I'll show you some of the good books.

Old School Booksellers Still Talking .... PART II

It’s been a crazy week, as we bought  somewhere in the neighborhood of 40-60 tubs of books off a semi-truck. I know – it sounds pretty wacky – but I’ll explain it the next time I post. Meanwhile, back in Sheila Markham’s absorbing book A Book of Booksellers; Conversations with the Antiquarian Book Trade I managed to cull yet more interesting comments from booksellers past and present (mostly past). I loved this book which is why I roared through it as fast as  I did, but what you’re getting here is only a microcosm of the wisdom it holds – a handful of crumbs instead of the whole bag of Doritos.

Peter Miller is a man after my own heart. When he said “The look of a bookshop is very important to me. And over the years I’ve got Spelman’s the way I like it –an open fire, pictures on the walls,  and the books standing up like little soldiers”  my heart did a somersault. Oh, how I would love a fireplace in my booth at the antiques mall, but lacking one, I’m still all fuss and feathers every week when I go there with fresh stock. My antiques dealer friend Darwin teasingly asked me once, “Tess, are you a booth decorator, or a bookseller?” The answer is I’m both. I want the books to be irresistible in both appearance and content, but I also want the space to dust off the reader’s worries, mop up the stress,  and provide a tiny oasis of beauty in our upside-down world.

If there were a vote for most fun seller in this book Michael Hollander wins with a Grand Slam.  Here’s his take on book fairs: “Somehow we’ve got to get a new generation of collectors, and publicity is the obvious key. The traditional means of mass communication is of course television, but who can afford it? So you have to think of ways of making news. How about getting a book dealer to immolate himself outside the British Library on the eve of a bookfair? I’m sure I could select a candidate.”

Wednesay evening will find me in Akron at a committee meeting for the 2013 Akron Antiquarian fair, so believe it when I say  this one resonated big time. Notice the reference to television in the quote instead of social media. Clearly, aging collectors were a big problem even then, which of course means that the heat’s REALLY on now! We have two basic choices --  think outside the box or pull a rabbit FROM the box. Either way, it ain’t easy, but if we want the show to go on we better build a better fair this year than the better fair we built last year. Like it or not, it’s not enough to haul in the books and prop open the door anymore. These days it takes a  trick monkey and a soundtrack.

The more I get to know booksellers the more obvious it becomes that there’s more than one way to sell books though. John Walwyn-Jones expressed this truth best with this line, “If I have any strength, I think it’s my ability to look at a book and find new angles of interest. There are 101 ways to sell a book.” Doesn’t that just beg to be a book title – 101 Ways to Sell a Book? The key words in John’s quote are “look at a book.” Not glance at a book, but LOOK at a book. I fancy myself pretty good at that too, but it does take time.

Of course just like the myriad ways of selling a single book there’s myriad ways of selling ALL books --  retail, wholesale, online, in stores, at fairs, at flea markets, by catalog, on the street, by appointment, by whimsy, or some combination thereof. And that doesn’t even count the various techniques, including my favorite – value added. I’ve mentioned this before, but since I effectively  did it over Christmas I’ll mention it again. I had an antiquarian title called Nostrums and Quackeries about the patent medicine scams of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. I also had a stack of trade cards of the period advertising these various snake oils. So I picked out a couple cards for companies mentioned in the book, laid them in, and – voila! – a book that was good got better because it now contained a tangibile REAL value that illustrates and informs  the text.

As much as I enjoy stuff like the above though, longevity in the trade is my biggest goal. So when Charles Traylen  said, “As for the future, I’ll go on bookselling ‘til I drop” my respnse was immediate and heartfelt.

Me too, Charles.

Me too.

 (Sorry for the lack of photos. Blogger has a known problem at this time. The browse button is missing on the  page for uploading pictures. Fortunately, this post doesn't really have to have one. but if it gets fixed I'll add one.)

Old School Booksellers Speak

I can’t believe how quickly I am tearing through my eighteen new Christmas books. So far I’ve read The End of Your Life Book Club which is truly wonderful, a novel called The Color of Tea, which is just okay, and Red House: Being a Mostly Accurate Account of New England’s Oldest Lived-in House which I could not put down given my abiding love for old houses. Now I am reading A Book of Booksellers, Conversations with the Antiquarian Book Trade by Sheila Markham. I started it last night and am already on page 103. I didn’t realize when I asked for it for Christmas that it was primarily about the British trade, but the oversight hasn’t diluted my enthusiasm an iota. The book is a compendium of interviews with various dealers, some of whom have since died. The interviews are rather old anyway, as some of these people died in the 90’s and the book came out in 2007. What I’m enjoying most is hearing these seasoned sellers say the very things I’m thinking right now even though time and inequitable experience divide us.

 As you know, I  gnash and rend endlessly over the difficulty of finding books for stock. Turns out I’m not alone, as evidenced  by this quote from Peter Eaton, “I was talking to the librarian of Rochdale, where they had a statue of Hitler in the town square and people used to throw books at Hitler for a waste paper drive. The librarian picked out one or two incunabula like that. There were a lot of pickings in those days.”

Simon Gough also shared my feelings about booksellers when right out of the chute he declared , “All booksellers are lunatics.” Of course we are – why else would educated people stand in lines turning their toes purple in  sub-zero temperatures to buy other people’s stuff in hopes of finding a treasure amongst the weeds when they could have a “REAL” job with  health insurance and paid vacation? I prefer, however, to think  our lunacy is ignited by our white-hot passion for books and the pleasure they bring to life.

Another sentiment I think today’s booksellers would give a nod to is Sam Fogg’s assertion – “I enjoy being my own man.” Amen to that! I enjoy being my own woman too. I love the solitude of bookselling, the autonomy, the scholarship, even the tightrope on which it forces us to dance. We’re  it – masters of our own destiny. It’s scary I suppose, but not really to me. I love sorting it all out, figuring out what to do next, reinventing myself. -- all of it except the dreaded Ohio sales tax! But even that is nothing more than the price I pay for the best job in the world. (I know – I complain bitterly  twice a year about having to send it electronically and of course I'll l be doing so again in a couple weeks!)

I’m not sure when exactly Anthony Rota made his comment, but it certainly has a déjà vu quality: “With the recession and so much redundancy  there will be more small firms starting up – maybe collectors selling their books, either from choice or necessity -- the tendency for one-man firms will certainly continue …”  Sound familiar? Absolutely! When the recession hit hard in 2008 the number of amateur sellers wielding scanners exploded. Many have come and gone since then , but some have also hung on and new ones keep joining  the ranks, though likely in smaller numbers. I wonder what Rota thinks about bookselling in Great Britain thse days and if it’s the same as the cattle call which has become the Great American Library Sale with  it’s armies of  galloping scanners!

A comment that’s  pretty funny and one that I agree with on the days that my computer is throwing temper tantrums was made by Eric Korn who said,  “I’m reluctant to see computers  in a prominent position in a bookshop. It’s rather like turkeys cultivating cranberries.” Ah, yes, but those turkeys have an amazing ability to cultivate book sales, do they not?

And then there’s Sally Edgecombe, a woman after my own heart. There were not many women IN the book trade back then and those who were had to jockey to keep their heads above the roiling sea of testosterone. But Sally said this, “Apart from the customers, I suppose my other great love is  buying. It’s rather like gambling and I find it very exciting!” Oh yeah, Sally – sing it girl!

How many times have I hovered over a book waiting to see if my internal "bookdar" would shove me to the check-out line or back to square one? And  how many times did it fail to kick in either way and leave me with only my own wits to make a decision?  As every bookseller knows it’s in this gray field  of consciousness that good books are lost and duds are carted home. But oh, the thrill of it all! Just last week I sold a book I might have  told you about -- A Complete Dictionary of Dry Goods and the History of Silk, Cotton, Linen, Wool and Other Fibrous Substances Including a Full Explanation of the Modern Processes of Spinning, Dyeing and Weaving, 1892. Try as I might, the arrow on my internal guage didn’t budge much either way. I was standing in front of a cabinet next to the door in cramped quarters three feet from the check-out line and people going in and out and all I had was a mild hunch that it might be worthy. It was – to the tune of $150.

I used the term “old school” in the title and throughout this post on purpose. It’s faintly derogatory when used by someone who believes that “that was then and this is now.” Of course that WAS then and this IS now, but here’s the thing – the past can inform the present if we listen. I will be sharing more old school booksellers' comments as I wend my way through the pages of Shelia Markham’s delightful book. I look forward to it.

A New Year In the Book Biz

 

I’m happy to report that I’m in a much better frame of mind since I last wrote. Christmas snuck up on me December 29^th when our house filled to the rafters with family and friends. Because both of our daughters live out of state we had to delay the family celebration this year to accommodate work schedules. As you know, after Newtown I thought for sure the Christmas spirit had eluded me this year, but  miraculously it hadn’t. In fact, when it finally showed up it brought with it a bit of wisdom. Christmas, I learned,  is not about the date on the calendar. Christmas is when people you love gather under your roof watching football, eating endless cookies, sharing dinner, opening presents, chasing kids and laughing as though all’s right with the world – which in such sublime moments it IS.

Of course with Christmas delayed this year New Year’s practically collided with it. We stayed home New Year’s Eve, had a nice dinner, and read our new Christmas books. I got an astounding eighteen – yeah, really -- EIGHTEEN books, a handful of which are in the photo above along with the Pomegranate and Green Tea  given to me by my  oldest grandson who just turned nine and is a gift giver of the highest order. I even woke up long enough to watch the ball drop in Times Square.

New Year’s Day, however,  found us at an auction with the deepest pocketed people in three counties. Everything I wanted passed me by, including a turn-of-the-century game so fabulous that the thick edges of the folding board looked like the spine of a fine book when closed. It had the spinner, the pieces, the original box and even the directions which were pristine. I bid to $130, but it sold at $275. The next thing I tried for was a short stack of early Harley motorcycle magazines from the 20’s and 30’s. I went to $250, but THEY went to somebody else for an eye-popping $650! Our antiques dealer friend Darwin was there and invited us to mend our wounds over dinner that evening, so I made some homemade gingerbread and we headed to Akron for pork and sauerkraut with wine and my dessert. Whatever red wine it was he had I strongly recommend  as an antidote to both pricey auctions and fiscal cliffs! (Turns out it was Spellbound, Petite Sirah 2010, California)

Another cool thing that happened over the holidays  is a trade I made with my friend Cheryl with whom I reconnected  last year (or was it the year before?). Cheryl and I were friends back in the 70’s, but lost track of each other when I moved to Medina. We reconnected decades later in the parking lot at Buehler’s grocery store at River Styx in Medina .Cheryl can sew anything – I mean the woman could make a tuxedo for a gorilla -- but instead she is making fun aprons and pillows which she sells on etsy. Cheryl made a transfer of my website’s logo seen at  www.garrisonhousebooks.com and – voila! – my girl in the red chair was immortalized on a pillow. In exchange I gave her  a book -- The Sewing Book; Containing Complete Instructions in Sewing and Simple Garment-Making  for Children in the Primary and Grammar Grades, published by Butterick in 1913. Because the drawings of the kids in their spiffy outfits are in the public domain  she can now resurrect them with a modern spin. To read her take on what happened in our crazy trade go to her blog http://csturgeo.blogspot.com/

 

Today I’m back to work and glad for it. This was not the best year I’ve had as a bookseller, but it was still  a good one with online sales chugging right along without ebay and alibris both of whom  I shed ( sort of like a snake’s skin )– ebay in 2010 and alibris in the summer of 2012. In fact, I had a better Christmas this year than I did last. The antiques mall performed well too over the Christmas holiday and it, too, exceeded last year. So I’m charged up and ready to move into my 16^th year of  bookselling. I am always tempted to make resolutions, but they have a sneaky way of both inflating and spawning even more resolutions which I also inflate. I can't just say I will increase my inventory. No, I have to vow to  buy collections so dazzling they’d blind the average seller. Nor can I say that I will sell more books in the New Year. Nope. I've gotta sell 'em  at a clip that would scare amazon.  I can't even promise to write more frequently on my blog. Somehow it always turns into "I will  effortlessly turn out a blog post A DAY so captivating  that my followers will be numbered in legions.” And there goes any semblance of a lasting New Year's resolution!

So this year I’m not making any resolutions. I’m just going to work hard, learn more than I know now, and gratefully do what I love best – which is exactly what I've done ever since I entered the book biz.

 

Searching for Christmas

Where, I wonder, is Christmas? Somehow it’s gone, though it never really kicked in for me this year.The fact that I was late to catch the holiday spirit isn’t particularly significant in itself because every year I am a dervish in high-spin, trying to balance work and the responsibilities of “making” Christmas for my family. But this year is different.This year Newtown happened.

Last Sunday after four days of self-imposed confinement  Eric coerced me into joining the real world for the second time since the slaughter of the lambs, first to go to the Medina Flea Market and then Christmas shopping and to dinner at Macaroni Grill. I would be lying if I didn’t admit that it perked me up some. But the other half of the truth is this -- I didn’t stay perked for long and I am not perky now. There aren’t enough sandbags in all of Connecticut to keep the anguish of Newtown inside its borders. And that’s how it should be. It’s our job to feel the pain of the parents, the terror of the children, the anguish of forever. It’s more than our job actually. It’s our privilege, our gift, our hope for the world. I suppose it's true that sorrow cannot  be measured on a scale, but the one thing I know for sure is that it’s a shared weight.

On our way out of town on Sunday afternoon a billboard caught my eye. It was planted in the yard of the Seventh Day Adventist Church on Rte 18 and on it were two stark words, white against mournful black-- "Jesus wept."  YES! Oh, yes. Yes.The word resonated, reverberated, richoted throughout my being. Of course He did. God would weep. How could He not when such an obscenity struck the most innocent and vulnerable amongst us? And yet ever since Newtown, in the name of God, some have argued that what happened there was retribution, the wrath of a God of mighty and fearsome vengeance. I know I should dig deep and find some kind of forgiveness for that, but I think my forgiveness bin is pretty much empty right now. It takes an incredible hardness of heart, a pomposity, a shameful showmanship to argue that God would strike down babies for the “sins of the fathers.” I don’t care if these self-proclaimed messengers  disagree with me on evolution, gay marriage, or anything else. But don’t, please DON’T, tell me that God (whom I do believe in, by the way) would  ever entertain such a revolting thought. To say so is blasphemy. Pure and simple.

For the record, I do know something about what it feels like when Evil finds your child. We were lucky the day Evil came calling if there is anything lucky about having your child abducted by a gunman. It happened to one of our daughters when she was in college. Somehow, against all odds, she broke free of him even though he forced her into her car in the blackness of night and made her drive to an ATM while he held a gun to the back of her head. By the time we knew it had happened it was over. But relief was short-lived because Evil always leaves a calling card. Always. For us it was  a heavy gunnysack marked with two words scary enough to turn your hair as white as the deadly oleander.  I suppose it could be argued that we  didn’t HAVE to unleash “What if”. But of course we did – many times. We did it then. We did it later. And I did it again  after Newtown.  But never, ever, not for one single second, then or now, did we blame God for the acts of a madman.

Still, and all, Christmas eludes us this year. We decorated our tree, but not in velvet splendor like last year. This tree is traditional, plain, festooned  with a  paper star, a bread dough replica of our oldest daughter when she was little, two little photos of two little girls, a shiny green globe held on by a diaper pin, a Hallmark ornament that says Baby’s First Christmas, and a white plastic heart ornament bought for me by my oldest grandson at the Santa Shop at school.

Will Christmas come this year? If so, when? How? Will it come in a rush of noise and excitement when our house fills to the rafters with family? Or will it come in the strains of a carol, or  a sky full of stars?  Will it come at all? I don’t know. I think it will.

I hope.

 

Good Gifts

 

I’ve been feeling a bit downhearted about my blog due to all the technical  problems with blogger these days. As you may know, the last paragraph of my most recent post turned blue and was virtually invisible unless you clicked the mouse to highlight it. No sooner did that pop up than I got a message from a reader saying that my Halloween post  (Lighter and Brighter) was  one long paragraph. I went over to have a look  and sure enough – it had morphed into a giant rectangle of words. I fixed it with the one and only html command I know and it was fine when I clicked off, but it didn’t stay that way. Fifteen minutes later  the same reader contacted me again to report that it now had paragraphs, but ended abruptly in mid-sentence and appeared to have parts missing. It did, and for all I know, still does.

I can’t bear to look at it or at any of the others, so I have no idea how much havoc it caused. But here’s the thing. I was wrapping books this morning and it occurred to me that more than usual are Christmas gifts this holiday. I did not put much stock in the Christmas season this year when it comes to people buying used and/or antiquarian books as gifts, so this was rather an interesting  observation. Immediately I wanted to run upstairs and talk to you about it. But of course  the only way I could  do that is to let go of my miserable blogger problems and  have a little faith.

So here’s me.

Having a little (micro little) faith.

A couple years ago I tore my rotator cuff when I tangled my foot in the leg of my capri- length pjs while running up the stairs. To keep from falling DOWN the stairs I grabbed the wall with one hand and – OUCH! Pain so intense I shook like an aspen in a hurricane. To make it worse Eric had to leave for a business trip two days later, so it looked like I’d have to close down the business until he got back. But my friend Nancy offered to wrap orders every night after work and take the books to the post office in the morning. I know, it sounds like I’m digressing here, but hang on – I really DO have a point. While I will never forget Nancy’s kindness in doing this for me, what I’ll remember most keenly is her pure delight in the books.  She truly loved seeing what people bought. Wow – a book about Lionel trains! Who knew? And 12 issues of a 1920’a magazine called Chemical Abstracts? Why would someone want that? How did they know it even existed? I had no idea, but watching her reaction to each item awakened a new delight in ME.

This morning  as I tied a silver ribbon around a handsome little antiquarian title from 1854 called John Penry The Pilgrim Martyr 1559-1593,  I remembered Nancy and the chemical magazines and suddenly realized what a gift it is to be able to provide someone with THEIR perfect gift. To tell the truth, I never heard of John Penry, but I’m glad he called out to me from a table nestled in a bay window of  a pretty old house in west Akron. That late summer estate sale, which I probably complained about, produced this scarce book someone badly wanted.

I love being a bookseller. I truly do. And I hope that I will be one for the rest of my life. Sometimes it takes a small book, a piece of silver ribbon, and a memory to remind you that doing what you love is a HUGE gift in itself.

And so here I am. Still.

Picture This!

 

The best laid plans – get interrupted. I know this to be true because every single day this week I tried to write a post and every day something happened to prevent it. The big something, which should have been a little something, was the demise of my camera. These days you don’t get cameras fixed –you get them replaced. I guess I could live with that if only the replacements WORKED. But in a span of 24 hours I bought two digital cameras – a Fuji and a Nikon – and had to haul both of them back to their respective stores (note that was plural) due to defects. I liked the Nikon Coolpix though because I had one before and liked IT, so I ended up giving that model a second go. Maybe the fact that it was purple had a teeny-tiny something to do with it, but mostly it was because it seemed familiar and therefore friendly. In fact, I would have bet my last memory card that I’d be snapping pictures like Ansel Adams in an hour tops. It didn’t happen.

The problems were myriad, so I will boil them down to a.) the lack of technological talent of  the user and b.) the overabundance of tech-talk by the writers of the annoying manual that accompanied it. I finally got it up and running, found the flash setting and the setting that sizes the pictures – all that important stuff – and zoomed confidently in on books I’d listed the previous day. But did they fly into cyberspace on the wings of angels? No, they did not.

It turned out that my new anti-virus program – the computer geniuses in Brunswick jettisoned Norton due to problems it’s having in its new incarnation – in favor of a product made by a company here in Medina. So far it seems good enough, but it did get a tad overzealous and decided that my new camera was up to nefarious things, hence why no pictures could be uploaded. I called the geniuses and  they fixed it, but  by then the day was over. Which brings me to yesterday.

Yesterday was filled with meetings. I thought I’d pretty much left those behind when I quit my sales and marketing job at the nursing home twenty-some years ago. But it’s time again to start working on the 2013 Akron Antiquarian Book Fair, so I had two meetings in one day. The first one was fun because it was just me and Andrea, but the second one was serious business. Actually I don’t even mind these kind of meetings. It’s just that I desperately needed to make up for lost camera time. As always, I love the book fair, so working on it is normally a great pleasure. Last year we introduced speakers to the itinerary which proved to be a big hit, so this year we’ve lined up four more, plus the possibility of a VERY cool display. I can’t say what this is yet because it’s really a long shot, but if it works out it will be fabulous. If it doesn’t there’s always  back-up plans.

Thinking about the fair though makes me anxious because I have bought very little since the collection I told you about in my last post. I’ve only been to one sale –  that small rural one I’ve mentioned several times that I like because it’s quiet and they don’t allow scanning which also means that I don’t have to fight the crowds. Mostly I don’t get much, but this time I found one humdinger of a book –New York's China Town; An Historical Presentation of  Its People and Places, published by Bohemia Press in 1892. This one’s got it all – photos, drawings, and a lively text which covers, among other things, governance, the Chinese restaurants and laundries, the seclusion of women, family life, music, opium smoking (includes a detailed drawing of the apparatus), playing fan-tan, Chinese lotteries, prostitution, slave girls, Chinese funerals, and Chinese cemeteries.

 

It just goes to show you -- you can find anything anywhere. Especially when you aren't beleaguered by broken cameras.