A Swell-Looking Book Used & Rare Books - Book Selling

Adventures of a Book Dealer
Among the Savages

A Collection of Humorous (and Perhaps Some Not-So)
Anecdotes on Book Selling, Collecting,
Bibliophily, Bibliogony, and More
continued

At any rate, I think there are still enough people who like to browse,
discover new things they'd never considered before, handle, touch and
smell the books, that if you're insane enough, justifies keeping an open
shop. I'm one of these people myself. One of the great things about
collecting and selling is that you are constantly learning - new authors,
new books, topics obscure and wide-ranging that you get hooked on. An
example: a few years ago I became interested in ancient history for the
first time in my life, specifically the Roman Imperial period. This was
initially sparked by, of all things, the movie Gladiator, which ironically
has very little relation to any real history at all, except the names of the
emperors who appear. "The names have not been changed to protect the
guilty, only the incidents they were involved in." Anyhow, this interest,
sparked by the movie, has been fueled by books. I discovered the classic
historians, like Tacitus, Suetonius, and Dio. There's nothing like reading
these ancient histories for first-hand accounts of famous events, that
most people learned about only from the old Hollywood epics.

So, anyway, have I new view of humanity? Well, I might be getting a bit
more cantakerous as I approach my fourth year with the store, but there
have been enough good days that I can smile and laugh, and offer these
little bits of wackiness, wisdom, and what-have-you, for you to enjoy.

Note: soon I'll be starting an online forum for other book dealers who'd like to leave
accounts of their most interesting customers and other foibles in the book selling
business.

     Comments on Some Common Species of Customer

          Oh, you have such a beautiful shop. "Yeah," says me to myself,
as this customer exits my shop, empty-handed, "So how about buying a
book?" Typically, the more admiration a customer has for the store, the
less actual money they are willing to spend in it.

          Do you buy books? "Some," says me to this customer. "Depends
what you have. What do you have?" Tom Clancy, Mary Higgins Clark,
Harold Robbins, Faye Kellerman . . . paperbacks or Readers Digest
condensed versions. "No, sorry, I don't buy those." Well, what do you
buy, then? As if this kind of stuff is all there is to read in the world.
After fielding umpteen similar calls in a day I want to answer the
question thusly: "Yeah, we even sell books from time to time."

          Is this book $20? "Uh, lemme see . . . Yes." But the jacket says
$4.95. "That was 45 years ago." This is usually someone who thought
that 45 years, the $4.95 was too much to pay for a book. What is this
person looking for? Why are they in my shop?

                                   . . . more to come . . .

                            You Gotta Believe

If you're selling rare books, there is something I think is often
overlooked and under-appreciated. "You Gotta Believe in the Books."
Some would add, "To an extent." But, I think, first and foremost, if you
don't believe, you'll never sell the finer, more expensive stuff - you'll
never be able to expand the horizons of your business. I've seen this
principal in action.

On vacation one year, I found a scarce mystery novel from the 1950's at
a used book store on the east coast. It was priced at $50. A high price for
many books, but this book even then was selling between $500 and
$1,000 for like condition copies. Of course, I purchased the book, and
while I was checking out (I think I must have had a hard time keeping
my poker face) the owner said to me something to this effect: "Yeah, I
know I could probably be asking a lot more for that, but it's only - insert
author name here - and I couldn't bring myself to price it for more than
fifty bucks." He didn't believe in the book! You gotta believe. You will be
find an aside about this particular book in the "Book Collecting" pages.

Part of believing, is spending big money on books, as well. Whether it's
for yourself or to resell (if you're a book dealer though, everything is
potential future stock). You can see the successful dealers - they are
spending money. The one's scraping by are afraid to spend - they don't
believe in the books. I've paid $1,000 an more for books. I'm a believer.
It's NOT the only thing that will make you a success, but I'm convinced
it is important.

Now, the flip-side to this is, believing in any one particular book to the
point that you become a zealot. If you've a rare book (that you don't
want to keep) and you've had it for 10 years with no nibbles - it might be
time to consider a price drop. Being inflexible on price is another
mistake some dealers make. It's one thing to be firm on the real primo
stuff, but if you want to sell books, you better be prepared to do some
wheeling and dealing. In fact, there's almost no way to sell scarcer stuff
on ebay, unless you're willing to take less than your "listed" price.

                           Those Dealer Scum

I was at a library sale in suburban Chicago recently - always a good place
to observe the book buying and book selling creatures in their native
habitats - and this lady in front of me in line was really putting down
book dealers. Now, this isn't the first time I've heard some of this - you
usually hear this stuff at these types of sales, because some of the
regular buyers think that dealers shouldn't be allowed to purchase books
cheaply, or at all. Now I can say all of the things that I restrained myself
from telling her in public.

She was talking to some other folks in line, complaining that the dealers
arrive early. Duh. She claimed that they hire people to hold their spot in
line. Besides the obvious absurdity of doing this at a run-of-the-mill
"Friends of the Library" sale - most dealers I know would be too cheap
to do this. She was a librarian in another suburb, and interested in books
for more than their monetary value, unlike dealers. As I said earlier,
there are very few people getting rich at this, and the ones who are, are
not waiting in line at your crummy library sale, lady. And, most dealers
probably love and appreciate books as much or more than you do - you
librarian, befouling fine tomes with card pockets, stamps, and stickers
everywhere. I jest of course - librarians please don't write - I know why
you must destroy the books you stock - book collectors or more likely
book dealer scum would be stealing them all if they were unmarked. But
seriously, there are a lot of dealers and collectors I know who are
preserving and have preserved stuff that libraries have no interest,
capacity, or ability to preserve. We are as important as you, to passing
on the cultural heritage.

Yes, dealers can be aggressive, but I'll tell you I'd rather see a dealer get
a one-of-a-kind, rare book, who will sell it to the right person, who cares
enough about it to pay a good price, than some shmuck who doesn't
really care about books, or else he'd be willing to spend more than a
buck a piece for them. If you want the best books, get your butt to the
library and get in line early. It's easy. Play the game, don't complain
about the rules being unfair. And remember, those guys aren't getting
rich. Well, at least not yet, anyway. ;-)