Reminders In Life About ten years ago, now, in December, I sat with my parents watching the CNN coverage of the Granada military action. This is significant only because at the time I was a ten year veteran in the military, working Special Operations, and those units were my own, those guys in BDUs running around, the gunship crews, they were all friends of mine and I was sitting home recovering from successful surgery to remove an ovarian tumor instead of working on the mission. It’s the only action I missed, and the funny thing was, it didn’t bother me to not be on the inside knowing what was actually going on. For me, the prospect of cancer had been a wake up call, one of those reminders in life, which made me think about what I wanted to use my time and mind and energy for. Travelling to foreign places and blowing things up, for whatever reason, wasn’t what I wished to be remembered for. I recovered, returned to work, finished my hitch and left the military to become a deputy sheriff here in Okaloosa County, Florida instead. It seemed a worthier form of warfare to me, and at least this way, if I died, it would be on my own ground and for a cause I personally believe in rather than one I got told to believe in. It was the right decision for me. However, my old nemesis came back to hassle with me again and about three years ago I had two more operations, both successful, to beat tumors, this time trying the breast cancer route. This second “go round” was harder than the first, really knocked me down and took a long time to recover from. In ways, I am still trying to recover the energy I once had. Just another reminder, and I started Books By Blondie, an online business, to have something to fall back on should another round be ahead of me and I not prove able to continue as a cop. Shortly after this, I got recruited into IOBA by Rik Pavlesak, one of the best friends anyone can have and the owner of Blue Monkey Books. I poured a lot into it, because I believed it could be important for me and others as a small, independent bookseller. I wanted it to be here and be strong in case I ever needed it. IOBA was just an idea then. I had the pleasure and heartburn both of being one of the Founders and working with the others as we struggled to define and give birth to this dream. Life is strange at times. I started by working as the webmaster for the website, then was drawn in to be the interim Vice President and later was voted in as the first acting President of IOBA. It’s been a very long couple years, full of challenges and hard work to learn the job and juggle this responsibility along with being a cop and a bookstore owner and, occasionally, having a life, too. I’d never done anything like starting and then running a corporation with a board. I was still learning the book business as well. Did mistakes get made? Yep. Did I lose some battles? Yep. I also was in on some great calls and big wins. Life is like that. One battle won or lost doesn’t make the whole war, and it is good to keep your eye on the long term perspective as much as you can to weather occasional setbacks and losses. Next week, I have another date with the surgeons for another battle with the old nemesis. It will be old news by the time this goes to press. I’m not worried about it, I feel really positive and haven’t chosen to share some of my personal world with you out of some maudlin sense of self pity or doom and gloom. I’m smiling a lot as I type this up. It’s just another one of those reminders in life to run a self check on where I am, where I’m going, what I stand for and what I’d be remembered for if I lost the war today. I like the answers better than I did ten years ago, but I still have a long way to go. I haven’t gotten it right, yet, but I’m learning. A couple weeks ago, I sent a call for volunteers to the membership for help in the coming elections. Last time around, people lacked confidence, perhaps, and the interim board had to handle it and ended up fortunate to get one candidate for each office. Later, we took some criticism for that, there were some mutters about it. I’d like to avoid that, this time, however NO ONE, not ONE, volunteered or even enquired what we had in mind or needed. There’s a lot of reasons for this. The biggest one is, you don’t realize how much IOBA needs YOUR help. It really does. Secondly, some of you don’t know that most of your current board had no prior experience, learned as we went along, and are still learning and making mistakes along with the good moves, and this is OK. Our members have never demanded perfection, just candor, from me. I believe the entire current board would say the same. All you need is the desire to make a difference, to learn and grow some more, to have an effect, to work with your peers, argue and agree and all the usual work of a relationship, be it working or personal. Having a tough skin also helps. Thirdly, secretly, maybe you lack self confidence to speak up, feeling you are too new, or not good enough in some talent or area or way. Facing the unknown is scary. I was scared to accept the nomination for president last year, if you want to know the truth. My reasons included all of the above ones. I’m not a fighter by nature, but I’ve learned it’s not being afraid which makes a person a coward. It is what you do despite being afraid which determines whether you face your battles with courage. Win some, lose some, what really matters in life is how you play the game. IOBA needs volunteers to oversee and help with the election process. IOBA needs several candidates for office to step forward to be the ones to take our association from here. Consider this a personal reminder in life and decide what you’d like to be remembered for a year from now. I really hope and pray with all my heart it will be that, among other things, you choose to add to your short list being much more active in our association, however your volunteerism takes form. No one gets paid here, we’re all volunteers. No more volunteers, no more IOBA. That would be a damn shame.

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

Hello! My name is Joan White. My husband, DeWayne (De), and I own White Unicorn Books. We have been IOBA members since 2002. We both have a strong commitment to IOBA and to the standards of IOBA. We have enjoyed the benefits of being a member and being active in the IOBA for many years. First, my reaction to becoming IOBA President. I was surprised, delighted and terrified! Surprised, because I had never run for an IOBA office. Delighted, because I have ambitious goals in mind for this association I love. Terrified, because there’s a lot of work ahead. In the time since the end of the election the support I have received is awesome. The Officers, MALs, Committee Chairs and fellow members have put themselves forward and we are on our way to accomplishing some of our goals. We have a good foundation to work from, and we will continue the efforts started by the previous administration. One of the items I have heard loud and clear is the Board and Committees need better communication with the membership on what is being proposed and accomplished. The best news is that The Standard has returned! Another project underway is the restructure of the various IOBA Committee pages on the IOBA web-site (http://www.ioba.org ). Each committee will have their own page, and can report on goals and accomplishments. Hopefully, this will get other members excited about the changes and improvements and they will volunteer to help. There is a new IOBA committee comin’ to town – so new it is in the process of choosing a name. This will be a ‘meet and greet’ committee, but also a ‘help and assist’ committee. The plan is, just to mention a few things, to welcome new members and ‘show them around’, helping with setting up passwords, navigating around the IOBA web-site, IOBA Discuss, IOBA Tradebooks, applying for a scholarship, and listing their books on the IOBA website. But the committee is not just to assist new members; we plan for it to be a resource for existing members wanting to know more about their benefits and how they can contribute to IOBA. Under the leadership of our Vice President, Heidi Congalton, we plan a campaign to encourage more applicants to apply for the IOBA scholarships to CABS, YABS and the Rare Book School seminars. Members can truly learn how to better themselves as booksellers and increase profits for their business. There is available an immense wealth of knowledge – just sitting there waiting for you. These scholarships are available to any current IOBA member in good standing, excluding members of the Scholarship Committee and current Officers. Abe is interested in promoting the listings of books offered by members of IOBA, and would like more IOBAns to list there. They will be creating a special landing page that will search IOBA sellers only, a page that will occasionally be prominently featured on their website. To encourage more IOBA members to try AbeBooks, they will waive the monthly fees for 3 months for IOBA members who do not currently list there and have not for at least 6 months. This should be a win/win/win situation – a win for IOBA in that it will increase sales for IOBA members who list on Abe and increase the visibility of IOBA overall, a win for AbeBooks since it will help them retain and recruit sellers who are committed to a Code of Ethics and to accurate descriptions, careful packing and good customer service, and a win for buyers will be able to buy in confidence from IOBA sellers. We hope that this will only be the first step in working more closely with AbeBooks, to address the concerns our sellers have about the site and concerns that buyers might have. And with the many international members that are joining the IOBA we must be aware of our worldwide membership needs. For example, the recent talks with ABEbooks.com described above could possibly be extended to include ABEbooks.uk, ABEbooks.au, etc. We could also pursue agreements with other venues such as Alibris, Antiqbooks and Biblio. An IOBA-specific landing page at the various venues should help drive business to IOBA members. With the help of all our members we will endeavor to strengthen the commitment to traditional bookseller ethics and standards, while embracing and staying ahead of the various new technologies. Joan White IOBA President White Unicorn Books Dallas, Texas

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines “serendipity” as: “the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.” The word has just celebrated its 262nd birthday, having been coined by Horace Walpole in a letter to Horace Mann, dated 28 January 1754. Walpole built his neologism on the name of a land in a Persian fairy tale from Amir Khusrau’s Hasht-Bihisht of 1302. For an interesting discussion of this, see Dr. Oliver Tearle’s “A Short History of the Word ‘Serendipity‘.” The key role that the concept of serendipity can play in book buying and selling is well-illustrated by the legendary bookstore founded by Peter Howard in Berkeley, Ca in 1967, and that he chose Serendipity Books as its name. In Howard’s New York Times 2011 obituary, Serendipity Books is described as follows: Potential customers were confronted with a warren of rooms, some two stories high, with good books stuffed absolutely everywhere, including in shopping bags blocking the narrow aisles. Although there was clearly an underlying order, its nature was hard to discern; there were no signs. People would wander in a daze, sometimes asking, “Do you sell books here?” They thought it was a library or perhaps a museum. The lack of direction was on purpose and in earnest. Mr. Howard wanted people to search for books and find not just what they were looking for but the book next to it, which they might want more if they only realized it existed. “The bookstore is an infinite array of material and knowledge of which you know nothing,” he said. “If you’re focused, you go to the library.” Browsing at Serendipity Books was, on purpose and in earnest, an exercise in serendipity. Interior of Serendipity Books, image courtesy of Eureka Books. There are two key factors at play in the concept of serendipity. The first, and the one that perhaps gets an undue share of attention, is Chance – luck, good fortune – being in the right place at the right time. At one of the thrifts where I scout, I once walked in just as their book lady was bringing out three garbage bags full of books, magazines and ephemera on the topics of stage and close up magic, hypnotism, and biographies of famous magicians. I told her I was interested in the whole lot, and she said I could have them for $10 per bag and save her the trouble of sorting and shelving it all. At another thrift a few years back, I came across sixty-some Easton Press and Folio Society titles in Fine condition and priced at $2 each. When I was checking out the cashier told me the books had just gone on the shelf less than an hour before. I suppose I was only half-lucky on that one – she then told me I should have been there the day before when they’d put out another, equally large lot. Someone else snapped up that one just as fast. The second part of serendipity is Response. Louis Pasteur once said “Fortune favors the prepared mind.” Or as someone once told me: “Opportunity may knock, but you still have to get up off your butt and answer the door.” It doesn’t matter what luck brings you, if you don’t recognize it or know what to do with it. As book sellers, there are any number of ways we prepare ourselves for the serendipitous opportunity. Not all will work for all sellers; in fact some are mutually exclusive. Be a specialist. Get to know one subject really well, so well that whenever something comes up in your specialty – at auction, in a thrift store, wherever – you will know if it is worth buying or not. You will be familiar with the books of worth in your field that most others would overlook. Establish a reputation as a specialist, and get the word out that you are seeking specialized material: through professional contacts and organizations, and through advertising. Put it on your business card, and hand it out liberally. As you become known as a specialist in the field, material will begin to seek you out. Be a generalist. Do research to develop a broad sense of what is selling and why – look for trends and patterns. I like to systematically look at eBay Sold results as a way of learning what real people are paying for real books, with the big caveat that there are a lot of weird over and under outlier prices on eBay. I’ll often focus on books that sold in a specific price range, typically between $40 and $400. This reduces the number of results to a more manageable level, and you may want to experiment with using various keywords to get even narrower results sets. Most books that sell for higher than that are not ones you will run into all that often in a thrift store or other general sources – my Near Fine Random House HB 2nd printing of Cormac McCarthy’s The Orchard keeper notwithstanding. Looking at Sold listings on eBay will give you a broad education in what’s selling in fiction, non-fiction, modern, vintage, children’s books, etc. It will give you ideas on general topics and trends. And there are pictures – lots and lots of pictures. Step outside your usual rounds. Craig Stark at  bookthink.com likes to say “Books are everywhere.” Try scouting at venues you’ve previously ignored. There are great book bargains on eBay, though I’ve heard many sellers say they don’t like the “neighborhood”. I source some of my best books at thrift stores, but in the past I’ve stopped going to one or another of them because the manager began overpricing, or writing prices in black marker on the front free endpaper. Stop back after a couple months, because managers and policies come and go pretty quickly in these stores. Try one of your local auction houses, or friend of library sale, or big flea market, or multi-family yard sale, or Craigslist, or any number of other sources. Developing multiple sources of stock protects you from being too dependent on one that could dry up. Increase the odds of being in the right place at the right time. If you scout at thrift stores, get to know the people who handle the books. Find out if there is a regular schedule for when new stock goes on the shelves, so you can be there for first crack at it. Develop a relationship with your local auctioneers or estate liquidators – I’ve heard of book sellers who get called when a house needs to get cleared quickly. Set up Wants on venues that allow you to do so, like eBay and Abebooks. Both of these sites let you save searches, and receive email notifications when a new listing appears that matches your criteria. I know some sellers who have developed numerous and sophisticated sets of saved Wants. This strategy is particularly useful now that so many eBay sellers use fixed price listings, because it allows you to get a notification and buy the item before others are even aware of it. Following is an example of serendipity in my own experiences while book scouting, that illustrates some of the points I’ve made here. In 2009 I went to a large college book sale. A high percentage of the books were recent – that is, printed within the last thirty-some years, and so had ISBNs. There were a lot of people with scanners, so rather than try to compete head to head with them I decided to focus on the pre-ISBN titles. One of the older titles that caught my eye was The End of an Era by John S Wise, a very good copy in original binding, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1901. The blurb on a recent reprint of this book from Anza Publishing describes the title as “one of the best first-person narratives of the Civil War period.” I saw that the book had a previous owner’s name (“Col. John Thomas Gibson”) signed to the front pastedown. Additionally, there was a second inscription on the front free endpaper: “Given to me by my father / January 3d 1903 / Susan G Gibson”. I was intrigued by Susan Gibson’s period inscription, as well as the military rank included in Gibson’s inscription. On a hunch, I checked in the index of the book and found entries for a John T Gibson. Turning to the indicated pages, I learned that Col. Gibson was the commander of the Fifty-fifth Virginia Infantry based in Charles Town Virginia (now West Virginia), and was the first military commander to respond to John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry. In addition, his home in Charles Town was built on the site of Brown’s execution. The secondary inscription from Susan Gibson not only adds some charm and human interest to the book, but through publicly available genealogical information confirms the identity of Colonel Gibson. So the book, while not signed by the author, has a very cool association with a key figure in a well-known and controversial chapter in American history. Purchase price of $1.00, sold for $290. This is an example of serendipity in finding a significant book and of building value by recognizing something about a book that others missed, and by applying research. Specialized knowledge definitely gives you a leg up in terms of recognizing the significance and value of a book, but my example shows that you don’t always need specialized knowledge. Sometimes just paying attention to detail and following up on a hunch is all it takes. Anyone could have looked at the book and seen that the name written in the front was listed in the index. If you have a story of serendipity in your book selling experience, email me at editor@ioba.org or baysidebooksmd@hotmail.com to tell me about it. I think it would be fun and informative to publish a follow up to this article, presenting a variety of real life examples. Timothy Doyle Bayside Books of Maryland, IOBA Baltimore, Maryland

Bibliofile will be an occasional column at The Standard, which will present bits and pieces from around the world related to the love of books. Today’s offerings all come from Atlas Obscura, a website that features articles about sometimes little-known – but always very cool – people, places and things. “If you’re searching for miniature cities, glass flowers, books bound in human skin, gigantic flaming holes in the ground, bone churches, balancing pagodas, or homes built entirely out of paper, the Atlas Obscura is where you’ll find them.” Following is a selection of ten book-related articles that have been featured at the site: 1) Portable lighthouse libraries, distributed across the United States in the 19th century, were a common but important part of life for families living under the constant work and near-isolation of the lighthouse watch. 2) Why there are still Borders bookstores in Malaysia, or the strange case of the zombie 3) In Romania, read a book and ride the bus for free 4) Awesome Places [Arguably] Ruined by Popular Books 5) Fiction’s Newest Frontier: Literary Geocaching 6) A 400 Year Old Book Made From Feathers 7) Julian of Norwich, religious anchorite, wrote the first published book attributed to a woman in all of English literature. 8) The Obsessively Detailed Map of American Literature’s Most Epic Road Trips 9) How Book Designers Around the World Interpreted Philip K Dick’s The Man In The High Castle 10) The Museum of Miniature Books: Baku, Azerbaijan

The following article was originally published in the Summer 2008 issue of The Standard. 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. his 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 Mostly Useful Fictions East Northport, NY

The theme of this issue of The Standard is perhaps somewhat counter-intuitive for the journal of the Independent Online Booksellers Association: real world bookselling opportunities for the online dealer. IOBA President Chris Volk sets the stage as she explains how the reports of the death of the book have been greatly exaggerated. Next is a pair of articles that explore real world bookselling at book fairs and at antique malls, with contributions from several of your IOBA colleagues. And rounding out the theme, I write about selling books at genre conventions, focusing on my experiences at science fiction conventions. In the previous issue (Winter 2013), editor Howard Prouty observed that ”The Standard serves to represent our organization’s values, goals and concerns….” The remaining articles in today’s issue are a great example of this. Jonathan Smalter, chair of the IOBA Scholarship Committee, introduces us to the 2013 IOBA scholarship winners. These scholarships, one to the Colorado Antiquarian Books Seminar and a second open scholarship, are one of the major benefits offered by our organization. The winners unquestionably represent the values and goals of IOBA. Finally, as an organization of online sellers it is a challenge to get to know our colleagues. So to help with that we present member profiles from Mike Tuck of Bungalow Books, Suzanne Mantell of Warwick Books, and Bob Maddox of Squid Ink Books. I’d like to emphasize that two of the articles in this issue were directly based on the contributions of several IOBA booksellers. By sharing their individual experiences, they helped create something of value to us all. I expect there will be similar opportunities on other topics in the future, so watch for requests for contributions in the IOBA Discuss list. And as always, we encourage anyone who would like to contribute a full article to contact Howard Prouty at editor@ioba.org. IOBA as an organization exists for its members, but it only succeeds if the members contribute. The Standard is the voice of IOBA, and I’m sure each of you has something of interest and value to share.  So speak up! Tim Doyle Bayside Books of Maryland 6285 Oakland Mills Rd Sykesville, MD 21784

In recent years, the online bookseller forums have been buzzing with the message that books are dead (or dying at least), that e-books will make printed books obsolete, and that no one is reading anyhow! Before giving in to the doomsayers, try a change in perspective – look up from your computer screen and check out some events in the real world. This spring we attended two book festivals – the long running Los Angeles Times Book Festival on the University of Southern California campus in April (founded in 1996) and the Tucson Book Festival on the campus of the University of Arizona in Tucson. Both festivals are free and feature hundreds of events, mostly related to books in some way. These include hundreds of authors appearing in panels, talks and readings … and signing their books. But what makes these festivals so special are the attendees, with over 100,000 in Tucson (only in its fourth year, but attendance has gone up each year) and 150,000 in Los Angeles. When the LA festival moved from UCLA to USC a few years ago, attendance went down a bit, but this year it was back up again. Unlike traditional book fairs, the attendees at these festivals are young – not just thousands of families with their children, but lots and lots of young adults coming to listen to or meet their favorite authors. There was a woman with her 13 year old daughter in Tucson who wanted to thank Diana Gabaldon for the books they both enjoyed reading so much, and the group of teenagers in Los Angeles who wanted to say hello to Victor Villasenor. The lines for Judy Blume, R. L Stine, Cornelia Funke, and Lemony Snicket had hundreds of kids in them. These are wonderful vibrant events, free and full of variety. Even the often-long lines have a positive side to them, as they give you a chance to chat with other booklovers (and booksellers). Traveling and visiting bookstores can also be rewarding. In the week we spent on the road after Tucson, the two bookstores where we found the most books to buy were both in small towns – one a very small town. Both had new owners, with one in her first weekend as the owner. Both stores had been owned by old-fashioned sellers who believed in packing in as many books as possible, and never getting rid of any. We didn’t have enough time to really check everything out, as books were double-shelved and piled on the floor. But we had fun chatting with the new owners and found enough interesting stuff to make the stops worthwhile. In between Tucson and Los Angeles, we exhibited at the Sacramento Spring Book Fair. The manager of this fair advertises on television and the local NPR station. As a result, we always have a few people in our booth who are attending their first book fair ever. They often did not even realize that book fairs existed! Our spring events ended with the Nebula Awards weekend in San Jose. This is a venue mostly for writers, but some events were open to the public, including an evening of reading and questions and answers by two Grand Masters: Gene Wolfe, who was just receiving this honor, and Connie Willis. There was a Kindle at this event – Gene used one for his reading (although as a first-time user, he needed some quick instructions) – but there were also hundreds of real books being signed. But for just plain fun – and optimism about the future of reading and books – go to a children’s bookstore when an author is appearing. We went to just such an event this spring with Lemony Snicket and Jon Klassen, and it was priceless. The authors were very funny, but the children upstaged them with their spontaneous comments from the floor! The adults had as much fun as the children – and the excitement that revolves around book events like this can go a long way to offsetting the doldrums of summer.

with Lee Kirk, Gayle Williamson, and Sharon Eisenberg So as part of this month’s theme of alternate selling venues for online book sellers, I thought it would be interesting to do a piece on selling in antique malls. Over the years I’ve heard many anecdotal accounts of dealers who set up spaces in antique malls, with mixed positive and negative results. I’ve been selling at the Westminster Antique Mall  for over a year, taking over my current space as of January 2013. Selling at an antique mall is pretty simple in concept: the mall owners rent you space in which to set up your stock. The details of the rental agreement vary from mall to mall. Some places charge a flat amount per square foot. Some have varying rates based on the size and location of the space in the mall. Some require the seller to work a certain amount of time as part of the rental agreement, or offer a reduced rate in return for time spent working. Some have lower rent, but take a commission on your sales as part of the agreement. In addition, there may be other terms in the contract: for example, a common element is a percentage that is charged for processing credit card purchases of items from your booth. You should of course read the terms of the rental agreement carefully: look for things like, for example, who will absorb the cost of a bounced check. Because the mall houses a number of different vendors, all of your items should be marked with at least your price and booth/vendor number. You will probably also want to include an inventory or sku number. The sku number can be recorded at the point of sale, and appear on the sales statement you get with your check at the end of each pay period. This assumes the mall is sophisticated enough to have a point of sale system that allows recording of information like this, and the generation of sales statements. One of the central advantages of the well-run antique mall is that multiple sellers are present offering a wide variety of goods to attract a variety of customers, with full time staff to keep an eye on things and open locked cases, and a central checkout area that handles sales (cash, check and credit, and sometimes layaway) for all the vendors. It has some of the advantages of a brick and mortar store, without a lot of the initial investment and continuing overhead. Also, unlike a brick and mortar store, you aren’t tied to being there or hiring staff. An antique mall space can complement your online business. Many online sellers won’t list books below a certain minimum value – say $20. Booksellers routinely run into decent sellable books while scouting or in auction box lots that don’t meet this online minimum. Many of us have accumulated box after box of books like this over the years, taking up valuable room. A mall space can be perfect for selling these books. You may also find that select higher priced books will sell quite readily in an antique mall venue, thus saving the online commission fee. And finally, books that might be difficult to sell online – oversize, bulky, heavy – could profitably spend some time at the mall.In theory, a good generalist book seller could have something of interest for all the customers one might expect in an antique mall: the military collector who initially came because of another vendor who has a selection of uniforms and military paraphernalia will also be interested in your military history books; someone who visits the mall looking for objects related to local history will be interested in your books on the same topic. Collectors of glass, ceramic, paperweights, oil lamps, and on and on will be interested in books you have on those topics. And the unfortunate spouse or kid who got dragged along on an antique mall shopping trip will welcome a place to hang out and browse – and buy – books. Sounds great, huh? Well, not so fast. In preparing for this article, I asked for input from IOBA members regarding their experiences selling in antique malls. Of those who responded, their experiences ranged from guardedly positive to lukewarm to profoundly negative. What were some of the bad parts of selling in antique malls? Lee Kirk of The Prints & The Paper had this to say about antique mall selling: “At one time I set up in antique malls – some books, some small antiques, lots of ephemera. My experience was that there was so much theft and destruction (of ephemera) that I didn’t make any money. I’m sure others have had a more positive experience. What was galling is that people did it just to show that they could – if I had a pair of something, they took one. If I had a set of something, they took one piece. Ephemera were swiped and the empty sleeve placed carefully on top of the display so I would be sure to see it. Others just handled things roughly – pulling ephemera out of sleeves and shoving it back in roughly. Even books walked away, so I gave it up.” Gayle Williamson of Champ & Mabel Collectibles  had this experience at one of several different antique malls where she sold books: “The owners at Pieces of the Past were doing some kind of monkey business, either drugs or skimming profits. When they absconded the mall was locked with all the dealers’ merchandise in it. Eventually the building’s owner reopened the mall with the same employees. Unfortunately I don’t think he was that interested in running an antique mall so there were few promotions or advertising, so sales dropped.” Sharon Eisenberg of CE Ranch Books  related this challenging situation: “The first antique mall I was in was a branch of a well-known west coast auction house. It had quite a staff and 30,000 square feet of space. There were always at least 3 people working the floor. After a few years, the company pulled out of Montana and that mall was taken over by a different company. The second company tried to run the mall with one person and occasionally two. After a couple of years, the company owner passed away suddenly and after a few months we were all told to move out (April 2012). I had 32 bookcases and 90 boxes of books there in about 450 sq ft. Moving was no fun.” Tim Doyle of Bayside Books of Maryland  notes another problem: “I moved into a larger space at the mall in January 2013, and getting the space up and running ate up a lot of my time in the first few months – to the detriment of my online business. Now the space is established, it still requires regular maintenance and investment of time – but not nearly to the same level as at first.” What are some of the benefits of selling in an antique mall? Gayle Williamson: “The best part was learning about selling and slowly learning to run my own business…. One advantage to having a mall space was when people asked if they could pick up a book, I could leave it at the mall with a note of who was to pick it up. I work from home and am not equipped to have people coming to my home to purchase books.” Sharon Eisenberg: “After about 6 years of selling part-time online, I decided that I needed to become better known in the Great Falls area which is the largest city near here – 60 miles from where I live. I already knew some of the auctioneers and the one company that did estate sales, but I really didn’t know any of the antique dealers. After 6 years of selling in three different antique malls, I finally know a lot of the dealers. This leads to referrals and calls when there are large quantities of books at an estate sale, etc. Other advantages – you call sell other things besides books-like the family stamp collection that needs a new home, postcards, old local newspapers, maps, photos, scrapbooks, photo albums, toys, framed art, and anything else you can fit into your space.” Tim Doyle: “I’m the only book seller out of more than 165 dealers at the Westminster Antique Mall. So I have found that I get a lot of referrals as a result of my mall space. These are from people looking to sell books, who have picked up one of my business cards at the space or who have talked to the mall owners who gave them my information. Of course, many of these leads don’t pan out – the books are of no real interest, or the owner has unrealistic expectations and wants more than I can pay and still make a reasonable profit. But there have been worthwhile calls that I would never have gotten otherwise.” What kinds of books have sold best for you in an antique mall setting? Sharon Eisenberg: “Top sellers for CE Ranch Books in antique malls – local history including county histories, Custer and Lewis and Clark, local authors especially signed first editions, Nancy Drew books, local yearbooks, bird books, Irish and Celtic books, cookbooks (especially older ones and those produced by local groups), military history, Western art. I also like to sell ephemera and what does well for me – road maps from the 30s-60s, Montana paper of all kinds – business invoices, checks, old letters, envelopes with Montana cancellations, old basketball and football programs featuring local teams. Most interesting sale this year- a framed Montana territorial map circa 1865 found at a local estate sale.” Gayle Williamson: “In all the malls, I tried to stock books on local history. The only mall where I exclusively sold books was Pieces of the Past and I had no more than 500 books. At Craft-tique, I sold new and secondhand local history books. At Best of Times, I sold local history books, and books on music, crafts, cats & dogs, humor, and vintage fiction. The best-selling were books on local history and visual books. I found that books like Golden Books, the Time Life series, and vintage children’s books, that might be readily available online, would sell. Worst selling would be fiction.” Tim Doyle: “Local history, local authors, new and vintage children’s books, mysteries (particularly Agatha Christie), signed local sports books, classic TV/movies books (Little Rascals, Three Stooges, I Dream of Jeannie, Hollywood, film noir, etc), Civil War and other military history. I have also had success selling higher priced books ($30 to $150) in the mall space. I like this strategy particularly for large and/or heavy books and sets that would be a hassle to ship if sold online.” Gayle Williamson: “I would say the instability of the management and ownership…. Best of Times and Pieces of the Past are now out of business. Both Craft-tique and Memory Lanes have changed to where they are a step above a thrift shop in merchandise and maintenance…. Also since I started selling tchotchkes and then converted to books, I think I was surprised that books even sold in antique malls, since I normally wouldn’t go to an antique mall looking for books. I think that is why vintage, children’s books, and local history sold well since I think those appeal to the antique mall customer.” Sharon Eisenberg: “I thought that I could sell a lot of books in an antique mall that were not saleable online but that turned out to be only partially true. What isn’t valuable online many times is not saleable in an antique mall. Most of my antique mall stock was purchased specifically for that market. The antique mall buyers are a completely different group of buyers and some of them never shop online. There are regular buyers here who go through the local antique malls almost weekly. Some sell on ebay and some are just collectors looking for treasures.” Tim Doyle: “The number of calls I get from people wanting to sell me books. I’ve had more calls in the last six months than in the previous ten years. I had hoped for some referrals – that was one of the reasons I wanted to have a physical location in the community. I think it’s a combination of the economy and people wanting a little extra income, and the rise of used book selling on the internet which has given people a tool to judge the value of their books. That they use the tool incorrectly most of the time does complicate things for book dealers.” Getting Started Finally, Sharon Eisenberg offers the following list of advice for anyone considering selling books at an antique mall: Some malls are much better run that others. The owner or staff should be interested in what you bring in and we try to bring in new material every week or every other week. They need to know what you have in order to tell customers where to look. The better staff will often call someone based on what we just brought in to alert a possible customer of something they are looking for. If the staff doesn’t care what your inventory is, it is going to much harder to be successful. The malls should be advertising but this varies widely. Talk to antique dealers that you know to find out where they are doing well and what sells well. Start small-you can always expand if there is more space available. Bring in new stock on a regular basis and make your space look interesting. Books displayed on easels always seem to sell faster than books just lined up on a shelf. Have regular sales. The public loves sales. Find out what the sales schedule is for the mall you are considering. Have a lighted, locked showcase for more valuable items. Talk to the mall staff regularly about what buyers are looking for. Put up some signs. It surprises me that most antique mall spaces are very anonymous. We have a huge banner with our business name and business cards available, as well as a sign that says “We buy books”. Keep your online and antique mall inventories separate. There is the opportunity to move things back and forth if they don’t sell but you don’t want to get an online order and not have the book because it just sold at the mall. Pricing for the local market is a challenge. We try not to be too far above the online price for most things. Many antique dealers put very high prices on books and we are trying to be more reasonable with our prices. We don’t want our buyers to buy an expensive book from us only to go home and find that it was a five dollar book on amazon. You have to expect some shoplifting although a well-run mall should be able to keep that at a minimum. Get insurance on your inventory if you will have a substantial amount of it in a mall. The mall is not going to cover fire, theft, or water damage. We are using DeWitt and Stern through IOBA. Read the contract for the mall space and make sure you understand what it says. Rent per square foot, commissions, mall-wide sales schedule, language regarding what can be sold there, etc. will vary from one mall to the next. There may be some options regarding discounts, layaways, etc. Discounts to buyers are very common in the antique mall world but we are becoming less willing to offer discounts as a matter of course. Your ability to honor requests for discounts depends on how you do your pricing. If you are going to get called every day or every week because a buyer wants a discount, you should price accordingly or set your own policy on discounts. Our current policy-10% off if a buyer purchases over $100.00. We also have regular sales as well as a table of items on sale. Conclusion There are a number of good reasons to sell books at an antique mall. It gives you a venue for those books that aren’t quite good enough to list online, that would be a hassle to ship, or that could sell quckly to a local customer and without an online commission. It gives you a physical presence in the community which can generate leads to buy local collections and estates. In that sense, your mall rent could be seen as money well spent on advertising. And of course, your mall sales should be a source of profit. But as with online sales, your success in an antique store venue will largely be a function of factors under your control, primarily the time, effort and intelligence you are willing to put into it … and also by what you define as success. Other factors – notably the availability and stability of a well-run mall with an adequate customer base – are beyond your control. And of course, only you can decide if the time and effort is worth the potential benefit.

with Lee Kirk, Ken Karmiole, and Nancy Johnson We asked several IOBA members for their perspectives on selling at book fairs. The focus of this article is not on the large international and member only trade association fairs, but on the smaller regional fairs where booths are open to all sellers with a good reputation. Many of these fairs sell out of booth space, so if you are interested in exhibiting at one, get on the waiting list early. Madlyn Blom of OldBagLady Books has some advice for first-timers. She exhibits at The Florida Antiquarian Book Fair – or the St Petersburg Fair as it is more frequently called – which is the Southeast’s oldest and largest antiquarian book fair, and one with an excellent reputation. 2014 will be its 33rd show. It features more than 115 dealers in books, maps, photographs, prints, ephemera and autographs: Are you thinking of selling at your first antiquarian book fair? If so, I bet you have a number of questions so I’m going to tell you what I’ve experienced at many different fairs and the St. Petersburg, FL Antiquarian Book fair in particular. Why do all the packing/pricing/selecting/work and spend all the money? It is disruptive to your organization; it is expensive and it is exhausting physical labor. Worst of all, you have to restock the unsold books (and usually the books which do sell are only a fraction of the ones you bring, so there is a lot of restocking.) You can actually ask for their contact information – unlike Amazon, book fair promoters want you develop your business! You can hand out your book marks, business cards and/or catalogs with every purchase, hold a drawing to get names, anything except “walk all over” your neighbors’ business. Rule: if you hear a customer ask another dealer about a book that you actually have, do not walk into that dealer’s booth and start talking to that customer! Wait until s/he walks away…. The on-line only dealer can upgrade their knowledge by studying the other books being offered for sale by both store dealers and other on-line dealers and their prices. You can connect with other dealers in your specialty area or specific locales. And meeting the people face-to-face with whom you email, sometimes daily, is worth (half) of the booth rental fee! Then there is the opportunity to buy books! I used to “do” the Michigan book fair two times a year and there was a dealer there who would, quite regularly, rent a booth but bring only one book. He would be first in line among the dealers to place his lone book on his table and then go shopping as other dealers were busy opening their boxes. As these dealers concentrated on setting up their booth – unpacking, paying attention to the lighting, and all of the other booth display details, like which book should go next to that book – he was looking and buying. He measured his success in dollars spent, not dollars “earned”. {Editor’s note: This is not a recommended practice: in fact, many book fair managers will not let you back if you do it once, since empty booths are unfair both to other sellers and especially to those who will be attending the show – the customers! Sometimes if you are coming a long way, keeping things light might make sense, but don’t overdo it.} Finally, if this was a “good” fair, you can leave with a pile of cash, more books than you came with, a notebook full of new customers and business cards from all your dealer friends and maybe a few more books signed. Well… ALL of this has never happened to me but I have come away with one or more of these goals achieved! And, in addition, I’ve spent some “vacation time” with my spouse! So, my advice: sign-up, pay-up and show-up. Expose your stock to new buyers and recalibrate. Have fun. Lee Kirk of The Prints & The Paper is primarily an ephemera dealer. Many of the regional book fairs include a significant number of ephemera dealers – even the names often reflect that. Lee exhibited at the Rose City Used Book Fair, a relatively new fair sponsored by the Portland Used Booksellers’ Association (PAUBA). This fair’s slogan is “An unpretentious book fair.” Here is her list of reasons. . . Why I sell at book fairs: To visit with seldom-seen colleagues and hobnob about the business. This often leads to ideas, sources, and congenial dinners. I can also extend invitations to visit my at-home business for buying purposes. To interact with the public (refreshing for those who work at home). You can also tune in on current interests and views. Interests tend to change with the times, and I’m often surprised at what becomes collectible. I also find that shows are useful in presenting ephemera to a younger generation who may not know that such material is available. I always have a few who gush over the variety and uniqueness of ephemera. To acquire new clients for “wants”. I have a “want” slip to be filled out. I sometimes request that they send an email with wants, but they rarely do. Having the information to make first email contact is helpful. To acquire new merchandise. One often buys more than one sells. That’s expected. My buying is usually focused on my client’s needs or my specialties. To make oneself visible. Pass out business cards and catalogs, brochures, whatever you have. Advertising the hands-on experience. Oh yeah – and to sell inventory. This, in the long run, is the least important aspect of a fair. The follow-up is usually much more profitable. Of course, a book fair is a lot of work no matter how you cut it. We are getting too old to haul stuff very far, so we’re cutting back to fairs close to home. In fact, right now I’m working with a local non-profit with the thought of holding a book fair that would benefit the organization, and their presence and influence could help advertise and embellish such an event. Ken Karmiole, of Kenneth Karmiole, Bookseller, Inc of Santa Monica  is an ABAA member who participates in the large national and international shows, but also emphasizes the importance of regional book fairs to the health of the bookselling industry and as a valuable experience for all booksellers. His comments focus on two of the larger regional West coast shows – Pasadena in Southern California and Seattle in the Northwest. SELLING/PARTICIPATING AT REGIONAL BOOKFAIRS: I am a strong believer in participating in regional book fairs. While it might not be true for all booksellers, they make a great deal of sense for my business. Fairs work for me, a generalist, who does a great deal of business with the specialist trade and who looks at book fairs as a place to buy and sell, both equal in importance to making a book fair successful. Also, fairs can result (although these results are quite varied) in new clientele and are important for business exposure and new opportunities for buying privately. Seattle and Pasadena are the only two surviving major West Coast regional fairs and these shows are valuable for both generalist and specialist dealers. If you are a specialist in press books or photography or travel books, for example, and you had a number of good customers in Seattle or Southern California whom you could expect to visit your booth, participation might be economically viable. Also, as a specialist dealer your expertise is much greater than the generalist dealer, and you should find some good buying opportunities in the booths of the other exhibitors. The generalist, like me, has a guaranteed audience with the other exhibitors on the floor as well as the visiting dealers who do not exhibit but still attend as buyers. I always notify everyone on my mailing list local to the show, and love to have private collectors and librarians visit. Participation at regional fairs is relatively inexpensive. Seattle and Pasadena are quite similar in cost. A standard 10 x 10 booth is $850 in Seattle ($500 for a half-booth) and $875 in Pasadena (the Bustamante show), where a half-booth is $437.50. Both fairs have a Friday set-up and then run Saturday and Sunday. If you want to keep your costs down and/or don’t want to bring a great deal of inventory, a half booth can be the best option. I’ve done over 200 fairs in the 37 years that I’ve been in business and some of my best shows have been with a half-booth and 120 to 150 well selected books, keeping in mind the audience (the dealers, collectors, and librarians) that I expect to see at that particular fair. I enjoy looking at the stock of my colleagues in the trade, and even if this doesn’t result in much buying, there is always something to be learned, looking at something you’ve never seen before, a special copy, a special binding, or a great presentation copy. Typically the interaction with the other exhibitors results in some business, if not during the fair weekend, then down the road. A dealer might mention a collection that is being acquired and give you an opportunity to take a first look, or you learn about a new client that is looking for the type of book you regularly acquire, and often sales are generated in the following months. Of course, being an exhibitor rather than a visiting dealer allows you a full day (the set-up day) of perusing and buying some goodies before the fair opens to the public. It has always been time well spent in my experience. Fairs are a great place to move along inventory, such as those books that don’t mean that much to you, perhaps acquired a long time ago, remnants from a collection that was quite profitable or books outside your main areas of current interest. I’ll take a smaller profit than normal, making some price reductions, but generating that all important cash flow, and making room for something else. Although I am a dealer that specializes in antiquarian books (pre 1800), like most of us, when something out-of-field, but nevertheless interesting, is offered at the right price (cheaply), I buy it. I just can’t help myself. Somehow nice leather bound sets, limited signed editions of illustrated books, and even the occasional book in a dust jacket (!) enter into my stock. I’m happy to take a quick profit on these books and fairs are the best exposure for their sale. I recommend that you try one of the regional fairs. You are there to do two things, buy and sell. Price your books intelligently, i.e. very competitively. Describe your books accurately. Don’t sit in your booth the whole show, get around and mingle. Have a good, hopefully profitable, time. And finally, a few passionate comments from the perspective of a book fair promoter and manager.  Nancy Johnson organizes the San Francisco Antiquarian Book Print & Paper Fair  which is held in February every other year (the coming show will be Feb 1 and 2, 2014 at a new location – the Festival Pavilion in Fort Mason Center. This is a huge fair, comparable in size and quality to the fairs run by ILAB and is an opportunity for sellers to reach a large audience, including some very serious collectors. The whole is a sum of its parts: Brick-and-mortar sellers, mail order by printed catalogue, book fairs and online retailing. The world of book commerce is comprised of all these parts, and it must have all those components. As the passionate producer of the San Francisco Antiquarian Book Print & Paper Fair, an enthusiastic exhibitor in Antique Shows & Book Fairs and a lethargic online seller (member of IOBA, to which I was introduced in 2006 at this same Fair), I wouldn’t trade in-person sales for all the sales in the big jungle. So I’m definitely biased. I know that many members of IOBA are equally passionate about online and lethargic-to-down-right-disinterested in doing a show in-person. How can I convince you? After all those books are heavy, there is booth rental to pay, fuel, airfare and shipping are not cheap, those hotels keep going up in price, and if you have the whole world looking at your stock online, why just settle for a local or regional audience? First of all as much as we would like, the entire world is not looking at our stock. For many of our books, unless they are rare or hard to find specialty books originally printed in small quantities, we’re competing pure and simple on price when we offer books online. At a book fair, you may still be competing on price but not because 200 sellers have the same book with a dollar price variance. Your competition will be primarily because attendees at a book fair want all of it (slight exaggeration). Book fair attendees come eager to buy and the browsing, the lusting and the eventual selection of items to purchase is part of the appeal. Listen to the real chatter among the customers and your fellow exhibitors. Skype and IM will never duplicate that verbal exchange. Think of a book fair as an expansion of your online site to a real site and back to your always up online site. Look at your stock and pack up the unusual, even the odd-ball, the book with the stunning graphics and linen paper that is best appreciated in person, and yes, the book that sits on a page no one has virtually browsed. During set-up hours, get to know your fellow exhibitors, exchange information, and network! After the Fair opens to the public, tell the fair-goer, if he or she asks for a title you are not displaying, that yes, you have that book! Personally introduce that person to your site, perhaps even a tour of your own website on your portable device, and hand out bookmarks, business cards and the very effective catalogue. You may not make a sale right on the spot, but it is going to be better advertising for your online sales than any other promotion you can do. To sum this all up, there is an old booksellers’ adage: You can sell your way out of a fair, buy your way out, or drink your way out. That is, a fair can be profitable because of sales made there, or some great buys, or simply because of contacts that were made. No two fairs are ever the same: at some fairs, the bulk of your sales might be to other booksellers; at other fairs, all of your sales might be to the public. A sale of an inexpensive item can lead to a profitable years-long relationship with a collector or institutional buyer. Paradoxically, fairs are an opportunity to sell books in exceptional condition – books that have to be seen to be appreciated – but also essentially interesting books with a lot of condition problems, where detailing the flaws online just doesn’t work very well. But most of all, book fairs offer a way to break out of your routine, to look at your inventory with a fresh eye, to handle a lot of exceptional books, and to have a good time!