The election is over, and we’re heading into a new year with a something old and something new board of directors.  (If I could figure out how to fit something borrowed and something blue in there, this would all segue nicely with my current theory on how a book business is like a marriage.  But that’s a column for another time.) Some board members are returning in new roles: Maria Bustillos served as membership/public relations chair last year, and is now Vice President; Greg Williams was finance chair and is now stepping into the role of Treasurer; and Jean McKenna, who served as education chair, is one of our Members-at-Large.  I just adore these folks, and I think they’re all going to be fabulous. Alyce Cresap is returning as Member-at-Large and Internet Operations chair, much to my great relief.  She’s an incredibly reliable worker, and most important to me, no matter how scatter-brained I get, she manages to poke, prod and nag me back on track.  Honestly, I would never have made it through last year without her help. In the something new category, I am thrilled to welcome Aimee England, Forrest Proper and Angela Thorpe to the board. Aimee will be serving as secretary.  You know the old saying, that if you want something done, give it to busy person.  Aimee’s a busy person, active in both her bookstore and her community.  She sometimes shares her schedule, and I get exhausted just reading it, but she’s got the energy to be out there going day in and day out.  I’m just tickled pink that IOBA is getting some of that energy. And then there’s Forrest.  I used to be so intimidated by Forrest.  First off, he’s got that name: Forest Proper, Joslin Hall Rare Books.  Can anything sound more prim and stuffy and, well, “proper” than that?  Then he’s got that whole ABAA thing and the books to die for and he’s in Concord, Massachusetts, home of Thoreau, Emerson and all those guys I worshipped in college.  The whole thing screamed intimidating.  Fortunately, the truth is Forrest is not a prim and stuffy old academic in an ivory tower.  He is extremely intelligent, knowledgeable and professional, and the big bonus is he’s got a wicked sense of humor.  We’ll need all those qualities this year. Angela is a “newbie” to IOBA, and I look forward to getting to know her.  I already like her spirit!  It takes guts to jump into something like this, just like it took guts for her to jump into bookselling full-time.  I am sure she will bring energy and derring-do to IOBA. I think this will be a great board, and I’m very pleased that I get to be a part of it. I also want to thank our departing board members.  Jerry, David, Sally, Anne and Chris, I am so very grateful for all your contributions.  You managed to put up with a president for whom “organization” is a four-letter word.  You spoke your minds and debated the issues intelligently and civilly.  You gave your time and your energy, and you believed in IOBA and its mission.  Thank you. Julie Fauble, President

Some time in mid October, 2002 in a chat room far far away, a number of booksellers got a bit tired of always having to deal with the big massive book listing sites and wondered if it was possible to have things a different way. They started a discussion room of their own which can be found at: http://pub47.ezboard.com/bglobalbooktownindependentbooksellers and decided to try to figure out just exactly what they wanted. The result is a website that to the best of its ability will feature independent internet booksellers who only have links to other independent internet booksellers and the Global Book Town site itself. Many of the existing member stores list on one or more of the book listing databases separately from their membership in GBT, but none of them directly link back to any of the major listing sites from their connection to GBT. Our home page brings back memories for some people when it suggests “Have you ever walked through a bookshop neighborhood, dropping in at one store after another looking for that special book? We have recreated that atmosphere here by bringing together bookstores from around the world for your shopping enjoyment. Many of the stores have special offers that you will not find anywhere else. Feel free to peek in at one or more of the bookstores listed here. Each has its own specialty, and they all have an assortment of interesting and wonderful books just waiting for a good home.” We opened the Global Book Town website in mid December 2002 at http:// www.globalbooktown.com and already have 22 stores listed. Our short-range goals include a specialties / category list, feature bookstore pages, book reviews, and most anything else that someone is willing to add to the picture. Membership to this point is voluntary and without any dues requirement. All expenses to date have been covered by the founding members of the group and all website work is being done on a voluntary basis by a few of the members. Access to the discussion room does not require that you be an ezboard supporter, just that you have a user id. If you don’t already have one we suggest that you obtain a ‘global’ user id instead of just a local one as there are a number of other discussion boards related to books within the ezboard system and a global id lets you access all of them. Our graphic for the site was kindly painted by the daughter of one of the founding members and as such is copyrighted by her, Elizabeth Kern. We hope and expect to have 200 stores or better listed by the end of 2003 and feel that this will create a very good venue for booksellers with freestanding websites to join and a good site for them to promote in order to retain their independence from any listing site. Any inquiries may be made thru our discussion board or by email to myself info@kensbookrack.com or info@altairbooks.com. Ken Dunn Kensbookrack.com A proud member of Global Book Town

Professor Carol Laderman received her Ph.D. in Anthropology, awarded with Distinction, from Columbia University, and has taught at Fordham and is Chair of the Anthropology Department at City College in New York. Professor Laderman’s primary research interests are Southeast Asia, medical anthropology, nutrition, reproduction, and sex roles. Her publications include such volumes as: Wives and Midwives: Childbirth and Nutrition in Rural Malaysia (University of California Press, 1983) Taming the Wind of Desire: Psychology, Medicine and Aesthetics in Malay Shamanistic Performance (University of California Press, 1991) The Performance of Healing (Routledge, 1996) Professor Laderman is also the wife of Gabriel Laderman, bookseller. They are currently planning a second, extended trip to Malaysia, to update Professor Laderman’s research on Malaysian trances and healing rituals. * * * * * * Carol Laderman didn’t go to Malaysia in search of shamans; she went to study childbirth practices in an area in which shamanism had died out 75 years earlier-or so it was assumed. Once she got there, she found these healers were still an integral part of the village medical system. An their ceremonies helped her discover “the things the Malays take for granted that everyone knows—that an embryo begins life in the man’s brain, for instance.” Laderman has also researched teenage pregnancy and nutrition in New York’s Spanish Harlem and South Bronx. She applied the latest research in brain chemistry to trance states in her article, which follows. * * * * * * Pak Long Awang is a powerful healer. The Malay villagers he treats believe that he commands spirits and can enter into an altered state at will, becoming a vessel for pronouncements from the invisible world. I first witnessed his power at work while doing anthropological research in a small Malaysian village set between the South China Sea and a tropical rain forest, a village so isolated it lacked electricity. In order to conduct my research, I had to store vials of blood samples in a thermos bottle packed with ice until they could be flown out to the capital, Kuala Lumpur, 180 miles away. Here, against a backdrop of flickering oil lamps in an atmosphere redolent of a resin used as incense, Pak Long serves as the local version of a country doctor. He treats aches and pains that he diagnoses as “wind sickness” by inducing a deep trance the Malays call “forgetfulness”. Pak Long is a shaman, or spiritual healer, and though his methods seem bizarre, his healing trances may work their apparent magic by actually altering the levels of brain endorphins—the body’s natural opiates—in his patients. These endorphins, produced by every human in response to certain extreme situations, may be a link between the trance ceremonies of the East Indies and the most sophisticated neurochemistry laboratories in the West. For almost two years after my arrival in the village, I refused to undergo one of the shaman’s trances. Having become a member of Pak Long’s entourage, I attended healing ceremonies with growing regularity; the shaman had even adopted me as his own daughter. Still, as a Westerner and a scientist, I was afraid to enter trance—afraid I might embarrass myself or, worse, never come out at all. My reluctance became a standing joke among the villagers. Although I had learned to love and trust Pak Long, I remained unwilling to place myself under his control. I had asked him and his patients many times to describe their sensations during trance, but no one would. “How could I tell you what red looks like if you had never seen the color?” Pak Long asked. Still, I had already become a willing subject for some of Pak Long’s treatments. I regularly submitted to incantations of release to ward off the dangers the Malays thought accompanied my work on Malay childbirth. I had apprenticed myself to the village midwife, who taught me obstetrics, nursing and the ritual duties of her profession. Malays believe that human birth is too deep a mystery for any but a midwife to witness, and even she runs the risk of failing eyesight unless she is ritually released. Usually the midwife performed this ritual for both of us, but occasionally Pak Long would squeeze it in at the end of one of his more elaborate healing ceremonies. Unknown to me, the stage was set for my first trance. One day, instead of beginning the familiar words of release as I sat beside him on the pandanus mat recently vacated by a cured patient, Pak Long signaled the assembled musicians to start the music that accompanies the transition to “forgetfulness.” As the drums and gongs set up their steady rhythm, Pak Daud, the shaman’s partner, played the introduction to “The Song of the Young Demigod,” a story of frustrated love, on his spike fiddle. Pak Daud is the indispensable earthbound member of the shamanistic team; he does not enter into a stated of changed reality. For a moment I hesitated, and then decided to submit to trance. As the vibrations of the drums and gongs entered my body, my eyes seemed to glaze over. As the music became louder my mouth opened, trembling uncontrollably. I began to feel cold winds blowing inside my chest, winds that increased in intensity, as the music swelled and accelerated until it felt as if a hurricane was raging within my heart. I put my hands on my chest to try to calm it, but instead I began to move my shoulders and then the whole upper part of my body as if I were about to get up and dance. With the last vestiges of my self-control, I prevented myself; I still feared embarrassment. But as the music swelled to a climax, I began to move my head so quickly and violently that, had I not been in trance, my neck would undoubtedly have snapped. The music stopped abruptly. Instantly, I stopped shaking my head and sank to the floor. Pak Long began reciting spells to bring me out of trance. I came out very quickly, literally as though a spell had been broken. I felt good; the only aftereffect was a slight pain in my stomach. Women crowded around me to wash my face with jasmine water and massage my stomach. The whole thing had taken about 20 minutes. What was going on? According to these Malays, the universe and all of its creatures contain four basic elements: earth, air, fire and water. When one of these elements is thrown out of kilter, sickness can result. The talents and desires of individuals are classified as air, or “inner winds.” They are powerful when expressed, but when denied or thwarted, they become dangerous, causing “wind sickness.” The shaman’s cures release these pent-up winds. Most Western scientists have a different perspective on the trance experience. Trance is achieved through cultural cues: ritual props, incantations, songs and stories. Percussive music, a steady, musical pulse, is especially important in the transition to altered states in cultures throughout the world. The most effective rhythm is four beats per second, which is exactly the optimum frequency for pain relief through electrically stimulated acupuncture. What’s more, it matches the EEG frequency of theta waves, which are produced by the brain during periods of deep meditation but appear only rarely in a normal waking state. English faith healers have been shown to produce continuous theta waves in their patients by the laying-on of hands, and the patient’s theta waves exactly match the pattern of the faith healer’s. A more important key may be found in the biochemistry of endorphins. Endorphins (the name is a contraction of “endogenous morphine like substances”} are substances that act on the nervous system, and are generated in the human brain in response to pain, stress or certain kinds of “peak experience.” It may be that they are also generated in response to a belief. The ability of the body to heal in response to belief has long been recognized. Physicians regularly administer placebos, pharmacologically inert substances, in circumstances that don’t indicate an active medication. The patient believes he has been given effective medication and, in response to this belief, he recovers. On theory is that his body produces chemicals—perhaps endorphins—that alleviate his ailments. Placebos have been used to control postoperative pain, relieve anxiety, and to cure warts and peptic ulcers. Endorphins may have evolved in order to protect and preserve our species in its struggle for survival. Pain normally serves as a signal to alert the body that something is amiss. But when pain becomes excessive or too prolonged, it becomes destructive; neurohormones can take over to relieve the pain, sometimes even producing feelings of euphoria. In pregnant women, for instance, endorphin production increases during the last trimester and reaches a peak late in labor. This helps account for the pleasure with which some women remember natural childbirth; endorphins have reduced both the pain and the memory of it. Nor are endorphins the only chemicals the brain produces. Given the right cues, it will generate tranquilizers as effective as Librium or Valium. A growing number of scientists, from biochemists and pharmacologists to psychiatrists, psychologists and anthropologists, have speculated that somehow shamans like Pak Long have hit on ingenious methods for turning on production of the brain’s natural chemicals. This involves a subtle appreciation of the patient’s psychological, as well as his physical, problems. The shaman carefully tailors his treatment to the patient’s needs, and his goal is to choose the appropriate “song of transition” that will move the patient into a trance state. For an asthmatic retired puppeteer, for example, Pak Long chanted his incantations to the accompaniment of musicians playing the overture to the shadow-puppet play. For the yearly healing of the fattest woman in the neighborhood, known affectionately as “Miss Fatty,” Pak Long took another tack. Miss Fatty had an overwhelming desire to dance in the Malay opera, a desire doomed by her enormous girth. She functioned well as wife and businesswoman for most of the year, but as her frustration, or retained wind, built up, she would lose her will and energy and take to her bed. In the healing session, Pak Long and his assistants played the music of the Malay opera to assist Miss Fatty’s journey from the normal world to the ideal; there she could realize her ambition. In trance, she would rise from her sleeping mat with the grace of a lithe young girl and dance the role of the beautiful princess before a delighted audience of friends and neighbors. Afterward, her ailments disappeared. The most striking aspect of the shamans’ trances is that they work—sometimes when Western medicine fails. One day, Pak Long was stricken with intense chest pain. I drove him to the hospital, but the resident physician could discover no physical cause for the symptoms and sent us home. When we got there, Pak Long was placed, pale and trembling, on his sleeping mat. A consulting shaman, summoned for a healing ritual, discovered by divination a cause that would make little sense to Western doctors: Angry, unsatisfied spirits were squeezing the life from Pak Long’s heart and lungs. Several weeks earlier, Pak Long had treated a woman for a spirit-induced disease. The spirits, using the shaman’s voice, agreed to restore her health in return for a feast. A chicken, eggs, pancakes, custard, rice, cigarettes and a present of white cloth were to be ceremoniously laid out for them near the jungle. But the patient’s husband, a rich, urbanized Malay, was skeptical of traditional methods. Instead of fulfilling his promise to the spirits, he took his wife to a clinic in Kuala Trengganu, where she recovered. The couple credited the doctor, and invited neither Pak Long nor the spirits to the feast of thanksgiving. The spirits, insulted and confused, turned on Pak Long. The consulting shaman announced this to me and to the waiting villagers, and asked that we all joint him in calling out to the spirits to leave the shaman alone and attack the real culprits, the unbelieving couple. Immediately Pak Long stopped trembling, color flooded into his face, and he sat up and smiled. There was clearly no hoax involved here; the consulting shaman believed completely in the results of his divination. But was Pak Long merely responding to the power of suggestion? A Western-trained doctor might have diagnosed his condition as angina pectoris or esophageal spasm; both are often associated with emotional stress. Was his pain brought on by the public denigration of his powers and relieved by a public expression of support? The Mind-Body Connection The Western interpretation of the shaman’s power lies in the growing appreciation of the mind-body connection. Psychosomatic illnesses may have their origins in the mind. But once physical symptoms appear, they are quite real and not “all in the mind.” We are discovering that the biochemical changes the mind produces can ravage the body just as a virus or a drug can. In fact, Dr. Raymond Prince of McGill University, a pioneer in the field of transcultural psychiatry, has gone so far as to say that psychiatrists who don’t recognize the interaction of mind and body should be known as “former psychiatrists.” Malay shamans, it seems, have always inhabited the frontier that Western scientists are just beginning to explore. And they have had company. There is good evidence to suggest that cultures and cults around the world have long exploited the brain-body link to produce altered states of consciousness without using drugs. The Salish Indians of Canada hold a Winter Spirit Dance designed to help a man achieve the kind of visionary experience that brings power in the form of a tutelary spirit. But the dance is also used to treat “spirit illness,” a conditional characterized by depression and often connected with drug and alcohol abuse. The Salish use a number of techniques, from over stimulation to sensory deprivation, to produce the altered state. The patient is alternately immobilized in darkness and silence and forced to run and dance for hours to the beat of drums, rattles and chants. He is underfed and tantalized with food, overheated with heavy blankets and nearly drowned in icy water. The treatment ends only when he becomes a new “baby” and calls out a song that has been revealed to him by the spirits. One can compare the Winter Spirit Dance to experiences brought on by opiates, and the Salish recommend it for tribesmen who have become dependent on drugs. Are the tribesmen substituting natural brain-produced opiates for externally administered drugs? Dr. Sheila Womack, an anthropologist who has researched Pentecostal Church services in the United States, feels that such a substitution may explain the ability of alcoholics and drug addicts to give up their habits in favor of regular churchgoing as vessels of the Holy Spirit; they speak in tongues and temporarily leave the confines of everyday life. What is even more remarkable is that if they don’t go to church at least three times a week, they suffer withdrawal symptoms. Missing Link Unfortunately, objective proof of a link between ecstatic states and endorphins is difficult to obtain. Lumbar punctures, standard procedure in neurology clinics to obtain spiral fluid for chemical analysis, are too risky in the field. My make-sift blood-refrigeration methods are inadequate for preserving the blood samples until laboratory analysis can detect the unstable chemicals. An even if these problems were solved, we don’t really know exactly which chemicals are likely to be the most significant in a shaman’s cures. We could block endorphin production with naloxone, a morphine antagonist that also interferes with the action of endorphins. But if the experiment were a success and a patient failed to achieve trance, then the healing ritual would be a failure, and a traumatic one at that. Such questions may already be academic; at least as far as the Malay shaman is concerned. For years, shamans have practiced in defiance of the ruling Islamic religious authorities. When I returned to my east coast village last summer, Pak Long had retired. Pat Daud, his partner, had suffered a stroke, and Tok Mamar, the consulting shaman, had given up shamanic activities after his pilgrimage to Mecca. Sadly, we may never discover the exact biochemical components of the shaman’s cures, but there is no doubt that by opening the floodgates of emotion he can exorcise the demons of disease. Shamanism in Print Ecstatic Religion by I.M. Lewis. New York: Penguin, 1971. Hallucinogens and Shamanism Edited by Michael J. Harner. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Shamanic Voices: A Survey of Visionary Narratives Edited by Joan Halifax. New York: Dutton, 1979. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy By Mircea Eliade. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964. The Way of the Shaman: A Guide to Power and Healing By Michael J. Harner. New York: Harper & Row, 1980. By: Carol Laderman

Over three years ago my wife, Mary, came up with the idea for a writers mural within our bookshop. The right artist was commissioned (an Oscar nominated animator, no less) and the research and designs began. That the mural would be a wonderful addition to the shop was not in doubt, but my job was to see if it could be justified commercially. The area was large (40′ x 18′), needing special fade-resistant acrylic paints, so cost was going to be considerable – the scaffolding alone cost a four-figure sum and the total cost was in five figures. Would it sell more books? Enough books to pay for it? We hoped so! The mural was finished just over a year ago, after two years work by Mary on research and, of course, a huge amount of work by Peter, the painter, assisted by his father, John.. Research? Read for yourself within the link below the care that went into the selection of each writer and the research that went into the grouping, so that there is a genuine connection (e.g., Stevenson actually met [and liked] Twain when travelling in America.). Then there were the reference photographs needed for each writer, dozens of them, so that Peter could get the likeness just right. He even had the bookshop staff (including management!) dressing up in appropriate clothes, acting as models for the mural. If truth be told, it was done for love, but always with an eye on the commercial angle – and we have been delighted with the results. The mural has attracted major regional newspaper coverage and two television spots so far. This has led to a 14% increase in turnover over the last year. There are other factors, but the mural is the major difference within the bookshop over the past year, so I believe that it can claim most of the commercial credits. So, if you have a gleam in your eye and have something wonderful you want to do within your bookshop, but are worried about the cost, I hope our example will inspire you to take the plunge. It has taken a further year to get the mural website ready, but here is a preview. The instructions for use are not quite finished, so I will give them separately: 1. Click onto the following link. http://voodoo3.tagish.co.uk/barter/mural.html 3. Sweep your mouse over the mural and each panel changes to colour. Click onto any panel and the panel comes up close, along with a description of the writers within that panel. 4. Click onto any writer (or dog, or cat, or other animal) for a final enlargement. In addition, you can click onto the link below the mural for a history and the explanation of the ‘Not the Writers’ name. (Yes, we probably missed out YOUR favourite author too!) Finally, there is another link at the very bottom for a full colour high-resolution sweep of the whole mural. Stuart and Mary Manley http://www.barterbooks.co.uk EDITOR’S NOTE: Here’s a peek at the mural. You’ll get a much better view by going to Barter Books’ site, and much more information about it. But wanted you to get an idea of what a tremendous thing it is.

The history of casting actors for roles in movies or TV series made from mystery novels includes more misses than hits, but there have been notable exceptions. Basil Rathbone was Sherlock Holmes. And when Hawk showed up on the “Spenser For Hire” TV series my reaction was: “Migawd, that’s him!” It was if my mental image of Spenser’s black sidekick had been transferred intact from my mind to our television screen. Avery Brooks was dead-solid perfect for the part. What started me off on this “horses for courses” musing about actors in mystery roles was the recent showing of the movie made of Tony Hillerman’s Skinwalkers for PBS. My first impression of Wes Studi as Lt. Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Police was negative. “Too young-looking, too nattily dressed,” I thought. I always pictured Leaphorn as showing a little more age, perhaps a little shorter and stockier, usually dressed in khaki shirt and slightly rumpled slacks, with a windbreaker or fleece-lined denim jacket in colder weather. My mental image of Jim Chee was a little fuzzier, but Adam Beech sharpened it and made the character his own. Whenever I read a Hillerman mystery from here on out, my mind’s eye will visualize Beach as Officer Chee. More unfortunate was the horrible miscasting of Tony Randall, a truly fine actor, as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot in “The Alphabet Murders.” David Suchet was a far better choice as Poirot from the mid-1980s to 2001. On the other hand, it’s hard to think of anyone filling the bill better as Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse than John Thaw, who starred in the long-running British series. There have been several very good Saul Panzers. George Wyner was one (1981 series) and George Jenesky of the A&E series was another. I know this is heresy but I did not feel initially that Humphrey Bogart was absolutely right as Sam Spade role in the classic movie of Dashiell Hammet’s “The Maltese Falcon.” Physically, he didn’t fit the mold but he played the role with such consummate skill that he literally made it his own. Instead of adapting to the part and becoming the character he portrayed, Bogart forced the character to become him, and did so with great success. Ironically, Bogart was not the first choice for the Spade role. He got it after George Raft turned it down, presumably because he did not want to work with the “newbie” director, John Huston. Just as well to my thinking, because never in a million years could I think of Raft as Sam Spade! Most people forget, or never knew, that Robert Mitchum reprised the role of Marlowe in a British remake of the classic mystery in 1978, with the setting transferred from a 1940s Los Angeles to an updated 1970s London. Mitchum actually made a better Marlowe in some ways than Bogart, but the film itself was not in the same league as the original. Mitchum came a lot closer to fitting the Marlowe persona in my mind than Bogart. Speaking of these cinema versions of Hammett and Chandler classics raises an interesting point. Millions of viewers have seen the movies over the years, but how many read the books first? In all cases cited in this article I read the books before seeing the movie or TV adaptations so I came to big or little screen presentations with pre-formed mental images of the characters the peopled the stories. These images were formed by my imagination, guided by hints from the text. People who see film or TV versions of novels (mystery or otherwise), then read the books, must unconsciously identify characters on the written pages with the actors they have seen portraying them on film or TV. This is a personal theory but I think it makes sense. Take Raymond Burr, for instance. He pretty well cornered the market on Perry Mason but he never did it for me. He just didn’t fit the mental picture of Mason I built up in my mind from reading Ellery Queen’s books. Admittedly, however, I was a tepid fan of the Perry Mason series from the git-go so that probably colored my reaction. For those who read Queen’s books after viewing TV episodes or never read them at all, which is more likely Raymond Burr will forever be Perry Mason in their minds. Another example is “Devil in a Blue Dress.” Don’t get me wrong; I’m a huge Walter Mosley fan and I think Denzel Washington is a fine actor. I just don’t feel he fit the Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins part: too handsome, and it was hard to think of him as an unsophisticated ex-GI, raised in rural Texas. A factor here again is that I’d read the book long before seeing the movie. Also, I’d seen Washington in a number of movies before seeing “Devil in a Blue Dress,” so I had some preconceived ideas about his persona. This whole subject do get complicated, don’t it! To add to the mix, I have some thoughts on “what might have been,” of casting of protagonists for books I would like to have seen brought to the screen. The first ones fall into the “it’s too late now” category. Travis McGee? The only candidate I ever considered for the hero of John D. MacDonald’s wonderful series was Sterling Hayden. I thought he was made for the role and could have played it as if born to do so. The recent death of James Coburn reminded me that I would have loved to see him star in a film or series as Fiddler, protagonist of the husband and wife team (Ann & Evan Maxwell) that writes under the pen name of “A.E. Maxwell.” Their books include Money Burns, Just Enough Light to Kill, Redwood Empire and Just Another Day in Paradise. In the “still possible” category, I’ve pondered the possibilities of casting the leads for film or TV versions of Robert Crais’ Elvis Cole novels, Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch, Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum (and the host of other eccentric characters in the Plum series), James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheau and more. One role no casting director need worry about filling is that of Kinsey Milhone, Sue Grafton’s hugely popular female private investigator. Ms Grafter, who refers to her 15-year career writing scripts for movies and TV as “doing time in Hollywood,” refuses to sell screen rights to her books. In a talk recently she made that abundantly clear with this statement: “I would rather roll naked on a bed of broken glass!” All of these observations are very subjective, of course. You may agree or disagree, maybe mildly, maybe heatedly. If so, I would like to hear from you, yea or nay. Send your thoughts to me at kfermoyle@earthlink.net and perhaps we can revisit this question of character casting, or miscasting, as some future date.

As booksellers, we would use the ezine to sell books. Keep that mission in mind. You should be convinced (rightfully so) that email advertising is very profitable. You should know that it has an almost zero outlay in reoccurring expenses, and returns are high and predictable. Even start-up costs are relatively low. If you have a couple thousand addresses of people who have bought books from you in the past it is time to start using this information to your advantage, and to the benefit of your customers. This is a highly targeted list, and is therefore very valuable. Your customers want and need your guidance to keep them informed as to the goings on in the book community, and provide them with buying opportunities. It is your duty as a successful bookseller to keep them away from your competition. Nobody can do a better job of serving your customers than you so do it. Where do I get my addresses? I’ll tell you where you DO NOT get them. You don’t run to your favorite search engine and find a website where you can buy a million addresses for $19.95 and send them your ezine. That is a quick way to get yourself in a LOT of hot water, and put out of business. If you have Outlook Express as your mail program, there are a lot of addresses in your address book right now. Probably 99% of them are past customers. If you do business with Amazon, there is quite a list of your past customers there too. Almost our entire address list comes from past customers. Some come from requests to be added to the ezine list from an opt-in box on the homepage of our website, and other readers refer some to us. We were able to accumulate just over 5,000 addresses in the first six months of saving them, and are currently at just over 11,000 after three years. Bulk Mail Programs. For the last three years we have used Desktop Server 2000. It is a very powerful and easy to use program. We send about 10,000 emails via ISDN (128k) and it takes about fifteen minutes, and our ISP does not get hit with big bandwidth usage because the DS2K package acts as a mail server. The ISP doesn’t even know you are sending them. It will maintain both the addresses that you mail to, and the remove addresses (more about the remove list later). Besides filtering out the remove addresses, it also filters out specified domain names, such as .gov or .edu if you wish to avoid mailing to them. It will even filter out specific words or strings of letters within the address. We filter words such as info, order, webmaster, adult, nospam, book, read, page and others. It costs about $300 and comes with a bunch of other programs and email addresses that you should THROW AWAY. It can be purchased at:http://www.desktopserver.com and is worth every penny. They will pitch other programs that “harvest”email addresses. Don’t buy them, don’t use them. If they come packaged with DS2K, toss them as soon as you get them. They will also give you a free disk with kabillion “hot, new, fresh addresses” on them it’s a coaster. All you want is the mail management program, Desktop Server 2000. Remove Requests. Dealing with remove requests is probably more important than the acquisition of new addresses. Maintaining and using a remove list is very, very important. As a merchant, you have every right, both legally and morally, to keep in touch with your customers. If someone has purchased goods or services from you in the past you can contact them to ‘service their account’. But if they ask to be left alone – if they specifically request that you stop contacting them, you MUST. A merchant (or anyone else for that matter) is not allowed to harass anyone via email. Sending unwanted material to your customers AFTER being requested to stop is bad business, and may even be illegal. Don’t do it. Am I Spamming? If you buy lists from a list service yes you are. If you ignore requests to be removed from the mail list you are spamming. By doing so you are opening yourself and your business to all kinds of nasty repercussions. Don’t do it. If you email your customers, you are not spamming. If you make an honest mistake and mail to someone who is not a customer, you are not spamming. If you mail from your own email account, with a real email address to reply to, use and maintain a remove list you are not spamming. But, sending out several thousand emails comes with a lot of responsibility. Tolerance for error is right around zero. If you bump into the wrong person (the rabid anti-spam activist zealot with a cause that really should get a life) they can bring down a lot of misery on you (we call it ‘heat’). They don’t have to prove anything – and you don’t even get to defend yourself. With some ISPs, accusation is the same as conviction, so it may be a good idea to have your website hosted somewhere other than where your mail is processed. In three years of mailing our ezine out we have had very few problems because we religiously maintain and protect and use our remove list. We have had more problems and complaints from book dealers than from our customers. I suspect that it is jealousy more than anything else, and a willingness to sling mud instead of competing fairly. It is interesting to note that book sellers don’t complain about getting our newsletter. Owners of businesses that actually sell books are interested in what their competition is doing, how they are doing it, why they do it that way and what the result is. Desktop 2000 has several features where you can filter out certain email addresses. We set words and phrases in that filter that block out book dealers; we have a very high percentage of ‘anti-spam kooks’ in our numbers, and they are not good customers anyway. As soon as we find out that an address on our list is that of a book dealer, we put it on the ‘remove list’. Book dealers, as a group, have very narrow margins and they are bound way too tight. OK. So, you’ve saved up some addresses, you have acquired and installed and learned your bulk mail program and it is rolling around to the first of the month, you are about ready to do your first mailing. It’s time to write. Before you begin banging it out consider these points: Make it personal. Write the newsletter the way you would write a note to a friend who shares your interests. Keep the sentences short and simple, keep the paragraphs short and simple. Interject personal touches; tell something about yourself, something about your store, the work at the store. Tell amusing anecdotes about interactions with customers at the store, or the mailman, or even the weather – whatever. Share an interesting or funny or informative website address as long as it is not direct competition to you. The best commercials make us laugh. The “Happy California Cows” commercial and the “Counting Sheep” commercials or the “Budweiser Frogs” on TV are excellent examples of this. Remember WHY people buy books. It is entertainment. The act of buying books is entertaining. Reading is fun. Be entertaining, have fun with your ezine and have fun with your customers. They will reward you for it. Invite them to write back to you with comments or stories of their own. Let them participate. Sometimes you’ll get great material for the next ezine that way. Tip: If you are going to use a story or information that someone sent you, ask them if it’s ok, and change names. Your customers want to know what’s going on in the book store, they want to hear about characters you’ve developed over time (customers, pets, employees, etc.) They want to hear the next installment of the book store news. As time goes on they will start to actually look forward to the ‘special offer’ of the month. People buy from stores that they feel comfortable in. Familiarity has a lot to do with comfort levels. The more they hear your store name, the more they are able to feel a connection to you personally, the more time and money they will spend in your cyber store. That is one of the reasons that Amazon is so successful. Incorporate the sales pitch into the theme. The sales pitch should be incorporated into the theme of the newsletter. Ads should not be clearly marked. They don’t need to be precluded with a heading that says, “This Is An Advertisement”, or “A Word From Our Sponsor.” Ever listen to Paul Harvey? Notice the way he makes the advertisements part of his gig? He is half way into a commercial before you realize that you are even being pitched. He talks to his audience the way he would talk to a group of friends that he’s having dinner with. He delivers a verbal Ezine. Study his style, and adapt it to your ezine. For example: Tell your audience a story about that day you took a day off last week and an employee bought a whole truck full of books, nice stuff all of it. Now there’s books stacked in the isles, and you’ve had to explain to the soon to be ex-employee that she may have to take some of them home with her instead of a paycheck… “And hey, now that we’re all overstocked in merchandise we’ll offer you free shipping if you order five or more books, but you MUST act NOW because the fire department will be around for their annual inspection soon and this offer expires next Tuesday…” Plain text no HTML. When you write a friendly email to your friend, do you fill it up with HTML? Bouncing frogs, and twirling batons, and exploding fireworks and the sound of a 40-piece brass band? Of course not. And you shouldn’t do it in your ezine either. Keep it simple, low-key and friendly. Keep it short. Keep it under 1000 words not including the legal stuff at the end (how to be removed from the list). People just don’t have the time or patience to wade through a small book. And the second mailing of the month (more about that later) should be VERY short, about 300 words. The “writer/sender” of the ezine should be female. I hesitate to even share this idea because it is politically and emotionally charged, and I’m sure that someone will be offended. But it is important, and the reader can choose to disregard it if they wish. Women are treated differently than men. I make no comment as to the sociological or political aspects of that statement I offer it only as a statement of fact. Women are treated differently than men. Females have raised most of us. From the time we are minutes old we learn that the female is the giver of food and comfort. Later we learn that she is the dispenser of discipline. She holds both the carrot and the stick. Her power is immense – and absolute. It is probably the first thing we learn and we never forget it. The Israeli Army did a study a few years back about women in the battlefield. They found that men took orders from a female superior officer better than from a superior officer who was male, especially while under stress (combat situations). The order was carried out with fewer reservations, and less hesitation. Men are accustomed to taking orders from women and not challenging them. Women are usually neutral. They tend to consider the order, not the person delivering it. What does this have to do with our ezine? Odds are that an ezine sent by a woman will be better received, more widely read, and less likely to draw heat than one sent by a man. Assuming that half of the receivers are going to be men, it will make things better by a factor of 50%. More will read it, more will take the action they’ve been ordered to take (BUY THE BOOK) and fewer will complain about receiving spam. We’ve tested this theory, and it works. Let’s assume that this theory is bunk, it just isn’t true. The women’s liberation movement over the last twenty years has been successful in changing basic animal instinct and everyone is treated equally. What have you lost or gained by using a woman’s name in the ezine? Nothing. If it is true, what have you gained? Right in the ‘From’ line of our ezine we put “Marian @ GentlyUsedBooks.com.” If you are male, and doing an ezine sell some of your ego and sign a female first name. Do it no more than twice a month. Any more than that is just too much. Remember that real clever advertisement you saw on TV last month yes, the one you laughed at. Now that you’ve seen it four dozen times in the last eight weeks is it still funny? Is it becoming annoying? Not only do you risk annoying your customers but your customers will begin to get the idea that if they miss this coupon offer, its ok because there will be another one next week. It does away with the urgency to act factor which is very important. Make your advertised special have a very short expiration date. We have found that an expiration date of seven days is just right. Why? Any shorter and you miss people who are out of the office, away on vacation, etc. Any longer and your customer will procrastinate and forget. You don’t want your customer to think like this: “This doesn’t expire until the end of the month, I have plenty of time.” Create urgency. Tell them in the ad to “act now!” After a lot of trial and error testing we have found the best pattern is to send two per month. The first one goes out on the first Tuesday of the month, with an expiration date of seven days. Why Tuesday? Many people get their email at work (we can tell by the addresses), and they are not there on weekends, some aren’t there on Monday (physically or mentally). By Tuesday the universe is back in balance. Our best sales and traffic day, overall, is Thursday. Our worst is Saturday. The seven-day expiration date allows them one weekend in case they are shopping from home. On the following Monday, we send a brief reminder. Just a greeting, and “the sale is going well, we’re getting a great response and take advantage of the coupon before it expires TOMORROW,” and a copy of the offer. That’s it. Two or three hundred words, very short. We also may thank everyone who purchased, and let them know that they can purchase again. Invariably we’ll get at least one repeat order, and usually they are large orders. In the second mailing, we also invite our regular customers to share this sale with their friends – and we’ve added new customers to our lists that way. The second mailing dollar return is sometimes larger than the first again because of the urgency factor. By timing it the way we do, it makes for two mailings, but only one offer. We are very stingy with the number of “special offers” we make. How can something truly be special if it happens all the time? One coupon offer per month is all our customers get. Sometimes we even skip a month (usually when we are real busy, and don’t NEED to discount). We will do the ezine, but make no offer, and we’ll still get orders from it. Immediately after (I mean within minutes) sending your first mailing you will get a lot of bounces for bad addresses and a few remove requests. Set your mail program so that these go to a separate folder. You’ll deal with them later (before your next mailing). Read ALL remove requests immediately. Sometimes, heat can be avoided by responding to comments right away. If you get a question like, “How did you get my address?” respond with a nice note that your email addresses usually come from previous customers, “but it appears that yours was placed on our list by error – sorry to have bothered you and we will remove it right away.” Even though they didn’t ask to be removed, do it anyway. Even if they email you back and ask to remain on the list remove them anyway. You have probably just bumped into a ‘spam nazi’ or a book dealer, and one address is just not worth the risk. Before doing your next mailing, process all the bounced mail and remove requests. Bounced mail I just take off of the list, I don’t add them to the remove list. Remove requests I take off of the mail list, AND, I add it to the remove list. Do both. The first few times you mail you will have a lot of this type of processing to do, you are establishing a useable list. It does take time, especially in the beginning. Our remove list contains about 1300 addresses. That is a remove request rate of about fifteen per mailing, on average. You will get a lot of remove requests like this: “We are getting your ezine at two addresses, please remove this one …” or “I’m not supposed to get personal mail at work, please remove this address and add this one …” Well over 99% of the remove requests are nicely worded, they just don’t want it any more. And that is ok, because we don’t want to send it to anyone who doesn’t want to get it. Overall, we have had very little problems with our ezine. It is fun to produce, our customers enjoy them and it is very profitable. We keep in personal touch with many of our customers and there really are a lot of very nice people out there. People who read are, by and large, a great group. A newsletter is a very important part of any on-line business marketing plan. It contributes a lot to the profitability of GentlyUsedBooks.com and properly executed it will contribute to the overall health of booksellers everywhere. In an age of corporate type mega-sites, it is imperative that a bookseller establish a niche and a following of loyal customers. A properly executed ezine is an excellent way to achieve those ends. By: Chuck Pierce GentlyUsedBooks.com

By: Yaacov Peterseil, Editor In Chief Pitspopany Press opened its doors in 1993 as a niche publisher of books for Jewish children. The problem at that time, and one that still exists today, was that for a publisher of Jewish books children to be successful he had to cater to one of the three major Jewish denominations: Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform. The dream of publishing quality children’s books in a variety of subjects, and for an entire spectrum of the Jewish market, and beyond, became a reality when Pitspopany began publishing books on Special Education and health related problems. PRINCESS ALOPECIA won the Gold Triangle Award from The American Academy of Dermatologists, and THE SAFE PLACE and UNJUST CAUSE, about children with severe learning problems in and out of school sold in excess of 10,000 copies each within a one-year period. www.pitspopany.com . If you wish to contact their New York office: Tel: 1 800 232 2931 Fax: 212 472 6253 Email: pitspop@netvision.net.il . #publishers

IF NOT RUN BACKUP RUN PROGRAM RUN PROGRAM RUN SEE PROGRAM RUN SEE SYSTEM CRASH GOTO SEE PROGRAM RUN SEE SYSTEM CRASH AGAIN LOOP UNTIL OPERATOR CRASHES SEE COMPUTER TECH PAY COMPUTER TECH RUN PROGRAM SEE SYSTEM CRASH GOTO SEE COMPUTER TECH PAY COMPUTER TECH LOOP UNTIL OPERATOR IS null ELSE IF RUN BACKUP RUN PROGAM SEE PROGRAM CRASH SEE PROGRAM CORRUPT DATA RESTORE DATA FROM BACKUP RUN PROGAM SEE PROGRAM CRASH SEE PROGRAM CORRUPT DATA LOOP UNTIL ALL DATA IS CORRUPTED LOOP UNTIL OPERATOR IS null SYSTEM IS CRASHED ALL DATA IS CORRUPT. The preceding program has been brought to you by our sponsors: MicroSquish: “We aren’t better, we are just all there is.” Sure you’re laughing now, but it’s not so funny when it’s your data in the hot seat.  Just when you think your system is running great, you come over all ambitious and think, “hey, if it’s running this good, I could stick another ram chip in there and it would scream.” [Uh-huh. . . and you though this was a good idea why?] So, you stick another stick of ram in there and since you already have it opened up you upgrade the video card, just because you can. And the MOMENT you get it home and plug it all back in again, what happens? It crashes, it’s running slower than before, it’s doing things it never did before you fiddled with it. So you suggest to ‘the guy’ that it’s the new pink bits that are causing all the fuss and ‘the guy’ looks at you like you got four heads, and just about to say “take your POS system and get out of my shop.”  Quickly you grovel and take it back, it must be all YOUR fault. You take it home again. You plug it all in again. You run every debugging program you own, you buy a few more and run those. You weep. You drag it back to ‘the guy’. ‘The guy’ shakes his head and says “it must be all those crappy programs you keep loading.” He asks you if you have backed up all your data recently. Your heart falls into your stomach and starts to percolate.  He tells you to bend over and brace yourself. He then proceeds to scour your hard drive like a highway after a chemical spill. He hands you back an antiseptic system and tells you not to load all those crappy programs you own onto it.  You take it home, you start reloading all those crappy programs you own onto it. It crashes yet again and again and again. You bring it back to ‘the guy’, you throw yourself on his mercy. He tells you to stop crying on his carpet and go home. You come back and he has Frankensteined your system into a new system. Turns out that the new pieces he sold you didn’t like the old motherboard that by the way he had also sold you. He hands you back your system along with a very large bill, which would have bought you an entirely new system if you hadn’t had the bright idea to tinker with your old system. END RUN.

An analysis and overview of the used book market in the United States from 1993-2002 Book Hunter Press, publishers of The Used Book Lover’s Guides, is pleased to share with you this report on the expansion of the used book market. Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003 Book Hunter Press Portions of this report may be reproduced with proper attribution to Book Hunter Press. For more information contact: Susan Siegel Book Hunter Press PO Box 193. Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 (914) 245-6608. Fax: (914)-245-2630 bookhunterpress@earthlink.net Contact us  For more information about The Used Book Lover’s Guides 2003 Update In 1999, in The Quiet Revolution: The Expansion of the Used Book Market 1992-1999 , we took the first comprehensive statistical look at the used book market. In 2001, we added revised Tables and new Charts reflecting the statistical changes that had taken since the publication of the original report. Now, in 2003, we’re pleased to share the findings of our continuing tracking of the ever-changing used book market. What follows is a statistical update, augmented with some general observations about the used book market as of the end of 2002. General Overview Since our initial report in 1999, the used book market has continued to grow, both in terms of the number of dealers and the number and dollar volume of sales. The industry has continued to change and evolve in response to the growing role of the Internet as a vehicle for selling used books. As shown in Table I (Revised 2002), the total number of used book dealers continued to grow during 2002, reaching a total of 7,198 dealers. Over the past decade, there has been a 20% increase in the number of dealers. (Please see the Methodology section below for an explanation of how these numbers are arrived at, and equally important, which dealers are and are not included in the figures.) Given the diversity of what constitutes the used book market, in terms of buyers, sellers and books, we repeat the caution included in the 1999 Report against making generalizations about the used book market. Comparative data for ’97-’00 not available. Source: Book Hunter Press. Copyright 2003 Chart I Revised 2002 Changes In Number Of Used Book Dealers 1993-2002 1. Comparative data for ’97-’00 not available. Source: Book Hunter Press. Copyright 2003 Table II  Revised 2002 Make-up of Used Book Market Source: Book Hunter Press. Copyright 2003 Chart II  Revised 2002 Make-up of Used Book Market As of 2002 Source: Book Hunter Press. Copyright 2003 Changes in Open Shops For the ten year period 1993-2002, the number of open shops increased by 7%. However, after 2000, the number of shops began to slowly decline, and between 2000-2002, there was a 4.8% decrease in the number of open shops. As a percentage of all used book dealers, open shops now account for 57% of all dealers, compared to 61% in 2000. The growth and subsequent decrease in the number of open shops over the past decade has been uneven across the country with the Central/Western and Pacific Coast States the only regions experiencing a net decrease. While the “net” number of open shops has declined, new used bookstores continue to open throughout the United States, with the greatest number of new stores opening in New England. The new owners represent a cross section of ages, from couples in their 30’s to retirees. Many of the new owners are book collectors turned dealers who are living out their dream career. The decline in the number of open shops can be attributed to a variety of reasons, including — death and retirement of the dealer — desire for a lifestyle change on the part of the dealer (health, family issues, burn-out from previous careers etc.) — lease problems and/or rent increases — decline in in-store traffic due to the Internet — overall decline in sales and profitability of store Table III  Revised 2002 Changes In Number of Open ShopsRegion1993-961997-002002% Change * Comparative data for ’93-’97 not available. Source: Book Hunter Press. Copyright 2003 Chart III  Revised 2002 Changes In Number of Open Shops Source: Book Hunter Press. Copyright 2003. A word about used book sales. Although all informal and anecdotal indications are that used book sales are increasing, there are no reliable figures on the actual dollar volume of used book sales. The reliability of estimated annual sales figures is limited by what the estimate counts and does not count, the source of the estimate, the methodology used to make the estimate and the motivation of the person or entity making the estimate. The major reason for the lack of hard, verifiable sales information is the fact that most of the 7,200 used book sellers are small sole proprietors and as such, they are not required to publicly report their sales figures. While large public companies such as amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com have reported that their used book sales have increased as a percentage of their total sales, they have not specified the dollar volume of their USED book sales. Similarly, other large used book companies such as Alibris have reported increased sales volume, but not the dollar volume of the sales. It is impossible to quantity the total number of sales, or the dollar volume of sales, made as a result of visits to multi dealer sites such as abebooks because only a portion of these sales are processed by the site owners. For more information, tables and charts and prior years’ information, please go to: http://www.bookhunterpress.com/index.cgi/survey.html?id=IXwQh2uB Report Methodology (Revised, 2002) Who’s Included – – Booksellers who identify themselves as selling used, rare, secondhand, recycled, pre-owned, out-of-print or antiquarian books. Stores that sell both new and used books are included. – – Dealers whose business has been verified by phone, mail, email or personal visit. Who’s Not Included – – Paperback exchanges that sell only used paperbacks. – – Used booksellers who sell only at book fairs. – – Dealers whose business operations could not be verified. – – Relatively new dealers who operate exclusively via the Internet and typically, but not always, have limited stock. Information Gathering – – The names of potential used booksellers are gathered from a variety of sources including, but not limited to: . membership directories of state and national bookseller associations . local lists of booksellers . the Internet . trade publications . direct requests from booksellers . leads from other booksellers . leads from book collectors . telephone directories – – Information about dealers is continuously gathered by questionnaire, phone calls and personal visits to bookstores. A minimum of two attempts, and often more, are made to verify information about a potential dealer. – – Information gathered between 1992 and 1996 was first published in six regional Used Book Lover’s Guides plus a revised edition of the New England Guide. Between 1997-2000, revised editions were published for five editions, including a second revised New England edition. – – Beginninig in 2000 when the database was put online, updates to all six guides have been made on a weekly basis. The print guides are updated yearly with print supplements. Regions  – – New England: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island – – Mid-Atlantic: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware – – South Atlantic: Maryland, Washington, DC, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida – – Midwest: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia – – Central/Western: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana – – Pacific: California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii About the Company Book Hunter Press was founded in 1992 by David S. and Susan Siegel. A life long book collector, David Siegel retired as Superintendent of Schools for the Croton-Harmon School District in 1992. Susan Siegel was a public relations consultant before teaming up with her husband to form Book Hunter Press. Since 1992, the company has been gathering information on the used book market in the United States, and, beginning in 1999, in Canada. The company’s database is the most comprehensive and most up-to-date database of used booksellers in North America. In 1993, the company published The Used Book Lover’s Guide to New England. Subsequently, five additional guides were published covering other parts of the United States, and in 1999, a guide for Canada was added to the series. Since 1995, the company has published revised and expanded editions of five of the original six guides. Between new editions, the guides are updated annually with published Supplements. The series currently features 8,000+ used book dealers offering in excess of 200 million books. In 2000, the entire database of 8,000 used book dealers was put online in a searchable format. The online database is updated on a continuing basis. To date, the Siegels have traveled over 100,000 miles and visited thousands of used bookstores in the United States and Canada. 0ver 50,000 copies of the Used Book Lover’s Guides are in the hands of book collectors, specialty enthusiasts, used book dealers and librarians around the world. The Siegels have been featured on national television on C-SPAN’s Book-TV, and in the Wall Street Journal , Washington Post, The New York Times , the Gannett Newspapers, Kiplinger’s Magazine and dozens of national and regional newspapers and magazines across the United States and Canada.

Anyone who has read the autobiography of Richard Booth, founder and ‘King’ of Hay on Wye, the original and foremost Book Town in Britain (indeed, the world), will have their views on booksellers confirmed – they are a shady lot who will take you for a ride if you give them half a chance. Richard is a very colourful character (the book is an entertaining read) and the success of Hay is indisputable – an annual footfall of over 2m people and enough business to support around forty bookshops. But with such wild success, how come he has gone bankrupt several times? One of the reasons is there for all to see in his biography – his ethics were deplorable. Not only does he recount many ‘deals’ of questionable morality, but also he does so with pride – he actually believes he is being a smart businessman. In reality, what he is doing is making a short-term gain and a long-term loss. Which is the subject of this article. There are as many ways to run a successful business as there are to run an unsuccessful one. And there are more pitfalls to screw up a successful business than you can count, not the least being hubris. You can run a successful business being smart, ruthless, cynical, and hard. And you can throw in sharp practice and even criminality and it can still be successful. Often wildly successful. But, sooner or later, such businesses founder. Or you can run a successful business going down a different route. You still need smart, and even a little bit of ruthless, but the rest you replace with basic honesty, honourable practices, and genuine effort on behalf of your customers, clients, business associates, and staff. Such businesses tend to endure and grow. It is on this latter method I will be dwelling, but before I do, let me remind you of the famous three Paul Getty principles for a successful business: Get up early. Work late. Strike oil! Which means that whichever method you finally choose to run a business, high ethics or low, it will not succeed if the basic business is flawed. Getting up early and working late is good, but if the basic business is unsound, it will still founder. Likewise, striking oil is good, but rare is the business that succeeds if you do not work at it. Never forget that. These rules run throughout all business (Enron is a spectacular example of low business ethics – incandescent short-term gain – long-term disaster) but I will concentrate on the relevance to the business of selling books. The bookshop (and its small branch) that my wife and I run is a very successful business that is now a major employer in the very small pond that is Alnwick. It has had twelve years of constant growth in a market that some say is declining, so we must be doing some things better or differently than others. It has been our equivalent of striking oil and the strong ethics behind the business is, I believe, one of the reasons for its success. We have never knowingly ripped off a customer. That is not to say we have not made mistakes, but we have never knowingly offered less for a book that is offered to us than we believed it was worth, or charged more for a book than we believed was its market price. Yes, we only offer trade price and guard our profit margin with our life, but we never offer less than that. To see how this affects your business let us examine this ethic in practice. All the prices I am about to quote are in pounds sterling. If you have a problem with this, whenever I say pounds, think dollars – it will do for the purposes of this demonstration. A little old lady comes into the shop with a valuable book to sell, say, for example, worth £200. She clearly has no idea of the value – it has been in the family for years. The low ethic business offers £20. The little old lady is perhaps disappointed, but she accepts because she knows no better – she might even be persuaded that it is a wonderful offer. Whoopee, our smart businessman has made a huge profit – what a clever lad am I! But stop – let us follow this through a little further. He puts the book on display at a massive mark up. The granddaughter comes into the shop and sees ‘Grannies book’ at £300. (or even more!). She tells granny and the rot sets in. Granny vows never to bring another book to that bookshop, and more importantly, tells all her friends. Sooner or later that short-term profit will become a long-term loss. She will grumble about that bookshop for years to come and do untold damage. Now look at the other side. The same little old lady offers the book to a high ethic business, and is absolutely thrilled with the £200 she is offered. The granddaughter comes into the shop and sees ‘Grannies book’ at £300. (or even more!). She tells granny and, and granny, who is older and wiser than the granddaughter, explains why, with overheads and staff to pay, the shop must charge more than she got for the book. Granny is happy, tells all her friends, and the bookshop continues to be offered excellent books. Now look at a third scenario, which is even more wonderful. It is a high ethic business but it gets the initial valuation wrong – not intentional, but perhaps a signature or a plate was missed during the valuation. Granny is offered only £100. Later, the bookshop discovers its mistake, and gets back to granny and insists on paying her a further £100. Granny is astonished. But more importantly, ‘the story of the book’ becomes a standard anecdote with granny for the rest of her life. I maintain that, in business terms, this ‘word of mouth’ recommendation is worth many more hundreds of pounds than the extra payment made to granny. You can extend this principle to all aspects of your business – how you deal with your colleagues or how you offer at yard or boot sales. Keep doing it and your reputation will grow to the point where all the best books and all the best deals are offered to you before anyone else. If you look through the histories of major corporations that have taken a fall, it can often be traced to the low business ethic of ruthlessly taking advantage of your customers when you feel you can get away with it or have the market cornered. IBM and Enron are classic examples of this, but there are many others. When customers have been abused they will stay with you only as long as they have to. The moment they have the opportunity to go elsewhere, they will leave you in droves. And conversely, if you treat them well, they will stay with you – the competition never gets a chance to break in. If you make ‘doing the right thing’ your instinctive reaction to any business situation, it can be remarkable how well it can turn out in business terms in the end. Another important area of business ethics is dealing with complaints when things go wrong. A high ethic business will take extraordinary care with complaints and to hang with the expense. A low ethic business will avoid responsibility wherever possible. This does not mean caving in to unreasonable complaints on the principle that ‘the customer is always right’. I do not think this is so, and the maxim should be modified to: ‘the customer should always have the benefit of the doubt’. The same sort of reward awaits the business that treats its staff well – we pay above the local norm, and, importantly, have a bonus system geared to the success of the business, so everyone who works for us has a direct financial interest in the shop doing well. The result is a happy and loyal staff – undoubtedly one of our major strengths. I forget the name of the man who said this, but it is true: ‘I pay my staff well, but this is not because I am rich. The reverse is true – I am rich because I pay my staff well.’ So there you have it – two ways to run a business, both of which can be successful: high ethics, low ethics. I maintain that high ethics brings the biggest business gains – and has the added value that you get to sleep at night! Stuart Manley, co-owner, Barter Books, Alnwick, Northumberland, England

There are several different categories of auctions. Most booksellers are familiar with the rare-book auction houses, with their elaborate cataloging. These specialists inhabit a universe all their own, and I doubt I will ever understand them. One such individual, in the Washington area, would always try to sell me his auction business when I phoned to inquire about the next sale. Another told me point-blank, in the presence of other booksellers, that I did not spend enough money to merit his attention, and that I’d never own a book worthy of being consigned to his sale. Needless to say, I don’t go to those sales any more. But you’ll find books sold at any weekly “antiques” auction, as well as those sales where the contents of a house are being sold on-site, before the house itself is auctioned. My primary specialization-performing arts-got its first real boost at just such a sale. The sale was well-attended but, as I’d feared, the books were to be sold dead-last. For six hours, we stood on a slanting driveway as the crowd bid on dilapidated living room furniture, old kitchen utensils, and the like. To relieve the boredom, I bid on a couple of things, and ended up buying a trombone. Finally, the auctioneer walked us into the basement, where the books had been stashed. My eye fell upon a carton of hardbound opera scores, which I quickly calculated would be a reasonable buy for me if I had to pay as much as $200. By the time the bidding started, my only competition was a timid-looking woman who’d also been waiting. My heart caught in my throat as the very box of books I craved was the first lot offered. I thrust my bidder’s card into the air and stared straight into the face of the other bidder, preparing for a real fight. To my surprise, she melted at a mere $18. To my further surprise, she was so intimidated that she actually left the sale at that moment. A competing bid brought me up to two dollars on the next box, and that was the end of the competition. Not another bid was made on the rest of the books. The auctioneer pled with the crowd, and finally entreated me to bid one dollar, in return for which I could have the remainder of the basement-full of books, playbills and magazines. I politely refused, at which point he begged me to bid a dollar, saying he’d be happy if I took only those books I actually wanted. Thus, for a total outlay of $21, we went home with our van loaded with opera, classical music and ballet books. The auctioneer was relieved, as he had committed to emptying the basement. Without my one-dollar purchase, he’d have spent $50 or $60 paying his helpers to haul the remaining books to the dump. At a more recent auction, I saw three large bookcases full of cookbooks fetch no more than $30, including the bookcases! And several weeks ago, I saw a couple of our colleagues score several Mencken first editions, in very good dustjackets, for a fraction of what they were expecting to spend. Things don’t always go so cheaply. A couple of years ago, I attended a sale held at the home of an aging couple who were moving to a retirement community. A dozen books of Gustav Dore illustrations, in pretty nondescript editions, went for prices nearly eight times what I’d sold them for at retail. Later, I learned at least part of the story. The elderly homeowner’s wife had insisted that he unload most of his books, including the Dore. While she was busy in some other part of the house, the old gent sneaked outside and bought back his own books, at rather scandalous prices. Of course, the price would have been less had there not been a competing bidder, and heaven only knows what was on HIS mind! Here are a few tips about buying at antiques auctions. If the books are set at the beginning of the sale, or offered at a pre-determined time, this means the auctioneer is expecting higher prices. Books sold at random throughout the sale, or near the end, generally sell for less. Many auctioneers will allow buyers to create their own lots, choosing from among tables full of books. This is a great way to buy only what you want, and save hauling unsaleable books. But because most auctions comprise property from a number of consignors, and the auction house needs to sell each consignor’s stuff separately, your freedom to create lots may be limited. Most auctions allow you to leave a bid and go about your business, paying and collecting your merchandise later if you’ve won. Be certain that you understand the auctioneer’s left-bid policy-some establish a minimum dollar amount for left bids, and many will start the bidding at 60 to 70 percent of your maximum left bid. Don’t leave bids on lots that are not secured under lock and key. Too often, the contents of box lots get shifted, deliberately or otherwise, as dozens of people sift through the books. Be careful about discussing your bidding intentions with potential competitors. Most localities have laws that forbid “bid-rigging,” the definition of which includes agreeing not to bid against a competitor on certain items, to ensure that someone gets the best possible price. (The auctioneer’s legal obligation is to the consignor, and his job is to squeeze every possible penny out of each item offered.) Selling your own over-stock at auction is a crap-shoot. At least once I’ve come away at a total loss, the cost of the boxes in which I hauled the books having exceeded the price realized at the sale. Selling at auction is a gamble, which I like to consider one step above the Dumpster. If you’re one of that minority among booksellers who has taxable income, you can probably do as well by donating the books to a local charity and taking the fair-market-value as a tax deduction. You will need to shop around for an auctioneer to handle your books. Although you see numerous books offered at auction, many houses have a policy of handling books only as part of a larger estate. You can make your offering more palatable to the auction house by doing a couple of things: Negotiate the best deal possible on sales commissions and fees. Hauling, storage and setup all add to the auctioneer’s cost, and these costs are passed along to the consignor. Offer to unpack and arrange the books at the auction. Offer to haul away any lots that do not receive bids. This saves time and money for the “house,” and will endear you to all those hard-working people who set up the sales and clean up afterward. Don’t use the auction as your dumping ground. Discard textbooks, useless encyclopedias and the like before you pack up for the auction. Don’t expect “reserve” pricing. Except in the case of rare and unusual books, best offered at book specialty auctions, this will make your offering unpalatable. Do try to get your merchandise placed early in the sale. The best positioning, time-wise, is an hour to two hours after the start of the sale. The lots sold at the very beginning of the sale are “warm-up” merchandise, sold while the auctioneer awaits late arrivals (many of whom are the most regular spenders). Don’t fret over how browsers handle the books. Once consigned to the sale, they are out of your hands. Support your favorite auction house by bidding on other stuff offered. As you watch neat old stuff get sold cheaply, you’ll discover other interests beyond books. (My personal favorite non-book purchase is a heavy woolen rug, formerly used in an Order of the Eastern Star temple, which I bought for $15.) As the auctioneers often say, “bid early and often.

January 24, 2003 marked the end of an era in Columbia, MO with the closing of Nowell’s. The Nowell brothers came home from the Civil War, wanting something different than farming, so in 1876 they opened Nowell’s Grocery Store, just up the street from where my bookstore is now located. Over the years this little store changed and grew, as did the generations of the Nowell family owning the operation. In the early 1960’s the store (in a much larger location) burned to the ground, and it re-opened in a giant tent while the new and improved store was built. Nowell’s was the first grocery store in town to have a multiplicity of services besides basic groceries, and Nowell’s was the first store in town to use scanners. At one time Nowell’s had two warehouse stores and 3 stores in Columbia and 4 more in surrounding communities. They were successful, innovative and interesting places to shop. Walmart opened a supercenter, and then Hyvee came to town and the fourth Jack Nowell closed the stores for good last month. And now I must purchase my groceries from one of the several corporate-owned chain stores—fortunately I do not have to stoop to Walmart. One thing I have learned in the years Columbia Books has been open (since October 1, 1977) is never to take anything for granted. Nothing stays the same in the book business, constant change is inevitable, and just about the time you think you have your business model in place is the time you will get blindsided by any variety of unknown circumstances. To survive and thrive in the book business one must have the extreme flexibility of a ballet dancer, the capacity to re-invent oneself repeatedly, tenacity, determination, stubbornness, and a certain amount of plain old dumb luck. My degree in Library and Information Science combined a program of rare book courses under the late Dr. Helmutt Lehmann-Haupt, and a series of courses in library automated systems. This was in the 1970’s when library automation was in its infancy. My vision was to be surrounded by old and rare books, utilizing the new methods of research through computers…….needless to say reality has been a somewhat different creature, involving such details as providing a living for myself and two children—and insurance on their vehicles as well as college tuition. In the mid-1980’s the only bookstore in downtown Columbia selling new books moved out to the large Mall. New books slowly became a part of my operation, over the next 15 years growing to become a viable business itself with sales reps calling regularly, and author events part of the venue. In 1992 the first computer was purchased to help manage the paperwork, catalog the books, etc. In 1994 Richard Weatherford started an internet service called Interloc, which he felt would revolutionize the op book business via the internet. I was one of those he called to take the plunge, and since we were never able to keep on top of the catalog mailings, this seemed to be a logical evolution. Those early days of internet selling were truly amazing; the books flew out the door and the main challenge was to type in enough titles to keep ahead of what was selling. The first computer was replaced with a bigger faster model, and then a second computer was added so we could type faster. Abebooks started up, Bibliofind was born and the databases grew like topsy as the big scramble began with everyone trying to get online. Amazon dipped its toe in the waters of used books in an effort to tap into another market….and the rest is history as they say. Big Corporate Entities have taken much of the book market, both B & M and online as well, making it a real challenge to survive and to maintain integrity and identity as individual booksellers. Between 1985-2000, 34% of the independent bookstores in this country closed, largely due to the invasion of B&N and Borders, and the domination of the internet by Amazon. Lengthy litigation on the part of the American Booksellers’ Association leveled the playing field as far as publisher pricing of books, but it came too late for all too many stores both small and large. Many communities and major cities in this country have no independent stores left. One of my sales reps told me about four years ago he had only a dozen accounts left in the entire state of Texas. Before the advent of the internet, the chain stores for the most part were unaware of the parallel world of used, op, and rare bookselling which had co-existed for some 500 years. Book buyers and collectors shopped both sides of the book world to satisfy their desires. The internet revolutionized this. Amazon discovered the link to the seemingly infinite world of used and op books on the internet and began the stampede of the Corporate Bodies to take over and control yet another segment of the market. Independently owned databases and websites disappeared rapidly as Amazon, B&N and Borders and, later, Alibris jockeyed for dominance, and book buyers found they could tap into seemingly endless listings of books online without having to expend the time and energy visiting and browsing their local bookshops. Another undocumented wave of bookstore closings is happening with the decline of walk-in traffic. B&M bookstores not actively involved with the internet are few and far between. Many booksellers have only internet presences with no visible storefronts. Bookseller catalogs are almost a thing of the past, as online listings make printed catalogs instantly obsolete. Local and regional book fairs are dying out due to lack of attendance. Book scouts and charities become instant booksellers online, making competition for the good books almost like a feeding frenzy in shark-infested waters. The internet is tailor-made to dovetail almost perfectly with bookselling; the problem is how to avoid the tenacles of Corporations who are invested in selling units of products, to work within their system in such a way as to maintain individuality and integrity, how to thrive as professional booksellers, how to withstand the Walmart pressuring of more is better, cheaper is best, quality is irrelevant. At the moment A’s are duking it out for internet dominance, their main concern being the bottom line of profitablity as far as selling units of product: more is better, cheaper is best, quality is virtually irrelevant. The first generation independently owned databases are gone, very few of the second generation databases are still around, but a third generation is now upon the horizon, with the emphasis being on quality, customer service, product integrity, individuality, making the whole process come full circle. They lack the size and clout of their larger counterparts, but they take into account the idiosyncratic nature of book buyers and collectors that ultimately is the driving force behind the used and rare book world. The browsing process is an integral part of the buying process for readers and collectors, and booksellers who can adapt the internet to recreate this “feel” for their online customers will survive and thrive over the long haul. The internet never closes—just crashes from time to time–and bad weather outside is a positive factor; readers and collectors thrive on serendipity, which translates into personalization, quality, integrity, and knowledge on the part of the bookseller being key factors—-once again moving full circle. Columbia Books has a server now, with the capacity to host its own website, several workstations. I list online with Abebooks, Alibris, Amazon, Antiqbooks, Barnes and Noble, Bibliodirect, and the ABAA/ILAB database. By using the Bookrouter service I am able to customize and tweak my listings to “fit” each database. I have 27,000 titles online, but not all of them are on all of the sites. Barnes and Noble has driven the regional chain store out of the Big Mall here and they in turn have located across the street from my store and are actively working to completely take over my market group. The internet keeps my store open and viable because they cannot touch what I do there. The possibilities are almost infinite: ILAB has had successful virtual book fairs, which means I can “show” my books without having to pack them up and wear out my body, the newer databases are so much more personal, the Bookrouter service is beta testing features to make websites better, easier, more personalized and much more readily accessible, my walk-in customers can check out my inventory at 2 am……I have thought about a new greeting on my phone machine to say “Columbia Books, we never close…” which, because of the internet, is indeed the case. #brickandmortar