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

                     "Interesting" Questions

          "Do you sell these books or just loan them out?"

          "Are your books arranged any particular way?" No, we just toss
'em, and wherever they happen to land that's where you find them.

           Phone conversation. "I'm interested in the book, so and so, that
you have on ebay. But I have a question. What's a little brown? Are
there little brown spots?" I get the book, look it over. It's nice shape. No
there's no foxing. It's a very nice copy. "Well your listing says it's a
little brown." I can't remember the description. I look at the pages. It's
a fine copy. Then I happen to glance at the title page. It's by Little,
Brown, I tell him. The publisher is Little comma Brown, of Boston.
"Well if you can't tell me what's wrong with it, I don't want it." There's
nothing wrong with. "Well, why does the listing say it's a little brown?" I
hang up.

                            "Interesting" Comments

            "You sure do have some weird books." Compliment? Put-down?
I'm still not sure.

            "That's a strange way to sell books." This from an older woman
reading a sign on our annual sidewalk sale table. It was the final day of
the sale and the sign explained that you could purchase a large paper bag
for $3.00 and fill it with as many books as you can. This is a common
tactic used at library sales to get rid of as many books as possible. Most
people would say, "Wow!" or "Cool." This lady seemed genuinely
perturbed, and thus she really confused the heck out of me.

            A man comes into my shop, with a pile of about six hardcovers
and a trade paperback or two. He plops them on my glass counter. "I'd
like to sell these." He looks real confident that I'll grab them all up.
They are all current books on politics, bios of George Bush, etc. They're
not even in good shape for brand new books. Jackets are crinkled, pages
dog-eared. Sorry. No thanks. "What, are they too conservative for you?"
We just don't buy books on current events. In a very short time, no one
will want them. "Yeah, my wife told to me to get rid of all these books
cluttering up the house." He leaves. I'm thinking, all the books, it was
like a half dozen books - how could that be cluttering up your house?
What, do you live in a shoebox?

            As I write this, another guy just told me how much he loves old
books, and what a nice store I have, and how much fun it was looking
. . . and he walked out empty handed. I guess I should consider turning
this place into a museum.

                          Those Affected Book People

I go to a lot of estate sales. Whenever there's a sale at a house that has
many books, like in the thousands, there is invariably someone
attending the sale, who'll make a comment such as, "Oh my, look at all
the books!" or "Who needs so many books?" or "I wonder if they read
all these books." Like, the person had to be a little crazy to have so
many books. One of the former owners I remember was a University
researcher. They were the tools of his trade, I want to say to the
comment-makers. Why do average people think anyone who has a lot of
books or who reads a lot is a little affected? People will go into houses
that have other huge collections of say art, or model trains, or Hummels,
whatever, and think nothing of it; or they'll even be impressed and say
"What a great collection!" But not books - oh no - if you have too many
books you're a geek to be shunned.

A variation on this theme: the people who think book sellers are
affected, too, because what grown man would want to sell books for a
living? Every now and then you'll hear a man walking by the front of my
shop, and drawl like a Texan, "Ewww, look booooks." I guess he's happy
being an illiterate. Or there are the town juvenile delinquents, who like
to pound on my plate glass window when they go by. One of them, whom
I even caught up with once, intimated that she was better than me,
because her parents owned a restaurant, and all I had was a miserable
little book store. Where the hell is this coming from? Aside from the
fact that this girl obviously has some serious issues - why is there this
anti-intellectualism in America? Book worms are probably one of the
last socio-economic groups that Americans think it's okay to ridicule and
harass. We should probably march on Washington DC some day.

One of my favorite quotes is this one by Mark Twain: "The man who
doesn't read has no advantage over the man who can't read."

                             The Catch-22s of Buying

Buying privately from folks is always fun. Don't get me wrong, I've
bought some great books from people who've either come in or called
because we have the store. But the average person might be surprised at
how much junk we have to wade through to get the good stuff. Other
book sellers will understand this of course.

When I first started out, I would happily encourage anyone who called to
bring their stuff over. I wanted to see boks. I wanted to buy books. The
more the better. Four years later, and I generally try to weed out the bad
stuff on the phone, and openly try to discourage people from bringing me
any more Oprah books, John Grisham, Tom Clancy, diet books, self-help
books, readers digest condensed (though believe it or not, I actually had
someone call the shop one time looking for these - I told her the name
of a thrift store she could go to to find hundreds of them for 50 cents a
piece). At a garage sale once, the lady had a bunch of these. She told me
she liked them because she could read so many more books by reading
the abbreviated versions. I didn't have the heart to tell her that she'd
never really read any of the books. Sorry if I've offended any Readers
Digest fans, but let's face it, you're not going to be spending oodles on
my books, anyway.

If you try to be nice and offer people a buck a book for the average or
below-average garage sale material, most will assume that you're trying
to cheat them. "But look, this book cost $27 new." Yeah, and they
printed 10 million copies, and anyone who ever wanted to read it, already
has, and it will sit on my shelf for the next ten years at $2, until I get
tired of looking at it and I donate it to the nearest Salvation Army,
where someone else can buy it for a buck and come back to me and
try to sell it to me again.

Then if you tell them you don't want any of their books, they'll be
insulted. "Well what kind of books do you buy?" The people who bring
me good stuff are generally the most reasonable. Hmm, there must be a
a correlation between owners of good books and owners of good brains.
Consequently, I pay very good money for the good stuff. It's fun seeing
the genuine shock sometimes when you make a good offer on a good