The Standard usually comes out on the first of January, April, July, and October, but here we are dropping the Fall issue down your chimneys in the last week of December. We are doing two things with this slimmer special issue. One is pretty obvious—catching up on getting our online journal out on time. Shouldn’t be long now before that happens. We are also taking a very close look at the ethereal connection between an extraordinary fine press publisher and the somewhat bibliomaniacal bookseller who is collecting, selling, and documenting his marvelous output a full century later. The artisan is Thomas Bird Mosher, and the learned devotee is Philip R. Bishop, and they team up here to present you with a richly inlaid holiday gift to be cherished in some quiet moments between seasonal activities. Needless to say, most of us would take any of these fine bindings and good advices over the gift of an ugly sweater or Jelly of the Month Club gift certificate any day. The Standard has been pitching for more specialized content for some time now, and this is a spectacular example of same. If applying to the mercenary side may tip the scales a bit, our online journal seems to get pretty good search engine placement, and one specialist reports continued profitable leads and contacts from an article he did for us many years ago. Indeed, I have good reason to believe the IOBA Standard is an industry leader when it comes to greatly delayed feedback. So, please give back. Here is what we say toward the end of each issue. “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. [Only fifty bucks a year.] We are very interested in the book trade outside the U.S. as well. “Currently we are also seeking short pieces for the following self-explanatory columns. House Calls; Yard/Estate/Library Sale Tales; Auction Action; Book Show Impressions; Book Store Lore; and Library File.” Thanks everyone and we will see you sooner rather than later. #standard

Thanks for granting this interview Philip, on top of the considerable time you spent on the Mosher fine bindings article that also appears in this issue. Tell us a little about your life BB (before bookselling). There was little in the way of books in my childhood unless you count Reader’s Digest condensed books and a couple cheap encyclopedias and some bibles. Assigned books from the library and a few paperbacks of my own choosing, especially those written by Taylor Caldwell like her Testimony of Two Men, Captains and the Kings and especially Glory and the Lightning were about all I read unless you include the small premium books one could order through National Scholastic magazines and publications which we’d wait to receive in elementary school. There just wasn’t anything which really cultivated my interest in books per se, and certainly nothing that sparked my interest in collecting them—although once a collector perhaps always a collector. I did collect rocks and fossils which were all neatly lined upon shelves in my bedroom, and there was a coin collection. Even in high school and college nothing about books really sparked my interest except for a visitation to my girlfriend’s (now my wife) uncle who had a room on the second floor filled with barrister cases who’s shelves were overflowing with books. I remember being particularly fond of—I hate to admit it—a limp-suede set of Little Journeys from the Roycrofters, particularly because they seemed nicely printed and because the bindings were so fresh, almost seemingly new. Back in 1976 he let me borrow a couple volumes from the set if I promised to return them in a week. One summer, when I worked for the Book-of-the-Month-Club, I brought him boxes of books I was allowed to buy very cheaply from Doubleday, and in exchange I got one small archaic looking book with clasps. I think it was a Peter Leibert publication from Philadelphia bound in full calf. I had never seen anything like it before. My first real interest in books came only after graduating from college. I attended a seminary in the Chicago area and did some volunteer work at the school’s library. I worked in a special collection room used to house part of the Abraham Cassell collection of bibles and Holy Land artifacts. That certainly was pleasant enough and I especially liked handling the cuneiform tablets which were so small in comparison to those huge Nuremburg bibles. I think what I appreciated most was being surrounded by the feeling of connection to the past. After leaving the seminary and moving back East, I worked at an employment agency and ended up finding myself a job as an administrative assistant back at my alma mater, Millersville University. It was there that I met a couple professors who had the collecting bug and who would plant the seeds that would redirect me years later. Dr. Francis Kafka was particularly helpful in a number of ways. His apartment was filled with all manner of books, many being references he used for his graphic arts classes taught in the Industrial Arts Department. There were also some sample books he collected from the 17th century and onward along with sample pages from incunabula and manuscripts. I couldn’t read Latin or Greek, but I could still appreciate their physical state and the importance of the text. I began to love these things, and strange as it may seem, I can distinctly remember their smell and their feel. I remember in 1975 Frank Kafka put me in contact with the folks at Deighton, Bell & Co. in Cambridge, England and I wrote for their catalogues only to find that they were filled with all sorts of cryptic codes and words which I had never seen before. I mean just what was an 8vo, and what was a “plate before letters” and why were there names like Adams, Schwab and Riley added at the end of the descriptions along with some numbers? I wrote back to Deighton, Bell and asked them what in the world they were talking about in their descriptions and to my amazement they answered in detail. I clearly remember the letter from John Sibbald with all the references printed out in full. Frank helped me with many of the bibliographic terms, and together these two gentlemen formed my first serious introduction to the world of books and book collecting, and the more I found out, the more my appetite for old and rare books began to grow. Following this introduction of sorts, I still wasn’t bitten by the bug until I got a note from Frank that I was to come over to see some antiquarian books he was going to sell, giving me first right of refusal. When I got to his apartment there was a table covered in dark green felt and on it ten wonderful looking books including early German and French bibles. It looked like an altar. The ten books were all in their original bindings with some looking quite ancient. He offered to sell them to me for what he originally paid years before. He also offered me six original leaves from books like the Kelmscott Chaucer, the first King James Bible of 1611, a page from Pliny’s ‘Natural History’ printed by Nicholas Jensen in 1475—incidentally the first printing of Roman type face—and a leaf from Wynkyn de Worde’s 1515 black letter history of Henry V. I bought everything and I was unquestionably smitten by the old book buying bug. As time rolled along I began to narrow my interests. I loved philosophy and ordered early works of Aristotle and Plato from Deighton, Bell. Man, was it ever fun getting those packages in the mail from England. One little set was of Plato’s works from the 16th century. It was charming in three thick full vellum bound volumes. I also remember the early 16th century Filippo Giunta printing of Aristotle and its lovely printer’s device at the end of the book. My shelf of books through Deighton, Bell steadily grew but when I received an offer to go to New York with an education professor who collected early books on mathematics, well, I couldn’t resist broadening my horizons. Professor Joseph Rousseau would eventually donate his extensive mathematics collection to Millersville University, but back then he was still in the midst of forming his collection and we visited some of his favorite collecting haunts in New York. The most impressive was Samuel Orlinick of Scientific Libraries. Mr. Orlinick asked me what I collected and I indicated English and Continental philosophy. He began to show me a number of examples on his shelves but then pointed to a locked cabinet. Orlinick slowly went over, unlocked it, and pulled out a small folio, the sight of which immediately began to excite me. He opened it up and put it in my hands. My eyes lit upon that most famous of frontispieces of a king made up of thousands of his subjects along with scenes and symbols surrounding the great leviathan’s body along the margins. Good heavens, this was it, the book I had read and was so enamored with as a political science student—Thomas Hobbes’s The Leviathan (the “bear edition” London, 1651, but actually printed a bit later). I was stunned. We talked price and he agreed to allow me to make payments on the book. After settling on our deal, I gave the book back to him so he could put it back into the case. “No,” he said, “you take it along and send me the payments as we discussed.” Really?! Was it possible? It was, I did. It was my first important and expensive philosophy classic and I treasured that handsome volume in contemporaneous 17th century binding for many years. Later in the afternoon we visited an ultra-serious collector of Aesop’s fables, and while looking over his collection, which covered two walls floor to ceiling, I was asked what I collected. I took out my newest purchase and proudly replied, “Philosophy.” Upon further questioning the Aesop collector said to me, “Oh no, dear fellow, you’re not a collector, you’re just a buyer.” I thought that some kind of snub, but I didn’t really understand the import of his remark until I became a collector myself. I continued to buy books, and even fancied myself a “collector” when I put together a modest assemblage of collected works of English and Continental philosophers. I didn’t have the resources to collect first editions of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Leibnitz or Descartes, but I was able to purchase first or early collected works. I bought the “works” of other lesser philosophical thinkers. In doing so, I felt that I was getting more bang for the buck in having so many texts in one set, while still getting the “feel” of a 16th, 17th or 18th century book. How did you get into the trade? In 1985 I had begun to question a number of things in my life including whether or not I wanted to continue in university administration. I had perhaps counseled my 10,000th student about doing what makes you happy. I used to tell them about Sarah Caldwell (first woman opera conductor at the Metropolitan Opera) imparting her father’s wisdom: the trick to life was in not only doing what you like to do, but in finding someone willing to pay you to do it. It finally dawned on me that I should take my own advice. For the next three years I made preparations to hand in my resignation and then left the university after working there fourteen years. Being vested, I could draw a small monthly sum and I took up employment with a bookseller in Lancaster, PA. I also took a part-time job with a bindery in Millersville where I helped to put together a collected edition of Clive Barker’s works replete with Barker’s personal drawing in each and snakeskin used in the binding. I spent several years as a bookseller clerk meeting collectors and selling books from a bookstore called The Book Haven and for the most part, enjoyed it. I also worked part-time in the evenings with an ABAA bookseller doing all of his cataloguing in his garret among thousands of reference volumes. This was heaven and I learned a great deal, in fact so much so that by 1991 I struck out on my own as an independent bookseller. I joined the ABAA three years later. Oh, by the way, I should add that employment with these booksellers certainly had its book collecting perks. It was while at The Book Haven that I met one of their New York customers who told me about a vellum Mosher book she and her husband bought years ago. She was Gladys Spector of Spector the Collector Books, and I went to New York to see and purchase the book which was the first vellum book added to my Mosher collection. At my night-time cataloguing job with Antonio Raimo Rare Books we had received a catalogue from Thomas G. Boss Fine Books, and because of Tony’s recommendation to Mr. Boss on my behalf, I purchased what would become one of the highlights in my collection even to this day: a one of four vellum printings of Marius the Epicurean in a stellar Toof & Co. art nouveau binding. That’s quite a leap, from university administrator to bookselling. Was it a soft landing? It was quite a leap. My parents certainly thought I was nuts and my colleagues at the university didn’t know what to make of it. After all, I did give up quite a lot. My wife had belatedly received her English degree and was employed in travel, so we figured we’d kind of combine the two careers. It worked and she was a terrific source of support. Without her I probably would have had a miserable existence working for the limited pay I was getting from the area booksellers. I remember too that another bookseller in Portland enticed me to move up to Maine and I even had an apartment of sorts above the bookshop if I wanted it. At the last minute I backed out of the deal particularly because my pay went up at my evening cataloguing job. When that bookseller could no longer afford to keep me, I struck out on my own and hardly looked back since, except for the fact that my cataloguing job was and still is my view of heaven. I mean look, not having to go out and buy all those rare books, but having them put in one’s lap to catalogue—to be able to fondle, smell, paginate, collate, find out why they were important, and to have all the references one could need all at one’s finger tips, well that was just dreamy. To get the funds to start my business, I sold off books from my philosophy collection. I was surprised just how well I took to selling those one-time cherished volumes, but I had to raise funds. I also did something which I don’t think I’d ever have the heart to do today. In 1991 I sold my most precious Mosher book, a copy of Marcel Schwob’sMimes (Mosher, 1901) printed on real vellum. It was one of only six copies, and I sold it through a San Francisco dealer to a collector in France. It was an expensive book and together with the proceeds from the philosophy material, I was able to start in the book selling business. For many years I regretted selling that copy of Mimes since the chances of my getting another copy of that treasure were minuscule to say the least. Does the bookselling side support the “independent scholar” side? Yes, of course. I wear four hats: bookseller, scholar, writer, and collector. Without selling books I’d hardly have the funds necessary to feed the collecting habit, and I certainly wouldn’t have the money necessary to travel to institutions to do research. This interview will reach book length if we get into all the aspects of Mosher’s life and career, so for those who are interested in the man and the fine press he ran, it’s all laid out in your own book, Thomas Bird Mosher—Pirate Prince of Publishers: A Comprehensive Bibliography and Source Guide to The Mosher Books Reflecting England’s National Literature & Design (Oak Knoll Press and The British Library, 1998), which I note you list in fine condition for only $39.95 with the offer, “Will be custom signed or fully inscribed to the recipient by the author.” Very true, but I’ve all but run out of copies for sale. It’s really a great deal because they were offered in England and America for $125 (and still are), but I bought up some copies at a really good price and have sold all but two. [Editor’s note: make that one.] And there is a wealth of information at The Mosher Press site hosted by Millersville University, with Table of Contents links to such topics as Biography of Mosher, Printing History, Books in Series, Piracy Dispute, Exhibitions, Book Samples, Fine Bindings, Mosher’s Writings, Bibliographies, Mosher Press Collections, Sites of Related Interest, and Bishop’s Writings on Mosher. (As a small example, the image above comes from a recent newspaper piece about your efforts to secure the 1900 Mosher Press specimen of The Letters of a Portuguese Nun used in the making of the 2005 film The Secret Life of Words.) So, we’ll concentrate here on the collecting aspect. The Mosher Press website really fills in lots of information not available in the book and is constantly updated, so if you have the bibliography, then you can supplement your investigations into the Mosher Press with the website. And of course, people can always contact me. I get a lot of inquiries as a result of the website. I was left wondering how you pronounce his last name though. Does it rhyme with “posher” or “closure?” When I had a corporate patent attorney do a name check for the business, I needed to know if anyone else was still using Mosher Books or even the Mosher Press name. The closest name he was able to find was a business out of Brooklyn, I think, called Kosher Mosher. If you know how to pronounce kosher, you’ll know how to pronounce Mosher. The big question would seem to be why Mosher? What spark got you started, and was it serendipitous or were you somehow predisposed to discover this or some other private press interest once you got into bookselling? Why Mosher? Why not? I so highly revered the publisher and what he tried to accomplish that I felt I’d try to imitate at least the name on his catalogues: The Mosher Books. Of course I got rid of the article, and just made it MOSHER BOOKS. Part of what I was doing relates to your previous question about the bookselling side supporting the scholarly and collector sides. I wanted to impress on people’s minds that when ever they saw MOSHER BOOKS they’d also identify me with my writer, researcher, and collector sides. I might add that it worked beautifully over the years. I guess the answer to your question is complicated. It all emanated from a sort of epiphany back in 1985, literally a point of enlightenment on Sunday, October 6. I know this might sound kind of weird remembering the very day, but back on that date everything changed or perhaps it might be better to say so many things changed since “everything” is too tall an order. From that day on I never ate another piece of meat, I reoriented my choice of career (even though it took three more years until the details could be ironed out), reoriented my relationships, and a whole slew of other things. I became very interested in spiritual matters, in literature, and music. My days and evening were reorganized so much so that I’d get to my university office at 2 or 3 AM to do my reading and writing. I wrote a number of people 5, 10 or 15 page letters. I reorganized my office to surround myself with books (people must have thought I was qualifiedly certifiable), I took courses in philosophy and even completed the course work for my master’s at Villanova University where I had been given a full scholarship after the first term. Of particular interest there were the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jacques Derrida. Outside of these more formal studies I also got involved in the spiritual investigations of Paul Brunton who was a master on yoga, meditation and mystical philosophy. And once, after a ten-day fast, I even had a limited audience with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama along with a few fellow sojourners. I intently read Walt Whitman and the Transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau. On the musical side of things I was composing music for the piano. I left any formal training years before, but music flowed out of me like water from a new found spring. I enjoyed it immensely. I suppose if there are any descriptors to typify this period I’d have to use words like unifying, integrating, uplifting and creative. Prior to my “epiphany” I frequented The Book Haven, the shop I eventually worked in after leaving Millersville University. The owner there, Kinsey Baker, had repeatedly drawn my attention to some small books he fancied which he had brought down from Maine on a book buying trip. They were all titles from Mosher’s Old World Series, and over the course of a year I’d pick up a couple only to put them back without much expression of interest. But when I got involved in reading literature—which by the way was limited to the 19th century or before—I distinctly remember that my then current thoughts were marvelously mirrored by the writer Richard Jefferies—often referred to as the British H. D. Thoreau. I was in The Book Haven on one of my many visits and alighted upon that same little stash of Mosher books and picked up Jefferies’ The Story of My Heart and began reading it. I was struck, even dumbfounded, by the parallels of Jefferies’ thoughts and my own personal investigations, plus I became somewhat excited by the typography of its presentation. There was a refinement, a gentility, which I had dismissed before, but which now became part and parcel of the message. It became important to me that there not only be a fine expression of thought beautifully written, but that it became a visual treat as well. I totally perceived Mosher’s books as something very apart from the more common book design and layout I had customarily seen elsewhere, and found this combined message electrifying. I purchased the book, took it home, and avidly read it cover to cover. The next day I returned and bought all the other Mosher books Kinsey had in stock. That’s when my love of books rekindled, and in particular my love of such literary expressions and forms in the private press movement of the 1890s-1920s. I loved them all, but Mosher’s productions were the most affordable forms of this new form of literary expression. By the way, I still have that first Mosher book in the collection for which I paid the pauper’s sum of $7.50. Did you start buying right away or did you do some research first? As I mentioned, I bought everything Mosher The Book Haven had in stock. As well my wife and I found a number of Mosher books during our travels up to Boston and Maine. On one of the trips I was referred to Bill Hill of Cross Hills Books in Maine. I was stunned by the large collection of Moshers my wife and I inspected, and after a year or so of negotiations I bought the collection which included a copy of Benton Hatch’s bibliography on the Mosher Books. The copy of Hatch became my collecting mainstay for many years to come (until I couldn’t stand it any longer due to numerous inaccuracies and omissions and thus wrote my own Mosher bibliography). Having acquired such a large collection helped to give me a clearer sense of what Mosher produced, and together with the Hatch bibliography, I knew essentially what I had to acquire to complete each of Mosher’s fourteen different book series. In spite of his relative obscurity, and the whole “pirate or Robin Hood” question, Mosher had some other patron saints before you came along, correct? I’m not sure I know what you mean by Mosher’s patron saints, but in the field of collecting sure, he had several collectors who established supporting standing orders for his publications. Perhaps the three best were Emilié Grigsby, the heiress of the immense Yerkes’ fortune, Henry William Poor, the brokerage magnate, and John Quinn, the attorney counted as friend by many a British author. All of these folks were located in New York City and all collected Japan vellum copies and the most obscure of the Mosher books—those printed on real vellum. There were others like the department store owner, William F. Gable of Altoona, PA who was fascinated by the private press books of the era including those of the Roycroft Press. Mosher’s broadest outreach however was not to the wealthy few, although he admittedly did include them, but to the hundreds of collectors who could buy his books at modest prices and manage to assemble quite a pleasing collection. A good number of well healed middle class collectors not only bought Mosher’s books for themselves, but to give away as gifts. One such collector was Elizabeth Pearce Rockwell Butterworth who lived in Montclair, New Jersey. I have a great deal of the Mosher correspondence to her as well as her journal indicating what she bought. I even managed to buy the Empire secretariat at which she’d sit down to write to Mosher, order his books, and on whose shelves her Mosher collection resided. There were also celebrities who ordered the Mosher books. Among those was the foremost British stage actress of the time, Ellen Terry, correspondence from whom is in my Mosher collection. You can include the Barrymores and Julia Marlow in that class as well. And we can’t forget W. Irving Way, the one-time publisher in the firm of Way & Williams, and then later librarian at the Zamorano Club in Los Angeles. In the modern era folks like Kenneth Shanks of Louisville and Jean-François Vilain of Philadelphia and New York both put together large collections of Mosher. There were a number of others too, like one of the heirs to the Borden Foods fortune, Fred Board of Connecticut, from whose collection I bought the crème de la crème. Gosh, the names can go on and on: Frank Marra out of Forest Hills, Donald Dede from New Hampshire, a one-time collector in New Jersey, Oliver Sheean of Maine, Dick Fredeman and Jim Earl, both of Canada, and a collector in England who’s been buying a very specific state of The Mosher Books, and of course Bill Hill who I mentioned before. But in the field of Mosher collections there is one collector who surpassed them all: Norman Strouse who once headed the world’s largest ad agency—J. Walter Thompson. How did you build the collection? During my beginning years of collecting I managed to find a number of interesting items to supplement the Hill collection and so the Mosher collection grew upon that foundation, but it wasn’t until I contacted the foremost collector of Thomas Bird Mosher’s imprints, Norman Strouse, that things really began to take flight because in doing so I had found a compatriot with whom I could share my joy and passion in collecting. Norman Strouse was well known to the bookselling and collecting community. He collected so much more than just Mosher and gave away a number of important collections to institutions, but it was his Mosher collection that remained nearest and dearest to his heart. In 1964 when I was still in junior high school, Norman wrote what is today still the only book-length biography of Mosher called The Passionate Pirate (Bird & Bull Press). I had a copy which together with the Hatch bibliography formed my core reference material on Mosher. Back on May 11, 1988 I hand-wrote a five-page letter to “Mr. Strouse” pointing out my delight in reading his The Passionate Pirate and then covering some of the highlights of my own fledgling collection next to his enormous collection. He must have smiled. From that date onward until May of 1992 we continued a correspondence that both of us highly enjoyed, but which became increasingly strained due to Norman’s ill health and final incapacitation. He died on January 19, 1993. My correspondence continued sporadically with his daughter, Pat Beresford, whom I still occasionally hear from today. I remember she wrote me in one of her letters that during the last year or so of Norman’s life she read my letters to him at his bedside when he couldn’t read them himself. I also remember when she sent me a little memento from Norman’s collection. Unbeknownst to her the book would have far more meaning than she could surmise—a copy of Richard Jefferies’ The Story of My Heart in full leather binding. As I mentioned before, the book was the very first Mosher book that I ever bought. Getting the same from Pat Beresford on Norman’s behalf was like Norman speaking from beyond the grave. One of the things I did to honor Norman’s memory was to hand over research on my friend’s life and collecting, the contents of which were used in the biographical write-up on Strouse in the Grolier 2000—A Further Grolier Club Biographical Retrospective in Celebration of the Millennium. That was just the start. I guess I can cover this by indicating a few things that I’ve done to bring the Mosher collection to the status of a rich research collection. Over the years I’ve established a number of areas or sub-collections which I try to augment whenever I can. These areas of specialization were arrived at partly by sifting through large amounts of material. The first steps I took were to build each of the fourteen Mosher Press series (see http://marauder.millersville.edu/~mosher/series/series.html for more on Series) to the point of relative completeness. In doing so, I not only collected each title in the finest condition I could possibly find, but also collected the titles in their various states. For example, I’d seek out the plain Van Gelder copy, then the Japan vellum copy, and the vellum copy. There were also variant publisher’s bindings and when discovered they’d be subsumed into the collection. There were different papers used, and even flexible leather covers which the publisher used as a further sales enticement. I sort of felt like the Borg of Star Trek: “to resist is futile and you will be assimilated.” That’s what I kept doing, assimilating every possible state of the book into the collection and this sometimes included unique or trial copies. Part of this was accomplished by buying other Mosher collections. Just think of it, there were collectors who spent decades assembling what they had found, and if one is fortunate enough one can bring their whole collection into the fold and select those parts which add new light or present new material or which simply upgrade previously collected copies. Of course there were plenty of individual items outside of the collections that I’d find which nobody or at least few had ever seen before, and these would be avidly acquired. Remember, “you will be assimilated!” Brick by brick and stone by stone I’d build upon those collections. In looking over the collection in years past I could see it beginning to naturally break down into a number of different areas. These areas I’d refer to as sub-collections within the whole. To keep this short, here are the major sub-collections I began to form and still collect to this day: 1st: there are the books from Mosher’s personal library including books he used as the source texts for his own publications and books which he inscribed or in which he kept notes or recorded events, 2nd: there is the whole area of manuscripts including letters to, from, or about Mosher in addition to entire unpublished books written by Mosher himself, 3rd: the Mosher books that were placed in fine bindings by bookbinders around the world, 4th: all kinds of references relating to Mosher and his publishing program or even just containing ads for the Mosher Books, 5th: paraphernalia related to Mosher including all sorts of press ephemera, printer’s dummies, small pamphlets, order forms, prospectuses, drawings, lists, and so on, 6th: correspondence with Mosher collectors both past and present, and sales catalogues containing Mosher material, 7th: my own research into the Mosher Press which, of course, resulted in the new bibliography. Beyond that I co-assembled a list of all advertisers he used in his publication, The Bibelot, and I keep records on all the books in Mosher’s personal library, lists of binders, sources of Mosher collections around the country and in England, new articles including references to Mosher, and my own detailed memoirs now up to 530 pages, 8th: inscribed and association copies of the Mosher Books. This is an important area, to be sure, and I don’t want the reader to think that it’s not by my glossing over it. The whole business of association copies can provide a wealth of information to the researcher and there are some extremely capable collectors who do nothing but collect association copies, 9th: a collection of Mosher look-alike books, and lastly the 10th being: the Mosher books printed on real animal vellum often called “pure” vellum back in Mosher’s day. This area is a rarefied one requiring experience and, in this day and age, sometimes big bucks. At present I’ve assembled 27 of these books, many in fine highly decorated bindings, but I have only secured examples of about half of what was produced. For more information on this, you can read my essay entitled “A Collection within a Collection” at http://marauder.millersville.edu/~mosher/other/collection_within.htm. There’s much more I could say here, especially about how one manages to solicit such material, find it on the Internet, how to corral dealers into the fold of being helpful supports and building a network of such dealers and collectors who will send quotes or will let one know if something is coming up at auction, etc. But really Shawn, this could go on forever if I went into the various strategies employed. You mentioned “anchors” in an earlier conversation we had. Serious collectors understand the importance of building into the collection certain anchors, high spots, or whatever you want to call them. The collection should contain some indisputable bell ringers. Like with bindings, it would be to have some of the finest one could ever hope to find or see. In the area of association copies, it would be to have an association that would really “wow” the viewer. Of the vellum books, it would be having, say, the only known copy printed on vellum—a #1 of only one ever printed. You get the idea? It’s not just a matter of breadth, but also of depth. What guides you in the selection process? By that I take you to mean how do I select what should go into the collection. Well, of course, it has to fit within one of the categories, and the selection criteria changes from one category to another. If it’s books from the Mosher Press, my selection criteria is to upgrade a present copy. The criteria changes with books from Mosher’s library however. Condition can be helpful, but it’s not the final deciding factor. I’ve collected so many books from his library that I don’t feel adding another is warranted just because it has his bookplate. I already have around 450 or so volumes from Mosher’s library, and I’ve come to the point that if I add anything it should be an important book meaning a book that somehow has a connection to what Mosher published or perhaps which I know he highly prized. Now if I come across a book from his library and it’s rather inexpensive, I’ll snatch it up, but if it’s priced high I’ll pass it by. Lately I’ve received quotes from dealers who have terrible copies of inconsequential books, maybe missing a good part of the spine or even minus the whole binding, and for which they still ask premium prices. One such book was offered without its binding and they still wanted over $250 for it. I noted that there was another copy of the book for sale at $75 with the binding intact. The book meant nothing to the Mosher story, had no connection to his publishing program, in fact he never even mentioned it anywhere in his correspondence nor in any of his writings throughout The Bibelot. So I respectfully declined the offer. I mean, what’s the point? On another occasion I was offered a Walt Whitman item. True, Mosher did like Whitman’s writings, but the price was high because it had more value to a Whitman collector than to a Mosher collector, so I passed on that one. There were around 8,000-10,000 books in Mosher’s library. Am I going to try to collect every one that I can find? Good heavens no. One has to pick one’s battles and go after truly important material, and not every little piece that comes along. Now if a book came along from Mosher’s library and it was a bit tattered, but contained some of his notes, and let’s say it was inscribed, that would be a different story and I’d listen to a quote within reason. Next, if I’m considering Mosher books in extra bindings, then it’s basically condition, and then condition, and then condition. The amount of decorative detail and technical skill are also factors. Whether or not the book is signed by the binder will also factor in my decision. Price is always a consideration. Another thing that plays into all of this is whether or not one is a beginning collector or advanced. I have hundreds of those fine extra bindings, so adding another quarter or three-quarter morocco binding isn’t at all in the cards anymore. The more advanced the collection, the harder it is to find appropriate material because one already has so much and getting more of the mediocre kind of material doesn’t advance the importance of the collection one little jot. For me, a simpler consideration applies to association copies when it comes to condition. If it’s a great association copy, let’s say with an inscription to Mosher, I’m not as concerned about condition so I don’t really mind if the cover is defective or if there’s a torn page. The importance is in the existence of the book with the association and that doesn’t require pristine condition. One can hope it will be in fine condition, but that’s not the critical element. I recently bought a book inscribed by Andrew Lang, Mosher’s arch critic over his publication piracies. The condition wasn’t all that great, but in his inscription he mentions Mosher’s piracies and how they are perfectly legal in America, but not in Britain. That inscription in Lang’s hand is what’s important, not the overall condition of the book. It reveals Lang’s understanding of Mosher’s legal title. When I look at books printed on real vellum, I have certain features that I demand of the offering. Vellum is beautiful when clean, but ugly when dirty, wrinkled and otherwise unsightly. I won’t buy a vellum book if it doesn’t please me even if it is a Mosher book. A dealer had sent me a vellum Mosher and thought I’d snap it up quickly. I returned the book saying it wasn’t for me. I didn’t explain why I rejected it. In my estimation, dealers don’t like to have their books criticized no matter how right you may be. I received an e-mail back from the dealer saying that he was curious as to why I passed on the volume. He said he really wanted to know. I gave him my complete and unvarnished report. That instance was different. He wanted to know, but I wouldn’t ever volunteer that kind of information or at most keep it to a minimum. That’s one of the things I’ve learned along the way. Don’t forget, I’m also a dealer so I know what it’s like receiving an unsolicited report from the other end. I don’t think I need to go into each and every category to explain my selection or rejection criteria. Suffice it to say that you have to come up with what you feel supports the building of your collection and try to keep to that, but remember, there are always exceptions. Presumably you cast a wide net by now, and you trade up whenever you can. Are you presently both the leading collector and seller of Mosher material? I am certainly the leading collector and am the leading seller of Mosher material, although if I had to make a living at it I’d be sunk. There just isn’t a really big market for any of the small late 19th or early 20th century American presses these days. And you’re correct Shawn, I have indeed cast a wide net and for many dealers in America and in England who know about me—and that’s a considerable number—I’m their first and perhaps only contact whenever anything interesting comes on the market. I get a kick out of some dealers who contact me and first ask if I’ve already heard about a certain Mosher book for sale. Then there are dealers who tell me they’ve been to England or California and ask for Mosher related material and they’re told that whenever their firm gets such they quote Bishop. Apparently my reputation precedes me, and the dealers who look for things for me. Keep in mind too that it’s so important to have the confidence and good wishes of select dealers. You’ve got to establish relationships which will pay off time after time after time. I have heard established booksellers warn against letting the collector bug infect the sales desk, but you seem to have reached a healthy balance. I wouldn’t exactly agree with that, but I’ve learned to at least manage it. I’m sure by many standards I’d be judged as being off the deep end. Actually there are many dealers out there who assemble collections and then sell them as a whole, so I’m certainly not alone in putting together a collection. It’s just that the one I put together isn’t going to be sold in the foreseeable future and perhaps never. But can I say that I don’t have “the bug?” I can’t say that because I do, but thank goodness I haven’t allowed myself to collect anything else or I’d really be in hot stew. As a member of the ABAA and frequent show exhibitor, you deal in all kinds of fine books, of course. Where do you find most of your stock, and what percentage do you sell by hand versus online? I find most of my books in book stores or at book shows. Quite frankly, just about everything I find is at those locations and only once in a while do I find books for the business on-line. Likewise, most of my sales are at book shows or come from quotes to collectors and institutions. Do I make a lot of on-line sales? Not really, but I have gotten several important collectors because they’ve seen my listings. Generally speaking, are there any great known Mosher collection icebergs you expect to break loose and float out to sea some day? I love your question. Yes, there is one but I doubt that it will ever come my way unless something radical happens. If it “breaks loose” as you say, I’ll be here ready to try to get it or to at least jack-hammer off pieces of it. I know that collection intimately and there are really only a few items, perhaps two dozen, in which I’d be interested. The rest would be duplication, and the whole collection is only part of the size of my own collection plus the elements of my collection are of higher quality to be sure. I’ve had many years to upgrade copies of the books and believe me, I know what I say when I indicate that this is the finest collection in private or even in public hands for that matter except for Norman Strouse’s collection which I’d say is equal in many ways. Speaking in just sheer number, the largest institutional collection is only about half to three-quarter the size of the Mosher collection here, and the largest private collection that I know of is much smaller and very unbalanced in many respects. For example, there may be thirty of the Mosher catalogues for a certain date, but other years are wanting. So far as I know, I have the only complete run of the Mosher catalogues in the country, public or private. But that’s just one example of what I mean by unbalanced. Another would be the type of books they have from Mosher’s library, or the paucity of same. I’ve made it a point to have many of Mosher’s personal library books that he actually used for re-making as his own publications. I’ve seen to it that I have examples of bindings and binding designs that he imitated on his own books, and I’ve concentrated in getting books that were marked up for the printer to use to set the type. The collection is well thought out, even if I say so myself. You calculate that Mosher published 783 examples of “fine literature in pleasing book formats” from 1891-1923. Do publishing surprises from this press continue to present themselves? Not that I’ve found. I think scholars have pretty well nailed down the corpus of works published by the press; however, every now and then something does pop up that might, just might, be a privately printed Mosher publication. I found such an item in an archive of correspondence between Mosher and the New York publisher, Charles Pratt, which I bought a couple years ago. The booklet is entitled Of Beauty and looks very much like a Mosher publication, although my Morellian analysis still leads me to suspect the piece as being of Mosher’s production and therefore I don’t attribute it to Mosher yet, but the jury’s still out. I use Morellian analysis to mean the careful examination and comparison of particular physical and content elements with known examples, in this case of Mosher’s publications. There are so few books for which I’m still personally looking, but a privately printed work In Measured Language (1899) by Ephraim Chamberlain Cummings remains elusive, as does the privately printed Little Willie (Boston, 1904) by Eugene Field. I’m also still looking for Verses and a Dream (1922) printed for Josephine B. Pressey. There were only three copies printed and I know where two of the three are so there might be a slim chance that I might find a third available for sale. Likewise, I still seek—and notice these are all privately printed books—the Works of Arthur Symons: A Bibliographical Note (1912) which has been elusive. Only five copies were printed. Of the regular Mosher books themselves, I’m still trying to find a Japan vellum copy of George Russell’s (A.E.’s) Homeward Songs by the Way (1895), and some of the volumes of The Bibelot printed on Japan vellum. Of course I’m still looking for Mosher books printed on real vellum. I have these and any others listed on a Wants List which I send to anybody who cares to have it on file. They just have to contact me at mosher@ptd.net. What big Mosher mysteries remain unsolved, bibliographic or otherwise? There are a few. One is where in the world did all of Mosher’s correspondence to his first wife go to? His first wife was Ellie Dresser who later renamed herself Aimee Lenalie after she divorced ol’ Tommy Boy and lived in New York City. I know her letters to him were destroyed by fire, but his letters to her still remain unaccounted for. Another big question I’ve had over the years is where in the world did Mosher’s 34 volume set of Bell’s British Theatre (1790-1797) go to? I remain vigilant at trying to find this set—for sentimental reasons if for nothing else—and would certainly like to buy it for the collection unless it’s already in an institution. Just knowing where it is would be a weight off my mind. To be sure, there are other Mosher mysteries. Who was the “attic philosopher” (how he signed his name) in New York City whom Mosher used to visit? Another: if the business records were not destroyed, where are they? Where did Mosher’s rumored pornography collection go to, and what was in it? Is there an insurance list of the books that were destroyed in the fire at Mosher’s office? In terms of bibliographical rarities, there is record of a privately printed Mosher Press publication which, so far as I know, a copy has not yet been found: In Memoriam (1917) printed for Arthur W. Sewall of Philadelphia. Records at the Mosher Press say it was printed, but thus far nobody has ever seen a copy except for the Mosher Press employees who recorded it and presumably Arthur Sewall and family. Were all copies destroyed? Are they still in storage? Who knows? Thus far all we can call it is a ghost book. Do you prefer the old days, hunting up oft-under priced copies in all their quirky hiding places; or the convenience of the internet, where prices are often copied rather than calculated, and where there is much more to look at but many more people doing the looking? If I could have my pick I really rather enjoyed the old days. I enjoyed the hunt. I enjoyed finding material in out of the way haunts. I enjoyed the serendipity. And I enjoyed having an exclusive set of knowledge built upon my reference works, my experience, and my ability to find out information. Now it’s all open to the democracy of eyes and has lessened the need to build and maintain a reference base. Of course it works the other way too. I do enjoy the rapid access to information and if you know what you’re looking for, the ability to find an otherwise obscure piece with relative ease. I guess if you could fuse the two worlds that would probably be optimum. What happened to Mosher’s personal papers and library upon his death? Ah yes, his personal papers. There were two sets: there were his business papers and then there were his personal writings and letters. The business papers were actually taken by an office assistant, Oliver Sheean, and given to Harvard. I don’t think he had title to the papers; he just did it. So you can see many of the letters that were in the business files if you access them at the Houghton Library at Harvard. As for the accounting books, they were heavily guarded by Mosher’s assistant, Flora Macdonald Lamb. After Mosher’s death in 1923 they were transferred over to the second Mrs. Mosher, and from that point they seemed to be lost or were perhaps destroyed. They weren’t turned over to the Williams Book Store folks who bought out the Mosher Press. Then there were Mosher’s really personal papers which he had locked away in his desk. He had given Flora Lamb the instructions to take the material upon his death and to make sure it didn’t get into the hands of the second Mrs. Mosher. A stash of letters from his first wife which he kept were destroyed in the office fireplace as per his wishes. The other material Flora Lamb took home with her for safe keeping. Today the papers are part and parcel of the Mosher collection here. There are four great hoards of Mosher papers. The business correspondence from Mosher’s authors at the Houghton, the papers turned over to Norman Strouse through one of Mosher’s sons which are now at the Gleeson Library of the University of San Francisco, the papers turned over to the University of Arizona at Tempe by the family of Mosher’s other son, and the personal papers kept by Flora Lamb. Add to that the wonderful collection of letters from Mosher to W. Irving Way at the Huntington Library and you’ve got the major portion of Mosher’s letters and files. All the rest are scattered among numerous institutions across the country, and I continue to buy any correspondence to or from Mosher. As for Mosher’s personal library, there were two parts. That portion that was kept at his office was destroyed by a fire during Mosher’s lifetime. After his death, the Mosher library was sold in two parts by Parke-Bernet Galleries in New York: the major portion on May 10-11, 1948 and the last part on October 11-12 of the same year. There was a more or less complete 132-page manuscript listing of all Mosher’s books made around 1930 by Oliver Sheean. This listing is now in my own Mosher collection. The books got scattered to the four winds, but over 450 of them are now back together here as well. How will the Mosher biography you are working on differ significantly from material that has been published already? Basically in detail and in revealing friendships and relationships hitherto unexplored or unexamined. Norman Strouse’s biography is nice, but sketchy. He knew it only scratched the surface, and offered to open his collection to anyone willing to write a better and more comprehensive biography. Another area which hasn’t been explored much has to do with Mosher’s early life and what led up to his entrance into book publishing. That will clearly be a significant addition to what we know about the man. Beyond that, how he was able to make such a successful go of it as a small publisher in America. One of the more difficult parts of Mosher’s life is his privacy, his introspective nature. Much of his life was built upon the inner man and intense connections with like-minded folks. Hopefully I’ll be able to present a better picture of what moved and motivated him, what influences he had upon others, and how he fit into his times and the literary movements of the day. His is a rather unique story and deserves a fuller treatment. I truly wanted someone else to write the biography, but given that I don’t see that happening, I reluctantly decided to attempt to do it myself. I have a back-up plan if the biography isn’t written, and that involves the same line of research on which I’ve embarked—but for now I’ll keep that to myself. The other big question is where your Mosher collection will end up some day. Have you reached a decision on this yet? But I haven’t answered your question about where the collection will go, have I? There are a few possibilities. One university in particular is interested in having it merge with a spectacular collection of materials relating to Victorian and fin de siècle literature. Their collections are rich in British books, letters and art from the period, but they don’t really have an American counterpart from the same period. The Mosher collection in all its permutations would be an ideal fit, but nothing has been firmed up so we’ll just have to see. As for the other possible angles, those I’ll keep to myself for now. -Any parting thoughts or words of wisdom? Actually I do have a few and I promise to keep these short. Both my bookselling and buying have put me in contact with people all over the world. Likewise, my collecting contacts have come from as far away as France, Switzerland, Spain, Australia, England and Ireland, and Canada. Even the great book scout in Paris, Martin Stone, knew about my Mosher collecting and managed to find me a leather bound book from the library of a princess. In America I’ve probably touched base with folks in over thirty states. I even remember a fellow who quoted me some important books from Mosher’s library while he was watching a moose just outside his window in Alaska—I know, he sent me a JPEG picture as it was happening. There are some great stories and adventures we’ve had finding this material and I hope it continues for years to come. As I’ve pounded the streets looking for Mosher material, I’ve encountered a few dealers who either confessed complete ignorance about his publishing program, or professed him to be a nobody in book history. One big time dealer confided in me that when he was young he collected Mosher’s books but then he grew up. He followed this with a broad grin. Yes, I guess that’s kind of funny, but it harbors the feeling that Mosher isn’t worth collecting, that his books are just a bunch of flimsy and almost ephemeral things or at best gift books, or that anyone serious about book collecting shouldn’t concern themselves with Mosher material. In my view, simply stated, Thomas Bird Mosher not only expressed an ideal in bookmaking but lived it. He’s certainly one of the most colorful characters across the American bookmaking scene and I truly feel blessed having an entire library set up just for the collection of his wares, the various books he treasured and the manuscript material which makes them come alive. He was a bookman par excellence. The Mosher bibliography I wrote helped to set the story straight, but more will come out as time passes. Lastly, in answer to that Aesop collector who said “Oh no, dear fellow, you’re not a collector, you’re just a buyer,” I can now say that I’m both. I buy and sell for the business, but can lay claim as a collector equal to any of his efforts, albeit in a different realm. Together we can both commiserate as fellow collectors. That’s it Shawn, I’ve said my piece. -I want to thank you again for your time and expertise Philip. In the middle of our correspondence I asked about future contributions in the form of original content on new topics. “Well,” you responded, “new writing I can provide, BUT… you might feel deflated when I say that all I write about is on some aspect or another involving Mosher. It’s through the Mosher essays that I convey my suggestions for buying and collecting.” Now that I’ve had a chance to review much of that material and the universal applications you allude to, your answer makes eminent sense. Keep up the good work, and may the publication of these two IOBA Standard pieces unearth additional deep deposits of Mosherite for you in the years to come. Thanks Shawn, I really appreciate the opportunity to have worked with you. Philip R. Bishop operates MOSHER BOOKS out of Ephrata, PA and can be contacted at http://www.stairway.org/mosher. #booksellers

Table of Contents Foreword What Should Amazon Do with AbeBooks? Problems with Amazon as an Antiquarian Seller Site What Is Wrong With Today’s Amazon? A Bookseller’s Tasha Tudor Remembrance Robert Fisher of Echo Letterpress An Open Letter To The Select Committee On Security And Consitutional Affairs, Parliament Of The Republic Of South Africa Embracing the Unexpected Books About Bookselling: The Bookseller’s Apprentice Adventures with a Binder Author Profile: Matthew Eck June Gaulding and Mark Gaulding of JMVintage Alan Deffenderfer of ABD Booksellers Golden Books Group of Devon, U.K. Letter to the Editor: Thank You Yard Sale Tales Happy Hits Literary Pilgrimages: Patchin Place A passion for books but not proofreading MacIntosh Books and Paper Book Store Labels: Zavelle Book Stores, Philadelphia Bookplates: W. B. Brandt & Co. The Bookshelf of Willie Sutton

Dated 2/19/1952, probably International News Photo.

In the online bookselling Dreamtime about a decade ago, there was Interloc (the larval stage of Alibris), Bibliofind (very clean of limb), and ABE (like fresh Canadian spring water). The Bibliofind list was a great place to talk privately about our profession, and we used to speculate on trends. We envisioned corporations buying these book-loving companies up, and we hoped that one or more of the search services would survive as strong independents and good partners. Ironically, Bibliofind was bought out and exterminated first by Amazon in a roundabout but purposeful manner, the early Alibris centralized business model sought to hide booksellers from our customers, and the evolution of ABE could serve as a study of creeping corporatism, though to be fair many of our problems are based on The Glut (millions of books dredged up by an army of overnight booksellers), and not solely on the depredations of the 3 As. And so it was on a quiet first of August before a three day Canadian weekend that we received notice Amazon had acquired ABE, pending final approval, and no it was not another April Fool’s-type jest. Over the years our ABE fees have doubled or quadrupled while our sales were halved or quartered, and we wonder how much of those revenues derived from our hard work and expertise went toward improving the balance sheet and making this property ripe for picking. This rather seismic event might have raised greater fears and more resentment years ago when ABE was pure, but things have gone so far downhill with mega-lister clogged search result pages, the credit card processing grab, and a score of other professional and technical problems that many of us are hoping equally impure Amazon can save the day. Unless Amazon gets religion all of a sudden about the difference between unique used/out-of-print/antiquarian books and shiny identical new ones fresh from the publisher’s warehouse, however, there’s a good chance we are jumping from a sinking ship to a ship of fools. I have given up debating enthusiastic Amazon supporters, who believe that the phenomenal branding and number of eyeballs Amazon delivers absolves the company of all sins against our noble profession. I shop there for cheap music and new books, but I usually don’t do my research or important buying there due to all the dumbing down and distractions, and I suspect it is the last choice for serious book buyers who know about the alternatives. Amazon’s customer base is not as sophisticated either. We just heard the following rationale for a refund from an IOBA bookseller: “I was ignorant of the fact that the product that I was buying was a book.” This is what makes the loss or diminution of ABE worrisome. Amazon makes it very easy to order books and it delivers them quickly on the back end, but it also makes it difficult to list books and to find books on the front end. And for “better” titles, Amazon’s dirty little secret is that these selfsame books can often be ordered directly, easily, and safely from independent booksellers, without the big Amazon markup added to cover the costs of doing business there, or added by those who realize that most buyers don’t know about this alternative. “Customer-centric” sounds great at first blush, but it often involves brutalizing your suppliers, undermining other businesses in the quest for monopoly, degrading traditional standards that are usually there for a good reason, and actually increasing prices in unseen ways. I have two visions of Amazon. The first is of a galactic horn of plenty sluggishly moving through the universe devouring star systems with the same guiding principles that inform WalMart. The other is of the Pythonesque Ministry of Silly Walks that must be their used books department, deep down in the bowels of the rude cornucopia. I picture the office door at an angle, up off the floor a few feet with a whacky doorknob and painted some bright color, with people inside jumping through flaming hoops and putting out small fires all day, which is what they make us do with technical inefficiencies (uploading, etc.) and bibliographic atrocities (truncating descriptions, etc.) far too numerous to list here. There is a third hopeful vision, long cherished, of our nice books smoothly interfacing with Amazon’s enormous potential. Will they start from scratch with used books and integrate AbeBooks into that, or will they make AbeBooks the premier arm of their bookselling empire? Will they squeeze us for profits, hide our identities, and coerce us into lowering standards, or will they respect the profession and treat us as business owners rather than shipping clerks? Will either company even listen to us? One thing for certain is that IOBA will try to make them listen, as when one of our Canadian members reported on challenging the head of AbeBooks heading for his sports car out on the street after a good but rather restrictive radio interview on hurtful new shipping commissions “like an Ent lecturing Saruman.” In this issue, three online bookseller insiders weigh in on the ABE takeover; a New Hampshire bookman says farewell to a beloved children’s author; IOBA supports our South African colleagues; a cool letterpress Q & A; and Joe Perlman writes about Great Unexpectations. The Reference Desk performs a strip search; the book review comes with Goodspeed; and we open a new drawer for exciting interviews with up and coming authors. The Tool Box gets into a bind and fights corruption. IOBA Bookseller Profiles say Havre de Grace, MD; go leather in Devon, U.K.; yet bow to royalty in Palm Desert, CA. If that doesn’t stuff you, how about a large slice of Addenda for dessert? I am late on this issue for the first time (July in October), and will try to catch up, though it’s always so tempting to save untold hours with two little words—“combined issue.” You can help. Send articles about your specialties, send brief pieces, send something. Please see “Solicitations” in the back pages for more information. PS: Sorry to take care of internal business in a foreword, but it has come to our attention that a good portion of IOBA members are not receiving our Announce List messages, probably because they are being filtered into a trash or junk folder. You can opt out of other lists, like Discuss or TradeBooks, but we ask all of you to make sure you are receiving Announce List messages, as that is our official conduit for important announcements, the annual August renewal notice (for the membership year September through August), voting on board elections, etc. We try to use it sparingly but we need it to reach all of you. Please consider this PS as a ping test. If you received word of this new issue of the Standard through the Announce List, you are golden. If you found your way here through some other means, take action to make sure Announce List emails go into your In Box. We can help you with this if you need it. Thank you kindly. We now return you to more standard programming.

What is wrong with Amazon? This is a question that is not possible to answer with any degree of objectivity for either buyer or seller since Amazon is a megamarket for an enormous variety of goods and services. So this, for what it’s worth, is the view of a bookseller. Or, to be more precise, an internet-only bookseller of vintage and antiquarian books. It should be stated right at the top that Amazon is one of the best known online markets in the world. If it has not already, it will certainly soon be replacing eBay as the foremost. In its early days it went deep into the red spending hundreds of millions on advertising, and has only recently achieved profitability. Part of the reason for its success has been the diversification of product lines since its origins as a seller of new books, and its highly proactive stand on customer service. Amazon is a large publicly traded corporation, and as such perhaps the most notable flaw is its inherent bureaucratic inertia and primary focus on shareholder approval. This means it is slow to respond to market dynamics, and when those changes come the first priority is short term profits rather than long term strategies. But most importantly, its corporate mindset has often led to the creation of general policies that do not fit particular situations—the classic “cookie-cutter” approach. More on that later. As a website, Amazon is well designed with the classic triple columns, and there is a lack of technical gimmicks (a good thing). It is a bit cluttered though, as it takes full advantage of the latest in targeted marketing by trying to sell you things that are even remotely related to your past purchases. This can become very annoying, when it is not humorous. Amazon is currently trying to sell me three CDs in three foreign languages I do not speak and have never browsed in. I have never even bought a CD from Amazon, and the ones I sold were all in English. It is also trying to sell me hand tools and things I will never use, like the ubiquitous (on Amazon) Kindle. Perhaps Amazon’s worst flaw is its horrendous search function. When I key in JOHN DICKINSON LETTERS into the default search bar I get 390 results with everything from CDs to legal pads, all jumbled with books, in no discernable order. Even the many duplicate titles are not sequential. Most do not even contain all three keywords in the title. But most troublesome and annoying is that Amazon insists on displaying items that are not in stock, effectively wasting everybody’s time. And for books there is that ever obnoxious “UNKNOWN BINDING” designation. For some reason I cannot upload listings without a stated binding, but others apparently can, or if grandfathered, there has never been an attempt to clean these listings. Particularly vexing is the lack of an Advanced Search link on the main page, until one clicks on an actual book in the search results. Here my above-mentioned search terms bring up only eight listings. Three are the same title, and five are unavailable, with only two actual choices. If I click on one of those titles I am brought to a Product Details page in which an image, if it exists, will be the one uploaded by Muse (or a related service) if it is ISBN, or by anyone if it is pre-ISBN. And there is no clear way to indicate exactly which book this is on the Product Listing pages. This is the One Picture Fits All method of selling books. This is clearly dysfunctional for the antiquarian market, where a single edition may have multiple varieties of bindings. Even worse is that the product description on the Details page is determined by whoever was the first one to upload it. This is not a problem for newer books with their publisher-supplied descriptions, but it’s a clear problem for pre-ISBN titles where the description may be simply wrong, but most frequently is mercifully omitted. This page also gives customers the opportunity to rate the title, to write and vidcam reviews (often supplied by commercial services for newer books), and even to start a discussion about it. This may be a positive thing, but gives the appearance of unnecessary clutter for older books where these are rarely if ever filled out. The link for the offerings is in a small font, and when clicked will bring up all listings (with optional tabs for NEW, USED, and COLLECTIBLE)—cheapest (including shipping) first. Amazon always encourages third party (3P) sellers to list cheapest (more on this when we get to selling). This is the page where Amazon falls flat on its face as a bookseller, and where the cookie cutter approach creates problems for buyers and sellers alike. Newer books sometimes share ISBNs. Older books are occasionally incorrectly bundled under an incorrect ASIN, Amazon’s kludgy part number for items without ISBNs. Basic bibliographic information such as Title, Author, Publisher, and Date are not included on the listings page, unless the seller uploaded in UIEE, in which case the listing will be missing the Title and Author. Descriptions, called “Comments” by Amazon, are completely optional. Many vendors do not even use them. And those which are supplied display only around 150 characters (out of 1000 allowed) before the customer must hit the >>MORE button to see the rest. As a result the typical description on Amazon is pathetic by any industry standards. Amazon is more interested in displaying vendor ratings and shipping options than encouraging sellers to display a working knowledge of their products. It is a method great for selling toothpaste, but miserable for selling books from 3P vendors who are not selling brand new items. From a seller’s perspective, Amazon is, simply put, annoying. Its fees aren’t too bad for Marketplace vendors (“rent” is not based on quantity, and the commission includes credit card purchasing), but the $1.35 shipping skim, now called by another name for legal reasons, significantly adds to their slice of the pie for lower end items. In fact, by encouraging penny sellers it is the sole commission from them. However, this can be compensated for by raising prices there. Amazon has about a half million “booksellers” out of a seller total of around 1.5 million, but from general observation and from the message forums it appears that the vast majority are simply hobbyists or those persuaded to hit the “Sell Yours Here” button based on a desire to clean out their basement. Perhaps no other market is so utterly deluged by so many who are so clearly clueless about the nature of their product. Sellers are encouraged to undercut. The first thing Amazon displays when a seller goes to list a book is the lowest price, independent of condition or other information about it. A beat up uncollectible copy of Harry Potter may well be fairly listed at $2 or so, but the next person listing the title will be encouraged by Amazon, albeit implicitly, to list their Near Fine copy at $1.99, with the inevitable result that the book will sooner or later descend to a penny. And then there is automated repricing software like Monsoon. When two sellers are using Monsoon at the same time for the same book, the price will tank. As they are undercutting each other, anyone else listing the same book will likely undercut them, and within a short time the perceived value of a normally fairly priced item will become worthless. This is not such a problem for items that are desirable as they will quickly be bought up, especially by dealers, but for scarcer items on the long tail where two megalisters who don’t even own the book in question still list it, the price stays wrecked. Books are divided into two broad categories: USED and COLLECTIBLE. Amazon has decided that no ex-libs can be collectible, and that they cannot be listed under $10. And that designation cannot be edited online or in any manner except by uploading through Amazon’s native CSV format. Amazon does not accept its numeric condition codes in UIEE. But most amazingly is that Amazon has never bothered to release a simple database conversion utility to convert standard book database formats such as HomeBase or UIEE into its native format, and indeed the instructions for doing so in Excel with a CSV export are only available when requested directly through their (excellent) customer service department. The result is that sellers who find the categorization useful (we do not) have traditionally been forced to purchase somewhat expensive commercial software or services. BookHound is now available free through Biblio, but it is somewhat hobbled by its system requirements (XP+) and lack of network capabilities. Amazon now requires, at least from smaller listers using either online listing or UIEE (as we do), that all major bibliographic fields be filled in: Author, Publisher, Date, and Binding. This is problematic for titles published without dates, or authors, and where Amazon does not bother to learn bibliographic terms such as ¾ leather, or comb bound. Fortunately dummy values can be inserted either online or in export files, and bindings can be replaced to either softcover or hardcover. It is particularly troublesome that Amazon does not allow FTP uploads, so a simple script cannot upload deletes to it as part of a normal data management routine that can be used for other sites. But worst of all is the fact that Amazon will parse the file uploaded through its web site and reject any listings with missing fields before looking at its availability status. In short, this means that a file of deletes will include some that are not deleted because they have been rejected before the sold status was even evaluated. Not all books uploaded will be accepted by Amazon. Other than problems with fields, it also has problems with certain characters like ampersands. Incredibly, if a book is already listed on a foreign site it will be rejected by Amazon, for no known reason that makes any sense. Amazon also has its version of political correctness and will bar certain listings. It will accept most ARCs but later delete them and issue warnings. Another irritation is that for listings with descriptions of over 1000 characters it deletes the entire description rather than simply truncating it. Titles are truncated at 80 characters, yet some at the site have around 150. Amazon has a quality control algorithm that appears to be aimed at smaller sellers. Megalisters often get by with lousy feedback, while smaller listers with higher than 5% refunds get “warned.” The screws have been turned recently and now problem orders will generate that warning at 1%. Amazon is doing everything possible to hide email addresses from sellers, who are forced into using an obnoxious form in which the actual message may be hidden behind a fear inspiring tirade by Amazon to try to prevent direct transactions. This has effectively eliminated shipping emails from us. They have an automated software order retrieval which will show emails but it is, for us, impossible to use when tried on three machines and two operating systems. The Phantom Bookseller cannot be contacted.

Most importantly, Amazon should take its time and look at AbeBooks carefully, recognize its unique strengths (and its many easily-cured weaknesses), and come to the wise decision that AbeBooks should remain a stand-alone website. Some of the main strengths of AbeBooks include the breadth and depth of book and ephemera listings, the superior advanced search functions, the unique wants matching function, the cross-listing of books on websites in five languages, and what remains of dealer goodwill. Now I’m not saying there shouldn’t be some cross-site promotion—there should. But AbeBooks should fill a niche that Amazon isn’t set-up to properly deal with—used books and ephemera from used book dealers. While Amazon has entered this market and succeeded to some extent, their database built around rolling up everything into ASINs (Amazon Standard Identification Numbers), while perfect for dealing with widgets, is not well-suited to unique items. Several other Amazon policies and practices also cause problems, especially for the rare/collectable book buyers (character limits on descriptions, no books over $2500, etc.). AbeBooks has long enjoyed many advantages for used and rare/collectable book buyers which would be lost if the AbeBooks listings were simply integrated onto Amazon. If I were Amazon, I would refocus AbeBooks back into serving the needs of used and rare/collectable book buyers and dealers while perhaps offering AbeBooks buyers the option to see new books and/or Amazon inventory (but not as they currently do). How should they do this? Technical Assistance Amazon should immediately offer technical (systems/programming) assistance to AbeBooks to start addressing the many recent technical problems with the AbeBooks website (both the general functioning and how the site appears across different browsers), the accounting and e-mail problems, and the problems with database processing of uploads and inventory. I’d also have Amazon get the endlessly-delayed gift certificates back on schedule so that they’re finally ready for this holiday season. The staff lent/rented by Amazon could also assist AbeBooks with the current clean-up of the website and with building automated queries to help AbeBooks staff identify problems on an ongoing basis. This shouldn’t wait until the acquisition is final. AbeBooks has programming positions open currently (and has for quite some time) and should simply contract with Amazon to fill those positions with Amazon staff now. Decluttering AbeBooks Amazon should remove clutter from the AbeBooks website—no more photocopies, no more e-books, no more supposedly free shipping, no more duplicate accounts, no more kitchen appliances, no more slogans and propaganda in listings, and no more over-priced new books and PODs. Photocopies don’t belong on AbeBooks, especially the high-priced ones currently there which generally can be obtained either free online or free or at little cost via interlibrary loan. They simply clutter searches with things buyers generally don’t want. E-books could probably best be handled by just forwarding buyers into Amazon—this is an area where their widget-based system is probably better-suited and where they already are pushing their Kindle product. A little advertisement box on the homepage would be all that’s needed. Free shipping in its current form on AbeBooks is so often not free. This is easy for any buyer to see since duplicate accounts (one without free shipping and one with) make it clear that a fair number of dealers aren’t really offering free shipping but instead just inclusive shipping or reduced shipping. False or misleading advertising isn’t helpful to anyone and the whole concept of free shipping feeds into the race to the bottom in pricing—again something that’s not helpful to dealers nor AbeBooks/Amazon in the long run. Duplicate accounts are simply a way for dealers to page-hog—something that’s not helpful to anyone, especially buyers. Refrigerators, microwave ovens, and everything else which doesn’t fall into the basic books and ephemera category needs to be removed. AbeBooks has taken some steps to do this but could do much more. Hopefully Amazon will help as mentioned above. Slogans and propaganda in descriptions on AbeBooks need to be removed. If this information is seen as being useful to some buyers, then it needs to be moved into a separate field, as it was before AbeBooks revamped the Book Details page, to not clutter descriptions for all buyers. New Books and Print-on-Demand Books (PODs) AbeBooks was right that new books and PODs are of interest to many used book buyers but was wrong in their implementation. Unfortunately what AbeBooks has currently is a large quantity of horribly over-priced readily available new books and PODs, too many poorly described new books, way too many poorly or deceptively described PODs, page-hogging by some sellers, books listed for sale that aren’t truly available anymore, no reasonable way for buyers looking for real used books to eliminate new books and PODs from search results, and no way for buyers to easily know for sure which books are actually in hand at a dealer’s premises and which will be ordered/shipped from a distributor/publisher/wholesaler. Hopefully Amazon will completely rethink this. Amazon could certainly fill these needs in a variety of ways. Amazon should start by immediately booting off all new book and POD relister sellers who have a consistent pattern of over-pricing on readily available in-print books and PODs. These sellers do no service to anyone here and don’t deserve a second chance. Amazon should review pricing by relister sellers on a regular basis to ensure that any relister sellers on the site are offering value to buyers rather than a negative experience. If Amazon decides to allow some new book and POD relister sellers to stay, I hope they will also set a very high fulfillment requirement (perhaps something like 98%). I also hope they will require a higher level of detail in all listings—providing all the details wanted by buyers of new books and PODs and without a bunch of slogans tacked onto the descriptions. Since the relister has no inventory-holding costs, it’s quite reasonable to expect them to be able to keep their catalogue accurate, detailed, and up-to-date and to expect them to be able to source their books in a way that ensures deliveries are made on time. I’d also recommend Amazon create a clear way for buyers to see which books are on hand versus books which will be ordered/shipped from third parties (and ideally the location from which the books will be shipped). An alternative is for Amazon to boot off all the new book and POD relister sellers and keep that inventory on Amazon. AbeBooks could then offer several ways for buyers to find those books: an advertisement on the homepage that simply redirects buyers into Amazon, offering buyers the opportunity at the search menu to include all Amazon results or just Amazon results for new books and/or PODs, or Amazon could re-work the search results screens so that Amazon results appear automatically at the end of search results with a clear dividing line stating that the results which follow are from Amazon. Another alternative is to boot off all the new book and POD relister sellers and just put Amazon’s own inventory onto AbeBooks, along with their In Stock indicators and all. Stopping Dealer Exodus Amazon needs to stem the tide (a small but increasing flow) of good dealers exiting AbeBooks. AbeBooks reached a peak of about 13,500 dealers but over the past year or two that total has slowly and steadily fallen. While changes to help buyers will make dealers happy, Amazon also needs to rethink some of the AbeBooks decisions which directly impacted dealers (and often buyers) over the past few years. A. First, I’d recommend some rethinking about credit cards. Professional dealers could and should be allowed to take back processing of credit cards. Amazon would do well to add some qualifications to this both to protect buyers and themselves, while encouraging use of the AbeBooks Payment Processing services. One simple idea (not mine) would be to only allow dealers to process cards after they’ve been with AbeBooks for awhile and have a proven track record—initially all orders using cards would be processed by AbeBooks and after a certain point the dealer could opt to change to processing cards themselves. Dealers with a proven track record elsewhere (or who had left AbeBooks previously and then returned) could perhaps be allowed to skip this “time at AbeBooks” requirement. If this is a non-starter (which it shouldn’t be!), then at a bare minimum the card processing needs to work better for both buyers and dealers. The 5.5% fee to dealers is unreasonable and needs to be reduced. A new card processor should be chosen who fails less often and who can provide exact reasons for rejections, when possible, that can be passed along to buyers and reviewed in aggregate by AbeBooks, so they can address potential problems like multiple orders at the time of the order by providing guidance to the buyer. All AbeBooks websites should allow buyers the option to choose from a selection of charging currencies. This would ensure that Canadian buyers buying from Canadian dealers aren’t paying double-conversion spreads on their orders (likewise for Australian buyers buying from Australian dealers, etc). This would also allow Irish buyers to place their orders on an English-language AbeBooks site but be charged in Euros and Spanish-speaking buyers could use IberLibro but be charged in US$ (or £ or whichever currency is appropriate). The charges should be processed via AbeBooks/Amazon in the country of the charge, when possible, so buyers don’t get hit with additional foreign and/or ISA fees by their card issuers. Ideally, the card processor chosen should offer services to authorize the charge (but not complete the charge) at the time of order placement. Upon processing by the dealer, the charge is completed. If the charge is reduced or extra charges are requested and approved, the card processor should be able to adjust the charge and complete the charge (they should be able to accomplish this most of the time without re-authorizing but if need be they would reverse the initial authorization and request authorization again). This would help buyers know right away if they’ve made an error entering their details without the annoying practice of putting through the charge before the order is confirmed, and it would help dealers avoid the annoyance of card rejections. B. The recent decision to charge commission on shipping and handling charges should be reversed. This isn’t good for so many reasons but perhaps mostly because it does exactly the opposite of what AbeBooks says it was intended to do (lower the shipping fees paid by buyers). C. The order process should be enhanced to allow for automated tax collection (both GST for Canadian dealers and Sales Tax for US dealers). If card processing by dealers isn’t allowed, this is a must and should be a breeze for Amazon to implement. D. The shipping matrix should be enhanced to allow dealers to opt into a tiered matrix that takes weight into account. For dealers who wish to opt out, the tiered matrix would have a “same” option so all tiers would be set to the same rates. The extra charges process should remain for sets and extremely heavy books. E. Amazon would do well to try and bring back some of the reseller programs, but I fear many of those companies won’t be interested in forging alliances with Amazon (given the damage done to their businesses by competition with Amazon). International Focus Amazon should refocus AbeBooks on international expansion using one brand name and should continue to use one database across all AbeBooks websites. AbeBooks’ foray into Gojaba is likely to continue to be a drain on resources for quite some time so I’d suggest that experiment be ended, though several of the ideas behind it should be used to better AbeBooks. The multi-character support of Gojaba’s database and website should be built into AbeBooks so that AbeBooks dealers listing Chinese or Russian or Croatian books could use the proper characters to list them and so that buyers using the proper characters to search for them could actually find them. The idea of expanding more rapidly into other languages/countries with a streamlined website (as Gojaba was doing) is also a good idea that AbeBooks should make use of, but with all of their listings showing on those sites. As business increases the websites can be developed further, but the streamlined websites would at least provide the basic tools so a buyer can search and purchase in their own language and so a dealer can set up and manage their account in their own language. Wants Matching This was and still is, even in its hobbled state, a fairly unique advantage AbeBooks has, especially when combined with their superior search function. Amazon should work slowly and carefully on fixing and improving the AbeBooks Wants Matching function. AbeBooks hobbled the function several years ago by cutting back on the number of e-mailed matches to a maximum of two per want per e-mail—a rather odd thing to do given that at the same time eBay (the only site with a near comparable function) was increasing the number of matches appearing in their e-mails for saved searches. Many more aspects of the service could and should be improved to benefit buyers, dealers, and AbeBooks, but this should be done carefully and only with the input of buyers and dealers (especially those who have large numbers of wants placed). Bookseller Ratings Amazon should remove “Bookseller Ratings” from the AbeBooks websites. The description of the ratings has never been accurate, the calculation has never been fair, and the above-mentioned improvements will have removed the bulk of failing dealers from ABE. A website of professional dealers doesn’t need ratings, and a website with ratings certainly doesn’t look like the home of professional dealers. Search Function Amazon should be impressed with the AbeBooks search function—both the speed and the ability to enter quite complex searches. This important and rather unique function should only be enhanced as mentioned above and with the involvement of a diverse group of dealers and buyers. This and the Wants Matching function are two of AbeBooks’ strongest assets and extreme care should be taken in altering them. That said, several things are far past overdue, such as the ability to exclude new books, PODs, and ex-library copies from searches, etc. It is time to create these exclusions and to create and enforce policies which will make the exclusions work properly. Dealer/Buyer Input AbeBooks has had both dealer and buyer groups that can be surveyed for information, and it runs message boards that are a treasure trove of good ideas. Unfortunately this free resource has not been utilized in the past. A smart company would make use of it. After saying all this, I should also say that another part of me wants Amazon to integrate AbeBooks’ inventory onto Amazon and close all the AbeBooks websites. Why? Because perhaps this might be the final kick needed to get many more dealers to finally understand that rather than making another for-profit website the place where we all list books, we might be better off supporting a non-profit website run by people in the trade, rather than continue to be subject to the whims of people who make decisions based mainly on constantly improving profits.

What will happen now that Amazon owns ABE? Generally speaking, AbeBooks sellers who list on Amazon are hoping there will be no automated migration of AbeBooks listings to Amazon; and AbeBooks sellers who do not list on Amazon are, in the main, hoping for the opposite. We would love to see Amazon’s techno-wizards reduce ABE’s glitches and help them facilitate the long-promised optional exclusion of new books and/or PODs from searches. Beyond that, our hopes and speculations are widely scattered. In the meantime, Amazon could actually use some help from ABE in the following areas. Dreadful Seller Storefront The left hand portion of the Amazon Seller Storefront screen is decent. This includes the Info & Policies, a feedback summary, and a link to more information (though this is primarily Amazon’s own Returns and Shipping statements). The manner in which Amazon listings are displayed is the dreadful part. This page is clearly aimed at the visually-oriented shopper, but it fails miserably in execution. This portion of the Storefront consists solely of product images with the title and author given in hypertext. This limits the number of listings per page, but the most serious drawback is that the screen in many cases consists of blank “no image available” place-holders (most unattractive), or, perhaps even worse, it shows whichever image Amazon has assigned to that book. For newer books this will be the stock photo, but for others it will be a former “customer share” image that Amazon has copied and placed in the “official” image spot (which is then beyond the control of the original contributor). This image may or may not resemble the book being offered. From the main Product Page on Amazon, it is easier for shoppers to guess that the image probably does not represent all the listings, but when coupled with the title on the Seller Storefront, the image may be quite misleading. This is especially true when the shopper clicks on a title. The page that comes up resembles the main Product Page, but the links to the listings page show only the one listing. At this point, only someone well familiar with the Amazon system will realize that the image shown often does not represent the book being offered. The Storefront layout has the potential of making an interesting display for those sellers who do make extensive use of image share, but that potential is generally not realized. The only instance of the seller’s image accompanying their title on the Storefront will be in the case of Created Product Pages (those deliberately created online—not the page images created automatically upon upload). Although Amazon started out as a bookselling site, its spell check function in the caption and notes for shared images (kudos there) does not recognize some common bookselling terms such as endpaper. The caption and notes also do not allow some rather crucial words, such as binding, spine, jacket, and title. Too Many Roll-Ups Amazon’s method of accommodating uploads of non-ISBN books from various sellers often results in a horrendous array of Product Information Pages. Since date, rather than publisher, is used as the primary identifier to separate various editions of the same title, books from any publisher that include a print date (as opposed to those that give only the original copyright date) may run into dozens of Product Pages for the same title. It also means that an attempt to create a page for a Grosset & Dunlap reprint that uses the same date as the Little, Brown original will result in an Amazon message that the product already exists, blocking the attempt to create a separate Product Page for the reprint edition. The date identifier is not always a negative. Sets such as the International Library of Technology may sometimes best be matched with similar copies by printing date. Date is also a reasonable divider for different editions of Betty Crocker’s Cookbook. The emphasis on date also leads to extra Product Pages when sellers can’t determine the date of a book. They can’t leave this field blank, so they have learned to plug in such dates as 1000 or 1111. New pages are also created by including or not including subtitles, and by adding inappropriate comments to the title field (Very Good!, one page creased, etc.). This problem is exacerbated by sellers who understand and manipulate the system by deliberately forcing new pages for their listings rather than selecting an existing ASIN and correcting any wrong information. The result of all this is an excessive number of roll-ups and endless clicking and hunting. The Prince of the House of David, for example, has 63 Product Pages, plus a few nested roll-ups. A Kindle edition may be masking the original publisher Product Page, showing only as an “Unknown Binding” link next to the Kindle on the search results page. Furthermore, if there are several of these embedded roll-ups, even a knowledgeable shopper may have to chase around to find the complete list. These roll-up linkages sometimes result in such oddities as the product review for a 1932 first edition telling us what a great voice the 2001 talking book reader has. Searching for a book like Stevenson’s Treasure Island is going to require a bit of experience on any search service, but Amazon’s maze is much harder to penetrate. There are over 1,000 roll-ups listed after the simple author / title search! Adding “Wyeth” as a keyword only brings it down to 28. The ordering system in the search results USUALLY leaves the empty pages last (those Product Pages with no listings), but that’s not dependable. The author field in particular is well handled when listing directly on Amazon, or when creating a page on Amazon, allowing multiple author listings, plus illustrator, editor, photographer, etc., with each being properly identified. The pages created by seller upload are not so nice, as the following author field examples demonstrate. Harriet.; Harvey Fuller (ill.) Ouida; Golden (Author) Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo) (1874-1965) – Related name: Kerr, George (illus.) Burgess The Advanced Search has a few serious shortcomings. Date refinement seldom works well, for no discernable reason. After finding the desired Product Page, it is often troublesome locating signed copies or first printings. Ideally the Collectible division should be the place to look for these, but rampant abuse by sellers pushed Amazon to set a standard based on price. This might actually work for books of at least moderately high value, but it doesn’t work well at all for the large number of lower end collectibles, such as signed copies of common titles that make them a bit more valuable. There may be many such books that you feel should sell for $20 to $30, but they cannot be listed as Collectible in that price range. Amazon does not make it particularly easy to determine what their lower end Collectible limit is for a given book, and I have heard that these limits shift and listings get deleted. #amazon #bookselling #standard

I add my voice to the many others who note the passing of Tasha Tudor with sadness. Many lives have been touched by Tasha’s art and her stories, including my own. I extend to the family and those who may have known and been close to Tasha and the kids my condolences and offer prayers and blessings upon their hearts and lives in their time of loss. My own story with Tasha began early one morning in September of 1994 when I received a phone call from a friend in Vermont who had heard that Tasha would be doing a book signing not far from her home. A few days later I found myself, dressed in a suit (those who know me know I do not do suits often), standing in front of Tasha, with books in hand and asking if she would grace my new (just opened) used bookstore with a book signing. Unknown to me at the time was the fact that she had just severed her long time relationship with Jenny Wren Press, and her response was a simple “yes.” A few days later we talked on the phone, a date was set, a plan laid down, and the journey has not stopped. I can only say now, in hindsight, I had little idea of the tiger’s tale I had grabbed on to. It was only a few weeks later when over 300 people showed up at my store on the most beautiful November day one could have ordered. It was only after I had sold—through phone orders, mail orders and in person—some 2,000 books that it hit me: this lady is really liked and people buy her books. I had been baptized into book selling by one of the major names in the children’s book market in a manner I had not expected. And to think I’d had the outrageous idea of inviting Tasha and both her daughters back to my store in 6 months! In the interim I moved my store down the street and laid plans for what would turn out to be my confirmation as a bookseller. No one had ever had all three Tudor women together on stage and I now knew that this was a big deal. We called the event “A Magical Moment in Time” and held it on Mother’s Day 1995. Over 400 participants and again thousands of books later Tasha and her daughters had provided me with a truly “magical moment.” I had moved into a 2,500 square foot space, not yet full of books, with plenty of floor space, and yet it was the only time I have ever asked people to leave the store unless they were in line to have a book signed or in line (yes, I do mean a line deeper than I have ever seen) paying for books. I actually became concerned about the safety of the situation. On a personal note, the best gift of the day was seeing how much joy my parents had in being the personal escort and drivers for the Tudor women. Mom & Dad showed up with a very plush recreational van with bucket seats. In my youngest days, my parents operated a taxi business, at that time, in the heart of New Hampshire’s tourist destination, the White Mountains. Knowing that their own personalities would help in setting the tone with Tasha, Bethany & Efner, I left the delivery of the Tudor women to the auditorium in Nashua in their good hands. To this day my folks talk about that time and when I am in touch with Bethany and Efner they always ask for my Mom & Dad. I have always been appreciative of what my relationship with Tasha and her daughters has meant both personally and in my business. There are many stories around Tasha and many individuals who have shared in the “Tudor Experience.” The Tudor fans are as loyal and respectful as any group of supporters and book buyers I’ve known. The gift of art and story that Tasha created is documented in the Tasha Tudor Bibliography by John & Jill Hare. I call it the most detailed bibliography ever done on a single author. But I expect what will live beyond her creative work are the stories of Tasha, her charismatic nature, her determination and tenacity in living a life style choice that had few of the modern comforts, yet was portrayed as a simple, comfortable, fun loving, and just glorious way to live. I expect most of us live our lives knowing that we may help or touch someone beyond our own families; Tasha touched many more than can be counted or than she herself ever knew. The theme of her work reached out to many who admired and revered Tasha. Her loyal fans will be saddened. And the book trade has been a large benefactor of Tasha Tudor’s life. Even if you do not sell children’s literature, Tasha gave reason for many to frequent bookstores who may have not entered without the Tudor appeal. Richard Mori operates Mori Books / Just Read Books out of Milford, NH and can be contacted at http://www.moribooks.com. Richard is also quoted in a 6/20/2008 Concord Monitor article on Tasha Tudor, which is the local newspaper closest to her Webster, NH home.

Dear Committee Members, This is in regard to the proposed Second-Hand Goods Bill [B2-2008] and the effect it would have on independent booksellers in South Africa. The Independent Online Booksellers Association is an international trade association composed of professional booksellers, and we share the deep concern of our South African colleagues over this bill. While we recognize the importance of this proposed legislation in combating illicit trade in precious metals, stolen car parts, and items of that nature, we trust the committee will recognize that used bookstores should not be lumped into the same category. Without exemption for the second-hand book trade, the required procedures would make compliance virtually impossible due to the very nature of our noble profession, and many booksellers would be faced with the difficult choice of ignoring the law or going out of business. Thanks for your consideration, and best wishes in your deliberations. Respectfully, Shawn Purcell, President and the Board of Directors of the Independent Online Booksellers Association http://www.ioba.org _____ A 9/3/2008 Email Response from Paul Mills of the Southern African Book Dealers Association Many thanks for this message of support – it is much appreciated by the committee and members of SABDA. We will add it to our submission. I am in Parliament again tomorrow morning to listen to the committee discuss our submission. As I understand it we can only listen at this stage but cannot comment although there is a possibility that we may be asked questions. We think we have a good chance of having books removed from the Bill. I will keep you informed. All the best, Paul Mills Clarke’s Africana and Rare Books ABA-ILAB, SABDA, IOBA _____ From the 9/11/2008 Issue of Sheppard’s Confidential South Africa: SABDA and Secondhand Goods Bill Good news from South Africa. Cape Times has reported this week that the government is dropping all ‘books’, not just those over R100, from this legislation. As we reported in previous editions, a huge effort was mounted by the SABDA, on behalf of all the whole book trade, to win this point. This shows that trade organisations can be very effective and why members of the book trade should join an association at the earliest opportunity. Geoff Klass of Collectors Treasury told Sheppard’s Confidential, ‘I described the attempt to include second-hand books as being the equivalent of using a sledgehammer to squash an ant. This did cause a ripple of laughter in the otherwise rather staid and humourless Parliamentary Committee!. We are one of the most over-regulated societies, and any concession on the part of Government is a welcome step towards restoring sanity and balance in the process of administering the law.’ Owner of Clarke’s Africana & Rare Books and member of SABDA, Paul Mills, said the removal of books from the list was a “triumph”. SABDA had been “positively received” at the last meeting, he said. ‘It had been a collaborative effort by SABDA on behalf of the entire trade.’

First of all Robert, thanks for taking time out from your very busy schedule, and congratulations on the recent addition to your family. By way of introduction, tell us a bit about Christina and yourself. Christina and I are both graphic designers. She has a BFA in Visual Communications from Virginia Commonwealth University and I have a BFA from the University of South Carolina and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, both in graphic design. We spent ten years in Manhattan working in the design world. Christina’s work was focused on textile graphics and corporate design work in both print and interactive. I started in NYC as an art director in publishing doing book design and magazines (with a 3.5 year stint at Martha Stewart Living) and then moved into interactive as the dot com bubble grew. We both worked on major brands such as Crayola, Little Tikes, Fed Ex, Nissan, Gucci, Prada, United Airlines and Motorola. We also have a passion for not-for-profit and educational work, which never pays well but is very rewarding. Why did you decide to leave the fast lane in Manhattan for upstate New York? We needed a change. The high-paced lifestyle was all-consuming. Christina was a creative director at Foot, Cone and Belding and I was VP Creative Director at IconNicholson and we both felt like we’d moved away from our roots, a love of typography, paper and creating beautiful things that people cherish and covet. We felt removed from our craft and wanted to get back into the hands on process of designing. In June of 2006 we moved to our country house near Jeffersonville fulltime. What drew you to the noble art of printing? A love of letters and paper. We both learned letterpress as part of our design training (typography as we know it today really started with the invention of movable type c.1440). We are both type nerds and can spend hours fussing over typefaces, leading, kerning and the endless machinations that come with a love of letters. We are kind of snobs when it comes to printing. If it’s not letterpress we rarely get excited. How did you acquire your equipment? Christina quit her Job on January 1, 2006 to start the process of setting up our new business. She began researching presses online, spending a lot of time at Briar Press (www.briarpress.org), a great resource for letterpress aficionados. We learned a lot about what we really needed to get started. Every week we would look for auctions on eBay, or presses for sale on Briar Press. We realized that we had to find a press that wasn’t too far away as moving it would likely cost as much, or more, than the press itself. While looking for a single press to start out on we found an amazing auction: it was an entire shop. The pictures looked too good to be true. We started asking the seller questions and found out the auction was actually for two Chandler and Price platen presses, a paper cutter, and lots of type. We watched it for days and waited until the last day to bid. The auction was to end at 8 am and the free open wireless internet that we relied on in our apartment was down so Christina had to run to the local coffee shop to place our bid. I had a client meeting uptown so I wouldn’t know the outcome until hours later. Christina left me a flat message on my phone to call her for an update on the auction. Of course I assumed we were outbid at the last second, but she was only baiting me for a big surprise. We won the auctions for just over $4100. Two weeks later we drove to Auburn, MA and found, to our surprise, a two level backyard print shop packed to the rafters with equipment and paper. With hardly enough room to walk around, we started the process of loading up our very large U-Haul truck. What we actually found under the boxes of paper and ephemera was: two 8 x 10 Chandler and Price Old Style platen presses (circa 1901 and 1904), a Kelsey Star 5 x 7 platen press (circa 1901), a very small table top Kelsey press, a 19.5 inch Oswego guillotine paper cutter (c. 1890s), 100+ drawers of metal foundry type, 28 drawers of wood type in various sizes and fonts, a saddle stitching machine (circa 1910), and all the essential tools of the trade one needs to run an authentic letterpress shop. We felt very lucky. After two long and exciting days of discovery and packing we were almost done. The third morning we tied up the load and drove to Liberty, NY where we stored everything. We left the presses and paper cutter behind, and hired a rigging service to move them three weeks later. Total moving costs were just over $4000. We saved thousands moving all the type and small equipment ourselves. For those who are not familiar with the hand printing press process, bring us through a typical job from beginning to end. Letterpress is a process of creating a relief image and pressing it into or onto a surface—much like a rubber stamp. Typically you need to set the type one letter at a time (backwards and upside down), locking up the type into a chase (a metal frame). Any artwork to be printed must be made into a relief image as well (either using magnesium or photopolymer plates). Once everything you want to print is locked up it is called a form. This form is placed into the bed of the press. Here the press rollers will ink the form and transfer the image onto the paper. Before printing one must set gauge pins (also called quad guides) on the press platen to keep the paper aligned with the form. Once the alignment is set the pressure of the press must be adjusted (according to the paper weight and the size of the form to be printed). This is called makeready. Paper packing on the press must be adjusted to create an even impression over the entire printed surface. Once the makeready is done the job is ready to print, one sheet at a time. The average makeready process usually takes about 10-30 minutes, but sometimes we can spend hours getting it just right. Of course if the job is more than one color this process must be repeated for each color. Printing on both sides of a sheet also requires multiple passes through the press, and a new makeready process. What type of work are you doing now? Our presses are on the small side (8 x 10 inches), so we are limited to smaller works. We design and print wedding invitations for clients around the world (recently completed jobs were for weddings in Cape Cod, West Point and Singapore). We also have our own line of greeting cards that we sell in our stationery store. We will begin selling wholesale greeting cards later this fall. High-end business cards and birth announcements also make up a smaller portion of our monthly work. We also print woodblock posters (10 x 16 max size) on a limited basis because we need to print them in two halves. We’re in the discussion stage with a few authors to create a series of chap books this winter. Do you advertise, or is word of mouth enough? We do not advertise. Most of our work comes from word of mouth or passersby in Jeffersonville. The stationery store is a loss leader for us—it barely breaks even, but it gives us a lot of visibility on Main Street. The past year we had invitations featured in two national magazines: Martha Stewart Weddings and Real Simple Weddings. Obviously this kind of exposure can really kick start your business. We are quite sick of printing these featured designs at this point. Tell us about your favorite papers and typefaces. Paper: Crane Lettra. It’s the only paper DESIGNED for letterpress. It’s a super fluffy 100% rag paper that takes a really nice impression. It’s made from textile scraps and cotton left in the seed pod, and it’s (sort of) local. The mill is in Dalton, MA and is very eco-friendly. It’s also relatively inexpensive compared to imported Italian papers. Typefaces: We love the classics. News Gothic, Garamond, Caslon, Frutiger, Helvetica, etc., but we also use some of the newer typefaces. We’re purists, but we’re not THAT pure when it comes to type. We’ll even use a drop shadow when we need to pump up the kitsch factor! Do you create your own design work plates? No, we use two plate makers. Boxcar Press in Syracuse for photopolymer plates and Owosso Graphic Arts for metal plates. We email our work out and the plates arrive two days later. It’s not worth it to have all that plate making equipment. Although your operation is starting to get into full swing, and you bring a real graphic design edge to the business, it must be frustrating sometimes puzzling over techniques that were commonplace back in the heyday of hand presses. Are there any modern day expert practitioners you can turn to, and do you belong to any fine press organizations? This is a big problem. All the old practitioners of letterpress are either dead or getting up there in years. We’ve met some old timers in Sullivan County and we call on a few of them for help when we feel stumped on a job. We’ve also been in correspondence (via snail mail) with the former owner of our presses. He’s taught us some ‘tricks’ over the years, although his eyesight is failing and he’s going into a nursing home. He’s 90 years old and started printing when he was 16. He ran his backyard print shop for over 50 years. He’s a wealth of information that we’re going to miss. We hope that one day we can teach someone else what we are learning now (our four month old son will no doubt be our first target). Sullivan County is my ancestral home, and I found your business while doing some preliminary research on who might publish a compilation of local Civil War letters I purchased at auction. Have you tackled any books yet? Not yet, but as I previously said, we are working on a project to create some chap books of poetry this winter. It’s a very cool project. We are looking for a larger press which will put us in a better position to tackle books. Christina has some experience in book binding that she’d like to get back into. It’s something we’d like to offer, but letterpressed books can be very expensive to produce. Your print shop is right on Main Street in Jeffersonville, NY. Tell us about the town, and about the Segar Building. We purchased our building in August, 2006. It was a 1950s Sinclair gas station, home of Segar Oil, a family run business that closed in the late ‘80s. It’s an American classic with a porcelain enamel facade. The building was vacant for 18 years when we purchased it from the Segar family estate. For the first time since 1883 the property changed hands. The building needed a lot of work, but we wanted to restore it rather than remodel/alter. After six months of work we moved the presses in and started setting up shop, which took another six months. We opened to the public on September 1, 2007. The building sits at the end of Main Street in Jeffersonville, NY, a small Catskill village of about 350 souls. It’s a sleepy little town that comes alive on weekends due to a large second home market. We’re certainly the most unique business in a town full of eateries, home décor and antique shops. Jeffersonville is only two hours from Manhattan, so we can run down for a quick ‘city fix’ which usually involves a meal at our favorite sushi restaurant. Thanks again Robert. Best wishes with your growing family and wonderful business, don’t work too hard, and save some time for trout fishing. Robert and Christina Fisher run Echo Letterpress in Jeffersonville, NY and can be contacted at http://www.echoletterpress.com. #publishers

One of the best things about being in the used book business is that you never know what to expect. When you get up in the morning, you can never predict what the day will bring. Usually, the first thing I do when I get out of bed is check my e-mail for orders that came in overnight. Earlier this year I noticed a pattern that most of the orders were coming in at the beginning of the week. By Thursday, the orders slowed down to a trickle, and the weekends were pretty quiet. Now that I am used to this pattern, it has begun to shift, and lately the opposite has been true. The early part of the week is slow, and the bulk of my sales are Thursday through Sunday. I know that as soon as I adjust to this it will change again. The same holds true for book scouting while traveling. The one thing I have learned in all of my travels is that I never know what to expect from a day on the road. Here, then, are a few examples of Great Unexpectations. Sometimes good things happen when I have no expectations whatsoever. A few weeks ago I was on vacation with my wife in rural Texas. We were driving from El Paso to Big Bend for a river trip, and my expectation was that this would be a bookless holiday. We stayed overnight in Fort Davis so we could go to the “star party” at the McDonald Observatory, and the next morning we stopped for late breakfast in town before heading on to Big Bend. As we drove up and down the small main street looking for a place to eat, I saw a sign that said “BOOK SALE.” I instantly learned two things that morning about rural Texas. First, you can’t get breakfast anywhere after 11 A.M., and second, sometimes you find books where you least expect them. My first meal that day consisted of barbequed brisket and biscuits, which I ate quickly so I could head over to the bookshop. The shop, Bookfeller, was small, and all hardcover books were $3 each. I did not have as much time as I would have liked to peruse the stock, but I did manage to find half a dozen nice books to bring back for re-sale. The owner told me he had been in the book business in larger cities, and when he retired back to his home town, the community persuaded him to open a shop. Naturally, on the river trip through Santa Elena Canyon, there were no bookshops in sight. I did not even bring any reading materials with me, which turned out to be a good thing since they would have been soaked along with the rest of our things when the canoe we were in overturned during that long, last mile before we reached the end of our journey. En route from Big Bend to Austin we stopped in Fredericksburg, at what looked to me like a tourist information center that turned out to be the local historical society. We had a long chat with the docent, and left with a lot more information than expected, along with some of the local histories that were for sale in the rather extensive bookstall. Unfortunately, not all unexpected events are positive. When I was in Cleveland last month, I organized an evening around a visit to Half Price Books, a used book chain that I had visited with much success in Austin last fall. My first disappointment was the size of the shop. In Texas, the stores are as big as supermarkets. In Ohio, they are more the size of a drug store. I found quite a few books I wanted, but when I asked to have the items shipped, I was told that the store did not offer shipping. When I mentioned to the manager that the Austin stores shipped books for me, he replied, “You have seen the size of the Texas stores. We are a much smaller operation.” I was traveling all carry-on and my bags were already stuffed, so I sifted through my selections and left about half of them on the counter. “I guess sometimes bigger really is better” I told him as he rang up my purchases. Cleveland may bill itself as the capital of rock ‘n roll, but when it comes to books, it does not rock ‘n roll like Austin does. At other times, things happen that are just as good but totally different from what I am anticipating. On President’s Day we were driving back to New York from Vermont, and I wanted to stop at a bookshop I had been to a few years before in Western Massachusetts. It was in an old New England building off I-91 with a lady proprietor and it contained stock from multiple dealers. I had remembered buying some really good books there. I had the MARIAB booklet, and looked up the name of the shop. I saw Meeting House Books, it was in the right area based upon a rather rudimentary map, and the proprietor had a female name. The shop was normally closed on Monday, so I e-mailed her earlier in the week to see if I could stop by, and she graciously offered to open the store for me. I printed off the directions from the internet, but as soon as we got off the highway and my wife began directing me, they did not seem correct. The place I remembered was right off the highway in the midst of farmland. I was being directed to a small New England town. When we arrived, I realized that this was the wrong shop. I had to go in because I had an appointment. The shop was aptly named since it is located in a former church, and when I told the owner I was interested in literature, she guided me upstairs. I think this room had originally been the main sanctuary, and it was filled with wonderful, well-priced books. I bought quite a few items, and sold a number of them the following week at the Greenwich Village Book Fair. I now know two interesting shops well worth a stop in that part of Massachusetts. Last but not least, sometimes I expect good things will happen and something even better happens. This past year I have spent a lot of time in Minneapolis. On my first few visits, I spent most of my free time at the bookshops within easy reach of downtown. Eventually, I began venturing further out, and into St. Paul. I found a wonderful shop—Midway Books. It was a half hour bus ride, but its three floors crammed with books made it well worth the trip. I always managed to find at least a carton of books to ship back home. I usually went there on Sundays because that was the one day that I had the time to book scout. The last time I was in the Twin Cities, the only free time I had was Saturday evening. The shop was open, and when I introduced myself to the “new” man at the register he told me that he was not new, but the actual owner of the store. I systematically went through each floor, stopping periodically to bring him stacks of books to set aside for me. As I handed him the last stack and pulled out my checkbook, he said to me, “Has anyone ever showed you where the better books are?” “Better books?” I replied. “Not that I know of.” He guided me through some narrow corridors, then up a back stairway, and pointed to a long hallway I had never been in before filled with bookcases of modern first editions. “Take your time, Ill be downstairs,” he said. I spent quite a long time going through the shelves until I had selected another armful of books and found my way back to the main floor after only a few wrong turns. After I handed him the pile he led me through another corridor, this time leading to an immense basement, again filled with books. This was the stock used for the internet and book fairs. Again, I returned to the counter with more books. While I had been to this store several times before, unknowingly, I had only scratched the surface of its inventory. In short, book scouting is not for those who relish the tried and true. I have a Wall Street colleague who spends his vacation every year in the same hotel in Disney World. A week before he leaves he makes restaurant reservations and pre-orders his meals. He leaves nothing to chance. He could never be a used book dealer. There is an old Yiddish expression that translates as “Man plans, God laughs.” While some may find this troubling, for me, it is part of the fun and excitement of the hunt. One of the things you quickly learn when you become a book dealer is to embrace the unexpected. Joe Perlman operates Mostly Useful Fictions out of East Northport, NY and can be contacted at http://www.mostlyusefulfictions.com. #bookscouting #standard