Marry, Merry Times

Well, here it is high July and I am so foggy from fibro I think my brain has turned into mothballs. In the past two weeks these things have taken place:

Our youngest daughter Catie married her boyfriend of eight years, Joseph Han, in a very sweet and simple ceremony at which, by Catie’s request, her father and I renewed our vows after 43 years almost to the day. The Fourth of July quickly followed so the newlyweds stayed on and the Michigan crowd came back to participate in further merriment which included  tons of food, a yardful of friends and family, and the city’s hands-down best fireworks show EVER. And that was just the 3^rd. The Fourth found us at our family lake (as opposed to the one behind our house) where we did the same stuff all over again only with a whole new cast of characters.

The third -- or is it the fourth? -- thing that’s gone on is nothing I can snap a picture of because it’s hard to take an after picture when you neglected to take a before. So you’ll just have to take it on faith that I have worked like a demon diminishing the piles of books on my office floor in hopes of making room for some new ones. And speaking of new ones, somewhere in there I went to two estate sales – one in a 5000 square foot Tudor mansion built in 1927 and the other in a cute little Western Reserve farmhouse built in 1830. Between them I got 12 California prints, one Ohio book for the antiques mall and a giant box filled to overflowing with spools of ribbon -- additions to what my friend Darwin always calls my ribbon collection. Anymore that’s about what it is too, as I have enough ribbon  in the basement  to wrap up a good-sized library. Name your color and I’m good to go.

Most of the books on the floor proved disappointing, though there WERE a few bright spots, but the fact is I have way more ephemera than I do books. I am trying to get my second website for the ephemera up and running, but Chrislands is holding a sale and are likely swamped, as I haven’t heard a peep from them.The good news is there are two sales tomorrow. One is in Cleveland, the estate of a former bookseller, but I’ve heard that his son may be reopening his late father’s business and has already retrieved what he wants for stock. If true, I don’t think I’ll have to worry about whirling and twirling with joy, which I suppose is good because foggy as I am I’d probably crash into  the stacks anyway. The second sale is that rural one I like that forbids scanners. Two sales ago I got a very fine book, there, but the last sale proved drearier than usual – my total outlay was around $20.What keeps me going back is a single memory -- seven dark oversized books with shiny  gilt on their spines spelling William Vollmann,  Rising Up, Rising Down.  It was four years ago but those babies remain branded on my brain. I bought them, sold them in a month for a three-figure price, and never saw another set since.

The other thing I’ve done these past weeks is continue  to thin the herd, aka the books in my inventory, which I do believe is a worthy use of time. I raised a few prices, dropped many more, and delisted all the low end stuff I don’t like. It’s paying off too as I made at least six very good sales on previously dead stock.  A few things such as these:

I squirreled away in the closet because they’re fine books no matter WHAT people online price them at. Both are in beautiful condition – a hard cover first edition  from the 60’s  and the paperback from the fifties marked first Japan printing.  I guess I’m getting a little cranky in my old age, but I hate it when beautiful, finely made books with serious content are treated like bottom feeders. I wonder if those sellers even know who Lafcadio Hearn was.

Overall it's  been a fun, if somewhat foggy,  time, but the bottom line is this -- sales are slowish this month even for summer. If the chat board at ABE is any indicator  I sense a lot of company. I’m okay(ish) online, but my mall sales are very disappointing. There’s an old adage in the antiques world – “in July you die.” But at our antiques mall July is usually better than Christmas. Thanks to travelers passing through for the Fourth and the Medina Antiques Show, July rocks and rolls.I don’t know what happened this time, but both weekends bombed. It’s the worst month I’ve ever had in two and a half years there. That being said, I’m not realy worried about the big picture, just rather miffed about the small one Besides, I  have something to blame it on.

Somebody bought the chair and now there’s nowhere to sit! 

Dinner At Six

Sunday night was so much fun I wrote a post about it Monday afternoon. I had no time to upload it though, so I did it yesterday morning and somehow managed to delete it in the process. Where have we heard THAT before, huh?  I had no  time to rewrite it yesterday because I had a speaking engagement in the afternoon about bookselling which I will tell you about another day. But for now I am committed to trying to reconstruct the lost story.

Two of our favorite booksellers came for Sunday dinner (bearing wine!) over which  we talked a blue streak about the world of online bookselling in this crazy year of 2013. It’s kind of interesting that they were seeking info from me because they aren’t exactly new kids on the block. One of them worked in bookstores for many years and has a degree which affords him the chance to specialize in an excellent genre. Given his depth of knowledge  he could end up OWNING this genre! His partner likewise has a great specialty, so together they are one dynamic duo infused with passion, intelligence, a love of books, impeccable social skills, and the ability to wrap a decent package. And -- get this – their holdings are about triple mine at the moment.

But even with all that in their favor, I  do have one thing with which I can help them and that’s what I aim to do. The only reason they lack this one thing is because of when and how they entered the book game. I arrived online in 1997 via Advanced Book Exchange while they came on the scene a little later through the  Amazonian portal. By the time they got there the Big River was already polluted and I had long since waded out of its muddy waters. In amazon land many people start selling with no real business name – a la our friends. At ABE you had to have one from the get-go which of course in the fullness of time leads to an independent website, social media accounts, blogs, book fairs etc. – all the stuff needed to crank a business up to the next electronic level. By now I’ve acquired all that stuff, for better or worse, so pretty soon they will too. But even without it  they’re already in a better position than I am at the moment.

I could be depressed about it. I could be a hell of lot depressed about it in fact.But I’m not. If I were depressed you’d know because I would tell you. Part of the reason why I have such a low inventory  right now is the acquisition problem we’ve struggled with these past couple years. But it’s also the result of a good thing – our phenomenal sell-through over the years and the Great Purge I’ve embarked on this summer. But all this month a steady stream of decent stuff flowed in here – nothing stellar but certainly good enough -- so I am optimistic that better will follow. I also firmly believe that despite the oft-quoted comment I heard in line at a book sale years ago --“You don’t gotta know nothin’ to sell books!” – the truth is that he or she with the most knowledge  wins the book game. Interestingly enough, I just ran across a great story told by Canadian antiquarian bookseller, David Mason, in his wonderful new memoir,The Pope’s Book Binder. It’s so illustrative of what I just said you’d swear I made it up, but I swear I DIDN’T—look  on pages 115 and 116  and see for yourself..  

One night Mason and a gang of inebriated booksellers were weaving their way  to the next watering hole when one them picked up a box of pamphlets lying at the side of road in wait of the trash truck. An alcoholic haze had descended to a greater or lesser degree over them all,  so they didn’t examine the leavings until they were safely ensconced in the next pub. The little booklets – there were many -- were all written in what they agreed was the Russian language. Mason concurred, but when he got his chance to take a closer look he immediately spotted something everyone else had missed – the imprints. Though written in  the Cyrillic alphabet,  Mason knew from having researched  some of the little booklets in the past  that two of the imprints  were Winnipeg, Manitoba and Toronto respectively. He also knew enough Canadian history to know precisely why the box had turned up where it had. Immediately he offered the finder fifty dollars for the entire thing, a bid which was snapped up faster than you can say LaBlatte Blue. Mason carted his treasures home and right away sold several for $300 and $400.

I’ve had my share of those kind of lucky breaks and had the wits to use them to my benefit, so I have good reason to believe I’ll do it again. Right now it’s enough to be happy for our friends. They’re going to be great. They already ARE  great.

They’re just going to be more visible.

One Fine Thing

Blogging, like a lot of other stuff I can think of, is not as easy as you’d expect. All weekend I was dying to tell you my latest adventure, but lacked the time to do it. So early this morning, the second I slapped the last label on the last order to be shipped, I was  in here banging away on the keyboard. I wrote a good half  of it  before it finally dawned on me that it had about as much zip as  the legal notices in the classified ads of the newspaper. So I hit the delete button and started again. Now an hour has slipped by and I’ve hit delete not once, but TWICE. So here we go a third time. At the very least I guess we can judge the veracity of that old saying about the third time being the charm.

As you know, I was jazzed up like a player piano to get to Saturday’s book sale because last year I made two great finds there. Of course I know all about lightning never striking in the same place twice, but when a bookseller imbues a sale with magical thinking there’s not an adage in the world that will disabuse her of the notion. As I took my place in line three words looped around in my brain like an endless tape – one fine thing. All I wanted was one fine thing.  There we were basking under a Cleveland sun at the end of a week that consistently predicted a 70 per cent chance of morning storms. Our favorite sellers were all grouped around us which made short work of the three hour wait. AND the crowd was noticeably smaller than usual. All omens looked good!

The first thing I noticed when we entered the sale room was the lack of an antiquarian and collectible section – the favorite of my favorites -- so I headed to art instead and immediately scooped up a few books and  catalogues. They did have some specials , but I had a hunch that  the one I wanted wasn’t a good idea  -- which proved to be dead-on right.  Eric told me later that a scanner zapped it and it was overpriced by $125!!!! Today is reduced  price day and I’m going, but you can bet that even if it’s a full half off (which it won’t be) I  won’t be selling a gorgeous kimono book any time soon.  But getting back to Saturday’s sale, I wended my way through architecture, music, cookbooks, children’s  and Ohioana buying one book here and two there, all of  which were nice enough but still  not my ONE FINE THING. Even literature bombed and I love the literature section. I couldn’t even scare up a nice set of classics for the antiques mall.

By this time the only place I hadn’t been was religion, a topic I’m very picky about so I rarely get anything other than Judaica which I do  like. But instead of making tracks over there I spent awhile talking to Keith, the nice bookseller I met last summer at a Cleveland estate sale and suddenly keep running into a lot. Since neither of us felt much urgency we talked as we desultorily looked for stuff we might have missed in the children’s section. After that I finally did hit religion, but I never really looked at the offerings because right away I ran into my friend Patrick who asked me how I was doing.

“Not all that great,” I said. “I got some stuff, but nothing really good.”

“Did you see the signed Robert Frost?” he asked.

The WHHHAAAAT???? No, I hadn’t seen any signed Robert Frost -- which might be because it was buried in a box that looked like another buyer’s book receptacle. Immediately I ran over and asked the woman working there who knows me well from the old antiquarian section if she still had it. Yes, yes,  yes – NO! Just as the worker she sent to fetch it reached for it another buyer picked it up and added it to his stack. And just like that -- the gig was up.

“Wait -- don’t leave,” the antiquarian category woman whispered to me. “Just wait and see what happens. There’s a good chance he didn’t see the price and will flip out when he hears it’s $200.”

I doubted it, but dutifully waited. Whole Ages passed as he continued to browse, looking  at this book, looking  at that one, and adding a few more to his box. I can’t recall why I didn’t see him check out, but Eric told me later that he did exactly what the  woman predicted he would do. In a just a few seconds, I got my one fine thing after all.

Later that evening I thought about all this and suddenly remembered a side conversation I ‘d overheard as we waited in line. I can’t remember what brought it up, but one of the scanners, whom I initially liked until he went over to the dark side, was explaining how dealers can manipulate prices and with cunning and laser sharp timing wring  big money out of a given book whether it’s worth it or not. I listened for a moment and quietly said to Peter, “I really don’t like that.”

“I don’t either,” he said

Which is not to say we’re saints, you understand, though we do respect the books, play fair with the customers, and even help each other. But we’re also competitive – to say otherwise would be lying through our teeth. Just stand on the sidelines of a sale and watch what happens when the doors open. All along the line conversations fall off in mid-sentence. If words were tangible the ground would be so littered with them you’d be kicking them up on the way in like dry leaves in autumn. But, even so, many booksellers have shared their knowledge with me over the years and I try to return that same generosity of spirit.

As for the  Frost book, I’m thrilled to have it. I’m practically giddy over it! But I’m also pretty sure that the world would have kept spinning even if the other guy got it.

The second Patrick told me where to find Frost I had my one fine thing.. It just it took me a while to get it.

Charms and Incantations -- The Superstitions of the Bookseller

 

Three days and counting to one of the biggest book sales of the year. You’d think by now I’d have the sense God gave a gnat to know better than to act like I’m expecting to find a previously unknown original of Shakespeare’s First Folio on the specials table priced to sell at  $15. It’s absurd and of course getting more absurd with every passing year. But all it takes is one lucky find, however many years ago, and a bookseller’s common sense packs its bikini and heads south.This year, I’m embarrassed to say, is no exception. Mine snagged a cheap flight to Mexico and flew out of Akron-Canton this morning.

Believe it or not, I'm so jazzed up I actually dragged out our bags an hour ago and put them next to the door like I might be in danger of forgetting them. All I need is a rabbit’s foot, a four leaf clover, a horse shoe, a St. Jude medal, and my lucky underwear and I’m good to go. I know. It’s  crazy – of course it is – and yet here I am tossing salt over my shoulder and crossing my toes as well as my fingers. So far I have not succumbed to the desire to chant incantations in the backyard under the quarter moon, but there’s always tonight.

Frankly, I assign at least some of this madness to the glitzy card that came in the mail touting 80,000 books. I mean REALLY – out of 80,000 volumes something must be good, right? Wrong! Not only is it very possible to come up empty, but it’s also very possible to pay too much and wish you HAD come up empty. Past experience has hammered this home to me many times. But here’s the thing. Last year – oh, hallowed, glorious  last year! – the number of books had visibly decreased and yet I made the best two finds ever. EV-V-V-E-E-E-E-E-R. The first was a four volume leather-bound set of Don Quixote in great condition  illustrated with engravings and published in Dublin in 1795. The second, a slim innocuous -looking volume titled Some Letters of Edgar Allan Poe to E.H.N. Patterson of Oquawkwa, Illinois With Comments by Eugene Field  published  by the Caxton Club in 1908 in limited edition. See what I mean? Toss a bookseller a couple bones and she’ll follow you anywhere.

Okay, I’m exaggerating a little here about my craziness over this sale. But not much. Four years ago on the day before this very same sale I tore my rotator cuff when I accidentally tangled my foot in my capri length pajamas and fell up the stairs. For a few seconds the pain actually winded me and by the time I caught my breath I was shaking  like an aspen in  a hurricane. But  did that stop me? No, it did not. Honestly, it never once crossed my mind to skip the sale. I tried to go – I really, really did, but I finally had to admit that I couldn't get dressed even with Eric’s help. Ah, but  wait!  I DID show up on Monday during a raging thunderstorm for reduced price day after sending him to Kohl’s for an over-sized shirt that buttoned up the front. I also went that same day to the see the collection in Bay Village that took me three years to finally acquire.

Was it worth it? I don’t know. Probably not. But that’s beside the point, as are the long lines, possible rain, too much time waiting around, the odds of inadvertently  buying damaged books, paying too much for  must-have books, paying too much for so-so books just to have something to show for the effort, and  years of heartfelt  avowals to never, ever again go to the preview. Which, by the way, starts at ten. We’ll be there by 7:30.

Now all I have to do is remember my lucky number (do I even have a lucky number?)  and follow the exact same path I took around the tables last year and I should  be fine. But just to be on the safe side if anyone knows of a reputable supplier of eye of newt do let me know.

Powdered preferred.

 

Dwelling On My Book House

I love when life serves up a little serendipity, so I was over the moon to have chanced into The Bookseller Inc., a cozy shop in west Akron, yesterday afternoon just in the nick of time to have one last look at my favorite thing there. Or at least one last look in that setting anyway.The shop’s showpiece item has been purchased by Kent State University for their Special Collections and is soon to depart to Kent in the next few days. It had been sold online once, but the buyer was from Australia so -- surprise! surprise! -- the extreme weight and shipping  squelched the sale.

For years and years I had been aware that the ever-popular My Book House set once came in a wooden box shaped like a house. I had sold the books any number of times – the black edition, the blue edition, the rainbow edition and once even the white edition which doesn’t charm me – but I had never laid eyes on the house itself and its smaller set until I went to The Bookseller for the first time. We weren’t in the door five seconds when Eric homed in on it like a pigeon with a GPS. It’s funny really how I even knew about this house at all. A casual anecdote buried in some long forgotten book popped off the page and lodged permanently in my brain. The author had gone antiquing with her mother, found both the house and its books in a dusty shop in New England (of course – where else?) and bought it to replace the one she’d had as a child, but had somehow lost.

Lost?????!!! I know it sounds ludicrous, but it happened, which is why seeing one of  these little wooden houses is about as likely as spotting a great snowy owl in the backyard.You know if you were a certain kind of little girl that you would absolutely HAVE to take the books out and turn the house into a dollhouse with curtains at the windows. And maybe if you were a boy it might even serve as a handy garage. Either way, the house/garage became a toy and the books landed in the bookcase. Even keeping the books  together must have been a challenge judging by how many stray volumes turn up at book sales.

My Book House was created in the 1920’s by Olive Beaupre Miller who formed an entire industry around them. What I love most is that it was an enterprise entirely run by women. Instead of selling the sets in stores, Olive decided to sell by subscription and hired a coterie of women sales reps known as The Book House Ladies to knock on doors and sign people up just like encyclopedia salesmen did for Colliers and Britannica. Eric and I bought a set of Britannicas that way back in the early 70’s and we still laugh to this day at the salesman’s extravagant pitch.

“Right in here,” he proclaimed, thumping a sample book, is “every thought, word and idea!” Hmmmmmmm. Wonder what he thinks of the internet.

But Olive created a small dynasty from subscription sales and it continued to grow. The red set was the first to expand with the addition of a new volume for a total of seven, but by 1932 the original six from the 20’s had doubled. I’m not sure when production stopped, but I know I sold a very nice rainbow set from the 50’s once. Door-to-door sales may seem a little cheesy in today’s world, but  My Book House was no schlock product. The books are bright and attractive and  offer a smorgasbord of fiction and nonfiction which for the most part transcend time. The art too, is stellar, as artists include William Blake, N..C. Wyeth, Caldecott, and my favorite, Willy Pogany, who  illustrated my pet edition of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in 1909. The later sets also included a parents’ guide. Below you can see a few volumes of a 1937 rainbow set, so named because the books are bound in different colors.

As best as I can tell, the My Travel Ship series that shared the wooden house never expanded beyond  those original three books. I never purchased them with a set and never even all together, though I’ve sold all three many times. They include Little Pictures of Japan, 1925 (the best I think); Tales Told in Holland, 1926; and Nursery Friends From France, 1927. I have all three, but they aren't shelved, so I have no idea where they are and I just created several small avalanches trying to find them.

Scarce as the wooden house is though, there is still one last My Book House holy grail that I would love to see. Well, maybe two because the house was fashioned of cardboard at one time also, rather like Richard Scarry’s library set , so that would certainly beinteresting to see and maybe even to buy. But there is also a rare miniature tin house that’s about 3”x5” and contains small books bound in flexible boards. I saw a picture online and it's priced  in four figures.

Given that, I suspect it  will take a lot more serendipity for me to gaze on the tin house in person -- it's really that rare .But who knows? Serendipity played  more than one role with the set at Booksellers already. Not only did I get to visit the wooden house before it departs, but the canceled sale to Australia proved to be more blessing than bane. The sellers paid no commission and avoided a complex wrapping job. AND the books will remain right here in northeastern Ohio at a university that already boasts a stellar childrens’ book collection and a renowned library science program.

Sooner or later it will go on exhibition too, which is just about as good as it gets!

The Bloom Is Back -- Maybe!

 

Well, I have officially been selling online for two weeks now following my self-imposed hiatus. I know I whined about how the bloom is off the online rose, but I seem to be enjoying the attar and ignoring the thorns  these days – at least for the moment. Nothing has fundamentally changed in the book business itself, so I can only attribute it to the fact that some good stuff has happened lately.

The first big thing is that my website is no longer owned by ABE/Amazon. Some time ago they bought Chrislands, the company that built my site years ago and has continued to host it even after the sale – with devastatingly awful results I might add. As with most corporate buy-outs, everything you loved about the original disappeared and in its place came constant technical difficulties topped off by no option to process credit cards. I had just been thinking that the time had come to light a fire under my computer guru and get him to build me a new truly INDEPENDENT site when the former owner of Chrislands announced that he is once again its owner. YESSSS, Jaymes bought his company back from The Man! How cool is that? Of all the third party sites I like ABE best, but some things, website building and hosting among them, should be left to the little guy with the brains and passion to do  it right. I’m so happy about this that I even played around with the new Chrislands templates (they were actually there before, but I didn’t care) and created a new look. Check it out at www.garrisonhousebooks.com. I may change it again if he offers some other options, but it was time to shake it up a little. Kinda  like it’s time to shake me up a little too.

The other good news is not quite as huge, but it did my heart good anyway. Last Wednesday we went to a library book sale that used to be GREAT back in the good old days and was still one of the better one in terms of content even in the recent bad old days. I steeled myself for the expected lunacy, but there was no need – I wound up having a wonderful time. The crowd was pretty big, comprised mostly of recycled scanner people, but they all stampeded for the inexpensive room leaving the handful of serious dealers and collectors to their own devices. How lovely to walk slowly and contemplatively up and down the tables browsing, taking the time to look at copyright pages and condition issues, and accumulating small treasures along the way. I didn’t find anything that would knock your socks off, but I did get this lovely set pictured below, among other good finds, including a signed first edition of Christopher Morley’s The Haunted Bookshop for myself.

 

Another great thing is the set pictured above at the very top of this post and the red book next to it. After so many disappointing estate sales I FINALLY got something good at one last Friday. I paid more for the set than I would like, but I also got the red county history  cheap because it’s not local, so it all balanced out in the end.  I’m quite tickled with them, especially the Ohio history set by Galbreath, because I haven’t had one in three years. According to my database I bought the last one in May, 2010.  But lest you think things are looking up at the estates, be assured that they are not. The very next day we went to one that advertised “lots of good books” when what they really meant to say was lots of cheap common books that you could smell before you saw. They did come with free mold though.

See? I told you I'm feeling more optimistic. I’m even making my dreadful little jokes again, though that may be because of two more good things. Yesterday morning I got a call to see a book collection  which we will check out tomorrow.  And right after I hung up the phone I sold a first edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James!

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.