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Firstly, let me express again my thanks to the IOBA scholarship committee and to the membership at large for their support with the scholarship that I received. As Mike alluded to, CABS benefits the entire trade, not just the people who attend. Mike put it very elegantly when he talked about the “vibrant, vital ecosystem” that is the bookselling trade, and CABS does a great deal to foster and support this. So, what makes CABS so great? There are many dimensions to it. *Faculty* When people outside the trade asked me what I was doing in Colorado Springs this week, I told them that I was going to listen to established, very successful professionals volunteer their time to share most of the secrets of their commercial success with their up and coming competition. I can’t imagine there are many other professions in which this would happen. The sheer breadth of topics covered, and most often depth as well, was a bit overwhelming. Whether it was Brian Cassidy going over business basics for booksellers, or Garrett Scott talking about research methods, or Lorne Bair and Rob Rulon-Miller talking about cataloguing, or Katherine Reagan talking about selling to libraries, or Terry Belanger talking about physical descriptions of books, etc., etc., there were very few aspects of the business of bookselling that weren’t covered. The faculty made themselves available to answer any and all questions, often using personal anecdotes as supporting evidence. I spoke with more than one person at the opening night’s reception who indicated that they had attended CABS multiple times, because it was nearly impossible to absorb everything that was taught the first time around. My sincere thanks go out to the faculty for their very generous donation of their time and expertise, and in some cases, the donation of their own valuable books as reference materials as well. *Administration* Kathy Lindeman and her staff were amazing. It must have taken a great deal of effort to make everything work so smoothly at CABS, but Kathy made it look easy. Every detail was attended to, and if any issues arose, they were handled swiftly, leaving us able to focus our full attentions on the material at hand. *Accommodations* The CC Inn on campus is, to say the least, spartan. However, you can’t beat the cost, and since almost everyone is staying in the same location, building connections was easy, often past 2:00 or 3:00 am for the hardiest of partiers. *Food* The students at Colorado College are very lucky. Not only do they have a beautiful campus, but the cafeteria, which is located in the same building as the seminar room, is quite simply amazing. CABS arranges for everyone to have breakfast and lunch in the cafeteria, again fostering the building of connections among the faculty and the students. *Collegiality* One of the biggest lessons that I took out of this week is exactly how much of a role collegiality plays in the bookselling trade. The title and a major theme of the keynote address by Lisa Baskin was “You Can’t Do It Alone”. Collectors need booksellers, booksellers need collectors, and booksellers need other booksellers. For this all to work, the entire ecosystem needs to be healthy, and I was very encouraged about the future of the ecosystem based on what I experienced at CABS this week. *Contacts* Another thing I’ll take from this week is lasting contacts. I know that friendships were forged, and useful commercial relationships developed as well. The late nights at the CC Inn, conversations with faculty and students over lunch, and shared trips to the excellent local bookstores all contributed to this. If you haven’t been to CABS (or even if you have), I would strongly encourage you to go. It’s a week spent in a beautiful location, learning very practical advice for business success, among people who share your passion for books and who will be your colleagues in the future. I’d be hard-pressed to think of another week in my professional career that was as rewarding, or as much fun, as this one. Best, Paul Shelley Churchill Book Collector, ABAA | ILAB | IOBA #cabs #collecting #ColoradoAntiquarianBookSchool

Ok, clever titling aside, (and the humor doesn’t get any better I’m afraid), I wanted to take a moment to share what I got out of CABS. Paul Shelly, a new friend and colleague from Edmonton, did a terrific job of detailing what this year’s seminarians experienced this past week; 54 of us by my count which we were told was one of the biggest classes to date. Regrettably, I did not take many photos though this one does sum up Paul’s comment about the spartan digs. Now, as a very fortunate scholarship recipient, I would have been happy to sleep in a tree. But truthfully, I liked it this way. No T.V. or other distractions and the only light to read by was a dull fluorescent in the center of the room making my favorite pastime as pleasant as a migraine. You felt compelled to go out into the parking lot beautiful courtyard to mingle with your fellow seminarians. In life, we tend to run with the crowd who share our same passions, philosophies, even similar lifestyles and livelihoods. This is only natural. But this past week I was thrust together with an extraordinarily diverse group of men and women from all over North America. Backgrounds as diverse as the titles in a Rulon-Miller catalog. But with just one common thread, our passion for books, we became one tribe, as my new friend and colleague, Annette Tixier from New Mexico, called us during one late night concrete conference. I believe this was the goal of the seminar all along. Putting us together with other folks in the trade to develop friendships and partnerships that will last a lifetime. With this alone I came back enriched, with an excitement and optimism for this thing of ours that will drive me forward to succeed. It was truly an illuminating experience being amongst all these terrific people, who, like me, never wanted Terry Belanger to stop speaking about Hand Press Period bindings and illustration. Who, like me, never wanted Brian Cassidy to stop teaching us how to be better marketers and business people. Or never wanted Garret Scott to stop giving his detailed insights on research. Or never wanted Katherine Reagan to stop explaining how to work with research libraries. Or like me, wanted Lisa Baskin to keep on opening our eyes to new areas of collecting. Or could have listened for hours and hours to Don Lindgren of Rabelais discuss his specialty of Cooking and Wine books, (of particular interest to this seminarian still in the wine biz). Or like me, would not stop listening to Rob Rulon-Miller and Lorne Bair even if they were talking about the relative durations of various methods of paint drying. Fortunately, their focus was on such diverse topics as Cataloging, Databases & Websites, Pricing, Photography, Book Fairs, and Archives, to name most but not all topics that were covered. I detail the curriculum to show anyone who has not attended CABS just how comprehensive the seminar is; just how much information, with immediate practical application, is on offer. I could not recommend it enough. I did indeed have high expectations for what knowledge and insight I would acquire and certainly they were exceeded. But there were a few things I did not expect. • I was floored by the very first lecture when Lorne Bair told the group that we were not so much competitors as colleagues. Frankly, being relatively new to the trade and coming from a highly competitive industry, I didn’t see this coming. And from every faculty member I got an identical sense of how important collaboration among booksellers and the nurturing of up-and-comers was to ensuring the vitality and future success of the trade. This set the tone for the week and was very much welcomed. • Leaving politics at the door, we closed the week with a frank discussion about what we could do as booksellers to ensure our trade is open and welcome for all, regardless of sex or race. We heard heartfelt experiences from women in the group who had been subjected to various degrees of sexism. Though I could not imagine every treating anyone in any other way than with the same respect and tolerance I would want for myself, I can only empathize mentally as I have not had to endure what some of the women have had to. What this session did, however, was create a much more acute awareness of a real issue. A very good life lesson that I did not expect but one that will certainly guide my outlook and actions in the future. • Antiquarian books and Cowboys do go together; who knew? When they said Chuck Wagon, they meant it. Monday’s Chuck Wagon Picnic • Lorne Bair has an absolutely amazing singing voice serenading the group with Appalachian Hymns. And we didn’t even need to get him to drink much for him to do it. • My first time in Colorado Springs and I could not imagine a beautiful setting for the seminar. Although, we were greeted with thunderstorms every day just as we broke for the day and walking back to the inn. Thunderhead coming in over Pike’s Peak. Gorgeous. • Lastly, as much as I was expecting scholastically, I never expected to have so much fun. I had an absolute blast inside and outside of the classroom and I simply did not want it to end. To close, I know I may sound like a commercial for CABS but so be it. A more fulfilling week, I could not imagine. I feel very fortunate that I was accepted into the IOBA which afforded me this wonderful opportunity. It also taught me how important it is for me to do my part to assist our trade group in continuing to provide the resources that all of us benefit from. Hopefully, this article is only the first small step in doing that. Mike Brenner, Brenner Books #cabs #ColoradoAntiquarianBookSchool

As far as the faculty is concerned, we could not have been more fortunate to share in the wisdom and scholarship of the assembled. The week began with a keynote address by Lisa Baskin, a prolific collector who encouraged us on how rewarding, personally and financially, it could be to build a thoughtful collection. The lesson she left behind was, “You cannot do it alone.” Katherine Reagan, Curator of Rare Books and Collections at Cornell University immersed the class in an element of the book world which rarely gets such valuable first hand insight. Terry Belanger, founder of the Rare Book School delivered a semester’s worth of knowledge about the book as an object in understandable and bite sized sessions. The collective experience of the faculty booksellers, Rob Rulon-Miller, Garret Scott, Brian Cassidy, Don Lindgren and Lorne Bair, delivered lectures on as many aspects of the book business as could be fit into a five-day session. What impressed me most about the entire staff was their accessibility, both personally and informatively. No question was too insignificant and no time was too precious for them to dedicate answering our queries. Their selfless access before, during and after classes demonstrated how generous each veteran bookseller was to the commitment of each student’s personal progress and success. The value of the seminar was multiplied by the hands-on exercises which we participated in. Practical application, interspersed with lectures combined with open access to the faculty makes this Seminar ideal for all learning styles and all vocations in the wide world of books. “Rulonomics” or “Would you buy this book?” This exercise required students to evaluate 17 different books or pieces of ephemera and determine if they would purchase it and for how much. The books had to be researched, evaluated for salability and priced for a profit. Each of us would have bought a few lemons and a few bargains. All of us were glad to have made those mistakes with Monopoly money. Descriptive Bibliography The students were given access to both electronic bibliographic resources as well as shelves of invaluable written bibliographies. Armed with this information we wrote entries for several antiquarian and modern books. The faculty critiqued our work and made the trade better by making us better at what we do. Teaching Library A comprehensive library of examples gave the attendees an opportunity to select and study an array of binding techniques, condition reports, edition points, tooling applications and so much more. This will not only make us better bibliographers, but more broadly knowledgeable in the realm of the written word. The Auction One of our last teaching sessions was on how to bid at auctions. This culminated in a live auction where the students bid on lots of quality material. The auction resulted in $1,000’s of dollars donated back to the CABS Foundation to support future scholarships and classes. I was pleased to have picked up several key pieces of Beat Literature. The value of this seminar was so important to me that I intend to donate books every year for future classes and future auctions to benefit the Foundation. It is with humble appreciation I extend my sincere thanks to IOBA for the 2016 Collector Scholarship. I am confident that the opportunity to attend CABS has put me two years ahead of myself with respect to book knowledge and reducing the number of mistakes all of us rookies will make. A year from now you will hear from me again as my application for IOBA membership crosses your desk. You have my sincere commitment to adhere to the ethics of IOBA as my business develops. Ed Markiewicz, Proprietor Montgomery Rare Books & Manuscripts 1696 SW Montgomery Drive, Portland, OR 97201 #cabs #ColoradoAntiquarianBookSchool #IOBAScholarshipContest

by Lynn Wienck, The Chisholm Trail Bookstore After several very warm days, I thought summer had arrived, but no, lower temperatures have returned. The rain has returned as well. It’s pleasant and surprising. All vegetation has gone various shades of green and wild. The days have been slightly hazy and humid. Small frogs, tiny frogs hop everywhere. They are a pleasure to watch. Do they play leapfrog? Coming soon, but not yet in hand is the Devil’s Dictionary written by Ambrose Bierce in the last century and illustrated by Ralph Steadman in this century. Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) remains known for his scathing, pointed, blazing, and satirical commentary. This tome – originally titled Cynic’s Word Book (1906), later published as Devil’s Dictionary (1911), Ralph Steadman illustrated edition (2003) – is Ambrose Bierce’s own abrasive attitude lexicon-dictionary. Ralph Steadman with his equally pointed illustrations should provide fine, merry, fitting tunes to the words. I’m looking forward to a rather perfect symphony. If words make music, then so do pictures. Enough of the musing. It’s into the rain, and perhaps, more rain for several days. It’s not too cold, not too hot, but just right, and the rain is gentle. Watch the clouds roll in; watch the clouds roll out; watch the wee frogs hop, hop, hop. It’s a pleasant respite from the soon-to-come summer heat.

by Lynn Wienck, The Chisholm Trail Bookstore After several very warm days, I thought summer had arrived, but no, lower temperatures have returned. The rain has returned as well. It’s pleasant and surprising. All vegetation has gone various shades of green and wild. The days have been slightly hazy and humid. Small frogs, tiny frogs hop everywhere. They are a pleasure to watch. Do they play leapfrog? Coming soon, but not yet in hand is the Devil’s Dictionary written by Ambrose Bierce in the last century and illustrated by Ralph Steadman in this century. Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) remains known for his scathing, pointed, blazing, and satirical commentary. This tome – originally titled Cynic’s Word Book (1906), later published as Devil’s Dictionary (1911), Ralph Steadman illustrated edition (2003) – is Ambrose Bierce’s own abrasive attitude lexicon-dictionary. Ralph Steadman with his equally pointed illustrations should provide fine, merry, fitting tunes to the words. I’m looking forward to a rather perfect symphony. If words make music, then so do pictures. Enough of the musing. It’s into the rain, and perhaps, more rain for several days. It’s not too cold, not too hot, but just right, and the rain is gentle. Watch the clouds roll in; watch the clouds roll out; watch the wee frogs hop, hop, hop. It’s a pleasant respite from the soon-to-come summer heat.

Before we launch into a serious and sustained consideration of the relatively new practice of mega-listing, which is of grave concern to many online professional booksellers, we need to define our terms a bit. Strictly speaking, mega-listers offer many books for sale through the major search services (ABE, Alibris, Amazon, etc.), through other portals, or through their own websites. To use a somewhat arbitrary but real number, 100,000 books constitutes “many” to most of us. That type of volume would represent a lot of effort and a lot of storage space. It goes without saying that most of us would rather own a catalog of 500 stellar titles or 5,000 fairly scarce sellable books than a huge warehouse full of bargain basement dreck that’s actually worth less, but the free market allows for many niches so that is well and fine. This touches on another loaded term—“penny sellers.” Speaking for myself, I don’t have a huge problem with penny sellers. I don’t think they have ruined the profession, though they do erode confidence in online book buying if they do not describe their wares accurately, or if they are not upfront about the shipping costs, which is where they probably make a good portion of their money. On the other hand, the stakes are not high for most of the cheap and common titles they offer. Penny sellers came when they heard about the used book gold rush. They don’t find many nuggets, and often don’t know fool’s gold from the real thing, but somebody has to pan for siftings in book streams and cart away loads of Grishamite from the mine floor. If this keeps them out of McJobs and gives them more dignity, time to see their family, or whatever, more power to them. Many will learn the basics and proceed to elevate themselves. They have a right to undersell as long as they have the merch (and there is nothing funnier than a $5 bookseller complaining about a $1 bookseller). Penny sellers are a natural market force. The Glut, where everyone and their grandmother realized they could sell books online, begot the penny sellers, and the Glut itself was spawned by the confluence of huge amounts of unwanted books and the selling platform provided by Interloc, Bibliofind, and the 3As, where profits eventually trumped standards. Capitalism, baby. I often think back on a copy of The Soong Sisters by Emily Hahn I picked up seven or eight years ago. They grew up to become Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Madame Kung, and Madame Sun Yat-sen. It was published in 1941 or so, with red cloth covers and nice photos. Anyway, there were already a small handful of copies on ABE so I ran it through eBay as a lark and realized around $35 on the transaction. Fast forward to today, where there are 117 listings on ABE alone, from $55 down to $2.75 (and no doubt it could be found cheaper somewhere else). Back on eBay, the only copy recently offered was started at a penny, with $4.00 for shipping (though it was for UPS second day air, so not much profit margin there). From the description, “Book is in great condition. Cover is in worn condition. Lots of great photo ilistrations. Book is in great condition overall. Pretty rare. I could’nt find one for sale anywhere on the web.” He could have looked just below the first search page at multiple cheap copies offered through eBay Stores. (It ended up selling for $8.63 on 9/3/2006, by the way, so eBay can still a good place to move books quicker and higher than the search services do.) I liked the nice profit from this moderately common title not that long ago, but that was then and this is now. Things change fast in the internet age. Many of us have altered our business models, shedding common titles or stocking them in bookstores or on antique center shelves at reasonable prices rather than carrying them online where they will languish in multiplicity. We can undercut everyone else online, but time is money, and we would rather be looking for or describing good books than wrapping $3 books. This is all by way of explaining that “penny seller” is not necessarily a pejorative term—at least to some professional booksellers and to a great many buyers who appreciate low prices—and perhaps the term “mega-lister” should be accorded the same semantic leeway. Many accomplished booksellers offer tens of thousands of titles. Some, like Rhett Moran of Gutenberg Holdings, list close to 100,000 titles online, with lots more sitting in storage. He acquired these himself over the years, he knows how to describe and ship them properly, and he can answer any questions about them. Giant physical stores like Powell’s offer millions of titles online, though there is not a lot of description (they have a 1941 Soong Sisters for $9.95 described as “worn condition or underlined”—my underlining), and they can’t always locate the desired out-of-print title. One would have to assume that most BOBs (big online bookstores) would not want to be called mega-listers. There is a newer breed of online bookstore that seems firmly in the mega-lister camp but still maintains some tenuous semblance of traditional standards. They are a combination of penny seller and mega-lister that one colleague calls “book mills.” Thriftbooks.com out of Seattle is a good example of a potentially above average mega-lister. They carry many cheap listings, they only flood the market with a quarter of a million books rather than millions, and they often even include such bibliographic information as the date. Thousands of titles are wildly overpriced, but tens of thousands more are very affordable. They claim some kind of mutually beneficial relationship with one or more local library systems, and their boilerplate claims “the HIGHEST star rating of ALL high-volume sellers!” This is obviously a place to go for reading copies rather than exquisitely bound volumes and creampuff first editions of highly important and sought-after works. They make a point of comparing many of their prices to the same title at Amazon (e.g., one cent vs. $7.99), though I don’t know how they keep that accurate or current. From the helpful FAQ page, “How do you sell your books for a penny? We are able to offer low prices because we leverage both our proprietary technology and our partnerships with many large sources of used books including book stores, wholesalers, and publishing houses.” Fair enough. (I had some FAQs of my own about their operation, but Thriftbooks did not get back to me, so this estimation might be a little off one way or the other.) They use some skimpy and boilerplate description, but for reading copies of dirt cheap books with reasonable shipping rates, that is not such a major concern. On the pricier side, I wanted to know more about the condition of The Postal History and Stamps of Bermuda by M. H. Ludington, priced at $150, which is described as “Good. Good.” Does the second Good mean it has a dust jacket? Their response reads, “Each book is individually rated by a Thrift Books staff member. Below are the different ratings and definitions;” and “Good” is defined as, “A copy that has been read, but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact. The spine may show signs of wear. Pages can include limited notes and highlighting.” So they really couldn’t be bothered to provide more than that generic description. A bookseller who seems to like books offers this fairly scarce title for the same price, and it is rated “Very Good” with details, so that would have been the logical choice in those cases where you are lucky enough to have a choice. From Thriftbooks’ About Us page, they say they hold over 250,000 titles “in stock.” They also claim to be adding 10,000 new titles a day, though it isn’t clear whether they mean to the website or into the building, or maybe they both buy and sell 10,000 a day so the base number stays at around 250,000. At any rate, and here is the biggest distinction of all—they seem to actually own at least some of the titles in question, and they seem to be stored on premises they own, lease, or rent. Yes, Virginia, some mega-listers don’t physically own the stock they list for sale. We are getting used to this bizarre idea, but it’s still shocking when you think about it. The BOBs and an okay book mill or three are the last outposts of civilization. After that we run into a whole stratum of mega-listers that are high on volume and short on standards. New book dealers who list the entire catalogs of various publishers and distributors at an often indecent markup; page hogging remainders dealers who offer multiple copies of palletized titles they hold; volume processors of ex-library acquisitions, charity works, and bulk donations; and scavengers who scrape all the titles from one site and list them on another. Super mega-listers, like black holes, suck it all in. This would all be okay of course if they all fought it out on some giant website where everyone knows what the deal is, but they have invaded once-pure book search services such as ABE and Alibris like some noxious species of plant or insect. (Many Amazon sellers are upset too, but this kind of comes with the jungle that is Amazon.) The 2As know that customers respond to branding and prefer one-stop shopping, but they should have worked out a better way for well-behaved new booksellers and used/out-of-print/antiquarian booksellers to co-exist without all the duplication and duplicity, even if it meant less income for them. Rare book tabs on the home page or other anemic sops are not the answer. We were there first, and we gave them life. We need the 2As at the moment, but surely they realize that given the current situation many of us would leave in a heartbeat if one of the independents would just reach critical mass (as in lots of sellers and lots of eyeballs). But back to the semantic task at hand. “Mega-lister” is probably the best term to use, because the prefix mega means large, and it’s the large ones that hurt us the most. This puts penny seller mega-listers (PSMs) with their own stock in the same tent as data miner mega-listers (DMMs). There are at least three types of data miners. Those that sell new books they don’t own (and often can’t provide) from distributor’s catalogs; those that put up huge lists of books they don’t own (and often can’t provide) from other types of sources; and those phantom listers that specifically target the catalogs of other booksellers with actual books. Most DMMs (also known as aggregators and data consolidators) never handle any books themselves. You order through the 3As, he gets paid, he orders the book through the distributor, the distributor ships it to you, and the distributor bills him for a much lower amount than you paid him to begin with. Some mega-listers ply their trade internationally, where unsuspecting buyers may not be aware of ABE and Alibris. To complicate matters, mega-listers and data miners often do some of both. They share several characteristics in addition to massive size, like poor descriptions and inane boilerplate, so one name fits them all pretty well. Eskimos have many names for pure snow but only one for yellow snow. If mega-listers are also good booksellers who are not sacrificing standards for profits, they will achieve customer satisfaction, some peer acceptance, and business success. That said, however, mega-lister nomenclature does demand a handy title for the worst offenders. Let us further define the “malicious mega-lister,” then, as distinct from somewhat more benign forms of this practice. Their sins against our noble profession are listed in order of magnitude. -MMs who scrape listings from actual booksellers and offer them up as their own at higher prices. They can’t stand by the book’s description because they did not create it, and most would probably be incapable of doing so with important titles anyway. They can’t easily answer questions about their phantom listings without contacting the actual bookseller and pretending they are the customer. They rely on drop-shipping by the actual owner, and cannot guarantee proper service in this area either. (As an aside, isn’t it annoying how we even do the wrapping and shipping for these leeches?) They can’t always insure availability, particularly when the order is finalized directly through one of the search services, and that means dashed hopes and the pursuit of refunds. This is all quite distinct from traditional book search services that charge a modest fee for locating wants. The markups many malicious mega-listers charge for a brief stint as middle man are totally outrageous. Selling items you don’t actually own is blatant misrepresentation at the very least. It’s the kind of thing a good federal agency or state attorney general should look into. The situation is different with newer books that they pretend to own but actually order from the distributor, though this can also be problematic for the would-be customer in terms of accurate bibliographic description, stockouts, and high markups. -MMs steal the hard work of actual professional booksellers who have found, researched, described, priced, and housed these books. They do this in a major way by lifting descriptions in their entirety, which is nothing short of plagiarism, and they are quick to pilfer images as well. This practice is falling by the wayside quite a bit, due to threats of legal action embedded right in the original descriptions, by altercations they have had with angry booksellers, and by the possibility of getting kicked off the search services. It is probably more common now among rogue operators selling single books they actually don’t own on eBay than it is among large established businesses on the 3As, although in some cases this might be one of their off-the-shelf operations. Have malicious mega-listers stopped stealing our hard work and merchandise on the 3As, or have they figured out less obvious ways to present phantom listings they don’t actually own by simply stripping them of unique descriptions and identifiers? -MMs clog the search service results. This can be confusing and maddening to customers looking for a desired title. It is also a real pain in the butt for true booksellers and researchers, and the ripple effects include virtually useless wants matching and meta-search engine results (as in BookFinder and AddAll). Piling on so many wild price variations and multiple listings of the exact same book with questionable ISBNs and misleading stock images is sure to bury legitimate offerings and sure to add to an erosion of confidence in online book buying. -MMs have an unfair pricing advantage over small booksellers. Most publishers and distributors don’t sell directly on the 3As because they know the booksellers who support them would complain. Instead, they enter into agreements with mega-listers who have few if any inbound or outbound shipping, inventory, customer service, or other overhead costs. They load entire databases to the web without checking against actual distributor inventories and delivery schedules. Once in this lawless zone, they can underprice and overprice at the same time, casting gill-nets at will and pulling in many of the available fish. Small publishers suffer when most sales are driven through Amazon, Baker & Taylor, or Ingram with their large discounts, because sales from their own websites fall off. And many mega-listers designate new books as used/rare/out-of-print on such sites as Amazon at two or three times retail when they are still in print and available directly from the publisher. In a more recent development, dubious charity mega-listers cut to the front of the line on the supply side, and undercut those of us who have to pay for our stock on the demand side. -MMs data mine. They use software programs to do the listing work for them. Data mining repeats erroneous bibliographic information, publisher catalog data mining lists many books that are no longer available, it causes too many listings to read the same way, and it often employs stock photos that are really only acceptable for new publications. It is virtually impossible to data mine in a responsible manner, as you would have to personally check thousands of listings for availability, etc. -MMs throw all price guidelines out of whack with a blizzard of confusing and conflicting information. This lines their pockets, but it often reduces the value of our property, wastes everyone’s time, and drives away paying customers. -MMs provide poor customer service. They unite a good number of books with a good number of customers for a hidden surcharge, and often nobody is the wiser, but the very nature of their operation precludes a high degree of honesty and satisfaction. These bottom two attributes were around before mega-listing on the internet, by the way, but they are readily identifiable aspects of it. I have some questions about this cyberpiracy that are perhaps rhetorical. First of all, am I missing something? Do MMs do anything that is good for anyone other than themselves and their hosts? And what about the major search services? ABE, for example, used to outlaw this activity before May, 2004. Does the increased income justify sacrificing standards, dealing with complaints, and denigrating the site? (It must, of course, so that one isn’t so rhetorical.) Should we just leave them in disgust and set up our stores on sites most book buyers are oblivious to? Do ABE and Alibris feel they would fall behind if either did the right thing here and reined in malicious mega-listers? Is “malicious” even a good word to use, or is there a better appellation for this new creature in our midst that would serve to differentiate between big online bookstores, relatively well-meaning cheap book mills, and the bad kind of mega-listers? Malice means “desire to harm others or to tease.” They don’t exactly desire to harm us, but they don’t seem to lose sleep over it either. And tease may be a stretch, but they are sure in our face as well as in our pockets, and it’s time somebody did something about it. I must confess that I do not totally understand how malicious mega-listers ply their trade. It would be interesting if a reformed employee of one of these outfits would come forward and write a book about it or something, or perhaps trial transcripts would reveal the same secrets. The technical details of data mining; the ins and outs of fooling honest booksellers; clashes with same; profiles of customers who pay ten times more because they didn’t know any better; certain understandings they have reached with the search services, including better deals on fees and commissions; the hellishness of their daily email and phone work trying to reconcile canceled orders and explain themselves to disappointed customers. Great stuff, though it doesn’t make up for the loss of our verdant fields with maybe three or four listings of a rare book (remember that dreamtime?) that are now clogged with countless rip-off mutations, phantom titles and PODs (another serious issue) like bodies amid broken down war machines on a bizarre and confusing battlefield, with camp follower penny sellers bringing up the rear, dark clouds and vultures above, and the 3As generals observing it all from a safe hilltop, though General Amazon can be partly excused because he never claimed to be an antiquarian and out-of-print bookseller to begin with. It seems too late for major reform. The 2As Amazon wannabes are liking huge amounts of newer books and wildly overpriced older books better, regardless of how they spin it. We do not necessarily believe that quality listings and services will always win the day, for example, as ABE and Alibris are now saying, because mega-listers are not stupid and they aren’t hanging around and multiplying for nothing. ABE and Alibris can’t really afford to provide significant relief for their original “partners” by drastically curtailing mega-listing without hurting the bottom line. They say they have plans to deal with the scourge by limiting listings to two copies only of books which are substantially the same (i.e., new books), by introducing seller ratings , etc., but we remain skeptical. What I learned in preparing this article is that they understand why we don’t like page hogging, but the new owners have either forgotten or never fully understood the whole traditional bookselling standards thing. Data miner mega-listers will still be free to list millions of books that are not available anywhere; data thieves can still scrape our listings for inflated prices as long as they are not extremely obvious about it; many older books will continue to be described in highly misleading and substandard ways; many customers will be left bewildered, disappointed, or cheated; most good booksellers will remain frustrated; and the venture capitalists will continue to extract profits while grooming these properties for virtually inevitable takeover by even bigger corporations. The average ABAA bookseller, somewhat above the fray to begin with by virtue of superior stock, is probably happier now that blatantly pirated descriptions of truly rare books are on the wane. The high fees and commissions they generate give them some clout, which is why Alibris has been courting them. The average IOBA or unrepresented bookseller, squeezed by penny sellers from one end and ruthless mega-listers from the other, are pretty close to the bottom of the totem pole at the present time. ABE or Alibris could make a bold move by firmly re-establishing itself as the premier site for used/out-of-print/antiquarian books. This could be accomplished by consistently expelling bad booksellers and by limiting inventory to, say, 100,000 titles per bookseller, where anything over that would require review. They could also start charging significantly more for listing over 150,000 or 200,000 titles rather than capping the high end of the sliding fee. They could roll back a few other hurtful loss of control policies, downsize a bit, still make good enough livings, and do right by the profession. Come home, ABE or Alibris. Become the site of choice for real booksellers and their happy customers. All is forgiven. Since that is a pipe dream, you know the drill. Work hard; improve your stock; improve your knowledge; set up your own website; list on clean independent sites like Biblio.com, TomFolio.com, and IOBAbooks.com; try lucrative venues like eBay; ease into book shows and antique centers; join trade associations like the ABAA, ILAB, and IOBA; and work toward a better future. Shawn Purcell operates Balopticon Books & Ephemera and can be contacted at http://www.balopticon.com.

How do I even begin to describe what it was like to be on the faculty of the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar—the booksellers’ boot camp—for the first time? Exhilarating, exhausting, exciting—and one of the best weeks I have spent as a bookseller! But no—it was not a vacation—except in the sense that a vacation is a break from the normal routine that can recharge you and help you to return fresher and more energized. Some of the comments from the Class of 2006 are posted on the seminar website (Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar), but I will quote one here: “I am currently implementing many of the practical applications and I am now directed to the areas where I know I need to ‘learn’ more. And this along with a notebook chocked full of real, usable information, contacts, etc. I have attended scores of conferences over the years in several fields, and this coursework was as well organized, classy, attentive to detail and interesting. All of the faculty were ‘characters’ and not shy about straight out talk or tough questions or saying “I don’t know”. I cannot recommend the seminar strongly enough, but it was not for sissies as far as the hours. Your money’s worth??? YOU BET!!” And a word of warning: if you think it might be enjoyable to see something of Colorado and the Colorado Springs area while you are at the seminar, plan on going early—otherwise Pike’s Peak will remain just a mountain in the distance! There is no “spare time” or “free time” during the week itself—you live, think, and eat bookselling. It is only when you are in the middle of the seminar that you realize how apt the nickname “booksellers’ boot camp” is! With a wide range of students’ background and experience, and an even wider range of their knowledge of bookselling and hopes for the seminar, the curriculum has to balance the amount of time spent on different areas—it has to include both depth and breadth in discussing books and bookselling and cram that all into one week—and we all know that bookselling is something you can spend a lifetime learning and still not learn everything. One of the ways that the seminar handles this mission is by long, packed days, careful attention to time and an intensive focus that did not let up even on the “breaks” or at lunchtime (most days, the faculty sat at different tables, so “seminarians” could sit with them and continue discussing books and bookselling). A significant part of the learning was in one-to-one conversations, or small group discussions either with faculty or just among the students themselves. The curriculum is also evolving to confront the changing realities of today’s bookselling world, but without neglecting the traditional knowledge base that a professional bookseller needs. Since this was my first year, I have no basis for comparison, but other faculty members commented on what a dynamic group of students were at the seminar. A large part of what makes an experience like this so valuable is not just the information given by the faculty but also that shared by the attendees from their years of experience! As a (former) teacher, I was dismayed when halfway through the week, a student asked in conversation a very basic question: “what is a trade paperback?” While I was able to answer that specific question then, the reality is that the seminar does not, and cannot in one week, answer every student’s questions. It is easy to assume that dealing with concrete “how to” topics can be more valuable to beginning booksellers—and the seminar addresses many very specific issues, ranging from details on packing for the mail order bookseller to Dan Gregory’s marketing presentation (an hour that contained enough ideas that would in itself justify the expense of the seminar) to the use of reference materials and how to approach librarians (another extremely valuable presentation given by Dan DeSimone, a bookseller for 25 years and now a Curator at the Library of Congress). And even though I am a bookseller who loves scouting and pride myself on being pretty good at it, I picked up several great tips from Michael Ginsberg’s session on scouting! Although many specific presentations focused on the practical to a large extent, that is not—in my opinion—where the real value of this seminar lies. Rather it is in opening up to booksellers the idea that they do not have to deal in “ordinary” books, but can become involved with the best and most significant and interesting books. It is in creating a sense of limitless possibilities—in telling booksellers that, yes, they can control both their business and how much money they can make—and then in showing them what they need to know to do this. Almost anyone can teach “how-to” methods, but I think the Colorado seminar is unique in its ability to convey the sense of what bookselling, at its best, can be—and I think that the uniqueness is due to the quality of those booksellers who have kept the seminar going year after year, ranging from Ed Glaser, who has given of his time, energy and knowledge for the entire 28 year history of the seminar, to Michael Ginsburg, Rob Rulon-Miller, and newer participants like Tom Congalton. They present, as booksellers, an example of collegiality, professionalism, and generosity that is unmatched. A recurring theme was that other booksellers are not your competitors; they are your colleagues, that helping other booksellers will help you, and even that booksellers can be your best customers. It is also important to emphasize that the seminar does not end at the end of the week. Since so much is covered and so quickly, the fat binder both extends the information presented and becomes a resource that can be consulted over and over again as a reminder of what was covered. The students are told that they can call upon anyone on the faculty afterwards for help. A mailing list was started before the actual seminar and it is still going on. More importantly, I am sure that some of those attending have already formed relationships with other seminarians that will survive for years of their bookselling careers. And finally, the worth of the seminar will be determined by how many of those ideas are put into practice! The ABAA has a clear sense of how significant the seminar can be, and it is reflected in their membership requirements: attendance at the seminar is worth six months of full-time experience as a bookseller. Chris Volk operates Bookfever along with Shep Iiams out of the Sierra foothills of Amador County, CA and can be contacted at http://www.bookfever.com.

You were warned about it at all levels of your education, and students are expelled from colleges and universities for doing it. You have read about it in the style manuals you used in your education or workplace. In recent years, you have probably heard about historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose, who were shamed by accusations of plagiarism and proofs of their guilt. And there are many other cases of less famous academics, novelists, and other authors who have plagiarized and been caught, damaging their reputations irreparably. Plagiarism is the representation of someone else’s words as one’s own. In the context of online bookselling, it is the copying of part or all of a book’s description from another bookseller or other source without attribution—thus representing it falsely as one’s own work. “Lying” and “stealing” are blunter ways of putting it. One of the most disturbing aspects about discussions on plagiarism is the number of booksellers who do not see the problem. So let us make clear from the start that it is wrong. It is unethical, sloppy, lazy, a professional “no-no,” and sometimes illegal. And if you are an offender and none of that bothers you, it is also against the rules of all major bookselling sites and can lead to your entire catalogue being suspended or withdrawn permanently. The exact wording varies from site to site, but this excerpt from the ABE Code of Conduct will suffice to demonstrate the nature of plagiarism: “Stealing bookseller information (such as descriptions, pictures, and images from other booksellers’ listings).” As ABE makes clear, such violations will lead to suspension and, if the violations are not resolved, a permanent ban. Sites with high ethical standards will be reluctant to readmit such an offender and even large listing sites take a strong stand on plagiarism, once it has been pointed out. Augustine Funnell of Fredericton, Canada has been plowing a lonely furrow against plagiarism for some time and is delighted to see IOBA looking into this matter. Gus suffers more than most—his descriptions are very good, the result of painstaking research and an encyclopedic knowledge, and are therefore more liable to be copied than other less erudite entries. Understandably, he gets—to use his own words—“pissed off!” Then comes the next strange thing—when the offending booksellers are notified, instead of saying “Oops, sorry, I’ll put it right,” many retort rudely or belligerently. Only when forced to comply by the threat of, or actual, suspension do they finally do something about it. Some booksellers, of course, plagiarize from ignorance (though there really is little excuse for not having read the Code of Conduct when joining a site, or being unaware of the general concept of plagiarism), but most seem to do it out of sheer selfishness or laziness—a lamentable disregard for their bookselling colleagues, not to mention their own reputations as booksellers. Most examples of plagiarism are found by accident when checking one’s own entries. Once a bookseller has found an example, it can be instructive to check on the offending dealer. Sometimes a serial plagiarist will be found, worth reporting to IOBA! One way to check for plagiarized listings is to examine some of the offender’s listings and pick one of the lengthy descriptions. Copy a section of that description and paste it into the keyword panel of a suitable general bookselling site such as BookFinder, AddAll or ABE. If the description is stolen, it will soon show up in another bookseller’s listing. It is, of course, perfectly legitimate to examine and learn from the descriptions of other booksellers as part of basic research on a book, but that should be the absolute limit. Once having crossed that line by copying and then pasting into one’s own entry, the offender is stealing and deserves any sanctions that come his way. There are some gray areas: How much copied text constitutes plagiarism? Must it be the entire description? A paragraph? What about a single sentence? A clever turn of phrase? A single, well-chosen word? What about factual bibliographic information about the book being described, such as the list of contributors in an anthology, the list of titles in a set of books being offered, or a long title or subtitle? What about copying a citation to a reference source if you haven’t seen it yourself? What about ideas, such as X being one of the most important scholars in a given field? How much paraphrasing is needed to “fix” plagiarism? What about copying text from a dust jacket blurb, with or without attribution? Is ignorance an acceptable excuse for plagiarism? Common sense answers most of these questions but none of these issues will arise if a bookseller does not do any kind of “borrowing” from another bookseller’s listing or other source, without proper attribution. There are any number of reasons why one bookseller might copy part or all of another’s description, but there isn’t a single good one among them. Not even flattery or as a tribute to the original writer. Plagiarism is simply the brazen theft of the fruits of someone else’s labour, and no different from one person scrimping and saving enough money to buy a car, only to have a stranger drive it away. If a bookseller believes that plagiarism is inconsequential, then he must also believe that he himself has no right to anything he has worked for, or to which he has committed time and effort. And if a bookseller cares so little about the ethics of this profession, he is better off out of it, and the profession is most certainly better off without him. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, “A thief is a thief is a thief.” Stuart Manley operates Barter Books in Alnwick Station, Northumberland, England and can be contacted at http://www.barterbooks.co.uk. Steve Harter operates Sweet Beagle Books out of Bloomington, IN and can be contacted at http://www.sweetbeagle.com.

Table of Contents From the editor The Bane of the Online Book World: Mega-Listers Plagiarism and Online Bookselling Defining Mega-Listers Megalisters: Big and Online Mega-Lister Questionnaire An Interview with Mike Goodenough Books, Books Everywhere, But Not a Page to Read, or, a Book Dealer’s Travels in Spain Ephemeral Assays: Herbarium Symposium Book Reviews The Art of the Book & Beauty and the Book Book Review: Books, Friends, and Bibliophilia by Anton Gerits How I Spent My Summer Vacation: Teaching at the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar The Boot Camp for Book Dealers Joe Perlman of Mostly Useful Fictions Marc Monsarrat of Bookmarc Books, Malahat, British Columbia John Hardy of Hardy Books, Nevada City, California Addendum Ye Old Booksellers: Forty Years Among the Old Booksellers of Philadelphia

My name is Joe Perlman and I am the proud owner of Mostly Useful Fictions. The name describes my specialty, which I like to think of as “Useful Fiction” (i.e., twentieth century world literature). I sell what I love, mostly serious fiction, including lots of literature in translation. My journey to becoming a book dealer has been long and meandering. It best described by some lines in a poem called The Waking, by Theodore Roethke: “I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I learn by going where I have to go.” In college, I majored in Psychology and English, and moved from New England to New York City in 1973 to start graduate school in Educational Psychology. In spite of the heavy work load, I would stop studying around midnight, just as the heat in the apartment building went off, turn on the oven for warmth, and pick up a novel. At the time, I was enchanted by the South American magical realists. Unfortunately, their writing did not lull me to sleep. Rather, I had to fight with myself to put the books down so I could wake up in time for classes. The last vestiges of the Book Row on lower Broadway and 4th Avenue were still in existence at that time, so I spent hours browsing and managed to acquire quite a few books, in spite of my meager student income. In 1983, married with two children and three rejected doctoral dissertation topics, I dropped out of graduate school, left the not for profit world, and accepted a position on Wall Street as a computer programmer trainee at the infamous Drexel Burnham Lambert. I worked for several firms and progressed from trainee to programmer to programming manager. Eventually I left the technical side and became a business analyst specializing in the relationship between banks and brokerage houses. As my income rose, so did the number of books that I was able to buy. By 1985, we left Manhattan for the suburbs. We moved to East Northport on Long Island and my commute to Wall Street grew to nearly two hours each way. I was able to buy and read more books than ever. In spite of the fact that the house had a den with wall to wall bookshelves, I still did not have enough shelf space. Every year the number of cartons of books in the attic increased. I collected modern first editions, South American and Eastern European writers in translation, and writers I fell in love with on the train—Yukio Mishima, Naguib Mahfouz, and William Trevor, to name a few. In the early 1990s I saw an article in Biblio magazine about book collector groups. A Long Island group was mentioned, so I wrote a letter to the secretary asking for information about the group. They sent me an invitation to the next meeting, and I have been a member ever since. The organization, Long Island Book Collectors, meets monthly on Sunday afternoons at Adelphi University. Each meeting is hosted by a member on a rotating basis, and the member either recruits a speaker, or talks about some aspect of their own collections. I spoke several times, and continue to learn a lot from other members. One of the valuable lessons that I learned about collecting was to focus and collect in depth. While I continue to buy modern firsts, I now seriously collect Jack Kerouac (who lived in Northport, Long Island for several years), James Joyce, particularly Ulysses and books about Ulysses, Anne Frank, and my newest collecting passion Alice Munro. The best part of belonging to a collector group is that you can talk about books with people who love them as much as you do. It is the only place I know where you can lament the fact that the one book you need to complete a collection costs $1,200, and the person next to you will not look shocked that a book could be so expensive, but instead will reply, “Well, you really should get it, you can afford it and you’re entitled to splurge every once in awhile!” The other important lesson that I learned from the group was that one third of the members were also book dealers. They had formed a separate organization, the Long Island Antiquarian Book Dealers Association (LIABDA), and I was asked to speak to the group a few times about my collecting interests. I became friendly with some of the dealers, attended their twice yearly book fairs, and realized that I should become a dealer myself. When my eldest child left for college in 1997, I started buying books for resale. I had decided that once I had 1,000 books to sell I would put them on-line. I gleaned through the cartons in the attic, scoured tag sales, library sales and used bookstores and by the fall of 1998 I was ready to start. I went to the county office to register my business name, received a tax ID number, and began to price and catalogue the books. Fortunately, I had a teen-aged daughter at home who was glad to earn some extra spending money by helping to enter the books into the database. I would make notes about the condition and price on a post-it attached to the front of each book. She in her typical teenage fashion would emerge at midnight and type away until dawn. When I awoke there would be a large pile of books without post-its, meaning the data had been entered, and a small pile of books with additional post-it notes with her questions. When the one thousandth book was entered, I uploaded them to Bibliofind, and was open for business. I remember the first order—a first American edition of Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, the Sea. The orders increased slowly each year. I discovered that in part, it was a numbers game—the more books listed, the more orders. I now have about 8,500 books on-line at any given time, and hope to increase that number to 12,000 over the next year or two. Bibliofind is long gone, but I list on the standards, ABE, Alibris, Amazon, as well as my own website, Mostly Useful Fictions. Since I always enjoyed writing, I began to write some humor pieces on making the transition from collecting books to selling them. They were published in the now defunct Book Quote magazine. When the editor of the LIABDA newsletter retired, I was quickly recruited, so I have been the corresponding secretary and newsletter editor for that organization for the past four years. Some of the pieces I have written for that newsletter have been reprinted in the Standard, and Book Dealer Monthly. Others are on my website. Working full-time during the day, commuting two hours each way and trying to build an internet business have kept me pretty busy for several years. As of July, I have cut back on my day job to 21 hours, so that Mostly Useful Fictions could become my primary job. Awhile back I wrote a piece about bookselling and the lottery. For me, most of the time being a book dealer feels like winning the lottery even without the big check from the State of New York. Mostly Useful Fictions really did start as the saying goes with just “a dollar and a dream.” That was the first time I actually bought a book at a tag sale, not for my own collection, but to start to build up an inventory to put up on the internet. I can even remember the name though it was sold a long time ago—Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. It is a great book and I still pick up and list copies whenever I run across them. A dollar here and a dream there, and the books began piling up. I may have chosen a few bad sets along the way, but the dream persists, and grows stronger over time. I have held many jobs in my various careers. I lasted one night as a cook at McDonald’s back in high school. I have been a car jockey, a psychiatric aide in a drug and alcohol hospital, a supermarket cashier, a research assistant and a grants writer. I have taught early childhood development as an adjunct at a university in New York City. I have designed and developed numerous computer systems for Wall Street firms including money transfer that handle several billion dollars worth of wire transfers every business day. None of these jobs has given me the satisfaction that I get from selling a book that I love to someone eager to read and to own it. Joe Perlman operates Mostly Useful Fictions out of East Northport, NY and can be contacted at http://www.mostlyusefulfictions.com.