Alfred Post of Pella Books

Midway in my life’s journey I awoke to a decision. I had been accumulating books all my life and had for a long time thought about opening a bookstore, used and rare. I reached an age at which if I was going to open a bookstore, it had to be done now or I would suddenly find myself retired.

I was lucky to find an old neglected/abandoned church building that a historical committee wanted to rent out (these modern churches are soft, expecting classrooms, changing tables, even running water). Many friends helped with the process of creating shelves, lugging boxes, and organizing sections. In May of 1999 Pella Books opened in time for Pella Tulip Time.

Because the town is not really big enough to support this type of store and because it was obvious even then that the Internet was going to be a major factor in the used book field, we have used computers from the beginning. Every book we have ever kept is in a database. This has turned out to be invaluable years later. We can check the sales history of any author and even any specific title.

Currently we have a bricks and mortar (real bricks, real mortar) store with about 15,000 titles, and about 12,000 on the Internet (some overlapping, but many of the latter tucked away in boxes). Like every other bookseller I have ever talked to, books are accumulating everywhere and piles abound. People constantly bring books to us, yet we continue to go to book sales as if we are desperate for more books. We are mostly upgrading our stock, replacing books that haven’t sold with books that appear to have more potential to sell. We don’t really have a specialty, but we have several areas in which we combine some knowledge with a good supply of books: theology, philosophy, literature, chess, baseball and of course Iowa and local topics.

We have always thought of ourselves as professionals, and have watched with dismay the various antics of the listing services and the practices they encourage. When IOBA was formed, we joined right away, not only to support other dealers and in our turn learn from them, but more importantly for us, to have a code of ethics to which we can point, saying “We try to conduct ourselves professionally, and this is the standard to which we aspire.” Although we are isolated geographically, we are pleased to be a member of a group of like-minded booksellers.

Alfred Post operates Pella Books in Pella, IA and can be contacted at http://www.pellabooks.com.