Editor's Notes

It's that time again, and we have a varied—and I hope interesting bag of goodies for you. We're a bit late this time, as we wanted to get IOBA's election results in.

We have a lot of practical hands-on advice on everything from shelving, maintaining inventory online and in an open store, online customer newsletters, women's literature links, Q&A on book matters, to ethical considerations in the book business. There are announcements of upcoming book-related events, coverage of past book fairs/events, word about new and existing online services, a rave about SIC magazine, and an article about a new book-related print magazine, OP.

We also have an in-depth interview with Robert Westbrook, author of the Howard Moon Deer mystery series and of Intimate Lies, and an interesting account by anthropologist and author Carol Laderman about her research into shamanism in Malaysia. There's information about an award-winning publisher of Jewish children's books, a raving by Godsey (which particularly hits home with me since I just went through something similar), a piece on books at auction, and an article about the spectacular and the not-so-great about movie and TV casting of mystery book characters.

There is also coverage about a most incredible mural at a bookshop in the U.K., an article from the perspective of a book collector, information on a booksellers' ring site, the next in our series on ephemera, and an update on the bookselling business from Book Hunter Press.

We also have the IOBA election results in a note from our re-elected president, Julie Fauble, and more information about IOBA’s classified ads program.

In addition, I would like to introduce you to two Regional Reporters I've acquired (yea!). I'd also like to solicit additional help, perhaps from Canada, Europe, Asia, South America, Australia, New Zealand, or the middle part of the U.S.—we would like The Standard to be truly international in flavor. Please contact me at editor@ioba.org or aaabooks@azalea.net if you're interested in working on the newsletter. Yes, it is volunteer, and no, you don't get paid. But it is fun, and you get to deal with our own charming computer guru, Deanna Ramsay and with Yours Truly (who is not so charming).

Our first Regional Reporter is Ken Fermoyle, who will be covering book-related matters on the West Coast of the U.S. Here's a brief bio of Ken, who also has some articles in this issue:

“I fell in love with books and reading as a youngster in the '30s. I suffered from severe asthma attacks and missed a lot of school. No TV in those days so I amused myself and made up for lost days in the classroom by reading. By age 11 or 12 I knew I wanted to be a writer. I got my first weekly newspaper job while a college freshman (courtesy of the GI Bill) in Oct. 1947. Then came succession of weeklies, a daily, freelancing, magazines, (Petersen Publishing, auto editor of Popular Science). a stint in advertising/PR. Etc. I moved to California in 1966 to be editor of Petersen's Wheels Afield magazine. So I've been a wordsmith all my adult life and always had the dream of owning a bookstore.

I took up book collecting when the kids were grown. That led to book scouting for local bookstores. I started my online bookstore several years ago, realizing that it was as close as this septuagenarian could get to his dream. I've enjoyed it and have made friends in cyberspace with many other book aficionados. I still write every day, working on a Vietnam book, my first fiction effort (a bookstore-related mystery) and articles for various publications, including The IOBA Standard. My wife Liz (an artist) and I live in Woodland Hills, an L.A. suburb.”

Our other Regional Reporter, for the East Coast of the U.S., is Terry Gibbs, who has just started working with us, and here is his brief bio:

“I have a small private shop, open only to dealer trade books and art. I specialize in photographic art / art, with an on line site http://www.gibbsbooks.com. I started selling books professionally 15 years ago, but I have been a collector and dealer of photography for almost 30 years. It all started with looking for research books on the works that I was buying/selling, next thing I had was too many books and not the space for them--my personal library on photography and art is about 1500 books plus our reference library. I am a member of the Daguerreian Society and other photographic groups. I've been an on line dealer from about late 1995 and have seen some of the changes in book selling on and off line.

My back ground with publishing and editing is: about five years with a magazine called Thunderbird Scoop, a bi-monthy hobby magazine for the members of the V. T. C. I.  (Vintage Thunderbird Club International), 1400 members. I sat on the board of directors as the Publication Director and editor, winning the top award for the best publication in the automotive hobby for five years running.

I live in Western New York, outside of beautiful Buffalo, New York. And no, it's not snowing here all the time, and I don't like chicken wings. My wife is a professional photographer and writer, and I have one son and a cat.”

I feel extremely lucky to have two such exceptional people working with me!

I hope you all enjoy this issue, and that it gives you some respite from our troubled world. Peace to all!

Shirley Bryant,
Editor   

President's Message

by Julie Fauble

The election is over, and we're heading into a new year with a something old and something new board of directors.  (If I could figure out how to fit something borrowed and something blue in there, this would all segue nicely with my current theory on how a book business is like a marriage.  But that's a column for another time.)

Some board members are returning in new roles: Maria Bustillos served as membership/public relations chair last year, and is now Vice President; Greg Williams was finance chair and is now stepping into the role of Treasurer; and Jean McKenna, who served as education chair, is one of our Members-at-Large.  I just adore these folks, and I think they're all going to be fabulous.

Alyce Cresap is returning as Member-at-Large and Internet Operations chair, much to my great relief.  She's an incredibly reliable worker, and most important to me, no matter how scatter-brained I get, she manages to poke, prod and nag me back on track.  Honestly, I would never have made it through last year without her help.

In the something new category, I am thrilled to welcome Aimee England, Forrest Proper and Angela Thorpe to the board.

Aimee will be serving as secretary.  You know the old saying, that if you want something done, give it to busy person.  Aimee's a busy person, active in both her bookstore and her community.  She sometimes shares her schedule, and I get exhausted just reading it, but she's got the energy to be out there going day in and day out.  I'm just tickled pink that IOBA is getting some of that energy.

And then there's Forrest.  I used to be so intimidated by Forrest.  First off, he's got that name: Forest Proper, Joslin Hall Rare Books.  Can anything sound more prim and stuffy and, well, "proper" than that?  Then he's got that whole ABAA thing and the books to die for and he's in Concord, Massachusetts, home of Thoreau, Emerson and all those guys I worshipped in college.  The whole thing screamed intimidating.  Fortunately, the truth is Forrest is not a prim and stuffy old academic in an ivory tower.  He is extremely intelligent, knowledgeable and professional, and the big bonus is he's got a wicked sense of humor.  We'll need all those qualities this year.

Angela is a "newbie" to IOBA, and I look forward to getting to know her.  I already like her spirit!  It takes guts to jump into something like this, just like it took guts for her to jump into bookselling full-time.  I am sure she will bring energy and derring-do to IOBA.

I think this will be a great board, and I'm very pleased that I get to be a part of it.

I also want to thank our departing board members.  Jerry, David, Sally, Anne and Chris, I am so very grateful for all your contributions.  You managed to put up with a president for whom "organization" is a four-letter word.  You spoke your minds and debated the issues intelligently and civilly.  You gave your time and your energy, and you believed in IOBA and its mission.  Thank you.

Julie Fauble, President

2003 IOBA Election Results

Global Book Town Independent Booksellers

By: Ken Dunn

Some time in mid October, 2002 in a chat room far far away, a number of booksellers got a bit tired of always having to deal with the big massive book listing sites and wondered if it was possible to have things a different way.

They started a discussion room of their own which can be found at: http://pub47.ezboard.com/bglobalbooktownindependentbooksellers and decided to try to figure out just exactly what they wanted.

The result is a website that to the best of its ability will feature independent internet booksellers who only have links to other independent internet booksellers and the Global Book Town site itself. Many of the existing member stores list on one or more of the book listing databases separately from their membership in GBT, but none of them directly link back to any of the major listing sites from their connection to GBT.

Our home page brings back memories for some people when it suggests "Have you ever walked through a bookshop neighborhood, dropping in at one store after another looking for that special book? We have recreated that atmosphere here by bringing together bookstores from around the world for your shopping enjoyment. Many of the stores have special offers that you will not find anywhere else. Feel free to peek in at one or more of the bookstores listed here. Each has its own specialty, and they all have an assortment of interesting and wonderful books just waiting for a good home."

We opened the Global Book Town website in mid December 2002 at http:// www.globalbooktown.com and already have 22 stores listed. Our short-range goals include a specialties / category list, feature bookstore pages, book reviews, and most anything else that someone is willing to add to the picture.

Membership to this point is voluntary and without any dues requirement. All expenses to date have been covered by the founding members of the group and all website work is being done on a voluntary basis by a few of the members.

Access to the discussion room does not require that you be an ezboard supporter, just that you have a user id. If you don’t already have one we suggest that you obtain a ‘global’ user id instead of just a local one as there are a number of other discussion boards related to books within the ezboard system and a global id lets you access all of them.

Our graphic for the site was kindly painted by the daughter of one of the founding members and as such is copyrighted by her, Elizabeth Kern.

We hope and expect to have 200 stores or better listed by the end of 2003 and feel that this will create a very good venue for booksellers with freestanding websites to join and a good site for them to promote in order to retain their independence from any listing site.

Any inquiries may be made thru our discussion board or by email to myself info@kensbookrack.com or info@altairbooks.com.

Ken Dunn

Kensbookrack.com

A proud member of Global Book Town

Opening a Bricks-and-Clicks Used Bookstore

By Jill McFarlane fictionaddiction@juno.com

Part I The Bricks

I recently opened a 1600-square foot used bookstore in Greenville, SC called Fiction Addiction. Per our name, we specialize in fiction hardcovers, paperbacks, audiobooks, adult, children's and a small selection of new books, with a few biographies and memoirs thrown in. We opened our doors on May 7, 2001 and started selling online a few days later. I was asked to write this article to share my experience of opening a bricks-and-clicks store with IOBA members.

Funding is a key issue when starting a business. The amount you need to start a used bookstore can vary drastically depending on the area you choose, your personal living expenses, and your vision for your business. To date, I've invested approximately $50,000 cash in Fiction Addiction and have another $10,000 available for emergencies. We're now at the point where the shop is paying for itself and supporting me, slightly ahead of my business plan.

I strongly recommend going through the exercise of writing up a business plan to help you address key issues in advance or at least map out your priorities and concerns. If you're asking for financing, you'll definitely need one and I had to have one as part of my lease application. One of the most important parts of the plan is identifying and detailing your store concept. Having a firm idea of your store concept (mine is that of a used bookstore with an upscale, new-bookstore feel and the customer service that independents are known for) will make your startup decision-making easier.

Your store name is crucial. My name -- Fiction Addiction -- combined with the tag line "Used paperbacks and more" tells customers exactly what we carry and yet the name is catchy and generic enough to work for a multi-store chain. Beware names that tie you to a physical location like Main Street Books; what do you do if you end up moving your shop? Your logo is not quite as important, but should also reflect your store concept. Using a book in our logo seemed self-evident, but we went with a stylized, elegant design to reflect our more upscale approach.

In thinking about my store concept, I wanted to have a couple of selling points that I could use to differentiate myself from the other used bookstores in the area. None of the other stores were open on Sundays, so I decided to make that a differentiation and to use "Open 7 days a week" in all our advertising. Sundays are our slowest day but I consider the payroll expense to be a loss leader that brings in new customers.

For my second differentiation, I wanted to have the best science fiction and fantasy section in the area (we currently have over 5500 SF/fantasy books). SF is an interest of mine and historically is hard to find at used bookstores since many SF fans are rabid collectors who never part with their books. So when searching for opening inventory, I bought nearly ever SF/fantasy book I saw.

Inventory turned out to be one of the easiest startup issues to deal with. I had a library of about 5000 books that I decided to give up for the store and then my mom and I simply made a tour of library sales (http://www.booksalefinder.com is a big help for this), thrift stores, and garage sales. We easily accumulated an additional 9,000 books (primarily mass-market and trade paperbacks) in 3-4 months at an average cost of $.35.

To get away from the image of the musty used bookstore, I decided that book condition was very important to my concept and that I couldn't let category romances overrun my store. I thus made the decision from the get-go not to deal in "category" romances at all unless written by an author who had gone on to bigger things (i.e., Nora Roberts, Iris Johansen, Janet Evanovich). Since I read romance, this was a fairly easy distinction for me to make. Now that our inventory is in the computer, my part-timer is instructed not to take any category romances unless the author is already in the computer. (I've since made an exception for Regencies and do have one shelf of them.)

When buying books I avoided ex-library books, moldy books, books with loose pages, books with clipped corners, books with shredding spines or tattered covers, or adult hardcovers without their dust jackets (we take children's pictorial hardbacks without jackets). If two copies of the same book were available, I took the one in better condition. I was looking for a broad selection (both as part of my store concept and because I wasn't sure what would appeal to my customers) and so I bought many books I was unfamiliar with but in such cases I tried for Very Good condition or better. For SF/fantasy I did take books with water staining, heavy wear, etc. since I knew how hard it was to find at all.

If you are planning to take trades from customers or use the line "We buy books" in your advertising then I suggest planning to open with little more than half the inventory that your space can support and budget for further buying over the course of your first year. This allows you to add sections and authors as you get a feel for your customer base. For example, we did not start with any Westerns or children's picture books but added both over time. We've grown from 14,000 books to 25,000 in a year and a half and our now working on maintaining this level.

Because I was envisioning a more upscale used bookstore, I knew I wanted to be on Greenville's East Side as this is an affluent, expanding part of town whose only other bookstore is a Barnes & Noble on a congested road that many people like to avoid. I grew up in Greenville and my parents still live here, which made location hunting easier. If you're unsure about an area, key indicators to look for are whether the community is growing or not, the average education & affluence, and general interest in books & reading (number of bookstores around, use & funding of local libraries).

I ended up in a small upscale shopping strip with several sit-down restaurants, a drugstore, a take-out pizza place, a kitchen specialty shop, and a children's hair salon. The strip is easy to get into and out of (avoid locations without a turning lane) and is visible as it is on a main 4-lane commuter artery. Our rent is $11.25 per square foot per year (plus CAM) and I consider it money well spent as we've gotten a ton of walk-in customers from the center -- people waiting to sit down for dinner, waiting on pizza, waiting on prescriptions, waiting on kid's haircuts. One of the shops in the center is moving and has found a sweet deal nearby with rent of only $8.00 per square foot but the strip is tucked away and hard to turn into. I might consider something like this in 4-5 years after we've built up our customer base, but for the time being I think the higher rent is the best advertising money I could spend.

Our next best advertising source, besides word-of-mouth, has been the Yellow Pages. Greenville has two competing phone books and I advertised in both with slightly different wording and we seem to get calls about equally from the two. We ran a buy one, get one free coupon in a 4-color direct mail piece called The Clipper Magazine that targets upscale residents and has good restaurant coupons and had a great response. Radio was effective but way too expensive for my price points. If I were doing it over again, I would take the money I frittered away on random advertising and put it into an extended newspaper campaign. For our second year, I'm keeping the phone book advertising but transferring the rest of our budget to online advertising (see Part II for more about online advertising).

Store concept was an important factor in designing our store layout and fixtures. I knew I would be carrying hardcovers and trade paperbacks and so the shelving had to deal with this. We decided to go with L-footprint wall cases with adjustable shelving (7 hardcover shelves or 9 mass-market ones or any combination you want) and A-frame floor cases with 4 mass-market shelves at the bottom and 2 hardcover shelves at the top. The L-footprint and the a-frame design allow the bottom shelves to angle out, making the books easier to see. The trade-off is that this uses up more of your floor space. I capped the a-frames at 6 shelves because I wanted the store to have an open feel. The shelving is all wood and was built by my father (but you could hire a professional carpenter). Except in the Nonfiction section, our books are shelved alphabetically by author (strict alphabetic order, not just all A's together). On the wall cases, hardcovers are interleaved with paperbacks, but on the floor cases they run along the top row or two. For the most part all books are shelved upright, but on the wall cases some of our hardcovers are stacked sideways so as to fit more shelves in. A pet peeve of mine is walking into a bookstore and not immediately being able to find what you're looking for, so we have prominent hanging & wall signage pointing out our various categories. To encourage browsing and keep away from that cramped, musty bookstore look we have a sofa and armchair at the front of the store and benches and two other chairs throughout.

As you see, the majority of our startup decisions we're easily answered by looking to our store concept and going from there. If you're having trouble defining your store concept, make a list of all the things that irritate you about other bookstores you've been in and see if you can pull together a theme from that.

Part II - Selling Online

Selling online was a major component of my business plan. Building traffic to a bricks-and-mortar store requires time and/or advertising money. The online services -- such as ABE, Amazon, Alibris, and Half.com -- have already invested that time and money for you and thus listing with them can be a source of immediate income for a new business.

Some bricks-and-mortar stores list only a portion of their inventory online, usually because they started out non-computerized and are only listing their newly purchased stock. I planned to have my entire stock listed in my inventory system so that I could easily answer customer requests ("Do you have a copy of x in stock?"), know whether or not to take another copy of y book on trade, and to track sales trends. Going one step further and listing my entire inventory online gives me two benefits. 1) My local customers are able to browse my website and check inventory levels before coming into the store. 2) My stock is exposed to a much broader customer base and thus turns more quickly than it would otherwise.

I wanted one computer system that would function as both a POS (point-of-sale) and an inventory management system. The choices I investigated were the traditional online book-listing software (such as HomeBase), software specifically designed for used bookstores (such as UBIC), and new bookstore software (such as Anthology). I quickly ruled out the online book-listing software since it was not primarily designed to function as a POS. The used bookstore software UBIC was tempting since it could track customer credit, but it did not have a data export feature. (At the time, a UBIC module to interface with Half.com had been developed, but other exports would have to be individually written by the programmer and would cost extra). I decided to go with the new bookstore software, Anthology, because it offered me a very flexible export feature and the support and reliability of an established, large company. I've been very happy with my decision to date.

I hoped in-store sales would account for rapid turnover of many of my mass-market paperbacks, so it seemed impractical to describe the condition of each book of my 10,000+ starting inventory or to create a separate inventory record for each individual book that came through my doors. Instead, I listed my inventory by ISBN number and then indicated how many quantity of each ISBN I had. Some books have been published at different price points using the same ISBN and so I did create a different inventory record for each price point. For older books, I set my SKU to the SBN number, publisher's book number, etc.

So how to list my books online considering that I had multiple copies in varying conditions listed under a single SKU and no condition notes for even those SKUs with only one copy? I took Powell's Books for my example. They listed on Amazon and I noticed that all their listings were simply as "Good" with no further description. Since I had been reasonably picky about condition, the majority of my starting inventory was in "Good" or better condition. For the ones that weren't I set a flag in the record that prevented it from being uploaded to the online listing services (these books do show up on my website, listed as being in "Poor" condition).

Many people are simply looking for a reading copy of a book and are more concerned about price than condition. This is the online market that Powell's and I are catering to. Obviously, I am missing out on some sales but probably not enough to overcome the sheer cost of entering and maintaining condition information for thousands of books. There are other advantages to this system. First, in many cases I am underpromising and overdelivering, which can lead to some ecstatic online feedback. Secondly, since my in-store customers can handle (and abuse) the majority of my stock, this leaves me some leeway for faults introduced in the time between a book being listed and being sold.

Anthology does have a limited-size field that can be used for condition details. From the beginning I used this to indicate Bookclub editions and the presence or absence of a dust jacket (many of our children's hardcovers have only pictorial covers). In the last few months I've developed an expanded system for listing condition more accurately and including specific condition notes for my rarer and more expensive books.

I started my online sales by listing with Half.com since they only charge commission fees and thus I wouldn't owe anything unless a book actually sold. Likewise, one could also start with Alibris (but Half.com has a lower commission). I started slowly, listing only a portion of my inventory with Half.com until I'd gotten our packing and shipping procedures down. After I'd been listing my entire inventory with Half.com for a month or two I was better able to judge whether it was feasible to pay the fees to list on ABE, Amazon, etc. Over time, I've added online sites one at a time. I now list on 8: ABE, Alibris, Amazon, BookAvenue, BookCellar, ChooseBooks, Half.com, and my own website.

I set prices for my initial inventory using a percentage system: paperbacks were 40% off the original cover price with a minimum of $2.50 for adults and $1.50 for children. My online sales did quite well because unbeknownst to me I had quite a few collectible and hard-to-find books. It wasn't until I was listing with several sites and would get multiple orders within minutes for a new listing that I decided that I needed to take the time to do price research on new inventory items. Currently if an item comes that I do not have in stock, I do a price check (usually on Amazon). The prices for the majority of my paperbacks are still set by the original cover price, but the rarer ones are priced individually according to the online market. My hardcovers have always been priced individually; our current hardcover minimum is $6.00.

When the store is quiet, I can often pull orders and wrap by myself. Luckily, those days are getting fewer and farther between so I have a part-timer who comes in and helps and then takes the packages to the post office. We ship six days a week and average 20 shipments per day of 30 or so books. We ship both domestically and internationally. We use the Simply Postage postage meter and the USPS shipping assistant. We send most orders for single paperbacks via first-class mail with the book wrapped in a layer of bubble-wrap, then brown Kraft paper. If shipping overseas or a more valuable paperback, I may first waterproof the book by enclosing it in a bag I buy from a local comic book store. For hardcovers we've experimented with various size boxes purchased from a local packaging company. We're currently thinking of going to 10 x 7 1/4 x 5" h boxes scored to fold down to varying heights as they will hold a single-stack of bubble-wrapped hardcovers or two stacks of mass-markets.

It is easier to build an ongoing customer relationship in person than online. In-store customers have a limited geographic area that they can feasibly shop in and that geographic area will contain a limited number of used bookstores. If your store has good customer service, a decent selection, and fair pricing then most initial in-store customers will return at some point - whether twice a month or twice a year. Online customers, however, have few geographic limitations and thus your online store is faced with nearly unlimited competition. Occasionally I feel like I get an online order because I'm the closest store to the customer and they hope that will result in a faster delivery time, but usually location (except as it impacts S&H costs) plays little or no role in online buying. What little online customer loyalty exists is usually to the larger brand name of Amazon, ABE, Alibris, etc. Some online customers don't even realize that your store is a separate entity from the listing site.

In-store customers also tend to purchase more books at a time than online customers. In-store customers will often walk in and say, "I just discovered author x, give me everything you have by him" and walk out with 15 books. Whereas an online customer is only looking for the 2-3 books by the author that they haven't been able to find in their local used bookstore.

Some online customers can be developed into loyal, repeat customers. For instance, many avid readers live in small towns without a local bookstore. Or perhaps you have a great specialty selection that is going to bring customers back to you over and over. But first your store needs to have its own independent website so as to enforce your brand identity and to eliminate commission fees on those sales and thus boost your profit margin. My site is hosted by Chrislands, which offers a very economical, customizable, easy-to-use solution. Your site should also allow customers to sign up for your mailing list.

I use the online listing services as customer lead generators. When I ship an ABE, Amazon, BookAvenue, etc. order I email the customer to let them know that the book has shipped and give them their tracking number if applicable. At the end of the email I encourage the customer to visit my website and sign up for my mailing list so as to receive coupons and sale notices. Unless prohibited by the listing site, I also wrap a bookmark containing my website URL in with the customer's order. Once a month or so, I send a coupon (i.e., 20% off if you order 5 books or more) out to my mailing list. To send my coupon email, I use GroupMail Pro software. Make sure to always include unsubscribe instructions on any email you send out.

I also spend $100-200/month on online advertising of my site via Overture, Ah-ha and MyPhrases. I'm going through the setup to list on Froogle -- Google's new product search engine.

Over the fiscal year 2002, Fiction Addiction did approximately $123,000 in top-line (i.e., before deducting commissions) sales including shipping & handling reimbursements. Excluding S&H, online sales accounted for approximately 32%. In 2001, online sales were 37% of the total, so our ratios have stayed pretty steady. In terms of dollar amounts, our June-December 2002 online sales saw an 8% increase over June-December 2001.

Our in-store and online sales channels complement each other in many ways. The wider reach of the web allows me to turn my inventory more quickly, sell collectible books at higher price points, and sell a wider range of titles than I would otherwise. In turn, this means that I can offer local customers a wider selection and accept more trade-ins which encourages them to spend more money in my shop and to give me first dibs on any books that they are looking to sell. Being an online-only shop would take away the customer contact that I enjoy and my online sales are not currently profitable enough to completely support me. By combining the two channels, however, I've reached profitability in only a year and a half.

Trances That Heal: Rites, Rituals and Brain Chemicals

By: Carol Laderman

Professor Carol Laderman received her Ph.D. in Anthropology, awarded with Distinction, from Columbia University, and has taught at Fordham and is Chair of the Anthropology Department at City College in New York. Professor Laderman's primary research interests are Southeast Asia, medical anthropology, nutrition, reproduction, and sex roles. Her publications include such volumes as:

Wives and Midwives: Childbirth and Nutrition in Rural Malaysia (University of California Press, 1983)

Taming the Wind of Desire: Psychology, Medicine and Aesthetics in Malay Shamanistic Performance (University of California Press, 1991)

The Performance of Healing (Routledge, 1996)

Professor Laderman is also the wife of Gabriel Laderman, bookseller. They are currently planning a second, extended trip to Malaysia, to update Professor Laderman's research on Malaysian trances and healing rituals.

* * * * * *

Carol Laderman didn't go to Malaysia in search of shamans; she went to study childbirth practices in an area in which shamanism had died out 75 years earlier-or so it was assumed. Once she got there, she found these healers were still an integral part of the village medical system. An their ceremonies helped her discover "the things the Malays take for granted that everyone knows—that an embryo begins life in the man's brain, for instance."

Laderman has also researched teenage pregnancy and nutrition in New York's Spanish Harlem and South Bronx. She applied the latest research in brain chemistry to trance states in her article, which follows.

* * * * * *

Pak Long Awang is a powerful healer. The Malay villagers he treats believe that he commands spirits and can enter into an altered state at will, becoming a vessel for pronouncements from the invisible world. I first witnessed his power at work while doing anthropological research in a small Malaysian village set between the South China Sea and a tropical rain forest, a village so isolated it lacked electricity. In order to conduct my research, I had to store vials of blood samples in a thermos bottle packed with ice until they could be flown out to the capital, Kuala Lumpur, 180 miles away.

Here, against a backdrop of flickering oil lamps in an atmosphere redolent of a resin used as incense, Pak Long serves as the local version of a country doctor. He treats aches and pains that he diagnoses as "wind sickness" by inducing a deep trance the Malays call "forgetfulness".

Pak Long is a shaman, or spiritual healer, and though his methods seem bizarre, his healing trances may work their apparent magic by actually altering the levels of brain endorphins---the body's natural opiates---in his patients. These endorphins, produced by every human in response to certain extreme situations, may be a link between the trance ceremonies of the East Indies and the most sophisticated neurochemistry laboratories in the West.

For almost two years after my arrival in the village, I refused to undergo one of the shaman's trances. Having become a member of Pak Long's entourage, I attended healing ceremonies with growing regularity; the shaman had even adopted me as his own daughter. Still, as a Westerner and a scientist, I was afraid to enter trance---afraid I might embarrass myself or, worse, never come out at all. My reluctance became a standing joke among the villagers. Although I had learned to love and trust Pak Long, I remained unwilling to place myself under his control. I had asked him and his patients many times to describe their sensations during trance, but no one would. "How could I tell you what red looks like if you had never seen the color?" Pak Long asked.

Still, I had already become a willing subject for some of Pak Long's treatments. I regularly submitted to incantations of release to ward off the dangers the Malays thought accompanied my work on Malay childbirth. I had apprenticed myself to the village midwife, who taught me obstetrics, nursing and the ritual duties of her profession. Malays believe that human birth is too deep a mystery for any but a midwife to witness, and even she runs the risk of failing eyesight unless she is ritually released. Usually the midwife performed this ritual for both of us, but occasionally Pak Long would squeeze it in at the end of one of his more elaborate healing ceremonies. Unknown to me, the stage was set for my first trance.

One day, instead of beginning the familiar words of release as I sat beside him on the pandanus mat recently vacated by a cured patient, Pak Long signaled the assembled musicians to start the music that accompanies the transition to "forgetfulness." As the drums and gongs set up their steady rhythm, Pak Daud, the shaman's partner, played the introduction to "The Song of the Young Demigod," a story of frustrated love, on his spike fiddle. Pak Daud is the indispensable earthbound member of the shamanistic team; he does not enter into a stated of changed reality.

For a moment I hesitated, and then decided to submit to trance. As the vibrations of the drums and gongs entered my body, my eyes seemed to glaze over. As the music became louder my mouth opened, trembling uncontrollably. I began to feel cold winds blowing inside my chest, winds that increased in intensity, as the music swelled and accelerated until it felt as if a hurricane was raging within my heart. I put my hands on my chest to try to calm it, but instead I began to move my shoulders and then the whole upper part of my body as if I were about to get up and dance. With the last vestiges of my self-control, I prevented myself; I still feared embarrassment. But as the music swelled to a climax, I began to move my head so quickly and violently that, had I not been in trance, my neck would undoubtedly have snapped.

The music stopped abruptly. Instantly, I stopped shaking my head and sank to the floor. Pak Long began reciting spells to bring me out of trance. I came out very quickly, literally as though a spell had been broken. I felt good; the only aftereffect was a slight pain in my stomach. Women crowded around me to wash my face with jasmine water and massage my stomach. The whole thing had taken about 20 minutes.

What was going on?

According to these Malays, the universe and all of its creatures contain four basic elements: earth, air, fire and water. When one of these elements is thrown out of kilter, sickness can result. The talents and desires of individuals are classified as air, or "inner winds." They are powerful when expressed, but when denied or thwarted, they become dangerous, causing "wind sickness." The shaman's cures release these pent-up winds.

Most Western scientists have a different perspective on the trance experience. Trance is achieved through cultural cues: ritual props, incantations, songs and stories. Percussive music, a steady, musical pulse, is especially important in the transition to altered states in cultures throughout the world. The most effective rhythm is four beats per second, which is exactly the optimum frequency for pain relief through electrically stimulated acupuncture. What's more, it matches the EEG frequency of theta waves, which are produced by the brain during periods of deep meditation but appear only rarely in a normal waking state. English faith healers have been shown to produce continuous theta waves in their patients by the laying-on of hands, and the patient's theta waves exactly match the pattern of the faith healer's.

A more important key may be found in the biochemistry of endorphins. Endorphins (the name is a contraction of "endogenous morphine like substances"} are substances that act on the nervous system, and are generated in the human brain in response to pain, stress or certain kinds of "peak experience." It may be that they are also generated in response to a belief.

The ability of the body to heal in response to belief has long been recognized. Physicians regularly administer placebos, pharmacologically inert substances, in circumstances that don't indicate an active medication. The patient believes he has been given effective medication and, in response to this belief, he recovers. On theory is that his body produces chemicals—perhaps endorphins—that alleviate his ailments. Placebos have been used to control postoperative pain, relieve anxiety, and to cure warts and peptic ulcers.

Endorphins may have evolved in order to protect and preserve our species in its struggle for survival. Pain normally serves as a signal to alert the body that something is amiss. But when pain becomes excessive or too prolonged, it becomes destructive; neurohormones can take over to relieve the pain, sometimes even producing feelings of euphoria. In pregnant women, for instance, endorphin production increases during the last trimester and reaches a peak late in labor. This helps account for the pleasure with which some women remember natural childbirth; endorphins have reduced both the pain and the memory of it.

Nor are endorphins the only chemicals the brain produces. Given the right cues, it will generate tranquilizers as effective as Librium or Valium. A growing number of scientists, from biochemists and pharmacologists to psychiatrists, psychologists and anthropologists, have speculated that somehow shamans like Pak Long have hit on ingenious methods for turning on production of the brain's natural chemicals. This involves a subtle appreciation of the patient's psychological, as well as his physical, problems.

The shaman carefully tailors his treatment to the patient's needs, and his goal is to choose the appropriate "song of transition" that will move the patient into a trance state. For an asthmatic retired puppeteer, for example, Pak Long chanted his incantations to the accompaniment of musicians playing the overture to the shadow-puppet play.

For the yearly healing of the fattest woman in the neighborhood, known affectionately as "Miss Fatty," Pak Long took another tack. Miss Fatty had an overwhelming desire to dance in the Malay opera, a desire doomed by her enormous girth. She functioned well as wife and businesswoman for most of the year, but as her frustration, or retained wind, built up, she would lose her will and energy and take to her bed. In the healing session, Pak Long and his assistants played the music of the Malay opera to assist Miss Fatty's journey from the normal world to the ideal; there she could realize her ambition. In trance, she would rise from her sleeping mat with the grace of a lithe young girl and dance the role of the beautiful princess before a delighted audience of friends and neighbors. Afterward, her ailments disappeared.

The most striking aspect of the shamans' trances is that they work—sometimes when Western medicine fails. One day, Pak Long was stricken with intense chest pain. I drove him to the hospital, but the resident physician could discover no physical cause for the symptoms and sent us home.

When we got there, Pak Long was placed, pale and trembling, on his sleeping mat. A consulting shaman, summoned for a healing ritual, discovered by divination a cause that would make little sense to Western doctors: Angry, unsatisfied spirits were squeezing the life from Pak Long's heart and lungs. Several weeks earlier, Pak Long had treated a woman for a spirit-induced disease. The spirits, using the shaman's voice, agreed to restore her health in return for a feast. A chicken, eggs, pancakes, custard, rice, cigarettes and a present of white cloth were to be ceremoniously laid out for them near the jungle. But the patient's husband, a rich, urbanized Malay, was skeptical of traditional methods. Instead of fulfilling his promise to the spirits, he took his wife to a clinic in Kuala Trengganu, where she recovered. The couple credited the doctor, and invited neither Pak Long nor the spirits to the feast of thanksgiving. The spirits, insulted and confused, turned on Pak Long.

The consulting shaman announced this to me and to the waiting villagers, and asked that we all joint him in calling out to the spirits to leave the shaman alone and attack the real culprits, the unbelieving couple. Immediately Pak Long stopped trembling, color flooded into his face, and he sat up and smiled.

There was clearly no hoax involved here; the consulting shaman believed completely in the results of his divination. But was Pak Long merely responding to the power of suggestion? A Western-trained doctor might have diagnosed his condition as angina pectoris or esophageal spasm; both are often associated with emotional stress. Was his pain brought on by the public denigration of his powers and relieved by a public expression of support?

The Mind-Body Connection

The Western interpretation of the shaman's power lies in the growing appreciation of the mind-body connection. Psychosomatic illnesses may have their origins in the mind. But once physical symptoms appear, they are quite real and not "all in the mind." We are discovering that the biochemical changes the mind produces can ravage the body just as a virus or a drug can. In fact, Dr. Raymond Prince of McGill University, a pioneer in the field of transcultural psychiatry, has gone so far as to say that psychiatrists who don't recognize the interaction of mind and body should be known as "former psychiatrists." Malay shamans, it seems, have always inhabited the frontier that Western scientists are just beginning to explore. And they have had company.

There is good evidence to suggest that cultures and cults around the world have long exploited the brain-body link to produce altered states of consciousness without using drugs. The Salish Indians of Canada hold a Winter Spirit Dance designed to help a man achieve the kind of visionary experience that brings power in the form of a tutelary spirit. But the dance is also used to treat "spirit illness," a conditional characterized by depression and often connected with drug and alcohol abuse.

The Salish use a number of techniques, from over stimulation to sensory deprivation, to produce the altered state. The patient is alternately immobilized in darkness and silence and forced to run and dance for hours to the beat of drums, rattles and chants. He is underfed and tantalized with food, overheated with heavy blankets and nearly drowned in icy water. The treatment ends only when he becomes a new "baby" and calls out a song that has been revealed to him by the spirits. One can compare the Winter Spirit Dance to experiences brought on by opiates, and the Salish recommend it for tribesmen who have become dependent on drugs. Are the tribesmen substituting natural brain-produced opiates for externally administered drugs?

Dr. Sheila Womack, an anthropologist who has researched Pentecostal Church services in the United States, feels that such a substitution may explain the ability of alcoholics and drug addicts to give up their habits in favor of regular churchgoing as vessels of the Holy Spirit; they speak in tongues and temporarily leave the confines of everyday life. What is even more remarkable is that if they don't go to church at least three times a week, they suffer withdrawal symptoms.

Missing Link

Unfortunately, objective proof of a link between ecstatic states and endorphins is difficult to obtain. Lumbar punctures, standard procedure in neurology clinics to obtain spiral fluid for chemical analysis, are too risky in the field. My make-sift blood-refrigeration methods are inadequate for preserving the blood samples until laboratory analysis can detect the unstable chemicals. An even if these problems were solved, we don't really know exactly which chemicals are likely to be the most significant in a shaman's cures. We could block endorphin production with naloxone, a morphine antagonist that also interferes with the action of endorphins. But if the experiment were a success and a patient failed to achieve trance, then the healing ritual would be a failure, and a traumatic one at that.

Such questions may already be academic; at least as far as the Malay shaman is concerned. For years, shamans have practiced in defiance of the ruling Islamic religious authorities. When I returned to my east coast village last summer, Pak Long had retired. Pat Daud, his partner, had suffered a stroke, and Tok Mamar, the consulting shaman, had given up shamanic activities after his pilgrimage to Mecca.

Sadly, we may never discover the exact biochemical components of the shaman's cures, but there is no doubt that by opening the floodgates of emotion he can exorcise the demons of disease.

Shamanism in Print

Ecstatic Religion by I.M. Lewis. New York: Penguin, 1971.

Hallucinogens and Shamanism Edited by Michael J. Harner. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Shamanic Voices: A Survey of Visionary Narratives Edited by Joan Halifax. New York: Dutton, 1979.

Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy By Mircea Eliade. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964.

The Way of the Shaman: A Guide to Power and Healing By Michael J. Harner. New York: Harper & Row, 1980.

FOR LOVE OR MONEY?

Over three years ago my wife, Mary, came up with the idea for a writers mural within our bookshop. The right artist was commissioned (an Oscar nominated animator, no less) and the research and designs began.

That the mural would be a wonderful addition to the shop was not in doubt, but my job was to see if it could be justified commercially. The area was large (40' x 18'), needing special fade-resistant acrylic paints, so cost was going to be considerable - the scaffolding alone cost a four-figure sum and the total cost was in five figures.

Would it sell more books? Enough books to pay for it? We hoped so!

The mural was finished just over a year ago, after two years work by Mary on research and, of course, a huge amount of work by Peter, the painter, assisted by his father, John..

Research? Read for yourself within the link below the care that went into the selection of each writer and the research that went into the grouping, so that there is a genuine connection (e.g., Stevenson actually met [and liked] Twain when travelling in America.). Then there were the reference photographs needed for each writer, dozens of them, so that Peter could get the likeness just right. He even had the bookshop staff (including management!) dressing up in appropriate clothes, acting as models for the mural.

If truth be told, it was done for love, but always with an eye on the commercial angle - and we have been delighted with the results. The mural has attracted major regional newspaper coverage and two television spots so far. This has led to a 14% increase in turnover over the last year. There are other factors, but the mural is the major difference within the bookshop over the past year, so I believe that it can claim most of the commercial credits.

So, if you have a gleam in your eye and have something wonderful you want to do within your bookshop, but are worried about the cost, I hope our example will inspire you to take the plunge.

It has taken a further year to get the mural website ready, but here is a preview.

The instructions for use are not quite finished, so I will give them separately:

1. Click onto the following link.

http://voodoo3.tagish.co.uk/barter/mural.html

3. Sweep your mouse over the mural and each panel changes to colour. Click onto any panel and the panel comes up close, along with a description of the writers within that panel.

4. Click onto any writer (or dog, or cat, or other animal) for a final enlargement.

In addition, you can click onto the link below the mural for a history and the explanation of the 'Not the Writers' name. (Yes, we probably missed out YOUR favourite author too!)

Finally, there is another link at the very bottom for a full colour high-resolution sweep of the whole mural.

Stuart and Mary Manley

http://www.barterbooks.co.uk

EDITOR'S NOTE: Here's a peek at the mural. You'll get a much better view by going to Barter Books' site, and much more information about it. But wanted you to get an idea of what a tremendous thing it is.

Mystery Novel Characters: Often Miscast for Films, TV

By: Ken Fermoyle

The history of casting actors for roles in movies or TV series made from mystery novels includes more misses than hits, but there have been notable exceptions.

Basil Rathbone was Sherlock Holmes. And when Hawk showed up on the "Spenser For Hire" TV series my reaction was: "Migawd, that's him!" It was if my mental image of Spenser's black sidekick had been transferred intact from my mind to our television screen. Avery Brooks was dead-solid perfect for the part.

The whole "Spenser For Hire" cast was very good, in fact. Robert Urich made a very acceptable Spenser; Richard Jaeckel and Ron McLarty were excellent as Lieutenant Martin Quirk and Sergeant Frank Belsen, respectively. On the other hand, I thought Joe Mantegna was a pale shadow of Spenser in the "Small Vices" movie. He had neither the size (remember Spenser was an ex-heavyweight boxer) nor the insouciant, flippant manner to carry off the role.

What started me off on this "horses for courses" musing about actors in mystery roles was the recent showing of the movie made of Tony Hillerman's Skinwalkers for PBS. My first impression of Wes Studi as Lt. Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Police was negative.

"Too young-looking, too nattily dressed," I thought. I always pictured Leaphorn as showing a little more age, perhaps a little shorter and stockier, usually dressed in khaki shirt and slightly rumpled slacks, with a windbreaker or fleece-lined denim jacket in colder weather. My mental image of Jim Chee was a little fuzzier, but Adam Beech sharpened it and made the character his own. Whenever I read a Hillerman mystery from here on out, my mind's eye will visualize Beach as Officer Chee.

Probably the worst collective disaster in the history of translating mystery novels to the big or small screens befell Jonathon Gash and his randy, rascally, ever-impoverished antiques dealer, Lovejoy. Ian McShane was woefully miscast as Lovejoy, but has only himself to blame. He was both star and co-executive producer of the first year of episodes (1986). He continued to star and co-produce but also directed the series in seasons two through six (19911994), to his great shame. His worst sin may have been transforming the slovenly, beer-swilling Tinker, Lovejoy's "barker" (antiques scout and all-around helper), into a sanitized eccentric who bore no resemblance to the original beyond the name.

More unfortunate was the horrible miscasting of Tony Randall, a truly fine actor, as Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot in "The Alphabet Murders." David Suchet was a far better choice as Poirot from the mid-1980s to 2001.

On the other hand, it's hard to think of anyone filling the bill better as Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse than John Thaw, who starred in the long-running British series.

A legendary sleuth who has been portrayed on TV and in the movies with varying degrees of success is Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe. A&E offered the latest versions, standing Maury Chaykin and Timothy Hutton. An earlier series (1981) starred William Conrad as Wolfe and Lee Horsley as his indispensable aide and legman, Archie Goodwin. Neither Chaykin nor Conrad felt exactly right as the 285-pound, orchid-fancying genius who occupied a custom-build in the office of his Manhattan brownstone. Excellent actors both, but perhaps Conrad was too identified in my mind as Marshall Matt Dillon of the radio Gunsmoke and Chaykin tends to over-emote more than I expected of Nero.

Timothy Hutton, however, is the hands-down choice over Lee Horsley as Archie. He fits the bill physically and strikes all the right notes in attitude. Horsley seemed tighter and never as comfortable in the role.

There have been several very good Saul Panzers. George Wyner was one (1981 series) and George Jenesky of the A&E series was another.

I know this is heresy but I did not feel initially that Humphrey Bogart was absolutely right as Sam Spade role in the classic movie of Dashiell Hammet's "The Maltese Falcon." Physically, he didn't fit the mold but he played the role with such consummate skill that he literally made it his own. Instead of adapting to the part and becoming the character he portrayed, Bogart forced the character to become him, and did so with great success. Ironically, Bogart was not the first choice for the Spade role. He got it after George Raft turned it down, presumably because he did not want to work with the "newbie" director, John Huston. Just as well to my thinking, because never in a million years could I think of Raft as Sam Spade!

I found Bogart more accurately cast, however, as Philip Marlowe in "The Big Sleep," one of Raymond Chandler's best hard-boiled mysteries transformed into a film noir, private eye film classic. Called "the best example of a classic Warner Bros. Mystery" by some reviewers, it has aged well since coming out in 1946. The palpable sexual tension between Bogart and Bacall, mirroring their off-screen romance, added an extra level of excitement and electricity to the film. Lauren Bacall was a near-ideal choice for her role.

Most people forget, or never knew, that Robert Mitchum reprised the role of Marlowe in a British remake of the classic mystery in 1978, with the setting transferred from a 1940s Los Angeles to an updated 1970s London. Mitchum actually made a better Marlowe in some ways than Bogart, but the film itself was not in the same league as the original. Mitchum came a lot closer to fitting the Marlowe persona in my mind than Bogart.

Getting back to "The Maltese Falcon," I must pay tribute to two casting decisions that rank right up there in greatness with Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes and Avery Brooks' Hawk: Sidney Greenstreet as Caspar Gutman and Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo.

Speaking of these cinema versions of Hammett and Chandler classics raises an interesting point. Millions of viewers have seen the movies over the years, but how many read the books first? In all cases cited in this article I read the books before seeing the movie or TV adaptations so I came to big or little screen presentations with pre-formed mental images of the characters the peopled the stories. These images were formed by my imagination, guided by hints from the text. People who see film or TV versions of novels (mystery or otherwise), then read the books, must unconsciously identify characters on the written pages with the actors they have seen portraying them on film or TV.

This is a personal theory but I think it makes sense.

Take Raymond Burr, for instance. He pretty well cornered the market on Perry Mason but he never did it for me. He just didn't fit the mental picture of Mason I built up in my mind from reading Ellery Queen's books. Admittedly, however, I was a tepid fan of the Perry Mason series from the git-go so that probably colored my reaction. For those who read Queen's books after viewing TV episodes or never read them at all, which is more likely Raymond Burr will forever be Perry Mason in their minds.

Another example is "Devil in a Blue Dress." Don't get me wrong; I'm a huge Walter Mosley fan and I think Denzel Washington is a fine actor. I just don't feel he fit the Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins part: too handsome, and it was hard to think of him as an unsophisticated ex-GI, raised in rural Texas.

A factor here again is that I'd read the book long before seeing the movie. Also, I'd seen Washington in a number of movies before seeing "Devil in a Blue Dress," so I had some preconceived ideas about his persona. This whole subject do get complicated, don't it!

To add to the mix, I have some thoughts on "what might have been," of casting of protagonists for books I would like to have seen brought to the screen. The first ones fall into the "it's too late now" category.

Travis McGee? The only candidate I ever considered for the hero of John D. MacDonald's wonderful series was Sterling Hayden. I thought he was made for the role and could have played it as if born to do so.

The recent death of James Coburn reminded me that I would have loved to see him star in a film or series as Fiddler, protagonist of the husband and wife team (Ann & Evan Maxwell) that writes under the pen name of "A.E. Maxwell." Their books include Money Burns, Just Enough Light to Kill, Redwood Empire and Just Another Day in Paradise.

In the "still possible" category, I've pondered the possibilities of casting the leads for film or TV versions of Robert Crais' Elvis Cole novels, Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch, Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum (and the host of other eccentric characters in the Plum series), James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheau and more.

One role no casting director need worry about filling is that of Kinsey Milhone, Sue Grafton's hugely popular female private investigator. Ms Grafter, who refers to her 15-year career writing scripts for movies and TV as "doing time in Hollywood," refuses to sell screen rights to her books. In a talk recently she made that abundantly clear with this statement: "I would rather roll naked on a bed of broken glass!"

All of these observations are very subjective, of course. You may agree or disagree, maybe mildly, maybe heatedly. If so, I would like to hear from you, yea or nay. Send your thoughts to me at kfermoyle@earthlink.net and perhaps we can revisit this question of character casting, or miscasting, as some future date.

Producing Your Own Newsletter

By: Chuck Pierce
GentlyUsedBooks.com

We've all received newsletters or ezines via email. They target specific audiences, and are produced for a specific purpose. They range from the very short 'joke of the day' type that is merely a medium for delivery of an advertisement, to the very long technical discussion of the hydro-dynamics of a sphere moving through a normal saline solution. They can be used to entertain, inform, enlist and sell.

As booksellers, we would use the ezine to sell books. Keep that mission in mind.

You should be convinced (rightfully so) that email advertising is very profitable. You should know that it has an almost zero outlay in reoccurring expenses, and returns are high and predictable. Even start-up costs are relatively low.

If you have a couple thousand addresses of people who have bought books from you in the past it is time to start using this information to your advantage, and to the benefit of your customers. This is a highly targeted list, and is therefore very valuable. Your customers want and need your guidance to keep them informed as to the goings on in the book community, and provide them with buying opportunities. It is your duty as a successful bookseller to keep them away from your competition. Nobody can do a better job of serving your customers than you so do it.

Where do I get my addresses?

I'll tell you where you DO NOT get them. You don't run to your favorite search engine and find a website where you can buy a million addresses for $19.95 and send them your ezine. That is a quick way to get yourself in a LOT of hot water, and put out of business.

If you have Outlook Express as your mail program, there are a lot of addresses in your address book right now. Probably 99% of them are past customers. If you do business with Amazon, there is quite a list of your past customers there too. Almost our entire address list comes from past customers. Some come from requests to be added to the ezine list from an opt-in box on the homepage of our website, and other readers refer some to us.

We were able to accumulate just over 5,000 addresses in the first six months of saving them, and are currently at just over 11,000 after three years.  

Bulk Mail Programs.

For the last three years we have used Desktop Server 2000. It is a very powerful and easy to use program. We send about 10,000 emails via ISDN (128k) and it takes about fifteen minutes, and our ISP does not get hit with big bandwidth usage because the DS2K package acts as a mail server. The ISP doesn't even know you are sending them. It will maintain both the addresses that you mail to, and the remove addresses (more about the remove list later).

Besides filtering out the remove addresses, it also filters out specified domain names, such as .gov or .edu if you wish to avoid mailing to them. It will even filter out specific words or strings of letters within the address. We filter words such as info, order, webmaster, adult, nospam, book, read, page and others.

It costs about $300 and comes with a bunch of other programs and email addresses that you should THROW AWAY. It can be purchased at: http://www.desktopserver.com and is worth every penny. They will pitch other programs that "harvest"email addresses. Don't buy them, don't use them. If they come packaged with DS2K, toss them as soon as you get them. They will also give you a free disk with kabillion "hot, new, fresh addresses" on them it's a coaster. All you want is the mail management program, Desktop Server 2000.

Remove Requests.

Dealing with remove requests is probably more important than the acquisition of new addresses. Maintaining and using a remove list is very, very important. As a merchant, you have every right, both legally and morally, to keep in touch with your customers. If someone has purchased goods or services from you in the past you can contact them to 'service their account'.

But if they ask to be left alone - if they specifically request that you stop contacting them, you MUST. A merchant (or anyone else for that matter) is not allowed to harass anyone via email. Sending unwanted material to your customers AFTER being requested to stop is bad business, and may even be illegal. Don't do it.  

Am I Spamming?

If you buy lists from a list service yes you are. If you ignore requests to be removed from the mail list you are spamming. By doing so you are opening yourself and your business to all kinds of nasty repercussions. Don't do it.

If you email your customers, you are not spamming. If you make an honest mistake and mail to someone who is not a customer, you are not spamming. If you mail from your own email account, with a real email address to reply to, use and maintain a remove list you are not spamming.

But, sending out several thousand emails comes with a lot of responsibility. Tolerance for error is right around zero. If you bump into the wrong person (the rabid anti-spam activist zealot with a cause that really should get a life) they can bring down a lot of misery on you (we call it 'heat'). They don't have to prove anything - and you don't even get to defend yourself. With some ISPs, accusation is the same as conviction, so it may be a good idea to have your website hosted somewhere other than where your mail is processed.

In three years of mailing our ezine out we have had very few problems because we religiously maintain and protect and use our remove list. We have had more problems and complaints from book dealers than from our customers. I suspect that it is jealousy more than anything else, and a willingness to sling mud instead of competing fairly. It is interesting to note that book sellers don't complain about getting our newsletter. Owners of businesses that actually sell books are interested in what their competition is doing, how they are doing it, why they do it that way and what the result is.

Desktop 2000 has several features where you can filter out certain email addresses. We set words and phrases in that filter that block out book dealers; we have a very high percentage of 'anti-spam kooks' in our numbers, and they are not good customers anyway. As soon as we find out that an address on our list is that of a book dealer, we put it on the 'remove list'. Book dealers, as a group, have very narrow margins and they are bound way too tight.

OK. So, you've saved up some addresses, you have acquired and installed and learned your bulk mail program and it is rolling around to the first of the month, you are about ready to do your first mailing. It's time to write.

Before you begin banging it out consider these points:

• Make it personal.

Write the newsletter the way you would write a note to a friend who shares your interests. Keep the sentences short and simple, keep the paragraphs short and simple. Interject personal touches; tell something about yourself, something about your store, the work at the store. Tell amusing anecdotes about interactions with customers at the store, or the mailman, or even the weather - whatever.

Share an interesting or funny or informative website address as long as it is not direct competition to you.

The best commercials make us laugh. The "Happy California Cows" commercial and the "Counting Sheep" commercials or the "Budweiser Frogs" on TV are excellent examples of this. Remember WHY people buy books. It is entertainment. The act of buying books is entertaining. Reading is fun. Be entertaining, have fun with your ezine and have fun with your customers. They will reward you for it.

Invite them to write back to you with comments or stories of their own. Let them participate. Sometimes you'll get great material for the next ezine that way. Tip: If you are going to use a story or information that someone sent you, ask them if it's ok, and change names.

Your customers want to know what's going on in the book store, they want to hear about characters you've developed over time (customers, pets, employees, etc.) They want to hear the next installment of the book store news. As time goes on they will start to actually look forward to the 'special offer' of the month. People buy from stores that they feel comfortable in. Familiarity has a lot to do with comfort levels. The more they hear your store name, the more they are able to feel a connection to you personally, the more time and money they will spend in your cyber store. That is one of the reasons that Amazon is so successful.

• Incorporate the sales pitch into the theme.

The sales pitch should be incorporated into the theme of the newsletter. Ads should not be clearly marked. They don't need to be precluded with a heading that says, "This Is An Advertisement", or "A Word From Our Sponsor." Ever listen to Paul Harvey? Notice the way he makes the advertisements part of his gig? He is half way into a commercial before you realize that you are even being pitched. He talks to his audience the way he would talk to a group of friends that he's having dinner with. He delivers a verbal Ezine. Study his style, and adapt it to your ezine.

For example: Tell your audience a story about that day you took a day off last week and an employee bought a whole truck full of books, nice stuff all of it. Now there's books stacked in the isles, and you've had to explain to the soon to be ex-employee that she may have to take some of them home with her instead of a paycheck… "And hey, now that we're all overstocked in merchandise we'll offer you free shipping if you order five or more books, but you MUST act NOW because the fire department will be around for their annual inspection soon and this offer expires next Tuesday…"

• Plain text no HTML.

When you write a friendly email to your friend, do you fill it up with HTML? Bouncing frogs, and twirling batons, and exploding fireworks and the sound of a 40-piece brass band? Of course not. And you shouldn't do it in your ezine either. Keep it simple, low-key and friendly.

• Keep it short.

Keep it under 1000 words not including the legal stuff at the end (how to be removed from the list). People just don't have the time or patience to wade through a small book. And the second mailing of the month (more about that later) should be VERY short, about 300 words.

• The "writer/sender" of the ezine should be female.

I hesitate to even share this idea because it is politically and emotionally charged, and I'm sure that someone will be offended. But it is important, and the reader can choose to disregard it if they wish.

Women are treated differently than men. I make no comment as to the sociological or political aspects of that statement I offer it only as a statement of fact. Women are treated differently than men. Females have raised most of us. From the time we are minutes old we learn that the female is the giver of food and comfort. Later we learn that she is the dispenser of discipline. She holds both the carrot and the stick. Her power is immense - and absolute. It is probably the first thing we learn and we never forget it.

The Israeli Army did a study a few years back about women in the battlefield. They found that men took orders from a female superior officer better than from a superior officer who was male, especially while under stress (combat situations). The order was carried out with fewer reservations, and less hesitation. Men are accustomed to taking orders from women and not challenging them. Women are usually neutral. They tend to consider the order, not the person delivering it.

What does this have to do with our ezine? Odds are that an ezine sent by a woman will be better received, more widely read, and less likely to draw heat than one sent by a man. Assuming that half of the receivers are going to be men, it will make things better by a factor of 50%. More will read it, more will take the action they've been ordered to take (BUY THE BOOK) and fewer will complain about receiving spam. We've tested this theory, and it works.

Let's assume that this theory is bunk, it just isn't true. The women's liberation movement over the last twenty years has been successful in changing basic animal instinct and everyone is treated equally. What have you lost or gained by using a woman's name in the ezine? Nothing. If it is true, what have you gained?

Right in the 'From' line of our ezine we put "Marian @ GentlyUsedBooks.com."

If you are male, and doing an ezine sell some of your ego and sign a female first name.

• Do it no more than twice a month.

Any more than that is just too much. Remember that real clever advertisement you saw on TV last month yes, the one you laughed at. Now that you've seen it four dozen times in the last eight weeks is it still funny? Is it becoming annoying?

Not only do you risk annoying your customers but your customers will begin to get the idea that if they miss this coupon offer, its ok because there will be another one next week. It does away with the urgency to act factor which is very important.

• Make your advertised special have a very short expiration date.

We have found that an expiration date of seven days is just right. Why? Any shorter and you miss people who are out of the office, away on vacation, etc. Any longer and your customer will procrastinate and forget. You don't want your customer to think like this: "This doesn't expire until the end of the month, I have plenty of time." Create urgency. Tell them in the ad to "act now!"

After a lot of trial and error testing we have found the best pattern is to send two per month. The first one goes out on the first Tuesday of the month, with an expiration date of seven days. Why Tuesday? Many people get their email at work (we can tell by the addresses), and they are not there on weekends, some aren't there on Monday (physically or mentally). By Tuesday the universe is back in balance. Our best sales and traffic day, overall, is Thursday. Our worst is Saturday. The seven-day expiration date allows them one weekend in case they are shopping from home.

On the following Monday, we send a brief reminder. Just a greeting, and "the sale is going well, we're getting a great response and take advantage of the coupon before it expires TOMORROW," and a copy of the offer. That's it. Two or three hundred words, very short. We also may thank everyone who purchased, and let them know that they can purchase again. Invariably we'll get at least one repeat order, and usually they are large orders. In the second mailing, we also invite our regular customers to share this sale with their friends - and we've added new customers to our lists that way. The second mailing dollar return is sometimes larger than the first again because of the urgency factor.

By timing it the way we do, it makes for two mailings, but only one offer. We are very stingy with the number of "special offers" we make. How can something truly be special if it happens all the time? One coupon offer per month is all our customers get. Sometimes we even skip a month (usually when we are real busy, and don't NEED to discount). We will do the ezine, but make no offer, and we'll still get orders from it.

Immediately after (I mean within minutes) sending your first mailing you will get a lot of bounces for bad addresses and a few remove requests. Set your mail program so that these go to a separate folder. You'll deal with them later (before your next mailing).

Read ALL remove requests immediately. Sometimes, heat can be avoided by responding to comments right away. If you get a question like, "How did you get my address?" respond with a nice note that your email addresses usually come from previous customers, "but it appears that yours was placed on our list by error - sorry to have bothered you and we will remove it right away." Even though they didn't ask to be removed, do it anyway. Even if they email you back and ask to remain on the list remove them anyway. You have probably just bumped into a 'spam nazi' or a book dealer, and one address is just not worth the risk.

Before doing your next mailing, process all the bounced mail and remove requests. Bounced mail I just take off of the list, I don't add them to the remove list. Remove requests I take off of the mail list, AND, I add it to the remove list. Do both.

The first few times you mail you will have a lot of this type of processing to do, you are establishing a useable list. It does take time, especially in the beginning. Our remove list contains about 1300 addresses. That is a remove request rate of about fifteen per mailing, on average. You will get a lot of remove requests like this: "We are getting your ezine at two addresses, please remove this one …" or "I'm not supposed to get personal mail at work, please remove this address and add this one …" Well over 99% of the remove requests are nicely worded, they just don't want it any more. And that is ok, because we don't want to send it to anyone who doesn't want to get it.

Overall, we have had very little problems with our ezine. It is fun to produce, our customers enjoy them and it is very profitable. We keep in personal touch with many of our customers and there really are a lot of very nice people out there. People who read are, by and large, a great group.

A newsletter is a very important part of any on-line business marketing plan. It contributes a lot to the profitability of GentlyUsedBooks.com and properly executed it will contribute to the overall health of booksellers everywhere. In an age of corporate type mega-sites, it is imperative that a bookseller establish a niche and a following of loyal customers. A properly executed ezine is an excellent way to achieve those ends.

PITSPOPANY PRESS

By: Yaacov Peterseil, Editor In Chief

Pitspopany Press opened its doors in 1993 as a niche publisher of books for Jewish children. The problem at that time, and one that still exists today, was that for a publisher of Jewish books children to be successful he had to cater to one of the three major Jewish denominations: Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform.

Pitspopany Press was determined to move beyond parochial publishing. Instead, the publisher decided to publish books that could be read and enjoyed by the widest and most diverse elements of the Jewish market. Their early books borrowed from classic themes in the general market like "Where’s Waldo." Pitspopany published an entire line of "UH! OH!" Holiday titles that not only presented the basics of each Jewish holiday on a simple, easy-to-understand level, but also asked the reader to find the Holiday symbol within the busy full color spreads that appeared throughout the book. Multiple printings of this series, and its subsequent soft cover incarnation as "The Energizing Series" provided ample testimony to the fact that Pitspopany was on the right track. Soon, not only Jewish book stores were purchasing its titles, but there was a strong interest by the chains and wholesalers for the Pitspopany Press titles as well.

Pitspopany began to see a trend in the way its audiences purchased its books. Books in series proved most successful. Yaacov Peterseil, the Editor of Pitspopany wrote a series of "Jewish Hardy Boy/Nancy Drew" type books called "THE GANG OF FOUR" and within a short time 30,000 copies of the first two books in the series, in hard and soft cover, sold across the country. Letters began pouring in from children everywhere – affiliated Jews and non-affiliated Jews – praising the series, and this led to a new genre of Jewish pre-teen books, which included fantasy, science fiction, humor and adventure titles with characters who strongly identified with their Judaism but did not harp on it at the expense of an exciting storyline. Within a few years the "Jewish Stories for Kids" anthology series appeared, including JEWISH LOVE STORIES FOR KIDS, JEWISH HUMOR STORIES FOR KIDS, JEWISH SCI-FI STORIES FOR KIDS, and JEWISH DETECTIVE STORIES FOR KIDS.

But Pitspopany knew that the strongest market was the young children’s market.

So, in 1998 it began a "Sevens Series" wherein every story taught a different desirable human trait, without being didactic. First there was SEVEN ANIMAL STORIES FOR KIDS, followed by SEVEN ANIMALS WAG THEIR TALE, and finally a compendium of stories written by the editor of the Jewish Chicken Soup stories, Dov Elkins, SEVEN DELIGHTFUL STORIES FOR EVERY DAY. This led to the "Ten Series" which have sold over 60,000 copies and are written by such classic Jewish authors as Peninnah Schram, Gloria Goldreich, and Barbara Goldin.

At the same time, Pitspopany Press began what was to be their magnum opus, THE JEWISH CHILDREN’S BIBLE, a five volume work with over 300 pages and 250 illustrations which includes the Five Books of Moses, The Haggadah, The Book of Esther, The Book of Ruth, and The Book of Jonah and the Whale. By 2002 all five books were completed and the workbooks and parent/teacher’s guide were being prepared. In April of 2003 these books will be completed.

Eight years after its inception, and over 80 titles later, Pitspopany created "The Littlest Series" by Sylvia Rouss. The second of the series, "THE LITTLEST PAIR" a story about a pair of termites trying to get onto the Noah’s Ark, won The National Jewish Book Award in 2002.

The dream of publishing quality children’s books in a variety of subjects, and for an entire spectrum of the Jewish market, and beyond, became a reality when Pitspopany began publishing books on Special Education and health related problems. PRINCESS ALOPECIA won the Gold Triangle Award from The American Academy of Dermatologists, and THE SAFE PLACE and UNJUST CAUSE, about children with severe learning problems in and out of school sold in excess of 10,000 copies each within a one-year period.

Today, Pitspopany Press publishes between 10-15 children’s titles a year and is one of the leading publishers of Jewish children’s titles, with its main office in New York and its Editorial and Production Divisions growing and prospering in Jerusalem, Israel. The Pitspopany Press website is www.pitspopany.com . If you wish to contact their New York office: Tel: 1 800 232 2931 Fax: 212 472 6253 Email: pitspop@netvision.net.il

RAVINGS

By: Joyce Godsey

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The preceding program has been brought to you by our sponsors: MicroSquish: "We aren't better, we are just all there is."

Sure you're laughing now, but it's not so funny when it's your data in the hot seat.  Just when you think your system is running great, you come over all ambitious and think, "hey, if it's running this good, I could stick another ram chip in there and it would scream." [Uh-huh. . . and you though this was a good idea why?] So, you stick another stick of ram in there and since you already have it opened up you upgrade the video card, just because you can. And the MOMENT you get it home and plug it all back in again, what happens? It crashes, it's running slower than before, it's doing things it never did before you fiddled with it. So you suggest to 'the guy' that it's the new pink bits that are causing all the fuss and 'the guy' looks at you like you got four heads, and just about to say "take your POS system and get out of my shop."  Quickly you grovel and take it back, it must be all YOUR fault. You take it home again. You plug it all in again. You run every debugging program you own, you buy a few more and run those. You weep.

You drag it back to 'the guy'. 'The guy' shakes his head and says "it must be all those crappy programs you keep loading." He asks you if you have backed up all your data recently. Your heart falls into your stomach and starts to percolate.  He tells you to bend over and brace yourself. He then proceeds to scour your hard drive like a highway after a chemical spill. He hands you back an antiseptic system and tells you not to load all those crappy programs you own onto it.  You take it home, you start reloading all those crappy programs you own onto it. It crashes yet again and again and again.

You bring it back to 'the guy', you throw yourself on his mercy. He tells you to stop crying on his carpet and go home. You come back and he has Frankensteined your system into a new system. Turns out that the new pieces he sold you didn't like the old motherboard that by the way he had also sold you. He hands you back your system along with a very large bill, which would have bought you an entirely new system if you hadn't had the bright idea to tinker with your old system.

END RUN.

Stanford Libraries Create Saroyan Prize for Writers

By: Ken Fermoyle

As the leader of the A-Team liked to say: "I love it when a good plan comes together." Or words to that effect. So I am happy to report that an institution where I enjoyed a too-brief, but most memorable learning experience will cosponsor an award bearing the name of one of my all-time favorite American authors.

The new literary prize, officially titled the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, will be sponsored by the Stanford University Libraries in partnership with the William Saroyan Foundation. Aimed at encouraging new or emerging writers rather than established authors, it will recognize a newly published work of fiction or memoir with a purse of $12,300.

The Saroyan Writing Prize (the monicker which I suspect it will be most commonly used) will be awarded every other year, with January 31, 2003 set as deadline for entries in the first competition. Entries are limited to works published in English in book form during calendar 2002 and available for purchase by the general public. Complete information, including entry forms and rules, are available at this website: http://saroyanprize.stanford.edu

"As a newcomer to the publishing world, the Saroyan Writing Prize has no track record,"says Michael A. Keller, Stanford Librarian and Stanford University Press publisher. "But our hope is that over time it will join the ranks of notable literary awards and prizes. It was established both to fulfill William Saroyan's expressed desire to encourage other writers and to fulfill the Foundation's mission to draw attention to Saroyan's works and legacy."

Stanford was the logical choice to cosponsor the award since it holds the Saroyan Archive, and Keller adds that the university sees the Writing Prize as a means "to participate in the book arts, to focus on writing in general and Saroyan's writing in particular and to place Stanford's archival collections in the public eye."

Perhaps it will also draw some attention to Standford's Professional Publishing Course, a unique and outstanding program held every summer at The Farm in Palo Alto.

"We are currently making plans to hold the award ceremony for the Prize in conjunction with next summer's Professional Publishing Course," reports Holly Brady, executive director of that program.

I can attest to the high quality and value of this course, thanks to a $5000 education grant I received upon taking early retirement from my "day job" in 1989. I blew the windfall on the Stanford course, a 15-day concentrated "boot camp" with notable, often distinguished, instructors from the "real worlds" of book and magazine publishing. It was probably the most interesting and valuable educational experience of my life. My only regret is that I didn't attend it years earlier!

The Quiet Revolution: The Expansion of the Used Book Market ©

Book Hunter Press, publishers of The Used Book Lover's Guides, is pleased to share with you this report on the expansion of the used book market.

Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003 Book Hunter Press
Portions of this report may be reproduced with proper attribution to Book Hunter Press.

For more information contact:
Susan Siegel
Book Hunter Press
PO Box 193. Yorktown Heights, NY 10598
(914) 245-6608. Fax: (914)-245-2630
bookhunterpress@earthlink.net

Contact us
For more information about The Used Book Lover's Guides

2003 Update

In 1999, in The Quiet Revolution: The Expansion of the Used Book Market 1992-1999 , we took the first comprehensive statistical look at the used book market.

In 2001, we added revised Tables and new Charts reflecting the statistical changes that had taken since the publication of the original report.

Now, in 2003, we're pleased to share the findings of our continuing tracking of the ever-changing used book market. What follows is a statistical update, augmented with some general observations about the used book market as of the end of 2002.

General Overview

The industry has continued to change and evolve in response to the growing role of the Internet as a vehicle for selling used books.

As shown in Table I (Revised 2002), the total number of used book dealers continued to grow during 2002, reaching a total of 7,198 dealers. Over the past decade, there has been a 20% increase in the number of dealers.

(Please see the Methodology section below for an explanation of how these numbers are arrived at, and equally important, which dealers are and are not included in the figures.)

Given the diversity of what constitutes the used book market, in terms of buyers, sellers and books, we repeat the caution included in the 1999 Report against making generalizations about the used book market.

Changes in Open Shops

For the ten year period 1993-2002, the number of open shops increased by 7%. However, after 2000, the number of shops began to slowly decline, and between 2000-2002, there was a 4.8% decrease in the number of open shops.

As a percentage of all used book dealers, open shops now account for 57% of all dealers, compared to 61% in 2000.

The growth and subsequent decrease in the number of open shops over the past decade has been uneven across the country with the Central/Western and Pacific Coast States the only regions experiencing a net decrease.

While the "net" number of open shops has declined, new used bookstores continue to open throughout the United States, with the greatest number of new stores opening in New England.

The new owners represent a cross section of ages, from couples in their 30's to retirees. Many of the new owners are book collectors turned dealers who are living out their dream career.

The decline in the number of open shops can be attributed to a variety of reasons, including
-- death and retirement of the dealer
-- desire for a lifestyle change on the part of the dealer (health, family issues, burn-out from previous careers etc.)
-- lease problems and/or rent increases
-- decline in in-store traffic due to the Internet
-- overall decline in sales and profitability of store