Addenda

Feedback

Dear Editor,

Stuart Manley writes in the Fall issue:

“How on earth can it be that David Brass Rare Books, a well respected ABAA antiquarian book dealer in California of over 40 years experience, is rated by ABE as a one star bookseller, yet obviously inferior re-listers such as Anybook, Best Bargain Books, Bargain Book Stores, etc., with their millions of low-grade boiler plate listings polluting the ABE site, are rated as four or even five star booksellers?”

Mr. Manley goes on to describe ABE's fulfillment ratings as serving only ABE's interests.

As an ABAA dealer of 36 years experience, who currently enjoys a 5 star ABE rating, I'd like to suggest that the picture isn't quite so simple. A customer who orders a book on ABE and doesn't get it is less likely to order via ABE again, and that hurts all ABE dealers (as well, of course, as ABE itself). I, for one, am glad that they have addressed the issue, though it may be that some further adjustments are in order (for instance, four stars looks like 80%, but it can actually be 94%; one star looks like 20% but may be 59%).

We sell upwards of 200 books a month online, upwards of 100 of them through ABE. The reasons we have (though just barely) a five star fulfillment rating are

1. We have always, as a matter of simple professionalism, placed great emphasis on tight inventory control. It happens no more than twice a year that we can't find a book we are supposed to have, and when it does happen we go all out to figure out why it happened, so that we can close that loophole. Many other respected and established dealers have 4 or 5 star ratings. I suggest that it is irresponsible for a dealer who can't or won't control his inventory to offer his books online. It's sad that it should be necessary for ABE to force this elementary standard on some of its dealers.
   
   
2. Using BookRouter, we remove sold books from all sites—we’re on four—every day. (Also simple professionalism.)
   
   
3. Our enlightened postage policy minimizes the number of times we have to ask for extra shipping.

I don't mean to suggest that David Brass or anyone else with a low fulfillment rating is negligent. Some are, but others may simply have low sales, which temporarily exaggerates the effect of any non-fulfillment. There should probably be a category for dealers whose online orders are too few to permit a statistically meaningful fulfillment rating.

Nor do I mean to suggest that fulfillment rate is the only thing that matters. But I think in our disdain for the mega-listers we tend to lapse into what I call “bookseller explanations.” These are most often heard while waiting in line at book sales. They always remind me of an old Peanuts cartoon, in which Lucy points at a tree from which an oak leaf is falling and explains “That's a maple tree. They cut them down to make knotty pine recreation rooms,” and in the next frame Charlie Brown is sitting on the curb saying “Lucy's explanations make my stomach hurt.” Or, to cite a booktrade source: The late Canadian bookseller Bill Hofer once wrote an eccentric piece for the old AB on the characteristics of “bad booksellers.” One of them was “Bad booksellers give implausible explanations for the scarcity of books.” The key word being “implausible.”

Some of the explanations of mega-listers that have appeared in recent issues of The Standard seem implausible to say the least. Gwen Foss says—but perhaps doesn't mean to say—that at least two-thirds of the customers of megalisters are angry in the aftermath (“for every customer pleased with their purchase from a mega-lister there are others who are angry at having been ripped off”). What would they be angry about? Not getting the book? A fulfillment rate that low would earn the dealer one star, and would get him kicked off some programs. Are they angry because the book has important undescribed defects? Most books don't have important defects, and I know some dealers who combine non-description with non-purchase of substandard books. Surely fussy buyers don't even consider buying from those listings. In a sense, there are several marketplaces within ABE, each of which attracts its own clientele.

How do the listers who simply replicate BIP listings (or something similar) avoid the low fulfillment rates that would seem to go with that kind of operation? We are told—without evidence—that they commit outright fraud by accepting all orders and issuing refunds only to the minor proportion of disappointed buyers who complain. Given that people usually order such books because they need them, I wonder how minor the proportion could be. And I wonder whether the sellers issue the refunds through ABE, thus garnering a low fulfillment rating, or bypassing ABE, and paying ABE its commission on all those unfilled orders. In any case, it seems to have escaped the notice of your writers that the service of sellers of new books is accurately measured by fulfillment rate; condition should rarely be an issue.

I trust it goes without saying that I don't like what I find when searching ABE or Amazon any more than your other readers do. But in addition to all the high-minded reasons for objecting to the “pollution” I find in myself another, more interesting reason: with experience one gradually acquires the ability to distinguish, within an array of unfamiliar books, those which have a potential for resale at a reasonable profit, and this works well enough in the traditional venues of store and bookfair. We even speak glibly of “supply and demand.” But now, thanks to the internet, we too often have unpredictably high supply and low demand shoved in our faces, and find that some of the books we thought promising are widely available for a dollar or two. A business which was never more than minimally rational has suddenly become even less so, and in our frustration we lash out at the easiest target.

Megalisters are a pest, but they are probably doing us less actual harm than we imagine.

Wayne Somers of Schenectady, NY

The mailbag was unusually full this time around, as I also received this.

Hi there editor

Do you want to have an average to small penis all of your life? No, you don't.

(Sorry to put more genitalia in the front matter of Addenda when it should go in the junk folder, as it were, but it’s in the interest of full disclosure. Besides, I like how I didn’t have to answer this one.)

Happy Hits

As I was performing the sometimes mind-numbing catalog hard inventory referenced in an earlier article from this issue, I kept an impressionistic account of the process. This was for mental diversion but also for possible use in the article, where it didn’t really fit. But as I have no other database doozies for Happy Hits this time around, it is recycled here. It’s kind of long and by far the best thing to skip in this issue of the Standard.

Hi there books. I haven’t seen most of you in awhile. Sitting there in boxes all that time, deep in the thoughts you contain. I had a huge supply of Union Camp Great White business paper boxes at one point, with a blue and white swimming shark design, so when I enter the room and walk down the gangplank between the stacked piles there are apt metaphor schools of swarming dead-eye sharks on each side. I’d prefer a different animal but you take what you can get.

Open my database, and go through the subject categories in alpha order so I always know where I am and don’t duplicate any efforts. Another big freaking chunking job. Seems like I’m always doing a big chunking job, where there are no shortcuts, like driving from New York to Florida. Cut and paste the title to AbeBooks and see just how common it is now in 2007. Add the author or the publisher if it looks like that will help. Wish you could set highest price first as the default. Mentally discard all those at the bottom. God how I hate to see those same nauseating mega-listers and phantom sellers. They have been joined by a confusing pack of U.K. liars that all sound the same to me. Also eliminate the ridiculously overpriced mega-listers at the high end, along with the Print on Demand pirates. Keep scanning until I start to hit real booksellers, where you still must wade through a large number of shallow water ex-library copies. There must be fifty ways to say ex-library. I gave up on ABE qualifiers some time ago as they are very inaccurate. By the second box I’m just pulling halfway down on the ABE results and starting there. If there are dozens listed I quickly calculate whether mine is anything special. If not, I just mark it Sold and make a note that it is actually Withdrawn. From there into one of three piles. Sell at the antique centers I am in (pricing below what it would cost somebody online, with the exception of good local interest titles); donate to the good charity book sale I now work with; or lot out to auction.

As for quality control, it’s about what I expected. I listed my first thousand in a hurry. This is a good time to make the entry points uniform, to look for misspellings, and to upgrade descriptions. “Near Fine Condition” is better than “NF,” for example. The most traditional term I will not abandon is “wraps.” I change “half title page” to “half-title page” wherever I find it, as the former might sound ripped in half to the uninitiated. Added ISBNs and author middle initials ignored the first time through, and added plenty of good keywords. Only saying “no dust jacket” when I know there is one. That always looks dumb next to antiquarian titles that never had one.

Got rid of the plus and minus mid-grades. Graded everything more conservatively, as it’s better to pleasantly surprise than to disappoint. Eliminated some conjecture about edition, place of publication, etc. I know that many of us list the printer as the publisher when the publisher is not apparent, as you hate to leave that field blank. It definitely helps to describe the colors of the boards and lettering and decoration, and to describe the dust jacket. A simple but friendly description of the book allows you to hand-sell it sight unseen. The final task for each one of these reviews is adding “Images available upon request” at the end of the description.

Some subject categories were hard hit. Books on Books, for example went from thirty to ten. I’ll keep the first three editions of Bradley’s Handbook of Values for the reference shelf, though mainly for sentimental reasons as it has been years since I consulted them. The Standard Value Guide to Old Books from Collector Books is virtually worthless though, with little bibliographical information and wildly outdated pricing. Even some once scarce library catalogs are now common.

Exploration and Adventure held up the best, largely due to a party of mountain climbers. Here’s Gaston Rébuffat’s On Snow and Rock (NY: Oxford University Press, 1963 first American edition). On Snow and Rock yields 249 hits because those two words are common. New search adding Rébuffat yields 52 hits, from $9.50 to $575.65 (which comes from a real mountain climbing specialist but uses the dreaded and rather non-mountainous “flatsigned”). I now notice that some later editions read On Ice, Snow and Rock. Was the first a bad translation of the French, or did somebody think the added danger of ice would sell more copies? I narrow it down to Published Date between 1963 and 1963, and get no results. My own copy is from 1963 so why not? Whoops, wrong field! There are no copies listed between $1,963 and $1,963. There are 18 1963 first English and American editions. (You only get six if you check the First Edition attribute, though all 18 are probably English or American firsts. One of the six wants $200 for a copy without a dj, and he says Ice is in the title. Don’t think so. Two of the remaining five are the exact same book from the same dealer, $25 apart. ABE attributes are better than nothing but still highly GIGO.) So my $25 copy is about six from the bottom, a relative bargain for a Near Fine/Near Fine first American, and it will stay there at that price. I checked ABE for my other Rébuffat that sold for $35 already, Between Heaven and Earth, to test this pricing stratagem, and to see if they added Hell to later editions.

Same with Lionel Terray’s The Borders of the Impossible. Only 12 listed, three of which are ex-library, some of which have dj issues, and mine is roped in at $150 just below the pinnacle copy (with an exact duplicate at base camp ready to replace the first). This is what you want to see when reviewing your prices.

Peter Freuchen’s Book of Arctic Exploration is another that survived. I pass on his Eskimo and Seven Seas books all the time, and an ABE author search yields over 2,000 general results, so why are there only six listed? Must have something to do with his name being in the title. But no, less than ten copies without the name. It actually is fairly scarce, though not highly collectible. My reviewer copy is the best deal at $19, it even comes with a glossy illustration of the author by Dagmar Freuchen laid in, and I like the book (that counts for something). There were others though where I wondered why I had the only copy, only to discover a lurking typo error. This happens all the time pricing new finds, and it happened quite a few times during this overhaul. There should be a word for this temporary thrill, like premature bibliographication.

Black and Beautiful: A Life in Safari Land by Marius Fortie (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1938 first edition) is black jacketed and beautiful, and was underpriced at $35 in a field of 30, some of which are not real and a few of which have poor dust jackets. Now it is $75 in the top spot where it belongs.

Another fun part of this big task is revisiting Sold books. In this category, evocative titles like The Ascent of Dhaulagiri, American Explorations in the Ice Zones, and The River of Seven Stars with a front cover paste-down pictorial inset captioned “A Guahibo Indian Shooting Fish.” Good stuff.

So, no casualties or reductions in Exploration and Adventure, though Four Against Everest by Woodrow Wilson Sayre ain’t there, and A Privateer’s Voyage Round the World by George Shelvocke also took off without permission. They must have sold at shows.

Some of the Withdrawn volumes go right onto my own bookshelf as keepers. From Fishing, The Compleat Brown Trout by Cecil Wilcox, illustrated by Wayne Trimm, is one such. I have fond childhood memories of these NYS naturalists from poring over The Conservationist, and was a pall-bearer with Mr. Trimm once, who knew my great fisherman Uncle Joe. And a cheap but splendid looking reprint of Henshall’s 1881 classic Book of the Black Bass, in dark green with gilt decoration. I skim the chapter on Natural Baits. “It exists for several years in the larval state, when it is generally known as the ‘helgramite,’ being a curious, flattened, and, to most persons, a repulsive-looking worm, growing to a length of two or three inches, and about a half inch in length.” “To most” was most perceptive, as I think hellgrammites clean, strong, and attractive to the point where I put the tail end in my mouth when catching them in the river so they can grab my tongue and free up my hands for a moment (which you wouldn’t want to do with the pincer end). Made a living off the little darlings one summer.

McClane’s Standard Fishing Encyclopedia, on the other hand, has got to go. It’s big, heavy, and common, like a dead shad after the spawn. 163 copies on ABE now, probably under ten when I listed it for $19. Just for the heck of it I sort by highest price. Three of the top five claimed by Anybooks, up to $274.74. They are shameless, as is ABE for hosting them. This should sell for $15 at the shop. Great Fishing Tackle Catalogs of the Golden Age should go for $35 there. And so on. Only two survivors in the Fishing category then. A 1934 booklet on bait casting, and Slack’s 1872 Practical Trout Culture at $75. Pretty poor fishing. Collecting in this area is my partial excuse.

Flora & Fauna. The Battles of Boro by John Albert Comstock (1965). I spend several minutes looking for the inscription and signature the catalogs says is there before realizing that it’s an unrecorded second copy I threw in the box. One of those authors where it is more uncommon to find an unsigned copy, but only ten listed and it’s local Catskills so I’ll keep it at a whopping $11. Added “black bear” to the Keyword field but doubt that will help. From somebody else’s description, “Boro, a real bear, earned so much of author's respect that he passed up several chances to kill him.” Poor charcoal cover illustration looks much more like a grizzly bear.

The Grizzly Bear: Portraits From Life, a University of Oklahoma Press reprint, is all wrapped up, and the pencil price is erased. That means the online sale must have fallen through years ago. Hopeless now, with over 100 listed. Same with The Chinese Shar-Pei, which was downright scarce when I added it.

How about Falcon’s Return from 1975 by Kaufmann and Meng? I have the only copy listed at $10, and it is signed by Meng. Wait a minute. Something is fishy as common Morrow is the publisher. Without the apostrophe, 36 copies, from $1 to $37.36 (that from Hawkridge Books). What a dumb title. I don’t think they meant as in “falcons return every year,” though I am the only typo so maybe everyone else actually cracked this one open. I don’t even take time to check now, as this Copy 37 Falcons Return wings its way to a “special” auction hall lot of signed first editions.

Speaking of animals, there are no signs of little bio-predators like silverfish or bigger ones like mice. No warping either, like there would be if you left them outside in storage containers for years on end, where paste degradation and foxing would be soon to follow, unless you don’t believe in all that pointy-headed professional preservationist stuff.

How about Surtsey: The New Island in the North Atlantic? What photos! Will never go for $19 online anymore, but I’d sure by this for $9 in a shop if I was a budding geologist.

Small Arms of the Mounted Police. The backing board that protects this 1965 booklet tells the story in notation. Was in the shop at $6, online for some years at $20 where ten others now reside at pretty low prices, going back to the shop at $9. My entire Guns catalog was wiped out. Lots that will do well in real space, like the hopelessly large Guns by Dudley Pope. Who wants to wrap something like that for the same $29 it will command at the shop? I see all the Sold ones though, about half of which would be good enough to sell again in the current market if I can find them.

Two Norman Rockwells in the Art catalog. Bye now.

Railroad, Indian and Pioneer Prints by N. Currier and Currier & Ives (1930, limited to 500 printed) brings back a painful memory. I’m stocking the shelves years ago and this kind of neurotic FBI guy asks if I can find it for him. I said you do it. He said he was not good with computers (that’s reassuring). I laid out the $100 for it from a bookseller I respect a couple states to the east, and when I handed it over he found the most minute flecks of foxing I’ve ever seen on a very few pages, and rejected it on that basis. I ate the sale rather than insult the bookseller. Was priced well enough then at $119 but didn’t go. Will settle for $65 online now. The only good thing is that I learned not to act as a middleman right then and there.

History. The first five bound volumes of Greek History magazine from the early 1960s are taking up too much space for only $40. Try them on eBay for $20 and then off to auction. The Crimson Queen: Mary Tudor from 1933. At $9 I would withdraw it without checking, but the publisher Duffield and Green is somewhat uncommon. Only three on from $9 to $25, all without djs. I could keep it but there is a light dampstain on the front cover. Looking at eBay completed auctions for The Crimson Queen, there are 202 results, but they are mostly crimson queen plants and stamps and sheets and drag queen wigs rather than books. Even King Crimson’s God Save the Queen. No The Crimson Queen: Mary Tudor on the second attempt, and she’s sort of hot right now, so will run it through eBay starting at the same $9.

Found two good ones just sitting there uncataloged. Holland’s two volume History of Western Massachusetts (1855), and Tooley’s The Mapping of America (1985). Time to put them to work. The latter sold right away at $85.

Quite a few are in with the wrong categories. Most of the mistakes make sense. Some of the ones that don’t are old unfulfilled orders in boxes I would never have thought of looking in for them. Could have sold Sutter’s Fort: Gateway to the Gold Fields for $25 not that many years ago, for example. Now it sets up camp in the shop for $13. For any titles that are rare, I’ll see if the old interested party is still interested.

I know the jettison sort piles behind me are getting big as the wife can’t make it past to say goodnight. One night the only place to step on the other side of this book wall was on a copy of Over Their Dead Bodies, about Yankee epitaphs.

In the Humor category, I put an extra zero in 100,000,000 “Sit-Down” Sitters by Bunk de Bunker. Using the correct figure, only one bookseller has this, for $10.60, so I might as well keep mine at $9. I don’t expect to sell it, but the numbers and the book are good so what the heck. This one may be jinxed, because I relisted it as published in 1037 rather than 1937. That would be quite early for a book of bathroom humor.

Lots of little mistakes in Literature, my second largest category behind New York State (over 200). Wild Metal (Bobbs-Merrill, 1932) with the wild metallic dj is by Charles Gilson, not Charles Gibson. Looked like I had the only one, but now there are six more from $12.50 to $35. Still, mine will go from $19 to $75 because it kicks comparative butt.

The Nick Adams Stories first edition at $175 was not showing up with Scribners (no apostrophe like on the spine but not on the title page). I alerted a $350 copy holder he had the same problem, as a courtesy, and to make my better copy look that much cheaper. No response as usual. Hemingway files right next to Aaron Hiller, and I have the only copy of his Diamonds in a Dunghill: A Somewhat Historical Dramatic Fantasy Concerning the Origins of Certain Religious Doctrine and Dogma—In One Act, from 1982. Only $25 for the discerning completist dunghill collector.

There are fifteen copies of Fifteen by Maupassant listed.

What is the difference between the $101 and $110 Book-On-Demand Reprints from AstroLogos of The Bewitched Parsonage: The Story of the Brontes? I have a beautiful real copy that is being crowded offline by many others at very low prices.

Partway through this project I learned to eliminate subtitles on most of the searches. It is surprising how many booksellers don’t include them. Take The Practical Pendulum Book: With Complete Instructions for Use and 38 Pendulum Charts by D. Jurriaanse. Now to me that subtitle would help sell the book. Only two listed. Did I spell “pendulum” wrong? Nope, but without the subtitle there are 54 copies listed, so it swang from the Online pile to the Shop pile in one fell swoop.

Some impressions from a difficult but rewarding process, and Hah!, another chunking job vanquished.

Descriptions of Good to Poor Books gathered by Gwen Foss

-Pretty good condition for the condition it's in.
-Good w/wear 'n Tear.
-I'd rate it about 75-80% overall—certainly not bad considering the age of the book!
-An OK copy. Nothing to brag about, nothing to complain about. A .250 hitter, to good to release on waivers, but benchwarmer on this team. (This was not a book on baseball.)
-An extremely worn-out copy that has seen its last gasp.
-Fair. Enquire for Details.
-Not in the best of condition.
-Not that good.
-Old and beat up.
-Not a perfect copy but indubitably a signed first edition.
-Slight mold infestation but overall a great reading copy.
-Not pretty but totally functional.
-Been around the block a few times.
-Book cover has issues, wants to separate from book.
-Of course the paper has that lovely yellowing color of old books.
-Servicable.
-Battered but readable.
-Poor Ex-Lib as is, VERY loved!
-A bit doggy, but acceptable.
-It had a rough life but it's a nice book.
-Horrible copy strictly for the desperate.
-Not Pretty.
-Vile.
-Good minus, almost poor, guaranteed to be complete. Very weak at hinges, covers very stained. Pages wavy. Appears to be cloth covers but may be boards. Paste-on title. Wavy pages. If you can find another copy get it.

Submitted by Gwen Foss - http://www.gwenfoss.com/about.asp)

Blurbettes

Seeing Red: A Study in Consciousness by Nicholas Humphrey (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).

From the inside flaps.

[“]Consciousness matters. Arguably it matters more than anything. The purpose of this book is to build toward an explanation of just what the matter is.”

Nicholas Humphrey begins this compelling exploration of the biggest of big questions with a challenge to the reader, and himself. What's involved in “seeing red”? What is it like for us to see someone else seeing something red?

Seeing a red screen tells us a fact about something in the world. But it also creates a new fact—a sensation in each of our minds, the feeling of redness. And that's the mystery. Conventional science so far hasn't told us what conscious sensations are made of, or how we get access to them, or why we have them at all. From an evolutionary perspective, what's the point of consciousness?

Humphrey offers a daring and novel solution, arguing that sensations are not things that happen to us, they are things we do—originating in our primordial ancestors' expressions of liking or disgust. Tracing the evolutionary trajectory through to human beings, he shows how this has led to sensations playing the key role in the human sense of Self.

The Self, as we now know it from within, seems to have fascinating other-worldly properties. It leads us to believe in mind-body duality and the existence of a soul. And such beliefs—even if mistaken—can be highly adaptive, because they increase the value we place on our own and others’ lives.

“Consciousness matters,” Humphrey concludes with striking paradox, “because it is its function to matter. It has been designed to create in human beings a Self whose life is worth pursing.”

I didn’t really follow any of this, probably because I was worried for the matador.

Book Blogs

Lux Mentis, Booksellers

http://www.luxmentis.com/blog/luxblog.html

Posted 11/14/2007

“Anatomy of a Perfect Evening…”

When you have spent a week or so doing little but cataloguing books, prepping for the Boston show(s) and a myriad of other minor/major tasks and are basically basically frazzled to the point of blathering, taking a few hours off to have dinner and hear a presentation might not leap to mind as the best way to spend one's time (sleep, for instance, would be a very good idea). It was, however, the best evening I have had in a very long time. Simon Winchester (of Professor and the Madman, A Crack in the Edge of the World, The Chart that Changed the World and many others) was the speaker at the Baxter Society this evening and we had a lovely dinner before the event.

The dinner before the presentation was at Ciaola's in Portland's West End. The food was wonderful and our charming little private room was very nice. The company was outstanding. Among the group of 12, we had the author and wife, the owner of one of Maine's great fine press shops, the head of the Maine Historical Society's Library, a medical historian, a vinophile, a book artist, and others...it was a great group. Great stories, great conversation and just a great time.

Simon spoke on his soon-to-be-published biographical work on the life of Joseph Needham. I will not go into details of the man's life...but his life is a remarkable story and I can not wait to read Simon's new book The Man Who Loved China: Joseph Needham and the Making of a Masterpiece (ARCs in Dec with a Jan release). Suffice it to say, he was a chain smoking Cambridge educated scientist, communist, serial philanderer nudist who created one of the truly great works of the 20th century. His book, Science and Civilization in China, was originally proposed as a single volume 6-800 page work. As it turned out, the first volume was published in 1954...the 17th volume in 1995 at Needham's death and is now at 24 volumes (using his notes and/or structure). It is, apparently, the longest book ever published and it quite literally changed the West's conception and perception of China at nearly all levels. The “Needham Question” remains at the core of figuring what happened with China in the “modern” age and what/or what may happen going forward...

This was the first time Simon spoke about this work in public and he read the entire prologue to set the stage. In addition to the tales about and around Needham, he told some wonderful stories that arose during/from his adventures in researching this book. For example: Having copies of Needham's diaries (he was meticulous diary keeper), Simon quite literally followed in Needham's footsteps on many of his journeys.

He told of following his route to one of the remote university cities, quite literally on the far side of the Gobi Desert...while en route and quite literally in the middle of nowhere and with no traffic about, he broke down with an oil leak. When his temporary repair of chewing gum only worked for about 5 miles, he was dead at the side of the road. Quite worried about his prospects, he turned on his cell phone, hoping that there might be the hint of a signal...only to discover that China has apparently built towers pretty much everywhere...not only did he have solid coverage, he had data and was able, at the side of the road, in the middle of the Gobi Desert, in the dead of night, to google his hotel, get a number and call them [N.B. this annoys me a great deal, as there are at least 3 *major* dead spots between Portland and Tentants Harbor, Maine (and no coverage at all in TH....but high speed data in the Gobi]. After a brief description of his situation, he was told by the hotel clerk (500 miles away) to put his flashers on and go to sleep and to look for lights in 5 hours. 5 hours later, he saw two sets of lights, a tow-truck for the car and a vehicle for him...complete with noodles and beer. Just remarkable.

As many of you may know, he had written about 14 books *before* Professor and the Madman (The Surgeon of Crowthorne if you have a British edition). These books, in his words, “went from the publisher directly to the remainder tables”. While not entirely true, it was clearly his breakthrough work...but do track down some of those early, easy as most have been republished in recent years. I strongly recommend, The River at the Center of the World: A Journey Up the Yangtze, and Back in Chinese Time.

I'll stop here. I could rave about his presentation for hours. Do not miss an opportunity to hear Simon speak, it is hard to think of a way to spend one's time more pleasingly.

[photo shows Simon Winchester, his wife Setsuko (in back) and Dr. Harold Osher (per Simon, “Ahhh, the Map Chap”]

Posted 11/15/2007

“Would a Name, by Any Other…”

One last Simon related bit. At dinner he told a story of one British Lord's message to another British Lord. He very charmingly asked his wife if it was all right to tell it.

I do not remember, at the moment, what led to the story, but I think it had to do with propriety and its nuances. As can be seen in the image, Lord Kerr (Amb. to Russia, 1943) wrote Lord Pembroke the following message:

My Dear Reggie,

In these dark days man tends to look for little shafts of light that spill from Heaven. My days are probably darker than yours, and I need, my God I do, all the light I can get. But I am a decent fellow, and I do not want to be mean and selfish about what little brightness is shed upon me from time to time. So I propose to share with you a tiny flash that has illuminated my sombre life and tell you that God has given me a new Turkish colleague whose card tells me that he is called Mustapha Kunt.

We all feel like that, Reggie, now and then, especially when Spring is upon us, but few of us would care to put it on our cards. It takes a Turk to do that.

Sir Archibald Clerk Kerr
H.M. Ambassador

He quoted the message from memory and I will not forget it for a very long time. [N.B. I really apologize for the subject of this post...but not enough to change it.]

[Editor’s Note: ditto.]

Ye Olde Booksellers

The American Bookseller, Devoted to the Interests of the Book, Stationary, News, and Music Trades (NY: 4/1/1876, Volume 1, No. 7, p. 233).

Osgood’s Sale of Plates and Remainders

The event of the month was the sale, at auction, of the plates and remainders offered by J. R. Osgood & Co. It was by far the largest sale of plates ever held in this country, the catalogue including some of the best books in the market. The original cost of the plates was about $300,000 and the retail prices of the remainders offered footed up to over $100,000. There was a large attendance, and the bidding was, at times, quite spirited. The entire catalogue was sold, with few exceptions, the most important being George Eliot’s novels, and the entire proceeds amounted to about $126,000.

The Diamond edition of Dickens, 14 vols., was knocked down to Lippincott & Co. for $840; for the Household edition, 15 vols., Lee & Shepard paid $3,075; and the Charles Dickens edition, same number of volumes, went to Porter & Coates for $3,150. The Library edition of twenty-nine volumes was purchased by E. P. Dutton & Co. for $7,250.

Thackeray’s works, novels 6 vols., and miscellanies 5 vols., were bought by Lee & Shepard for $5,665; Charles Kingsley’s works, 5 vols., went to Macmillan for $405; Albert Mason bought Grace Greenwood’s writings for $120; the Rev. W. H. H. Murray’s books Adventures in the Wilderness, for $95; Music Hall Sermons, for $60; and Park Street Pulpit for the same amount, all subject to a ten per cent copyright.

Mr. Mason also purchased Charles Reade’s Works, 11 vols., for $2,860; Samuel Smile’s Works, 4 vols., for $800; Verne’s Tour of the World, plain edition, for $190; Dr. Ox, for $150, the illustrated edition for $285; Captain Hatteras, for $330; and The Wreck of the Chancellor, 18mo,, plain edition, for $105; and the illustrated edition, for $325. The illustrated edition of The Tour of the World went to Porter & Coates for $410, and they also bought Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, for which they paid $400. Lippincott bought Five Weeks in a Balloon, cheap, for $120; and The Fur Country went to the Lovell Printing and Publishing Company, for $280.

Hurd & Houghton purchased Sir Walter Scott’s Novels, 50 vols., with Lockhart’s Life of Scott, for $7,475. De Quincey’s works went to the same firm, 22 vol., for $2,300. Porter & Coates bought Stephens’ Camping-Out Series, 6 vols., and Trowbridge’s Jack Hazard Stories, 6 vols., with the remainders, paying for the former $1,320 and for the latter, $1,200. Horace Greeley’s Political Economy, which is subject to a 10 per cent. copyright, went to the same firm for $3,750. Gail Hamilton’s eight volumes were bought by Estes & Lauriat, for $266; W. R. Greg’s books brought $150; Ginx’s Baby, $11; and Leigh Hunt’s two volumes of poetry of 648 pages were bought by Welsh, Biglow & Co., the type founders, for $60.

Made in IOBA

After a career as a weather and storm researcher, Bob Maddox began an internet book business, Squid Ink Books. Although he wrote many scientific and technical papers over the years, he has also written several articles for the readers of “Firsts - The Book Collector's Magazine.” These are: “Collecting Walter Satterthwait” in the June 2000 issue; “Collecting Rick Bass” in the May 2001 issue; and “Two Very Different Pulitzer Prize Winners” in the May 2002 issue.

Bob Maddox operates Squid Ink Books out of Tucson, AZ and can be contacted at http://www.squidinkbooks.com.

Eenhoorns

When local estate sales or auction houses announce the disbursement of somebody’s animal-themed collection of penguins or cats or cuddly pandas or whatever, a vaguely queasy feeling arises. QVC home shopping network and tacky gift shop kitsch of every category and description. This goes double for a unicorn collection, though I will admit to a very short unicorn phase that included a poster for my bedroom. He or she (assuming female unicorns have horns) was gamboling about somewhere in the earthly paradise I briefly thought human evolution was steering us toward.

At a recent auction, I spent way too much on big boxes of large format estate books from a deceased bookseller that were only grouped together by virtue of their size. There were some impressive collections of French and British art masterpieces that don’t usually fly off the shelves, and many others that looked better there than they did later online, including a truly gigantic volume on horse-drawn carriages that turned out to be as common as manure. The winner would probably be the other physically largest titles—two copies of Percy Crosby’s Sport Drawings (1933), limited to 1,000 printed. The one in the slipcase is nice indeed, but the other copy turned out to be broken by the razor-wielding Philistine who had them last. Same thing with some others, like a two volume Gibson Girls.

Running out of hope, I found a slim folio unnoticed during the preview entitled Vijf Houtgravures, which my intimate knowledge of Dutch-to-English translation websites revealed to mean Five Cuts. Further inspection and research yielded the following description.

VIJF HOUTGRAVURES.~ Breda, The Netherlands: Eenhoorn Pers, 1951.~ Large format folio, paper over cloth-backed boards, folder contains a four page introduction by C. J. Asselbergs on the symbolism of the unicorn throughout history and on the cuts commissioned for this work, text in Dutch, five wonderful engravings on the theme of unicorns, artists are John Buckland Wright, Valentin le Campion, Dirk van Gelder, Stefan Mrozewski, and Mark F. Severin, all signed in pencil, one of only ninety copies printed, the Buckland engraving is 4.5" by 5.5" on a sheet of Basingwerk Parchment 9" by 11.75" mounted on a thick simili Japan paper passe-partouts folder 12" by 15.75", dimensions of engravings vary.~ The folder itself is in fair condition only, with wear and staining. The engravings are in near fine condition, a light stain to the lower portion of the le Campion mount, gift inscription on an inside flap of the folder.

Although this is a scarce and interesting work containing a signed engraving by John Buckland Wright, there were no copies available and not a lot of market value indicators to be found, so I decided to let the eBay marketplace set the price. This is a little lazy, but I’m going for the quick nickel over the slow dime these days (with a $500 start to make sure it wasn’t too quick), and sometimes the auction environment way is the high way after all. At any rate, these prints were not in any kind of order and only one of the signatures was clearly readable, so I guessed which was which based on C. J. Asselbergs’ Dutch language introduction, without relying on translations, once again, out of laziness or busyness. The captions under each image reproduce the sentence fragments used to ascertain which artist did which engraving. The first three are superb, by the way.

The folio got 4 bids and went for $926 in early November, recouping much of my expenditure in one swell poop and somewhat renewing my faith in unicorn collections, though I’d trade it all for earthly paradise, really I would.

House Calls

There are four messages on the machine. My son is hanging around while I listen to them, because the last one was a guy calling about a single book, and he just wanted to see my reaction. This same fellow called back the next day.

“I understand you buy books. I have a good one. It’s from 1850. It’s called Twelve Stars of the Republic. It’s about the presidents, and has pictures of all of them.”

“If it’s only one book, let me check on the value of it right now.” Keystrokes. “While I’m doing that, I can tell you that I usually buy books by the hundreds or thousands.”

“Oh, you don’t want it then?”

“Well, if it was the right single book I might be interested, but most old books are not worth very much. Okay, here it is. It is pretty rare.”

“I know it’s rare, like I said.”

“I see four copies listed, three at $150 and one at $225. Published by Edward Walker in 1850. The subtitle is Our Nation’s Gift-Book to Her Young Citizens, so it seems like it’s kind of a children’s book. Is yours brown or red?”

“Mine’s green.”

“It would also depend on the condition.”

“Mine’s in good condition. The pages are discolored, that’s all.”

“Well, I don’t think you will be too thrilled with my estimate, but that’s probably worth about $25 to a bookseller, in very good condition. It probably wouldn’t sell that fast, and...”

“Twenty-five bucks! Are you kidding? I have that much in my pocket.”

I suppressed a small chuckle at that odd rejoinder, and suggested he use the Yellow Pages to get second opinions from other booksellers, or perhaps try advertising it in the book section of the Want Ad Digest, but he hung up on me somewhere between these two alternative means of placing this valuable work. I don’t mind mistrust or rudeness, but I do sometimes wish for a follow-up weeks later.

“So, were you able to sell that book? How much did you get for it?”

Somewhat Literary Bookstore Names gathered by Gwen Foss

Some of these are probably no longer in business.

• Antigone Books (Tucson, AZ)
• Balrog Books (Brownsville, PA)
• Becky Thatcher Book Shop (Hannibal, MO)
• Books and Old Lace (Ashland, OR)
• Book Friars by Toad Hall (Austin, TX)
• Borogove Books (Santa Barbara, CA)
• Brillig Books (Philadelphia, PA)
• Cabbages and Kings (Blairstown, NJ)
• Cabbages and Kings (Chatham, MA)
• Caxton Books & Records (Santa Fe, NM)
• Charing Cross Bookshop (Tulsa, OK)
• Charlotte's Web (San Francisco, CA)
• Cheshire Cat Book Shop (Kennett Square, PA)
• Cheshire Cat Books (Sausalito, CA)
• Copperfield & Twist (New Springfield, OH)
• Cyrano's (Anchorage, AK)
• Daily Planet (Frisco, CO)
• Fahrenheit 451 (Laguna Beach, CA)
• Fantastic Planet (Plattsburgh, NY)
• Frabjous Books (Calgary, AB)
• Galatea (Chalfont, PA)
• Gigantic Hound (Tucson, AZ)
• Gulliver's Books (Fairbanks, AK)
• Hobbit Hall (Roswell, GA)
• Jabberwocky Bookshop (Newburyport, MA)
• Leaves of Grass (Willits, CA)
• Literate Raven (Colfax, CA)
• Little Dickens' Book Shoppe (Mount Pleasant, MI)
• Little Shop on the Prairie (Mendota, IL)
• Marco Polo & I (Tucson, AZ)
• Milliway's Books (Olympia, WA)
• Mr. McGregor's Garden (Fort Wayne, IN)
• Much Ado About Books (Redlands, CA)
• Munchkin Bookery (Lufkin, TX)
• Nevermore Used Books (Ridgefield Park, NJ)
• Paraclete Book Center (New York, NY)
• Parnassus (Astoria, OR)
• Parnassus (Ketchikan, AK)
• Pendragon Books (Dallas, TX)
• Phineas Fogg's Books Maps & More for the Traveler (Palo Alto, CA)
• Pickwick Books (Akron, OH)
• Poor Richard's Almanac (Salinas, CA)
• Poor Richard's Bookseller & Stationers (Easley, SC)
• Poor Richard's Bookshop (Flemington, NJ)
• Prince and Pauper (Rapid City, SD)
• Red Wheelbarrow Books (Portland, ME)
• Rohan Book and Game (Saskatoon, SK)
• Shakespeare Books (Dallas, TX)
• Slaughter House Comics, Games & Cards (Killeen, TX) [Vonnegut reference or old slaughterhouse?]
• Tempest Book Shop (Waitsfield, VT)
• Thackeray's (Toledo, OH)
• The Constant Reader (Albert Lea, MN)
• The Miller's Daughter (Haydenville, MA)
• The Moonraker (Langley, WA)
• The Old Curiosity Shop (Old Greenwich, CT)
• The Owl and the Pussycat (Lexington, KY)
• The Pied Piper (Yakima, WA)
• The White Rabbit (La Jolla, CA)
• The Worm (Sedona, AZ)
• The Yellow Book Road (La Mesa, CA)
• Through the Looking Glass (Glenwood Springs, CO)
• Toad Hall Books (Pleasanton, CA)
• Toad Hall Bookstore (Rockport, MA)
• Twice Told Tales (Gloucester, VA)
• Twice Told Tales (Houston, TX)
• Upstart Crow (San Diego, CA)

• Walden Pond (Oakland, CA)
• Waiting for Godot Books (Hadley, MA)

Submitted by Gwen Foss - http://www.gwenfoss.com/about.asp

Book Fallouts

This little item fell out of Miss Tallulah Bankhead (1972), and for a moment it tricked me, but the jokester should have spelled her first name right, and a book that was out before TB’s death in 1968 would have been smarter yet.

Images of Broadway Street Booksellers

These were taken on December 1, a cold but sunny day. The first guy had all his books wrapped in plastic, like Saran Wrap. He said, “If I knew you were going to take a picture I would have made them prettier.” “They already look good enough to eat,” I replied, though not good enough to buy. The second bookseller had a small table of vintage paperbacks. In keeping with my policy of buying something in every independent bookstore I enter (and my other policy of not carrying heavy books around New York City for 12 hours), I chose his C. S. Lewis, partly on speculation and partly because that looks like Mitt Romney behind the Martian canal otter. The third fellow was putting out some very classy titles. In the last shot, man’s best friends.

Book Store Labels: Durkee & Jenkins, Albany, NY

Found inside an old book whose title I recorded but misplaced.

Bookplates: Mary Butler Kirkbride Collection, NYS Department of Health Division of Laboratories and Research Library

Solicitations

The Standard can always use interesting, well-written articles on subjects of interest to the bookselling trade. Please query first, however, to editor@ioba.org. You will be supplied with submission guidelines, but to summarize, the material should be original, it is subject to editing, you retain copyright, and of course there is no payment other than most everyone’s satisfaction. You do not need to be a member of IOBA, except for the IOBA Bookseller Profiles section, though we would surely like you to join. We are very interested in the book trade outside the U.S. as well.

Currently we are seeking short pieces for the following self-explanatory columns. House Calls; Garage/Estate/Library Sale Tales; Auction Action; Book Show Impressions; Book Store Lore; and Library File.

Booku

Of all the little bibliographic oddities you inflict

on the Da Capo Press reprint of The Years of the Locust, ISBN Lookup,

the most unseemly is inserting Gilbert Seldes' middle name, Vivian.

Comic Books

Original newspaper file photos dated 10/13/1938, from International News Photos and the Associated Press, with the caption on the reverse from the latter.