-Let’s clear something up right away Donald. How did you come up with the name Noah’s Ark Book Attic? The name Noah’s Ark Book Attic grew out of my background in my family’s antique business known as Noah’s Ark (“a little of everything” was the slogan). -You have been in the business for over fifty years. How did you get started selling books? When I started with book selling in the late summer of 1944, my father had a corner of his antique store devoted to books. He was acquiring them as part of the purchase of estates and being a lover of books and of reading, he always wanted to make books available to others. With one free-standing, two-sided book case holding about 500 books, he was shelving them all under a sign reading “25 cents each, 5 for $1.” As a thirteen year-old, also a lover of books and reading, it was my job to keep them straight and dusted. In all my wisdom at thirteen, I decided that some of those books were worth more and suggested pricing them individually. With foresight I was only later to appreciate, Dad agreed and turned the job over to me. Living in the area of John C. Calhoun’s home, Dad had just purchased an estate including some books which had belonged to Calhoun. I decided in my new position as manager of books that those were certainly more valuable and priced them at what I thought was a realistic but still reasonable price. They were promptly purchased and the buyer wanted any more we could find. There were of course no more but that was my introduction to the law of supply and demand. Over the next ten years I accompanied Dad on antique buying trips, mostly to New York in those days, and learned much about books by spending all day walking from store to store among the booksellers of lower 4th Avenue. I found most of those booksellers to be very helpful with advice and encouragement. One of them, Wilfred Pesky of Schulte’s Bookstore, suggested I subscribe to the Antiquarian Bookman, newly established about 1948, the year I left for college. I must have been a nuisance to many a bookseller for I began asking for catalogs from just about every one who issued them. Then, while I was in college, I worked in the library under a student aid program, giving me access to book catalogs from around the world. And, I still went home regularly to price, shelve and organize Dad’s ever growing inventory of books. Also I still accompanied him on buying trips stretching to Boston and down to Philadelphia and many cities in between. Finishing college I married and then attended a graduate school for three years. During my last year in graduate school, I bought a professor’s library and, upon graduating, decided to establish my own business. It was natural to pick up my Dad’s store name since I was not opening a store but selling exclusively by mail. -What are the mechanics of the catalog method of bookselling? My first catalog came out in the summer of 1954, almost exactly ten years after my beginning. It was produced on a hand operated mimeograph machine, purchased from Sears, Roebuck for, I think, under $40.00. I sent out 100 copies to names gleaned from a library directory. For quite a number of years, bookselling was a passion but I had paying jobs and my wife brought in a salary as a public school teacher enabling me to support my passion. I typed my catalogs in the evenings and on week-ends, graduating from a mimeograph machine to a table-top offset press. The mechanics of catalog production changed as the technology changed, but most of my books were modest in value and hence would not justify commercially produced and highly illustrated catalogs. Nevertheless I tried always to keep in mind that the customer knew nothing about the condition of my book except what I described. And, I always, then and now, maintained that anything I sold was fully returnable for any reason, or no reason, for a full refund. -How many catalogs did you issue over the years, and do you have copies of all of them? I have maintained a file of copies of all my catalogs, except for two that I turned over to a copy shop to produce while my offset press was dying. The copy shop went broke before they did my catalogs and I never got back the originals, nor did I ever get around to listing those books again. Without those two, the total corpus of catalogs was just under 400. -Do you remember the first book you ever sold? My first catalog sale was to a professor in Massachusetts who bought a copy of a New England church history and wrote to tell me how pleased he was with the price (postage was included—I think it was under seven cents to mail the book) and packing. As a side note, thirty-five years later he wrote to tell me how outrageous my prices had become and to please take him off my mailing list. I still had the original letter and was tempted to taunt him with it, but that, of course, would not have been very courteous. And, the end of this story is that when he died, several years later, his widow called me and said that he had told her to contact me about disposing of his books. -What was bookselling like back in the mid 1900s? Then, as now, there were several types of booksellers and I wanted to have a large, browsing type of store. It wasn’t until about 1961, that I opened a retail store, with limited opening hours, but with an ever growing inventory. Until then, I issued catalogs and wholesaled the unsold routine books, packing away the better quality ones. Those that were packed away became the nucleus of an open store. Subsequently, every collection purchased was cataloged and then the unsold books became store stock. Dad had died in 1960 and while his business continued, with an inventory of over 100,000 books, little new stock was added. While none of the books from his store came to me, I was able to open my store with substantial experience in sorting and displaying books for browsers. Between 1961, my store grew from under 2,000 square feet, to over 7,500 square feet and the inventory grew from under 5,000 books to a final total exceeding 140,000. My philosophy was twofold: 1) continually cull the poorer titles and, 2) keep the books well organized. The majority of the books were still cataloged first and stayed off the open shelves until the catalogs were totally out-dated. That enabled me to have the books organized before they went on the shelves. It also made it possible to rather quickly assemble large subject collections that I could offer to libraries aiming to grow their collections quickly. -How did you acquire most of your stock? This period in the two decades following the Second World War was one of rapid expansion of existing colleges and universities and the establishment of a number of new schools. It also was a time of building new libraries and moving out of, and frequently demolishing, the old ones. Hence there was a good market for reasonably priced collections but there was also a great opportunity to buy books as old libraries were cleared out. Consequently I purchased continually and on a large scale, one time buying over 35,000 books from the attic of a school. They had been prepared to pay to have the books transported to a land fill. I bought them and spent years gradually going through the boxes to find out what I had. There was the usual chaff, but some very fine scholarly books and a sizeable group of truly antiquarian books as well. That was also the collection whose acquisition gave me the bookseller’s worst ailment—back trouble. It was many years before I stopped having spasms of back pain. 1961 was also the first year I traveled overseas, to England, to buy books. That’s when I first met Peter Eaton, a London bookseller going back to the late 1930s. I had gotten on his mailing list, a fortnightly flyer listing several hundred books, from which I was buying heavily. Books came from England in those days, via mail, for pennies a book. When I took this first trip over, I met with representatives of a packing and shipping firm and thereafter, all my books came back by ocean freight. Peter was another bookseller who bought on a large scale and was anxious to sell on a large scale and I bought many, many thousands of books from him. He was also generous with advice for one who was still something of a novice at large scale bookselling. He died some years ago, but his wife is operating the business still. Another English bookseller from whom I purchased large numbers of books was Leslie Walker of Nelson’s Bookroom. Leslie, at the time I first met him, was in Brighton, but about the same time I moved to the country, outside Greenwood, SC, Leslie moved to Shropshire, to a small village. He also is no longer with us and his book shop has been closed. I still, however, keep up with his wife and three children. Throughout the early years, most of my stock came directly or indirectly from college and municipal libraries. Recognizing that small towns in the South, and even some smaller cities, did not have any used book sellers, I visited the libraries in the area, introducing myself and urging the librarians, when offered books which they could not use, to have the donor contact me. Those were the days when practically none of the libraries had “friends” who would handle sales and I received a large number of calls, frequently obtaining fine collections. That was the indirect route. Through the direct route I also was able to buy from these same libraries books they were unable to use, not only because they were duplicates or outside their area of interest, but also because they were in fine bindings or were very old or in non-English languages. I bought in those years everything from incunabula to splendid leather bindings to hand illustrated plate books and more. Some of those books are now, having been in my boxes for as many as thirty-five years, part of my present inventory. This was also a period when I prepared lectures on making use of the out-of-print bookseller to sell your books and making use of the out-of-print bookseller to buy books for your collection. Through a librarian who taught library science whom I had met on my book buying trips, I was able to offer to future librarians useful advice not normally available to them. Some of the young ladies (they were all young ladies in the classes to which I presented my information) kept the accompanying printed material and sometimes many years later remembered and called me to sell me books. One of these ladies had become a staff member in charge of cleaning up the accumulated donations of many, many years, and called me from six hundred miles from where I was. She wanted me to come and buy what I could as, she said, she had found regional booksellers unwilling to pay more than pennies per volume. I didn’t know who the regional booksellers were, but I purchased enough books to fill a tractor trailer, paying considerably more than pennies per volume. -You must have handled some important estate libraries over the years. While I obtained most of my books from libraries, plus the smaller estates who were directed to me by the librarians, occasionally I got large estate libraries. In the early days, there were so few booksellers around that people had difficulty finding someone even to look at their books. It was not unusual for an estate to be cleared out, including the book cases, and I was called in when the books were on the floor and the house was to be shown by realtors. It is no longer the case, but sometimes the books were worth probably as much as all the furniture combined. Since banks never understood how anyone could make money selling books, they were unwilling to make loans available, so I depended on my outside income for much of my buying. -Any strong memories of the one that got away, whether an individual title or a large collection? While I was steadily selling books and generating cash flow, I was forever enlarging the inventory. My accountant kept telling me that I was never going to get ahead. I made it a fixed practice, however, not to buy anything I could not pay for. With a very few exceptions, I maintained that stance but had to turn down some wonderful collections because I couldn’t pay for them. One included an elephant folio Audubon’s Birds, signed with a warm presentation note. I never have regretted not getting it as I couldn’t have done anything with it but quickly resell it, but it was a thrill to handle it. Another time, I had to, reluctantly, advise a prospective seller that their books should go to one of the major auctions. I did have in my store for about a year, the final books in the estate of Wright Howes, including the original notebooks from which he compiled his “USiana.” I was not able to buy that collection and the owner eventually decided if I could get for it what I was asking that perhaps it should be withdrawn from me and sold without paying my commission. I’m still not sure exactly what happened to these. -Tell us about your specializations. During most of my career I specialized in theological books, in all major languages, any part of the world and any denomination. My first purchase was a theological library and through the years I handled unknown thousands. There were other, larger theological booksellers but I cataloged through the years as many if not more than any other bookseller. For a number of years I was issuing six to eight catalogs yearly, each of which contained from 500 to, sometimes, over 2,000 titles. But, I also bought books on just about every subject (including some that turned out to be unsalable—and they are hard to eat!). I issued catalogs on South Caroliniana, Americana, Literature, History, International Affairs, Art, Biography, and other subjects. Within the theological field, I published catalogs at regular intervals on Church History, Hymnology, Church Arts & Architecture, Missions, Bible Commentaries, Festschriften, and others. I sold large collections in all those fields, the largest being over 24,000 books that were shipped from South Carolina to Hong Kong. -Did you discuss the book business with colleagues on a regular basis, or did you go it alone; and did you have rivals, friendly or otherwise? Probably because of my early experience going from one to another of the bookshops in New York, all of whom graciously helped me find another shop that might have some of what I wished to buy, I never saw other booksellers as rivals—they were always colleagues. With only a very few exceptions, I have observed the same attitude among other booksellers. We are a rare fraternity who care about and help one another. In the days of AB Bookman’s Weekly (the same Antiquarian Bookman to which I subscribed in 1948) we had a means of keeping up with one another. When a bookseller suffered a disaster, be it fire, flood, or ill health there seemed to be an outpouring of assistance from others. I remember well when I had a spell of bad health, publicized in AB, and the offers of assistance that came from booksellers whom I did not even know, including some from overseas. Being in a backwater, so to speak, there were few booksellers very near me so, except for my travels, I didn’t meet many other booksellers but, looking back, I am still amazed at the number who came by to see me. I still remember the several older booksellers in my area, though their names are slipping from me. There was Gittman’s in Columbia, SC. The Book Basement and Schindler’s (an antique shop with some wonderful books) in Charleston, SC. There was Peachtree Books and Kinsey’s in Atlanta. Going north there was Lowdermilk in Washington, Leary’s in Philadelphia, Schulte’s in New York, Goodspeed’s (two area locations) in Boston, plus many, many others, almost all of which are now gone. Without a single exception, they were all courteous and helpful to me the entire time I had occasion to visit them. -Booksellers grumble a lot about various things now. Is this a new phenomenon? Courtesy to fellow booksellers is appreciated but it would not be correct to say no one ever complained about things. Grumbling is a part of dealing with the public and booksellers are not exempt from it. We all have favorite stories about our obnoxious visitors (sometimes even our customers) and our stories, wherever we are, seem remarkably similar. All of us have the browser who wants to know if we have read all these books. We all have had the people who want to know if we will take $5.00 for that $20.00 book, or something equally ridiculous. We are constantly asked where we got all those books. Plus there are the innocent souls who want to know if we sell books or if this is sort of like a library, plus the equally naïve ones who want to know if we buy these books or are they given to us. Then there are the equally obnoxious ones, to librarians as well as booksellers, who do not like the way we have arranged our books and consider it their bounden duty to re-arrange them. We have to fight off our primal urges when we find someone in our store room busily emptying boxes in the apparent belief that our finest books, and especially the one or ones they want the most, are hidden away. Then there are the occasional shop lifters—the ones I knew seeming primarily to steal single volumes out of sets. While I frequently know who they are, only once did I catch one in the act. That is not a happy memory. The ones that I knew probably never realized how few customers came in a store out in the country on a given day and hence never guessed that I knew the only person who came in that day was the one who stole from me. I made it a practice when they returned to follow them everywhere they went. Without me saying anything, most of them seemed to get the message and stopped coming. Surprisingly, since I closed the large store in South Carolina and moved to North Carolina where I have only two or three thousand books on the shelves and six thousand or so on line, I have had very few grumblers of any kind. I don’t know if it is the change in my inventory, or my white hair and wrinkled skin, or maybe my increasing tolerance but few people seem to complain about anything relating to books. Of course, I get my share of conversationalists who are convinced that I have nothing to do and have plenty of time in which to help me do it. Many of these grumble about everything from politics and religion, to the state of courtesy these days, to the non-book store merchant down the street who wouldn’t take time to listen to them. Still, I have learned a lot through the years listening to people who know many things I do not. -I guess I have to ask about your take on the internet, noting that you have kept up nicely with the floodwaters of change. The last two catalogs I issued were financial failures. For many years, I counted on a catalog to sell enough books to repay its cost, pay for the books sold out of the catalog and generate a little profit. The remaining books that went on the shelves (and were never re-cataloged) would become somewhat delayed profit as they sold. The last two catalogs I issued, in 1999, did not return their cost of producing a mailing. I lost several hundred dollars on each one. It was such an abrupt transition that I immediately made arrangements to go on the Internet. I had been exploring the possibility from the days when Dick Weatherford of Alibris fame, who visited my shop in the pre-internet days, was writing in a number of articles for AB Bookman’s Weekly about the future of selling books using a computer. Because I had been publishing catalogs using a series of separate databases for several years, I had a ready-made inventory to upload. When a bookseller in Kentucky recommended I purchase BookTrakker for setting up and uploading my inventory, I was soon ready to go with 10,000 plus books. Andy Gutterman of BookTrakker was very helpful in my leap into this new venture, as he still is to users of his program, and almost instantly I discovered that I could sell more books in a week on the Internet than I was accustomed to selling in a month in my store or by catalog. I miss the catalog business and the special relation with the customer, but I don’t miss waiting a month or more for all payments to come in, the delay between catalogs, and the ever more complicated postal regulations. Sales are not as easy or as steady as they were in the beginning but with one’s willingness to adjust to the changing climate in the Internet community, this is still a very good way for me to sell my books. We have a proliferation of sellers who seem not to know the basics of describing their books, and there are the changes by the large venues removing the customer, in many cases, further from the booksellers, plus the fee structures that switch more and more of the profit from the ones who went out and purchased, described, packaged and shipped the books to the ones who more and more provide a less and less user friendly, but extremely large, venue for display of the books. Without some of the search engines it would be extremely difficult if not almost impossible to find many of the desirable books among the millions collected and displayed. While I have not been asked for my take on the present state of Internet selling, I would suggest that a great deal more needs to be done to help find the books on the sites but, with some wonderful exceptions, I find the opposite to be taking place. -Where do you sell online, besides your own website? I still list on ABE, Alibris, Amazon, Biblio, ZVAB, Antiqbook, IOBA, and TomFolio. I am willing to list my books on any site that produces profits exceeding costs. Two of the above are border line. My web site is probably something of an ego trip. I get to put my picture on it and list, with pictures, a few of my finest, but it has been neglected to the point that it is getting out of date. One of these days, as I am prone to say in recent years, I am going to add some more great books and some more pictures. -Are your internet books in with the regular shelf stock? I keep my Internet stock entirely separate from my browser stock. That way, if a book goes missing, I have only myself to blame. From time to time, a book does seem to vanish into thin air. -What are the pros and cons of running an open shop? Without an open shop and with only an Internet presence I would miss most of the wonderful people who share my love of old books. I probably would miss some very good buying opportunities and many of the dealers and volume buyers who still stop by to see me. Even with my overwhelmingly antiquarian (pre-1840) stock, I still sell numerous boxes full of books several times a year to persons who drive up and find books they want. If I did not have an open shop, though admittedly with somewhat limited days and hours, I would probably become a crotchety old misanthrope, loving the books but hating the customers. -Words of advice for those starting out? If I were starting out today it would not be possible to do many of the things that I did when starting sixty plus years ago. But I believe there will always be a place for a browsing book store, with a variety of selected books, neatly shelved and fairly priced. And the experience gained handling these books gradually leads to a better understanding of the rarer or finer books that do not come our way very often. I deplore the tendency, even with the books that are common to every library sale or thrift store, to turn them into a commodity, automatically cataloged with scanners, priced with software that searches the Internet and compares prices, and never really dealing with the book as an individual item with its own message. Book selling has changed, mostly for the better, but some things must always remain, whether we sell on the Internet, in a store, or by catalog. Things like proper descriptions, fair prices, knowledge, courtesy and respect. Like Bertrand Smith of Acres of Books, lastly in Long Beach California, who almost made it to 100 years actively buying and selling old books (and also a customer), I too hope for many more years of book selling. It is a rewarding and relaxing way of life. Thanks for your time and insights Donald, and best wishes. Donald Hawthorne operates Noah’s Ark Book Attic in Tryon, NC and can be contacted at http://www.noahsarkbookattic.com. IOBA Standard, Summer Edition 2007, Volume 8, No. 3.

Within the last four years I have been in the St. Louis area at least half a dozen times, but I have never had the chance to see the actual city. I have always traveled there on business with a group of colleagues, and since majority rules, we always stayed at Harrah’s, a casino hotel supposedly built on the river so it is exempt from local gaming restrictions, though it always looked to me like it was built on dry land. We would shuttle back and forth to the client’s offices in an industrial park in the suburbs, and the closest I got to the famous arch was to see it from the airplane, on the flight back to New York. In the evening, after long days of talking to difficult clients, my colleagues would unwind by playing high-stakes poker late into the night. I, in turn, would sit in the lobby after a tawdry casino buffet dinner and watch busload after busload of senior citizens race into the casino (some dragging oxygen tanks attached to their walkers) to wager their children’s inheritances. I quickly tired of this rather depressing spectacle and after wagering about $5 of my children’s inheritance on the slot machines, I’d head up to my room to read. A few weeks ago, my 20-something daughter who lives in Boston called in a quandary, because she had applied to graduate schools all over the country and been accepted by most of them. “I don’t know how I am ever going to be able to make a decision,” she said. “The two best schools that offered me financial aid are the University of Texas, at Austin, and Washington University in St. Louis. I have friends in Austin, so I am going down this weekend, but even if I like it I don’t know what to do about Washington University.” After almost a quarter of a century of acquaintance, I think I know my daughter pretty well. If she went down to St. Louis alone, and did not know anyone there, she would not leave with a very good impression of the place. Most likely, she would run from it like the plague. Since I am not a big fan of the state of Texas (I must confess this is based upon only 2 days in Dallas and 7 years of the Bush administration), I said, “I have a great idea. Why don’t you plan a trip to St. Louis the following week-end. Your Mom and I will fly down and meet you. She has never been there, and I have never had the chance to see the actual city. I can do some book-buying. It will be lots of fun.” My daughter hesitated. “Suppose we go and see the school and I don’t like it?” she asked. “I don’t want you to think you are wasting your time.” “This is strictly a spur of the moment adventure,” I tried to reassure her. “There is no obligation . . . at worst we will see a new city. And, I may even get to buy a few books.” I started to sing a few bars of “Meet me in St. Louis,” and she agreed to the plan. Ten days later, my wife and I were up at 4 A.M. on a Saturday, racing to the airport for a very early morning flight from LaGuardia to the Gateway to the West. I had put out a query on the web looking for bookshop recommendations, and was surprised that I received so few responses. I figured that since this was a university town there had to be some worthy bookshops and planned to do some research in the yellow pages once we arrived. The flight was unusually smooth, and we actually landed 45 minutes ahead of schedule. In spite of an interminable delay at the rental car office, we arrived at our downtown hotel mid-morning St. Louis time with the Boston contingent not expected until mid-afternoon. I went through the yellow pages and made up a list of shops before heading for some sustenance at the Depot, an old train station converted into a food court and shopping mall. After lunch I dropped my wife back at the hotel for a nap, checked the local map and drove over to the first used bookshop on my list, about 15 minutes away from downtown in a non-descript part of the city. It was a large warehouse type building well stocked in most categories. I explained that I was a dealer from New York. There was no dealer discount, but they were willing to ship any of my purchases for a small fee. I managed to find about a dozen books for re-sale, nothing extraordinary, as the prices were on the high side. Also with some prompting, I obtained the names of some other shops that I might be interested in. Fortunately, my daughter, too, arrived right on schedule. When I picked her up at the airport shuttle station she had an armful of research she had done about St. Louis neighborhoods, night clubs, restaurants, etc. After a quick stop at the hotel to drop off my daughter’s luggage and pick up my well-rested wife, we went out to explore the sights. Our first stop was a funky student neighborhood not far from Washington University known as “the Loop.” It looked more like a straight line of half a dozen blocks of shops and restaurants to me, but maybe we just never found the actual loop. The area is home to a first rate bookstore—Subterranean Books, a large shop containing a blend of both new and used items interspersed together. My daughter headed off towards the used clothing store across the street, and my wife accompanied me into the shop. As luck would have it, they were having a 40% off sale on all used fiction, so a dealer discount was unnecessary. They had a special section on counterculture literature, and I found some interesting Kerouac material for myself, as well as some great items for re-sale. I decided that since my suitcase was half empty, I would take this batch home with me. The owners were very friendly and we had a long conversation with them while waiting for the true family shopper. They had high praise for both the city and the University. We all reconvened at a local Mexican café, I with a large bag of books, and my daughter with an even larger bag of clothing. In honor of Cinco de Mayo we ordered “grande” marguerites accompanied by “muy grande” bowls of chips with salsa. The Loop is also the home of the St. Louis Walk of Fame, so before we left we paid tribute to some of the city’s literary luminaries such as T. S. Eliot, William Burroughs and Tennessee Williams, to name just a few. It was now time to move on to another neighborhood. We drove to an area called “the Hill,” which is the St. Louis equivalent of Little Italy in New York or Boston. It was surprisingly suburban looking, three or four blocks of widely spaced houses and apartments with about half a dozen Italian restaurants, one coffee bar and one Italian food shop interspersed among the residences. We broke tradition with the neighborhood by having dinner at the one non-Italian restaurant, an excellent Spanish tapas place. After dinner we headed over to yet another interesting neighborhood—Soulard. This is one of the oldest sections of the city. It is right near the river front, and the old warehouses are being converted into music clubs and bars. We found a lively bar with a local band that played a combination of blues and rock, so we sat on the terrace soaking up the ambience and enjoying the warm spring evening until it was time to return to our hotel. Sunday morning, after a leisurely breakfast, it was time to visit the famous arch. We were all surprised both at its size and its beauty. It is a wonderful example of the philosophy that “less is more.” The design and the materials are perfectly simple, but it stands in a park by the river, glistening in the sun, and looks like a true symbolic gateway to the West that is the city’s claim to fame. Underground at the base of the arch is a museum dedicated to the Westward Expansion Movement. I never knew that inside the arch there is a platform at the very top, and if one is willing to pay a fee and squeeze oneself into a tiny compartment with other adventurous strangers, one can actually be shuttled up to the top. The views were spectacular. Illinois is right across the river to the east, while the western windows provided a panorama of the entire city of St. Louis. We walked along the path by the edge of the river, admiring the arch from the ground, then headed for Forest Park, a very large park at the western end of the city, near Washington University. The park has playgrounds, ball fields, museums and gardens. There is also a very large zoo with free admission. The zoo is divided into habitat sections, and most of the habitats are large expanses that attempt to replicate the animals’ native environments. We saw the hippos and the rhinos and the famous baby elephant born at the zoo. We shivered through the penguin house, which is kept at about 40 degrees—great for penguins, but a bit chilly for humans in summer attire. As we left, we all agreed that the zoo was a wonderful gift especially to the young families of St. Louis as it provides a nice and affordable way to spend an afternoon. At dinner time we headed back to the Soulard neighborhood. This time we had a Cajun meal, served al fresco, to the accompaniment of another blues rock band. Monday was to be my major book-buying day. I dropped my wife and daughter off at the university, and headed for the Central West End, a beautiful neighborhood which looks like a more spacious version of New York’s Greenwich Village, with low brownstone apartment buildings interspersed with interesting shops and sidewalk cafés. It is also home to a superb bookshop—Left Bank Books. This shop, too, contained a mix of both new and used books. This time they were segregated, with the new books on the street level, and the used books in the large well-lit basement. The used fiction section had some wonderful books, and I spent quite a bit of time pouring over the shelves. I selected a large carton of items, and arranged to have them shipped back to New York. My one regret is that I did not buy more books. I passed on some unusual new items, British imports, mostly, that I have not been able to find anywhere else. Alas, I should know better, as my motto is that what you regret the most are not the books that you bought, but the ones that you didn’t buy. I still remember that gorgeous copy of Confederacy of Dunces I saw in New Orleans back in 2001 for $700. Now the only copies I see are three times that price in half the condition. My next destination was a used book shop a few miles out of town in a nearby suburb south of the city. When I arrived, to my disappointment the shop was closed. I peered through the window and saw books piled from floor to ceiling. I made a mental note that it would definitely be worth returning on my next visit. I was in need of a cup of coffee, so I asked someone where I could buy one. They recommended a shop called the St. Louis Bread Company. I walked in and it looked just like the ubiquitous Panera that we have back home. I asked the waitress if they had been taken over by Panera. She explained that Panera started out as the St. Louis Bread Company. They changed the name when they went national, since St. Louis in not known for its bread. The only stores that retain the original name are in St. Louis. St. Louis is also the birthplace of both the Burroughs adding machine and Tums. I arrived back at campus about half an hour early, so I decided to investigate its bookstore. This was final exam week and with the semester winding down there were tables full of clearance books all throughout the store. I found some inexpensive, esoteric university press literary treatises that I expect I will be able to sell in due course. We had just enough time for a very late lunch in a town right near the University, before heading to the airport. During the meal we talked about my daughter’s impressions of the city, and the university. She was still in a quandary, as she liked both schools, and each had its own plusses and minuses. My wife and I urged her to take some time to think about her impressions before rushing into a decision. We parted company at the airport, she heading to Boston, us to New York. As we said goodbye, we all agreed that whatever the outcome, the weekend had been a success. We had visited a new city and had a great time. I had even managed to purchase a fair number of books. A few days later, the phone rang. “Dad,” my daughter said, excitedly. “I made my decision . . . (long pause) . . . After much thought I decided to go to the University of Texas at Austin.” “Congratulations,” I replied. “I am glad that you made a decision. Well, I guess in October after you are settled in, I will have the chance to explore another new city.” I certainly hope that it has at least a few bookstores. According to the New Yorker magazine, their library has one of the best literary archives in the United States. In the meantime, I better start learning a few bars of “Deep in the Heart of Texas.” Joe Perlman operates Mostly Useful Fictions out of East Northport, NY and can be contacted at http://www.mostlyusefulfictions.com. IOBA Standard, Summer Edition 2007, Volume 8, No. 3.

In the glorious pantheon of postcard production, glamorous nameless head shots are not usually valuable or noteworthy. They certainly liven up my refrigerator though, clinging poly-protected to the polished white slopes amid an avalanche of magnets, child artwork, contact info, stickers, reminders, and more modern graphics. Of this assemblage, only five of fourteen are postally used, and all were either picked up in box lots or purchased very cheaply. Group One. Are one or two of these the same person or what? I’ve been trying to decide for years now. Two different French publishers, one Italian. Nicely composed and hand-colored, bobbed, be-flowered. The one in the middle is by the door handle, always saying something like, “Do you really need that sandwich and cold beer at two in the morning?” Group Two. Beautiful half-tones, radiant skin, natural hair, lips that have not been reshaped, earthy, wistful. A numbered series, probably early Russian movie stars. Translating the Cyrillic, one is named something like Vlyublennaya, and the other also looks like a mouthful. Group Three. Maiden with sprigs. Sent to Mrs. L. Mason, 2 Bramley Road, The Fosse, Leicester. Can’t quite make out the cancellation date on the green half penny stamp. “Dear Laurie. So many thanks for the magazines. I like it very much indeed. I hope that you have not had too many pancakes today. I feel that I should like one now. I have not had any for many years. I have been to see Mrs. H. and she was out. Mr. Hargrove is much better I am glad to say. I hope to have the pleasure of your company soon. I am about the same. I hope you are quite well. Ever your loving friend Lizzie.” Group Four. In a blue mood. “Vive Marie” card made in France and sent to Brussels by one Georgette dated 1923. “Gladys Cooper” is perfectly composed on her bench. She has fallen off the most, and needs a better fridge magnet. Group Five. Miss Queen Vincent and Miss Isabel Elson. Both by Rotary Photo read, “This is a hand-painted real photograph of a British beauty.” Group Six. Fully framed in pearls. No. 1170 in some unidentified series, the caption is cryptic, the word “postcard” printed on the reverse in fifteen languages with no publishing information. But there she is, as she once was. Group Seven. Two more flower girls. I don’t like the 1906 pink shouldered one so much and she is in imminent danger of losing her spot. Too gloomy, and the tinting is clumsy. The other includes this message. “If ever you should send me any books at any time, please only put A. Ogden or Alice Ogden. I don’t mind at all & would rather you did not put Miss, if you don’t mind.” Group Eight. The menacing Jwan Mosjukin is on hand to remind everyone who the fairer sex is, and to keep a piercing eye on all of the above. “Reproduction verboten,” his face card commands. Maybe it’s time Jwan moved on as well. Shawn Purcell operates Balopticon Books & Ephemera and can be contacted at http://www.balopticon.com IOBA Standard, Summer Edition 2007, Volume 8, No. 3.

This is the second in a series of articles taking a brief look at the pros and cons of the various multi-dealer book listing databases. The first in the series looked at AbeBooks.com and can be found in the previous issue. This article examines Alibris.com, which was the first “on-line” site developed under the name of Interloc (in pre-internet days), and the site which has undergone the most dramatic and significant changes over the years. Interloc, which was founded in 1994 by Richard Weatherford with Tom Sawyer and Brad Councilman, was perhaps one of the most important factors in introducing booksellers—especially those with open stores—to the use of computers in their business. Initially, it was a closed business-to-business only service, which gave sellers the ability to upload information on thousands of books, to get want matches daily, and to search for books for their customers. It was also a rather expensive service, although less so than running an ad in AB Bookman’s Weekly, the only real alternative at the time. With hourly phone charges and listing fees, it was far more expensive both to run and to participate in than the public sites which later appeared on the internet in 1996—notably Bibliofind.com and AbeBooks.com. Late in 1996, Interloc also opened a public internet website, but it had already lost some ground among booksellers as the third such site (personal note: since we were Mac users as booksellers, we were never able to upload to Interloc back in those days). In 1998, there was a drastic change: the old Interloc was bought out, or merged into, a new company called Alibris.com. Rather than simply being an “internet classified listing service” for booksellers (as they referred to Bibliofind and Abe), Alibris was going to be a bookseller itself. While booksellers could still upload their inventory to Alibris (and in fact, Alibris purchased Bibliocity.com at least in part to enhance their ability to accept more files, for example, from Mac users), the dealers’ prices were increased by a certain percentage; the individual bookseller’s name was not associated with a specific book; and there were no costs to the bookseller until a book was sold to a customer, at which point Alibris “bought” the book from the seller for a 20% discount, and the book was shipped to the Alibris warehouse. Flush with venture capital funding, Alibris bought extensively for its own inventory (including the entire stock of some booksellers), developed a warehouse in the Reno area (at one time it offered listing/warehousing/shipping services to booksellers on a consignment basis), and advertised extensively. Most significantly, it developed several partnerships with libraries and other businesses like Ingrams, Borders, and others, most of which continue to this day. While Alibris described its new business model as similar to that of a traditional bookseller, in reality, in less than 2 years the other listing services had created new expectations among booksellers: low flat fees for listing, direct contact between buyers and sellers, the advertising benefits of having your business name associated with your inventory and more. Over the past few years, Alibris has moved back towards this “new traditional” Internet model. While Alibris remains a bookseller itself, it changed its focus from rare and out-of-print to remainders and new books. It also began charging a flat monthly fee for all but the smallest sellers, reduced its commission on retail sales from 20% to 15%, listed books on the website at the same prices that individual sellers put on them, increased seller visibility, had sellers ship directly to buyers in the US (thus reducing the costly and time-consuming shipments to the warehouse), and made direct contact between buyers and sellers possible. FOR BUYERS: PROS – Extensive use of coupons and discounts. These, combined with “flat” and relatively low shipping rates set by Alibris, often means that a buyer can obtain a copy of a book on Alibris for less than on the competing services. – Reliability of sellers. ALONE of the three big “A’s” Alibris seems to be making a serious effort to exclude “sellers” who are just data uploaders or who do no more than “spider” other listings and then offer these books (which they do not actually have in stock) at inflated prices. Alibris might not be perfect in this regard, but at least they are trying. – “Protection” of your order in the shopping cart for 12 hours. If you select a book and put it in the shopping cart, it is removed from public sale for up to 12 hours, thus giving the buyer time to look around and select other books. – Reasonable shipping fees. Set by Alibris (and almost identical to those set by Amazon). In addition (unlike Amazon), Alibris offers reduced shipping on additional books when purchased from the same bookseller. Buyers should be aware of the fact that not all of the shipping fees are passed on to the sellers (again this is identical to Amazon). Some are retained by Alibris to help fund programs like the discount coupons. – A large database. 60 million books are claimed on the website, and in 2006, Alibris had approximately 8,000 active sellers. While this was reported as a reduction in numbers from previous highs, it represented only active sellers. Recently Alibris has opened listings up to individuals who might just want to sell a few books (as Amazon did long ago), but it is too soon to see what effect this will have on the overall inventory. – For buyers looking for a reasonably priced reading copy of a book, the summary results (by title) and the “quick buy” suggestions can speed up and simplify searches. However, these same features become a negative when searching for specific features, such as first edition, as discussed below in the Cons. – For collectors, Alibris permits the listing of uncorrected proofs and advance reading copies (ARCs) after the book has been published. – Consolidated ordering and billing services for libraries. While the prices of the books might be slightly higher, this is probably more than offset by the increased convenience and savings in handling. – Offers want matching (called “fetch book”). However, even though Interloc pioneered want matching capabilities, Alibris’s system seems to be less effective. For example, I put in a match request and received a notification that there were no matches, but an actual search using the exact same parameters brought up 62 results. – Reliability ratings. While Alibris tells buyers that these ratings only reflect book availability (with the highest rating meaning “almost always available”) and does not reflect quality of dealer service, the buyers are not told precisely what the ratings mean in terms of percentage of completed order. 3 dots means “often available” but this can be as low as 70% of the time. FOR BUYERS: CONS – Difficulties in searching. Especially for more uncommon books or for collectible books like signed or first editions. Unlike the traditional search engines, Alibris searches first its own bibliographic database of several million “most commonly searched for” books and gives as matches the books found in that database. If you do a title search for an uncommon book, you might get back a book with a similar title but not the book you are looking for. If you “narrow” your search by adding the author, then the search will find the exact book, since it now looks at the actual listings uploaded by dealers. This is designed to speed up the search results, but is often counter-intuitive. (Example: title search “Writer on Her Work” will return two “summary” results, for the first volume in this series, and the second with the subtitle “New Essays in New Territories.” If you select the second volume “New Essays” you will see 38 results, all for the trade paperback edition, no hardcovers. If you go to the advance search and put in “Writer on Her Work” and select hardcover, you will get 80 results, some of each title. Adding “first edition” to “hardcover” returns 34 results. If you further narrow the results by adding “signed” to “first edition” and “hardcover” you will get 4 results, including two copies NOT returned in any of the previous searches. This is a neat trick, and I have no idea why these two copies did not show up in either the hardcover or first edition results, but still showed up when all three refinements were selected.) – Limited and inaccurate keywords. The “keywords” used are not those entered by booksellers but are presumably taken from Alibris’s database. (Example: if you enter “Canadian authors” in the keyword field, you will get 20 pages of title results, but if you sort these results by author, you will see that only three of Margaret Atwood’s many titles are included, but one of Australian author Thea Astley’s books is also listed.) The same problem exists in browsing a single seller’s inventory. The categories are assigned by Alibris and are often very inaccurate and incomplete. – False results when searching for first edition and signed copies. When Alibris “parses” for first edition, phrases such as “first US” or “first UK” are not accepted as first edition identifiers. Since most of Canadian writer Margaret Atwood’s “true first” printings were Canadian editions, this means that listings by sellers who are careful to correctly identify printings from other countries will be eliminated from first edition searches (unless they use a program with a specific “first edition yes/no” type of box). However, this does not mean that all books listed as “first editions” really are. If you narrow the first 38 search results for “The Writer on Her Work: New Essays in New Territory” by clicking first edition, you will see 3 copies—1 “trade paperback” presumed first and two identified as “second printings.” Sometimes search results for first editions or signed copies on Alibris are more accurate on Bookfinder (if you use the “classic” option on Bookfinder, the Alibris results are easily found). – Credit card is charged immediately upon placing the order, even though the book has not yet been confirmed as available. – The only payment method is by credit card. PayPal and checks are not an available option. – For most international buyers, books are first shipped to the Alibris warehouse and then to the customer, which can increase costs, possibility of damage from additional handling and the time of delivery. – “Help” pages are not kept up-to-date. Information on returns still gives instructions only on returning the book to the warehouse, rather than the individual seller, and the ability to ask the bookseller directly any questions you might have is not mentioned. – Minimum price of $1.99 means that a book listed for as little as 1 cent on Amazon or $1.00 on AbeBooks.com will have the price increased on Alibris.com to $1.99. – Unable to set preferences for search results. Depending on the search, the results default to “by seller rating,” lowest price, or most popular, depending on the search, and have to be manually adjusted for other options each time. FOR SELLERS: PROS – Its network of “business partners” which gives booksellers access to many different markets—primarily, the library consolidation feature it offers, uploading to BarnesandNoble.com, Borders, Chapters, and for a small additional fee on sales, it offers sellers the option to have their books uploaded to Amazon’s marketplace. – Extensive use of coupons, widely available internet discounts and other promotions to increase sales. – New program which permits those who have a small number of books for sale to list them individually on the site and to incur no fees (after a sign-up fee) until the book is sold. At that time, an additional flat fee of 99 cents is charged in addition to the usual commission. – An informative and easy to access bookseller page called the “dashboard.” Includes summary information on sales, listings, total value, average sale, etc. – ISBN look-up features, market value comparisons, and optional automatic re-pricing (however, I will include the caveat that I personally think the comparative values shown are rather inaccurate). – Email customer support is usually responsive and to the point. – Moderately active forum for booksellers. – Reduced commissions on more expensive books. Although Alibris does not have a maximum commission (for example, AbeBook.com’s is $40 regardless of the price of the book), Alibris does have a declining scale for books priced at $500 and more. This can lead to inconsistencies. For example, a book priced at $475 will have a commission of $71.25, one at $525 will be $52.50, and an $850 book will only incur a $42.50 commission. Since this includes credit card processing fees, it means that on sales of all books over $500, Alibris is less expensive than the same book would be on both AbeBooks and Amazon. FOR SELLERS: CONS – Search engine results on Alibris.com often do not include your copies. This is the direct opposite of AbeBooks.com. All of the factors that will improve the visibility of your books on AbeBooks will either reduce the chances of “your” copy showing up on Alibris or have no effect at all (see detailed search notes above under the comments for buyers). In addition to the problems already mentioned, listing contributing authors or illustrators in the author field will either have no effect, or can eliminate your copy; the use of keywords, catalogs or subjects are ignored; and books can not be searched by any information included in the description. – Alibris and its partners consider the buyer as their customer rather than what they really are, which is the customer of the individual bookseller. – Competes with sellers by offering options and benefits like free shipping, express shipping, etc. only on the books in its own inventory. – The cost of listing and selling. In addition to a high commission of 15% (20% on some partner programs), Alibris has a flat monthly fee which is a few dollars less than AbeBooks.com, and can be higher than Amazon’s, depending on the number of books listed. Alibris also retains part of the fees charged to buyers for shipping, so when the buyer pays $3.99, the seller only receives $2.65. – Sellers are told that they are responsible for sales taxes, but there is no provision for collecting sales tax (except in the four states where Alibris has a presence and automatically charges sales tax on all sales). – Limited uniform shipping reimbursement set by Alibris (can occasionally be adjusted). – Long delay in receiving payment for sold orders. Payments are made only twice a month and cover orders either marked as shipped or received in the warehouse. Most of the time, this means that there is a minimum 15 day delay that can reach up to 29 days. Four times a year there is an extra Friday in the month and this increases the delay to as long as 36 days. – No telephone customer support. Chris Volk operates Bookfever along with Shep Iiams out of the Sierra foothills of Amador County, CA and can be contacted at http://www.bookfever.com. IOBA Standard, Summer Edition 2007, Volume 8, No. 3. #Alibris #databases

We are Craig Horle and Laurie Wolfe of Classic Books and Ephemera, which we run out of our home in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania. When we began the business in 2001 we did not anticipate the store-in-the-home phenomenon common to so many booksellers. Our cozy house is now so crammed with our stock and shipping supplies that living there has become almost secondary. However we do have room for the obligatory “bookstore cat,” Greystoke. Having eclectic interests ourselves, we have not specialized to the extent that might make good business sense, but we focus mainly on 17th to mid-19th century books in French, German, and English; late 19th and early 20thcentury military prints and postcards; and manuscripts, deeds, maps, and paper ephemera of all periods. Craig earned a B.A. and an M.A. in English and European history from Temple University in Philadelphia and a Ph.D. in English history from the University of Maryland. He taught for the University of Maryland overseas program in England in the mid-1970s for six years and worked as an archivist, first part time and later full time, at Friends House Library in London for seven years before returning to the states in October 1980, driven out of England in part by his distaste for Margaret Thatcher and in larger part by his loathing for the never-ending inclement weather. On his return to the states, he worked for almost three years as a retail manager for the philatelic firm of Earl P. L. Apfelbaum in Philadelphia (he had been a stamp collector since childhood, but seeing the business close-up led him to sell his collection, although he has recently returned to collecting). Craig returned to the world of academe first as associate editor on The Papers of William Penn Project at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and later as co-founder and chief editor of the Biographical Dictionary of Early Pennsylvania Legislators Project, responsible for producing the series Lawmaking and Legislators. The Biographical Dictionary Project was located initially at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, but since 1990 it has been at Temple University, where until recently Craig also taught European and English history as an adjunct professor. Laurie earned a B.A. in English Literature from Earlham College in Indiana, an M.A. in American History from Temple University, an M.L.S. from Drexel University in Philadelphia, and a J.D. from Temple University School of Law. She has also (and perhaps most importantly!) attended four courses at the Rare Book School, two at the original location at Columbia University and two at the present location at the University of Virginia. Laurie worked as a rare book cataloguer at Bethel College in Kansas where the oppressive heat drove her slightly insane (which is sadly incompatible with Craig’s love of hot weather). She returned to Philadelphia to go to graduate school and later became a cataloger in the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia. Then with M.A. in History in hand, she joined the Biographical Dictionary Project as an editor in 1994, working full time until she entered law school, and then continued to work on the project part time. She passed the bar (something Craig did infrequently in England, as he loves real ale) her first go-round, but her interest in non-patent intellectual property law did not result in any local employment possibilities. (Ironically, Philadelphia is a great location for patent law, which requires a science degree but not, alas, a library science degree.) We have lived together in Lansdowne for about ten years, tying the knot in August 2006. We decided to become bookdealers because: 1. Craig’s father, a well-known military figure maker, left a substantial collection of militaria, both books and prints, as well as Craig’s Classics Illustrated collection of comic books (which formed the backbone of Craig’s early scholastic career and which his father had secretly kept for him lo those many years); 2. The Biographical Dictionary Project has always relied on grants, almost exclusively from government sources, and thus has the potential to end suddenly, which meant that we needed a backup plan; 3. Craig is nearing retirement (and experiencing project burnout after 22 years and four published volumes) and would like to become a full-time bookdealer, as would Laurie; 4. Working at home is very appealing, even if the two of us can no longer fit together in most of the jammed rooms and are in mortal danger from falling books and cardboard; 5. Laurie is a true, passionate bibliophile and loves the challenge of the business and, as a much younger woman (11 years Craig’s junior) needs to keep busy as Craig declines into his dotage; and 6. Both of us (but especially Laurie) are good with computers; so we decided to establish a partnership and sell on eBay, gradually easing our way into online retailing. We have been members of IOBA from the very beginning of our partnership. We now sell on eBay, Biblio, IOBAbooks, and Choosebooks and will be looking at other sites in the future, as well as creating our own website. As all of you know, dealing in books and ephemera, while often fun, enlightening, and educational, is also frustrating and constantly changing as online opportunities evolve. EBay giveth and eBay taketh away, enabling outreach to a world-wide market but adding fee upon fee and showing very little understanding of the differences between older books and widgets; moreover the addition of live online bidding access to live book auctions (which used to be a great source of material for bookdealers willing to travel to those auctions) reduces the ability of dealers to buy quality books at reasonable prices, as we now compete with both dealers and collectors worldwide for the same stock. As soon as Craig retires, we plan to do shows and to travel to purchase books and ephemera from non-auction sources. Another increasing problem for bookdealers is the impact of the USPS shipping changes and the rising cost of oil on our international business, as very few of the books we sell are amenable to shipping in a Priority envelope and, in any event, we prefer shipping in boxes. Only the present weakness of the dollar works in our favor. We are proud to belong to IOBA and, through the discussions and profiles, have been astonished at the remarkable diversity of its membership. Obviously, we hope that more buyers will learn of the association and will come to appreciate the professionalism, knowledge, and quality of the members. Craig Horle and Laurie Wolfe operate Classic Books and Ephemera out of Lansdowne, PA and can be contacted at cbandeph@netscape.net. IOBA Standard, Summer Edition 2007, Volume 8, No. 3.

“I sell books about antiques.” “You sell antique books? I have an old school book that was my grandmother’s.” “No, I sell books ABOUT antiques, not necessarily antique books.” And so a typical conversation with a stranger ends—the same conversation for thirty-one years! Fortunately, the collector, the antique dealer and the book lover recognize what I sell, and their enthusiasm for my specialty has been my profession since 1977. My father, Walt Johnson, started promoting his COLLECTORS’ EXTRAVAGANZA® Antiques Shows in 1969 (that’s Dad in the photo!) and in the mid-1970s expanded his shows to cities outside our home base of Des Moines. Those shows needed a reference bookseller, and on February 25, 1977 in Denver, with three boxes of books I bought (using some left-over money from my college savings account) I became our show’s book dealer. I bought those titles just on a feeling they would be good sellers, and I actually sold out during that antique show, something I would never again do! “The Library” served its owner well for nearly twenty-five years, but as the business changed, so did I, and Nancy Johnson, Bookseller replaced “The Library.” With my home now in Denver and warehouse in Strasburg, Colorado (30 miles east of Denver) my shows now stretch from the Great Lakes to the Pacific. That three box inventory has also changed—the inventory is now some 75,000 books, at least 90% of which are on antiques, collecting, decorative arts and fine art. We still promote antiques shows as well, and our Denver Show is held at Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum, so I have a growing inventory of aviation titles and material, including some ephemera, pertaining to the American West. I have never operated a bricks-and-mortar store, as the nature of my specialty has always mandated that the bookseller take the books to the collector (at antiques shows and book fairs) instead of the other way around. I drive to all my shows and fairs, sometimes with a cargo trailer in tow, and although I still set up a large display, I can only bring a portion of my inventory to the event. Selling online allows me to better serve my existing show customers and to find new customers who would never see my books in person. Since that first day of selling in February, 1977, I have always considered myself a professional. I belong to the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association (MPIBA) and IOBA, which I joined because of IOBA members I met at the San Francisco Antiquarian Book & Paper Fair. I liked the concept of IOBA because it allowed me to be me, with more emphasis on the way I conducted business than the square footage of a walk-in facility. I participate in the member’s discuss lists and have learned a great deal from other members. And I have just applied to list through IOBAbooks. In addition to the shows in which I exhibit, I sell on my own web-site, nancyjohnsonbookseller.com, and on AbeBooks.com. My Mom, Frances Goodman Johnson, was always an enthusiastic volunteer in my business. When she passed away in 1997, we established a private foundation in her name. The Foundation is supported by our family businesses and very generous contributions from friends. “Mom” works in the area of literacy and reading programs, as well as working with the Iowa Commission on the Status of Women to provide small scholarships and financial aid to young women of need. My Dad is 81 years young, a World War II and Korean War veteran who is also a retired police officer. I am fortunate to have two wonderful families in my life in Colorado. The young lady pictured with me, Brandy Hoffstaetter (age 6) is learning how we write an online listing at her home in Greeley! Dawn Warren (age 11), in Strasburg, along with her mother, Laurie, is very helpful in locating books to be shipped to our great online customers. These girls love books, and that is music to my ears! Nancy Johnson operates Nancy Johnson, Bookseller out of Denver, CO and can be reached at http://www.nancyjohnsonbookseller.com. IOBA Standard, Summer Edition 2007, Volume 8, No. 3.

My first bookstore job was at Iowa City’s Prairie Lights. I was attending the University of Iowa Writers Workshop and working in a bookshop helped support my “plans” of becoming a writer. While there, and though I didn’t realize it at the time (or at least wouldn’t have used the term), I began collecting books: haunting the bargain tables for good buys (once even finding a third printing of Olympia Press’ two-volume Lolita for five dollars), and stalking authors who read at the store to sign my books. Iowa City also had several excellent used bookshops and I began hunting their aisles for books cheap enough for even a poor graduate student to afford. Two years later, I left Iowa with significantly more books than I arrived with. After graduation, and now in California, my “plan” was to teach full-time. But when all I could find were part-time adjunct positions, bookselling again helped support me, this time at Monterey’s Bay Books. Soon galleys, ARCs, and proofs—a new interest, perhaps especially because they were free—began piling up around the house. I spent many of my lunch hours at one of the three used bookshops within walking distance. The book collection grew. And when my wife’s career brought us to Colorado, Denver’s Tattered Cover occupied me while I looked for what I “planned” to be my “real” work: teaching, maybe writing, or some combination of the two. At least that’s what I still hoped. Yet by the time we left Colorado, I found that I had risen to the positions of both buyer and Poetry Events Coordinator at the Tattered Cover, and I began to wonder if perhaps bookselling was not in fact itself the plan. After all, for several years I had been supplementing my book buying with amateur book-scouting, and had become rather adept at shuffling titles from one Denver area used bookshop to another for increasing amounts of cash or credit. So when my wife and I decided that I would be the stay-at-home parent for our daughter, the idea of online bookselling, of this scouting project writ large, occurred to me. I had a good start-up inventory from my years of teaching, collecting, and working in new books: advance issues, signed books, lucky finds from used shops. And my wife liked the idea of clearing some of the many books from the house (insert bookseller laughter here). But this would only be for extra income, of course, nothing permanent. That was the plan, anyway. But despite all of this, and much to my wife’s consternation, the book piles around the house have only managed to grow. So much for plans. Pity the poor bookseller’s spouse. Not all plans have been abandoned, however; I have not completely stopped writing. This past year, I have written a series of articles on my time as a stay-at-home father for a new parenting magazine, Baby Couture. In July of this year, I’ll be presenting a paper at the annual conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP). In his recent book The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, Louis Buzbee writes, “No child sets out to become a bookseller.” But somehow, in that meandering way that seems common to all booksellers, I have become one. And will remain so. At least, that’s the plan. Brian Cassidy operates Brian Cassidy, Bookseller in Monterey, CA and can be contacted at http://www.tomfolio.com/mall/BrianCassidy. IOBA Standard, Summer Edition 2007, Volume 8, No. 3.

Ye Olde Booksellers Adventures in American Bookshops, Antique Stores and Auction Rooms by Guido Bruno (Detroit: The Douglas Book Shop, 1922) is a swell little thing, the one in hand numbered 898 of 1,000 printed, with bumped corners and cracked hinges, at 125 pp. plus the index. It mostly covers New York City, excerpted in this issue; with brief stops in Chicago, Boston, and other cities that will have to wait until next time. The first passage is from his preface, and then we get good snapshots of many predecessors. “On reading the proofs, I feel I have not done justice to my bookselling friends. I wandered into their shops, I browsed among their books, I listened to their talk and wrote it down . . . . pictures not studies, impressions not descriptions. Some of my friends have since passed on to a better world and in these pages will be found perhaps the only record of their useful and laborious lives. This, I believe, is an excuse for the existence of my little book.” The Salvation Army Books and magazines are turned over at once to the book department, which conducts a book store on Fourteenth Street near Union Square, not in the name of the Salvation Army, but in the name of the Reliance Book Store. Its employees are experienced booksellers who do not wear the Salvation uniform. In fact, every possible indication that this store belongs to the Salvation Army is carefully concealed. Magazines are here sold wholesale to other dealers or retail to you or to me or to anybody. The magazines given to the Salvation Army by charitable people are sold for from five to fifteen cents each. A very well-equipped rare book department attracts collectors from all over the city; “Book Prices Current” is the guide for the sales prices. School books are sold in great quantities. I believe the profit of this shop to be far greater than of any other book shop in the city, as its proprietors do not need to pay for the books they are selling. There seems to be a good deal of hypocrisy in concealing the fact that the Salvation Army owns the Reliance Book Store. Why not put a sign out that would tell everyone that the books and magazines sold have been received as gifts for the poor and sick by the Salvation Army? In New York Book Shops Every city has its book streets. Book shops are gregarious, and they grow like mushrooms in groups. There is little competition in the book business. No matter how large and complete the stock of a second-hand book dealer may be, his neighbor’s collection will be quite different. The clients of second-hand bookshops like to “browse about,” they seldom ask for a certain book and they love to have a large territory in which to hunt. The location of book streets changes with the growth of a city. Seventy-five years ago the book centre of New York was far downtown on Ann Street; after the Astor Library opened its doors, Fourth Avenue became the city center and soon was lined with picturesque bookshops. The city grew and Twenty-third Street became the Dorado of the book-hunter. Then people began to make immense fortunes and build palaces and mansions on Fifth Avenue, Central Park was opened to the public. . . .and Fifty-ninth Street became the book street of New York. Ever further the city expanded. Harlem grew in population and One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street is another shopping center for lovers of books and objects of art. Most of the book dealers kept step with the times. They moved from street to street. The grandfather had been prominent on Ann Street, the son on Fourth Avenue, and the grandson flourishes on One Hundred and Twenty-fifth. Fourth Avenue has come to honors again during the past four years. Some big book dealers had the idea to move back to old “booksellers row,” new people soon gathered around them and today most of the second-hand book business of the United States is transacted here on this old street, surrounded by a ramshackle neighborhood, invaded by factory buildings and sweatshops. But some book dealers could never make up their minds to move. They stuck to their shops. They are the landmarks of New York’s book streets. The Den of a Pessimist The Nestor of the book dealers who “have remained” and have withstood the trend of the times is E. A. Custer on Fifty-ninth Street. Right near Park Avenue, next to a livery stable in the cellar of an old-fashioned brownstone house, is his picturesque shop. Large bookstalls with hundreds of books invite you to rummage about, quaint paintings and drawings will arrest your attention and make you stop even if you are in a hurry. Firearms of all descriptions, swords and shining armor add a war touch that seems quite appropriate in our time. If you look closer you see a pale face with keen black eyes behind the show window. You have to look very closely in order to detect it. And if you enter the store you will meet the proprietor of face and store, sitting at his look-out, watching his stalls, scrutinizing the passers-by who stop to glance at his wares. He continues in his position while he is talking to you; he never takes his eyes from his treasures, even while waiting on a customer, or delving into the depths of his shop. “I have to watch my property,” he offers as explanation while excusing himself. “I am listening to what you say,” he adds, “don’t mind if I don’t look at you while we talk. All people who stop out there to look at my books are thieves, and if I give them a chance to get away with my books they prefer to acquire them that way rather than to buy. They steal from earliest childhood and never cease until they are dead. I have been forty years in this very place and I know what I am talking about. And though I am as watchful as a dog, I lose about twenty per cent of the stock that I put in my stalls through thieving. All book collectors are thieves; people who never would think of taking anything else without paying for it must think a bookshop is different from all other stores. Their consciences are not sin-stricken if they incidentally slip a book they like into their pocket and walk out with it. I have long ceased to read books. I read human nature for my pastime. “There is not a day that I do not lose books by theft. Take for instance last week. I had a set of Dickens on my stands. A cheap edition on the table where I keep my books for boys. I saw a little freckled, red-haired, bare-footed lad inspecting the Dickens books for longer than half an hour. Some time later he came back and looked at them again. This time he had a few books under his arm. He laid his books on the table and managed very cleverly to pick them up after a while together with one of my Dickens books. The boy really wanted to read the book and I let him get away with it. I knew that he was passing my shop every day, and I thought of speaking to him another time. “The next day he came again, inspected the remaining volumes of my Dickens set for a few minutes, repeated his trick of the day before and stole another volume. He came every day and acquired six of the seven volumes. It was only on Saturday that he stole the sixth volume; this time I went after him, told him sternly to come back with me, handed him the seventh volume and said to him: “’Here, my boy, I don’t keep open on Sunday, and somebody might buy this one and spoil your set. Better take it along. You have the right spirit. Continue and one of these days you will find yourself a millionaire. Perhaps then you will endow libraries.’” “But,” I interjected, “mustn’t it be dreadful to sit in your shop day after day as a sort of watchman?” “I’m accustomed to it,” he answered, “and that’s the only way I can make my business pay. It was not always so. There was a time when people really loved books and bought them in order to read. Then they had time to read. The successful man of today has an automobile, has to go out joy-riding after business hours, has to spend his time in cabarets and road-houses. He needs books only as decorations when he buys a home or furnishes an apartment. And then he leaves it usually to his decorator to choose the most attractive and expensive bindings in keeping with the color scheme of his library. “I tell you, New Yorkers don’t know books, don’t want to know them. The men read newspapers, the women magazines, and the young people trashy novels. Of course there are our modern book collectors. They know as much about the commercial values of books as I do. They buy books as an investment, just like pictures. They follow the auction sales and gamble in books. You can hardly call such people booklovers. Thirty years ago I used to have comfortable chairs in my shop and in the evening big business men, lawyers, and physicians would drop in and examine at leisure some tomes that I had laid before them because I knew they were interested in this or that subject. Today most of the men who are interested in books are so poor that they can hardly pay their room rent.” And then he proceeded to show me some of his treasures. “Who do you think buys this sort of books in our day? Dealers, nobody but dealers. And they sell them again to dealers. Finally they find their way into the auction rooms and are bought again by a dealer.” A Whitman Enthusiast He loves Twenty-third Street and intends to stick there till the last house is transformed into a factory. You almost fall into his shop from the street, so steep are the stairs and tread-worn. He has the instinct of the born second-hand book dealer to find out-of-the-way books on out-of-the-way subjects. There is always something unusual in his shop, and his prizes are within the reach of the poor man’s purse. He likes his books and he likes to sell them to good homes. And therefore he often fits his price to the purchaser’s purse. His hobby is Walt Whitman. He has the most famous collection of Whitman items in this country, even larger and more extensive than the one Horace Traubel has guarded. He has original manuscripts of Whitman, proof sheets of his books, everything that was ever written in any language about Walt Whitman, more than four hundred pictures of the “good, gray poet,” and you couldn’t buy one of those precious things for any money in the world. An Optimist “If one keeps a bookshop something unusual happens almost every day. It is the uncertainty of the book business that always attracts me. Of course every book dealer who wants to make a decent living must have a specialty of his own. Mine is architectural books. I have a large clientele of architects and decorators; I know these books well, and they were the backbone of my business. Chance and good luck are the great factors in the book dealer’s life. Let me tell you a few instances: “A few months after I opened my shop at the time of the big auction sales, I felt very gloomy. Of course I needed cash in order to buy books, and I did not have it. One morning one of my best customers walked into my shop and asked for a copy of Canina’s Ancient Rome. I told him that the book was so scarce that there was no use to ask for it. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I am willing to give you two hundred and fifty dollars for it any time you bring me a copy.’ The very same afternoon I noticed a copy of the book in an auction catalog to be sold the next day. I went to the auction and sat there shaking like a leaf, waiting for the first bid after the book was put up. Nobody seemed to be interested to buy it. Somebody bid five dollars, and I got it finally for six dollars and seventy-five cents. I had it wrapped up, took it around the corner to my customer and collected two hundred and fifty dollars. That was the first real money I made, and it gave me a chance to acquire better books.” A Gambler On Thirty-fourth, near Lexington Avenue, Jerome Duke has opened a bookshop of a peculiar sort. It is not exactly a book shop because there are antiques and curiosities all over the place. The books are thrown together topsy-turvy, Latin authors, modern novelists, theological books, old French tomes and German philosophers. I asked the proprietor about his books and his answer was: “I don’t know anything about them. I never read books and would not be bothered with them. I buy them at a certain price and I try to sell them at a profit. In fact, I intend to buy anything I can get cheap enough, no matter what it is. I went into the book game in order to gamble and I am going to gamble on anything that people bring in here. “There is one thing I have just refused to buy because the man wanted too much for it. He said that he had recently returned from Europe, had been a soldier, and wanted to sell me the embalmed finger of a German general. I forget the name of the general, but the man said that it was authentic and that he would sign a document before a notary public, swearing that he had been present at the time the finger was cut off of the general’s hand. Now, if he had asked fifty cents or a dollar, I would have been willing to take a chance, because it would make a good window display in this time of war; but he wanted five dollars, and I couldn’t see my way clear. That’s too much of a chance, to stake a five-spot on an embalmed finger of a German general. So I bought a slipper instead. It belonged to a Madame Jumel, and she is supposed to have worn it on the day that she got her divorce from Aaron Burr. I paid a dollar for it and I consider it a pretty sound gamble.” “How so?” I asked. “Well,” he answered, ”because Aaron Burr was the second Vice-President of the United States.” Of course that argument was final, and I wished him luck with his purchase. The Oxford Book Shop If you wish to know what authors Mr. Goldsmith does not like, look at his ten-cent stand in front of the shop. Extraordinary values can be had there for one dime, because Mr. Goldsmith does not like the books. Casement’s Book Emporium All his books are alphabetically arranged and I don’t wonder that many a scarce book can be found amongst his stock. Mr. Casement is a solitary figure among the book dealers of New York. Very silent, always kindly, smiling, obliging and unassuming. Often in the twilight, when he drinks his cup of coffee, and eats his herring with rye bread, I love to drop in and watch his self-content and real satisfaction with his life and with his lot. He is the only happy man among all the book dealers in New York—from hope and fear set free—content among his books. The Man Who Knows His Books A spotlessly clean little store on Thirty-eighth Street near Sixth Avenue, book shelves all around the walls, friendly pictures right beneath the ceiling. In the middle of the room a little desk, and in a chair before it Mr. Corbett, who prides himself on having read every book that he ever sold. Jack London used to spend hours here whenever he was in New York, and Edwin Markham received a good deal of inspiration from Mr. Corbett’s suggestions. Literary hack writers are his daily visitors; to call them customers would be too optimistic. He dreams of magazine articles, he invents titles for them and he sells you for a few pennies all the material to write them if you happen to be a journalist on the lookout for suggestions. He had his own peculiar ideas of what people should read and what they shouldn’t read, and it is not an unusual occurrence that, for instance, a young girl should enter his shop and ask for a certain book, and he would answer: “Yes, I have it, but you shouldn’t read it, and I won’t sell it to you.” And then he will tell her about some other book, and picture it in such desirable colors that she will change her mind and buy it instead. “You know,” he told me once, “the bookseller has a very important mission in life. The writer writes his books, but he doesn’t know into whose hands they will fall, the publisher sells them as merchandise to dealers all over the country, but we little shop-keepers come in contact with the real readers. It’s up to us to place something in their hands that might be decisive for their future career, that might inspire them to great and noble thoughts, and that might make criminals out of them. A few pennies that we might gain might mean the perdition of lives and souls.” Mr. Stammer, Their Great Patron Do you ask “How do all these people manage to darn a livelihood?” Mr. Stammer, the great book dealer from Fourth Avenue, whose specialty is hunting up every book that anybody in the United States might desire, no matter when and where printed, and who knows the most obscure book dealer in the most obscure part of New York, answered this question: “Because two-thirds of the book dealers in New York are selling exclusively almost to the remaining third. The big book dealers very rarely buy books from private sources. These little book shops are our vanguards, that collect the honey for us and we come and take whatever we can use, or they bring it to us, and we are glad to have them come regularly.” Mr. Stammer makes his round to these small book dealers almost constantly every day. He is their educator and patron. He tells them what books are worth money, and he pays a good price whenever he can use them. He is a welcome figure on rent day, and most of the treasures of these cobwebbed corners wander to the comfortable shelves of his palace on Fourth Avenue. Mr. Madigan’s Interesting Shop A complete change of scene. The most fashionable shopping district of New York, just around the corner of Fifth Avenue in Forty-fifth Street. A window filled with expensively framed autographs marks the sanctum of Mr. Francis P. Madigan. He is a jovial man who has all the qualities which make for the success of our Fifth Avenue art shops. He knows when to stop talking, he knows when to say “the word” which closes the deal: he sells to his customers, they do not buy from him. The high walls are hung with innumerable autographs in appropriate frames, signed portraits of great celebrities; some little drawings and sketches by lesser know artists—Mr. Madigan also dabbles in art. His specialty is selling books signed by their authors. He is one of the few men who realized Oscar Wilde’s importance at a time when no one paid much attention to this unfortunate poet. In the course of years he collected a mass of Oscar Wilde material, and he is now reaping the harvest. I spent an afternoon in his shop. Quite a study for the observer of human souls was the procession of visitors who came and went continuously. They pay for autographs of men who never could even sell their work during their lives. Mr. Madigan has sold more Poe material during the last ten years than anybody else. Poor Poe! During his entire literary career he hardly got in direct returns as much money as this dealer in dead men’s letters receives for one single epistle. Schulte’s Book Store Scattered about the throbbing city are a few quiet nooks and corners that seem especially made for the lover of antiques. They are not numerous, but full of a certain charm. Book stores, with big boxes in front of the doors, where you can choose for your pennies, tomes in old-fashioned binding and printing. Inside are shelves laden with books in delightful disorder left by the book-hunter who looked through them before you. The narrow passageway becomes narrower on each visit you pay to the shop because of newly-arrived books and pamphlets. A long vista of boxes and cases well filled with a delightful miscellany of books marks the front of Mr. Schulte’s book store on the southwest corner of 23rd Street and Lexington Avenue. Don’t cast suspicious looks at the nice girls in immaculate white blouses who loiter about the aisles. They won’t interfere with you. They won’t ask you any questions. You will soon feel at home after you have glanced at the titles of the books on any shelf, and if you meet Mr. Schulte he won’t be a stranger to you. There is such a deep-founded relationship between the man and his books and customers. He is the appreciative, sympathetic co-collector and, after you have gained his confidence, if the friendship is mutual, he will spread out his gems before you: a first edition with a rare imprint, or some unknown etching by Whistler or Haden or Zorn. George D. Smith, Speculator in Literary Property A new type of bookseller has developed since books and literary property have become commercial and subject to corners created by shrewd buyers and holders, and to fluctuations caused by selling en masse. Mr. George D. Smith, the king of rare books and great dealer in literary property, operates on the largest scale. Mr. Smith buys carloads of books for millions of dollars and sells again by the carload to millionaires who build palaces in California and who order their libraries complete. Mr. Smith is the leading figure in our auction houses where he buys, excluding all competition, by paying an exorbitant price for anything he desires to possess. He is a millionaire and the chief counselor of our nouveaux riches when they furnish their homes with rare autographs and valuable books. Mr. Cadigan of Brentano’s After you have passed the stairway in Brentano’s leading to the basement and properly admired the framed autographs and signed portraits which cover the walls, you will pass the gate that leads into the kingdom of Mr. Cadigan, another dealer in literary property but of quite a different type. Mr. Cadigan is the head of Brentano’s periodical department. He knows the development of the American magazine better than anybody else living. For a score of years he has watched successes and failures, but nearest to his heart are the magazines of those men who have had the courage to stand up for their own ideas and their own conception of the world. Some of the most pathetic figures in American letters have founded magazines of their own; they would not follow the example of their contemporaries or submit to the wishes of their publishers and to the presumed desires of the reading public. Mr. Cadigan knows them all. He recommends them if he thinks them commendable. While the gigantic trusts of our American news companies afford them very little or no chances for circulation, Mr. Cadigan adopts them and presents them for sale on his table next to the full-fledged product of the capitalistic press. I get more satisfaction and pleasure out of Brentano’s basement devoted to periodicals than out of all the periodical reading rooms of all our public libraries combined, with the Carnegie institutions thrown in. To be able to look over the current issues of magazines and to take home just the interesting ones carries with it an intimate satisfaction.

Happy Hits Excerpts from recent online book descriptions. -Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Acceptable. Heavy edge and cover wear, some faux stains, inside great!! -Corners bumped, Spine worn at top and bottom with teat at center. -Book Condition: Good. No Jacket. 4to – over 9 3/4″ – 12″ Tall. 407 pp. For years 1907, 1908, 1909. All the main color plates have been cut out of book; also, a few pages are loose from binding. Spine cocked, some soil to covers; edge & corner wear. Ex-lib w/stamps to front & rear endpapers. -At some point in book’s peregrinations, a phoney three dollar bill was laid-in. -Included are a bit of ephemera: A page from the magazine Tops, advertising the 1940 P. C. A. M. Convention July 21 to 27, 1940 (Pacific Coast Assoc. of Magicians?). an unidentified snapshot of two males who one must but asume are muscians and an 8 by 10 sepia half-tone photograph inscribed To Bob Hammer with best wishes from Oscar and his stooge George “Quiver Lip” McAthy, 1944. Book ‘em, Danno Ioba is one of the 45 provinces of Burkina Faso in West Africa. The capital of Ioba is Dano, almost as in “Book ‘em, Danno” from the classic TV series Hawaii Five-O. IOBA, the Independent Online Booksellers Association, sells books. Coincidence? Probably. Blurbettes Notorious C.O.P. by Derrick Parker with Matt Diehl (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2006) features a simulated bullet hole on the front panel of the dust jacket. The entry point is very smooth, but the automobile or recording studio glass it penetrated feels fractured to the touch, like it was real. The three brownish blood drops are also embossed. I contacted St. Martin’s Press with some questions about the process involved, the design spec language used, and the additional printing cost, but nobody got back to me. “As head of the first special force unit devoted exclusively to the investigation of hip-hop crime, first-grade [that seems awfully young] detective Derrick Parker worked on some of the biggest criminal cases in rap history. From the shooting at Club New York to the murder of Tupac Shakur, Derrick was on the inside of hip-hop’s most notorious crimes. “Always straddling the fence between “po-po” [gangsta slang for cop] and NYPD outsider, Derrick threatened police tradition to try to get the cases solved. He was the first New York detective on the Biggie Smalls’ [why the apostrophe?] murder and discovered shocking and never-before-revealed information from an unlikely informant. He protected one of the only surviving eyewitnesses to the Jam Master Jay murder and knows the identities of the killers as well as the motivation behind the shooting. “Notorious C.O.P. reveals hip-hop crimes that never made the papers—like the robbing of Foxy Brown [hold the press!] and the first Hot 97 shooting—and answers some lingering questions about murders that have remained unsolved. “The book that both the NYPD and the hip-hop community don’t want you to read, Notorious C.O.P. is the first insider look at the real links between crime and hip-hop and the inefficiencies that have left some of the most widely publicized murders in entertainment history unsolved.” From the rear inside flap. “Derrick Parker is a twenty-year veteran of the NYPD who headed the first special force unit dedicated to the investigation of hip-hop-related crime. Now off the force, Parker serves as the media’s rap-related crime expert, appearing in Rolling Stone, New York magazine, Vibe, Blender, The New York Times, Newsday, and dozens of other magazines and newspapers as well as on Unsolved Mysteries and shows on MTV, Fox, VH1, and Court TV. “Matt Diehl is a journalist whose work has appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ, VIBE [they went with all caps in this second mention of Vibe, probably under the influence ofGQ’s caps], Spin, The Village Voice, and Blender [not to be confused with Spin]. He served as the music columnist for Elle magazine for four years and now serves as the music editor-at-large for Interviewmagazine. His first book was No-Fall Snowboarding.” From the rear panel (busy cop’s desk motif, blurbs on typescript sheet with coffee cup and stain rings, crumpled up piece of yellow legal paper, folders and pads underneath). “Yeah, you know me. I’m the guy The Miami Herald called the ‘hip-hop cop’ when they ran a story about the [really big] binder I’d compiled for the NYPD detailing the criminal history of over nine hundred hip-hop artists and associates. Yeah, that was me. “In my duties as NYPD’s hip-hop cop, I investigated some of the biggest names in music. The Club New York shooting involving Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, Shyne, and Jennifer Lopez, I was there. The Hot 97 shooting that Lil’ Kim is now serving time for—who do you think they called on? [The hip-hop cop?] Cases involving the Wu-Tang Clan, 50 Cent, Nas, DMX, Foxy Brown—I worked them all. [Foxy Brown’s Wikipedia entry includes eight “Legal run-ins” for such offenses as spitting on two hotel workers in Raleigh who could or would not provide an iron; crashing her Range Rover; an altercation with an airport policewoman in Jamaica; attacking two manicurists in Chelsea over a disputed bill; getting handcuffed to a bench for fifteen minutes on order of a Manhattan judge until she agreed to apologize to the court for sticking her tongue out when asked to stop chewing gum; throwing hair glue at and spitting on a Broward County beauty parlor employee who told her it was closing time, and swatting at the arms of the police officer who tried to escort her from the shopping plaza back to the salon; and a couple of minor court violations.] “As a rookie detective, I patrolled the mean streets of Brooklyn and Queens. I was involved in one of the first cases that would bust drug impresarios Kenneth ‘Supreme’ McGriff, Lorenzo ‘Fat Cat’ Nichols, and Howard ‘Pappy’ Mason. “I spent years learning and investigating hip-hop on both sides of the fence. [Several paragraphs ago he said he was “straddling” the fence—two different things.] I know the people behind the music and the people they mythologize. There have been numerous books exploring the murders of Tupac, Biggie, and now Jam Master Jay, but as I am the original ‘hip-hop cop,’ no one has ever been where I’ve been, seen what I’ve seen, or knows what I know—and now I’m laying it all out on the line.” At the end of the day, I am confused by this dust jacket. Is glorified crime and violence good or bad? If the author knows who was behind big unsolved hip-hop murders, why are they still unsolved? Is Fox News more righteous than the NYPD? Maybe it’s a good book and an important contribution to the history of rap, and the author had nothing to do with all this hype. Either way, that’s what libraries are for. Book Blogs The Blog of Brian Cassidy, Bookseller http://briancassidy.net/blog/?s Posted 6/6/2007 “24 Hours in the Life of a Used Book” I always have mixed feelings when a book I care about is chosen by Oprah for her book club (The Corrections, House of Sand and Fog, Night, East of Eden, Light in August…). On the one hand, I like that good books get read and that reading as a pastime is endorsed on such a mass level. These are undeniably good things. At the same time, I always fear some author debacle (see James Frey or Jonathan Franzen) or worry that in the meeting of mass culture and fine literature, the latter ends up the loser. I’m thinking of moments like when on an early Oprah book club episode one woman complained to Toni Morrison that she had trouble understanding some passages and found herself needing to review. “Yes, my dear,” Morrison replied in her imperious tone, “We call that READING.” And now, on the day she snagged Cormac McCarthy’s only TV interview ever, Oprah had anointed Jeffrey Eugenides’ Pulitzer-winning novel, Middlesex. I had a couple copies in stock at the shop, so when I heard of the selection I headed over to Amazon to see what was happening with the online price and decide if I should bother listing my copies. Though at first it appeared not much was going on, as the above chart demonstrates (click to enlarge), the power of Oprah is not to be underestimated. Oprah single-handedly cut the number of available used copies by more than half (from 375 to about 160) and nearly tripled the asking price (from $2.88 to $7.50), all in a scant 24 hours. A few clarifications: First, this data is for the “old” trade paperback edition only (as opposed to the new “Oprah” edition). Second, that plummeting price for new copies represents the fact that Amazon sold out of the “old” edition (demonstrated by the fact they say copies will ship in “1-3 weeks”). Third, note the impressive jump in sales rank (500 or so to 17). Oprah, we bow before your mighty influence. Made in IOBA Elizabeth Svendsen of Blue Jacket Books is co-author, with her father (and under her maiden name) of The Sorcerer’s Companion, A Guide to the Magical World of Harry Potter(NY: Broadway Books, 2001; 2004 second edition), by Allan Zola Kronzek and Elizabeth Kronzek. The Dignity of the Bookseller’s Calling Submitted by Rockford E. Toews (http://www.backcreekbooks.com) Block and Tackle I seem to have the only online copy of the improbably titled Nine Lives on Four Coasts: Autobiography/Confession/Love Story of an Educational Administrator, by Byron F. Evans (Urbana, IL: Prairie Publications, 2004 first edition. Signed and warmly inscribed by the author. $35.00). I received the following IOBAbooks query about this offering. -3/16/2007 12:10 A.M. Customer inquiry: Hi, How are you today? and how are you doing? I am interested in this book, let me know the last price you are willing to sell it, and also let me know if you accept check as form of payment, I could have called you but it was unfortunate that I’m hearing Impaired. I am looking forward to read from you, David Block.david_block1@yahoo.com -3/16/2007 1:28 A.M. If you would like to order this book, I accept payment by check, money order, PayPal, or credit card. The total comes to $38.00, to include Media Mail shipping. If you email me your confirmation and method of payment now, I can prepare the book for shipping. -3/16/2007 10:11 A.M. Hi Shawn, Thanks for your email, I am okay with your price, please let me know if pickup is acceptable. I am looking forward to read from you. -3/16/2007 12:07 P.M. Sorry but pickup is not convenient for me. [At this point, somebody on the IOBA Discuss list mentioned a similar scam, and we all learned that this same technique was previously attempted against Biblio booksellers. What makes this a bit different is that he chooses titles you actually own, and then sets up a transaction where you get a bogus check for a larger amount and must send him a refund before his “shipper” comes to your business or home in order to pick the book up. It is clumsy, but particularly offensive enough for me to respond, as he had my email address anyway.] -3/18/2007 11:21 A.M. Sorry but it looks like the book you ordered is out of stock. I thought you might be interested in an alternative to this work. It is titled A Biographical Encyclopedia of Pathetic Lowlifes. Just send me a check for a larger amount, and I will send a refund to wherever you say. -3/19/2007 6:20 A.M. Thanks for your email, I am okay with your price, please let me know if pickup is acceptable. I am looking forward to read from you. -3/19/2007 4:49 P.M. Read my previous message again, moron. -3/20/2007 5:29 A.M. Yes, I know. I am intersted in the Biographical Encyclopedia of Pathetic Lowlifes. I just want to know if pickup is acceptable. I am looking forward to read from you, Thank You. -3/20/2007 8:21 P.M. Yes, pickup is acceptable. The total is $38.00. Do you live near me? -3/20/2007 9:55 P.M. Hi. The check I’ll send you will be in excess amount, the amount I’ll write on the check will be higher than the amount to demand for, so the amount written on the check will contains my shipper’s funds. So when it clears your bank deduct your funds, and wire the balance to my shipper to enable him pickup the book from your territory. If you are okay by this arrangement, kindly get back to me with your name, address and phone number so that I can write the check asap. Thank You. -3/20/2007 10:00 P.M. How much higher than $38.00 will your check be? -3/29/2007 9:39 P.M. Hello Shawn, Have you received the check? -3/29/2007 9:57 P.M. Hi again David. I haven’t been to the Post Office recently, as it is a long journey from my village, but plan to do so shortly. Please let me know how much over $38.00 it is. What amount did you write the check for? Thanks. -4/19/2007 12:41 A.M. I have been to my post office and there is no check there from you. Do you still want to order this book? If not, I would like to take it off hold in case anybody else wants it. Please let me know as soon as possible. Thank you. -4/19/2007 8:28 P.M. I am sorry for the late response, I was not filling fine, but I am okay now. please I would need a mailing address, rather than post office box. I will send the check first thing tomorrow morning. I am looking forward to read from you. -4/19/2007 8:28 P.M. Sorry but we only have a Post Office box. -4/19/2007 8:46 P.M. Okay I’ll send it there tomorrow morning. Thank You. -4/28/2007 12:12 P.M. Hi, have you received the check? -5/2/2007 8:37 P.M. No. Does your mother know what you do for a living? -5/3/2007 12:06 A.M. why do you said so? -5/3/2007 12:41 A.M. Because you (“David Block/Tom Grant”) are a well known scammer who cheats people out of their hard-earned money by lying to them. Most Biblio and IOBAbooks booksellers know better than to send you payment for the “shipper’s funds” difference between the actual cost of the book and the big bad check you send them. First of all this is a really stupid way to try and cheat people, though apparently some are fooled or you wouldn’t still be doing it, and secondly we have all shared your emails and discussed your methods. Chances are your mother would be ashamed of this behavior. Get a real and honest job, before it is too late. [At this point, our online correspondence comes to an end.] Pub Sale Tale by Bruce Tober I’ve become something of a hermit in the past couple of months. Takes all I can do to leave the flat and usually only manage to do so 2 or 3 times a week for a couple or 3 hours each. Today was one of those days. Took til about 10am to force myself out the door. While walking to the bus tried to decide on where to go. Finally got to the bus stop and decided on taking the 451 route. That left me with 3 choices, village 1, town or village 2. By the time we got to village 1 I decided I’d not been there in quite a while so might as well. Stopped in at each of the 4 or 5 charity shops and found nothing (not surprising, they’ve had nothing but pretty new take on holiday books for a couple of years). So I stopped for a Guinness (hadn’t had breakfast, let alone lunch yet). I immediately recognised the pub. It was where I bought a load of books (from one of their rooms, the decor of which is Edwardian library) last year. I talked to the manager and made the arrangements, which he was totally amenable to. I walked out having finished my Guinness, with about 30 books. I gave the manager £20 (later found out that I’d actually given him a £10 by mistake) which he was more than happy with. I’ve only checked two of the books so far (each bought for about £0.30) and one’s going to list for £60 (first edition of a physics book by the 1924 Nobel Prize for Physics recipient) and the other one’s going to list for about £40 (a Mrs Beeton’s Every-Day Cookery from the 1930s). And many of the others look likely to make a very nice price. Damn! I love this business. Submitted by Bruce Tober (http://www.star-dot-star.net) Book Fallouts New, Voyager My 1997 Plymouth Grand Voyager ceased to exist a couple months back, at least in the form I was familiar with. We were having overheating problems with both vehicles, and the original dealership thought the Voyager only needed a new thermostat and water pump. Monroe Muffler (our garage of choice) previously detected the need for a vastly more expensive head gasket job, but they are not allowed to work on engines. When the repair did not solve the overheating problem, I just took it easy on the van for a few days, topping it off with coolant between eruptions until we had the time and funds to deal with this. The Subaru going to my daughter just received a new head gasket of its own, plus all new brakes and tires, and we were in the process of buying a new vehicle to replace it, so the timing was not good. The Number 10 Filet-O-Fish sandwich meal comes with a big ass Coke, which I carefully poured down on the conflagration, and although it was largely quelled, it’s pretty hard to put out burning rubber and oily engine parts, and it licked back up again right quick. Mom’s smaller Coke and two bottles of spring water were also put to use, to no avail. I considered driving my flaming van back to McDonald’s in order to borrow their fire extinguisher, but saving Mom’s life and calling 911 seemed the better plan. Beating on the now fully involved engine with a wet packing sheet while waiting for the police and fire trucks, I realized that emptying the vehicle of anything I ever wanted to see again probably made more sense, and when that was done we waited pretty far away in case it blew. Long story short, it took two police extinguishers and a fire pumper to cool things off, and we had a nice quiet five minutes to eat our cold food (with no drinks) between the departure of the authorities and the arrival of the wife and tow truck. The Allstate adjustor was sympathetic to my plight, but he could not help prove that faulty repairs led to the fire, as all the evidence was in one molten mass. The dealership was very quick to deny any culpability, though they were kind enough to let it sit there for a few days earning storage fees. $2,500 plus change was the best he could do, which is not that bad for a 1997 with 130,000 miles. I visited the old girl a few days later to drop off the seats (an extra $150 for that) and to pick up a parking lot hang tag missed in the sweep, and they actually had to cut a rectangle in the hood in order to gain access. All this was sad, as we’d spent so much time together. So I halfheartedly looked for a replacement until a Monday morning was coming up where three of us would need to go to work in three different directions with one vehicle. I’d been holding out for a slightly newer model of the same van. The Plymouth Grand Voyager and her sister the Dodge Grand Caravan were the bookseller’s vehicle of choice for awhile there. I remember doing book shows where the parking lot during setup looked like a Plymouth dealership. The sliding doors are great, it can hold an enormous amount of books, and if you do antiques as well it will accommodate a ten foot dining room table and still close in the back. I even wanted the same color, metallic pearl green with the grey interior. After several weeks of near misses and jamming book call booty and large items like a free roadside down-filled sofa worth $500 into the small Subaru, I finally found one online, though the dealership was about ninety miles away in Brattleboro, VT. It was a 1999 with only 84,000 miles, and it even had a CD player! They wanted $5,000 and settled for $4,500. The closest I came to that was several 1999s and 2000s with about 120,000 miles in the $3,000-$4,000 range, so the price seemed pretty good. We were also rafting the Upper Delaware River and bringing my daughter to Longwood Gardens in PA for a year long paid internship all in a five day period, so time was short. Route 9 through the Green Mountains of Vermont is spectacular, and although we couldn’t peruse a great looking bookstore in Wilmington, we did take a lemonade moment to look down from the bridge at a couple of large trout patrolling crystal clear waters, one on each side, unless it was a single example just messing with our heads, though I would be the last to ascribe certain human qualities to beasts, be they rough or smooth. I had the assurance of Mark’s Motors that this van was in great shape, that it would pass a routine day-of-sale internal inspection with no problems, and that the entire transaction would only take twenty minutes. Needless to say, it didn’t go down quite that way. Their small service department found it needed rear brakes and a new tire (no extra charge), and there were other inefficiencies. We killed time by having a wonderful marina lunch under bright blue skies, and then fully exploring progressive downtown Brattleboro (funniest sight: a children’s store T-shirt with the image of Bush and the caption “President Poopy Head”). From the low parking space we found, I looked upward toward the fringing mountains and saw a large yellow banner way up on the back of a building that read, “75,000 Used Books,” so bingo off we went scaling the sidewalk heights of lower Brattleboro off on our own quests. A few twists and turns later I entered Brattleboro Books, which I now know to be the largest used bookstore in southern Vermont. I spent a half hour poking around, and would have needed another to look for the modest topics and authors I collect in such stores (turn-of-the-century journalism, Harry A. Franck upgrades, etc.); or those that I can easily resell locally if the price is right (Catskill Mountain railroad lines, etc.). It has just the right combination of jumble, organization, coziness, and what appears to be new arrivals in boxes. Serendipity too. Down in the basement, a big red copy of Marlboro Music Programs 1951-1984 caught my eye, and a perfectly pressed Monarch butterfly was laid inside. The highlight of the visit was a chat with co-proprietor Ellen Tenney. We shared some booksellerish sentiments and she allowed me to take a few pictures. I told her about my green Voyager and she pointed to hers parked right outside. I would link to a very nice article on the Tenneys that appeared in the 1/1/2007 Vermont Business Magazine, but it pulsates with too much garish advertising, so google it if you want. I see Rachel Ray slurping a Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee in one of those ads, by the way. She got her start in my area with little food spots on the local news, and Ellen mentioned that the now famous Rachel Ray did a piece from Brattleboro Books for her show. I apologized for not buying anything, though I did pick up a small photography book on Vermont dogs in one of the other three local bookstores Brattleboro strongly supports. I’d like to say the Plymouth Grand Voyager saga ended well, but I don’t know yet. We had lots to do at home before the close of the business day, so I made the unorthodox arrangement of making the return trip the actual test drive. Some things don’t feel quite right, like the brakes, the two back seats shake more than they should (though they will rarely be in anyway), and I’m hoping the smell I detect is only Armor All and not cigarettes. I usually buy new, to avoid cooties and the time and expense of constant repairs. The CARFAX report they coughed up shows this started off as a rental in Michigan, and I am the fourth owner, which is not the uncheckered past I envisioned when chatting with the sales rep on the phone. It looks great (nearly new) for its age though, the CD player is sweet, and it’s so nice to see the temperature gauge right in the middle where it belongs. (When A. J.’s SUV caught on fire in the recent series finale of The Sopranos I had a bad flashback, and I don’t think a Filet-O-Fish will ever taste the same again either, though that might be a good thing.) Next week’s inspection will reveal more, though I wouldn’t mind investing another grand or three sooner or later if that what it takes to Voyager again. It isn’t so much about the make and model, however, as the vast cargo space . . . its five year mission: to explore strange new lands, to seek out new books and new antiques, to boldly go where no van of mine has gone before. I plan to run it into the ground doing my thing and trade it in for a new one some day if my thing goes well. Maybe there will be a good hybrid van by then. Images of Brattleboro Books Brattleboro Books, Brattleboro, VT (brattleborobooks@verizon.net) Book Store Labels: Peabody Book Shop, Baltimore, MD Found on the extreme lower right inside cover of The O’Donoghue; A Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago by Charles Lever (Dublin: William Curry, Jun. and Company, 1845). Solicitations The Standard can always use interesting, well-written articles on subjects of interest to the bookselling trade. Please query first, however, to editor@ioba.org. You will be supplied with submission guidelines, but to summarize, the material should be original, it is subject to editing, you retain copyright, and of course there is no payment other than most everyone’s satisfaction. You do not need to be a member of IOBA, except for the IOBA Bookseller Profiles section, though we would surely like you to join. We are very interested in the book trade outside the U.S. as well. Currently we are seeking short pieces for the following self-explanatory columns. House Calls; Garage/Estate/Library Sale Tales; Auction Action; Book Show Impressions; Book Store Lore; and Library File. Booku Blue Rum by Ernest Souza, down and out expatriate in Portugal, deep blue boards, top edges dark blue, “blue tobacco smoke,” “hideous blue jardinieres,” “blue as blue glass,” blue rum running and “Blue Sleep” addicts, hazy azul oscuro permeates, 1930 blue. Comic Books From the comic section of the New York Journal American dated 4/8/1945, the third panel of “Bringing Up Father” by Geo. McManus. IOBA Standard, Summer Edition 2007, Volume 8, No. 3.

Table of Contents from the Editor From the President Interview with Paul Mills of AuctionExplorerBooks Book-Buying in Middle America, or, A New York Dealer’s Visits to Three Middle American Cities Ephemeral Assays: Jumpin’ Jehovah Book review: Bookstore: The Life and Times of Jeannette Watson and Books & Co Anyone for the Forsythe Saga? Cathy Graham and Serena Wyckoff of Copperfish Books, LLC Pros and Cons of AbeBooks.com for Buyers and Sellers Paul Mills of Clarke’s Africana & Rare Books Tami W. Zawistowski of Resource Books, LLC addendum

Most of us love books for much more than their commercial value, but how did we go from appreciating them to selling them? In many cases, collectors simply decided to specialize, weed, or trade up, and reselling is a logical way to make room and raise funds. In my case, mother ran a weekend barn sale in rural upstate New York in the 1980s. The rest of us avoided this in one way or another, most notably my dad who didn’t like strangers on the property all that much and retreated to his huge sloping garden. Antiques were easily had back then, and Mom had an especially good eye. I did a lot of wood chopping at the back corner of this rambling barn, which now looked out on waving fields of hay rather than hops, and would slink up into the rafters of an adjoining room on occasion to eavesdrop on the transactions. Once a troupe of uninhibited theatrical types tried on lots of vintage clothing, which was great fun for everyone involved. Anyway, it fell on me to price her books, and the whole process was something of a mystery. There were no booksellers around, no local libraries carried large sets that reported on prices realized at auction (not that these would have helped with this kind of stock), and no instant expertise courtesy of the internet. One day a rare treasure came in though, and I pictured it financing future college educations. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, signed, and probably a first edition. I was crestfallen several years later to learn that it was a cheap reprint with a facsimile signature, and in particularly bad condition to boot. The other funny thing I know now is that even the best signed Whitman won’t pay for all that much college. It has a loving place on my shelf though, as a reminder of the first bibliohieroglyph I ever cracked, valuation-wise, and the shaky ladder between the love of books and making a living off same. So, how did you get started, in one long paragraph or less? We will run some of these tales in a future issue. And on that subject, this is the fourth number of the Standard under my editorship, and I could use some help with content. If you look under Addenda/Solicitations at the rear pages of our online journal, the begging is more detailed there. You know you’re getting old when you bend down for something and think if there’s anything else you need to do while you’re down there, as the joke goes, so as long as I am begging about submissions, please consider joining IOBA if you don’t belong already. In IOBA news, we have a new slate of officers and board members girding their loins for exciting progress. Thanks to outgoing President David Friedman of Bibliotique, and best wishes to new President Michael Watson of 20 Ants. Michael gets top spot in our membership directory as part of his extensive compensation package (don’t tell him he was at the top anyway because of the “20”). And check out the powerful new “Search Journal Archives” feature, which will find any word in all past issues of the Standard. President Watson leads things off with an introduction. This is followed by an interview with one of the guides leading AuctionExplorerBooks out of South Africa; and a Joe Perlman expedition to the interior. The Reference Desk holds an ephemeral assay on high flying fliers and an artsy-smartsy bookselling book review. The Tool Box clanks with advice on how to improve your online sales; and the first (AbeBooks) in an important series of search service Pros and Cons from Chris Volk. The IOBA Bookseller Profiles feature fun in the sun, a serious case of building envy, and more Africana. Addenda ends. The next issue of the IOBA Standard will be so great that it will be celebrated by fireworks, though it will probably take everyone about four days to organize that.

Change, Challenge, and Response I had an article nearly finished for this edition of the Standard, and took the article to my “day job” today to finish the last ten percent. Today turned into an exercise in how to make smooth transitions between crises and the article went unfinished. After dragging myself back home I reflected on the day and found that it illustrated some things that I was struggling to explain in my article. Following one of my numerous credos—“never be afraid to throw it away and start again”—I did exactly that and wrote a new article based on my day. At first glance it may not seem related to bookselling or the IOBA, but, if you’ll indulge my rambling, the meaning may be clear to you by the last word. My favorite author is Dr. Seuss, and just as his Cat In The Hat introduced you to Thing One and Thing Two, I’ll do the same. Thing One: I have a day job. Like many of your day jobs, mine has nothing to do with bookselling. While acclimated to bookselling by temperament, previous ownership of an open shop, an illogical affinity for the general public, and simple desire, my financial situation doesn’t allow full-time participation. Life dealt me some cards, some I chose, but it all adds up to the hand that I hold and it doesn’t allow me to have an open shop for the foreseeable future. If you get a daytime missive from me it’s because I’m leaned over the keyboard and a plastic tray of Lean Cuisine’s finest during my lunch break at the job that pays the bills. Like being a full-time owner of a bookstore, my situation is tenuous. I’m a contractor who manages IT projects for one of the largest hospital systems in the US, but being a contractor I’m always “on the bubble” of being bumped out of my current situation if my work is done, or I’m not needed, or any number of other reasons. Thing Two: My day job was one long series of crises today. Just when it seemed like things were getting under control, a car hit a utility pole a block away and cut off power to our office where all IT operations occur. On emergency power only, with no lights in a generally windowless building, and late in the afternoon, it was rational for me to just give up and go home. I was certainly willing to do so, since my day had consumed most of my energy and good will. At that point my pager produced its hysterical beep and suggested that I bring my laptop computer to the café down the street. I did so and met my boss and his boss, not to partake of the specialty of the house, but to continue the workday. We logged into the house’s free wireless Internet service, hopped from there to our own network via a secure connection, and continued the day’s efforts. Undisturbed, we produced a rough draft of a plan we’d been working on. It was easily the most productive 1 ½ hours of our day. So what on earth does any of this have to do with bookselling or the Independent Online Booksellers Association? Thing One: The odds are good that I’m like you, given that most online booksellers have a primary job unrelated to bookselling and are part-time booksellers. As the incoming president I represent not just the majority of IOBA members, but the majority of online booksellers. I have experience that enables me to understand the needs of the high and low ends of the trade, but I’m working in the same manner as the majority and that majority is the group that drives and directs the trade. I see my presidential task as a project management task, specifically to support the full spectrum of online sellers while strengthening the part-time majority that may feel threatened by changes to the trade. Thing Two: I’m familiar with change on short notice. When circumstances turn for the worse I’m as adept as anyone at wringing my hands and emitting whining noises, but that doesn’t make anything better. When electric power went away there was still a way to change how I worked and made progress. When the IOBA is faced with change and crisis there is still a way to navigate through it and find an appropriate direction. 2007 is a year that will bring questions and decisions. The IOBA faces change. How might we offer more tangible benefits? How can we increase membership? What kind of organization are we today? More importantly, what kind of organization should we be today and what kind should we be in five years? The long-range answer will give us a definite direction for our short-term decisions. I appreciate the opportunity to work beside a capable, energized board of directors and appreciate the responsibility of improving our members’ collective lot. Let’s get busy. Best regards, Michael Watson president@ioba.org Michael Watson operates 20 Ants out of Indianapolis, IN and can be contacted at http://www.20ants.com.