ABAA Holds First Official Webinar for Antiquarian Booksellers

The ABAA’s first official webinar took place on Tuesday, May 17, 2011. My calendar, iPhone alarm, etc. were marked for the date and time, and my own excitement built as I sat down to meet the faculty and hosts, namely: Sarah Baldwin, George Krzyminski, Brian Cassidy, Sunday Steinkirchner, Janine Moodhe and Susan Benne. There was, I will admit, a small learning curve on my part with regards to the actual program that allows for the webinar. Dashing between desktop and laptop, the correct software downloaded and in an instant I was connected with audio, visual and chat exchange.

Sarah Baldwin led us through the important history of the ABAA itself, its formation in 1949 and its journey to the 21st century bookselling world. She highlighted the remarkably different landscape which booksellers work within, from changes in storefront prominence to technological advances, with understanding that the trade is certainly and profoundly evolving.

The make-up of the ABAA itself was reviewed, from officers to the Boards of Governors, regional chapters, and content/focus of meetings. From chapter to chapter, participation and intensity of focus varies, with website development, lectures, hosting of literary events and involvement in local libraries all hinging on the ABAA members themselves. It strikes me as important to remember as we discuss the trade that in fact we are the trade.

George Krzyminski, a 12 year ABAA member from Westhampton, NY spoke to the variety of membership. Is there a typical ABAA member? What do they sell? What do they look like? What they do share … a love of books. In fact he asserts that the diversity of backgrounds as a whole make up a more relevant ABAA body.

Some have come up from within the trade itself, whether from long-standing bookselling families, from apprenticeship with exceptional mentors or simply growing within their own specialties. A sophisticated collector may enter the trade, having become highly knowledgeable and specialized by virtue of their passion. George emphasizes that however the road brought them to the ABAA, the overwhelming majority of them stay in the organization, thus speaking to the benefits and satisfaction that membership brings.

Next Brian Cassidy, a relatively new member with three years in the ABAA addressed the many benefits of membership. The heavy measure of credibility that the ABAA logo and association brings to an individual is invaluable a tangible (read profit) addition to one’s business. He tallies a condensed list of immediate positives: average sale = jumped; selling higher end material online = easier; quoting to institutions and libraries = facilitated; catalogs = well received. In short, buyers look for this ABAA stamp and your bookselling bottom line reflects this. In practical terms Brian shares that he is often asked the question of how? One large answer: ABAA book fairs.

The ABAA hosts three major (and major is not an overstatement) annual fairs: California (alternatively Los Angeles and San Francisco), New York and Boston. Brian has participated in several and puts the results of said fairs quite simply as this: his worst ABAA fair was far better than his best others. Again, the stamp of ABAA attracts a tier of customers that is exceptional. Many dealers question the cost, expense of exhibiting and travel, but again assures that fairs are, quite frankly, the key that many booksellers are looking for. He highlights, as an example, the Rare Book and Manuscript Conference which hosts a mini bookfair, attracting primarily special collections libraries, essentially a room full of these sought after professionals. With ABAA membership comes automatic ILAB entrance as well, with an exposure and marketability overseas that is unparalleled.

A thriving business reflects more than a well balanced ledger, and here the ABAA holds a special role as well. Brian elaborated on the sense of community that comes with membership. Some 400 colleagues, mostly experts in their field, with whom to exchange many facets of the trade, from reference material to the subtleties of customer relations, the ins and outs of the general trade and industry specific business advice.

Next Sarah Baldwin addressed the application process itself, cue dramatic music. Prospective members should begin to establish references, letters of sponsorship, etc. as they consider their own timeline for formal application. In other words, begin laying down the foundations, the five part application process will require solid, established connections in the trade. Briefly 1. The written application 2. The Biographical Essay 3. The Evaluation Essay 4. Credit and 5. Letters of recommendation.

Sarah addressed with detail the credit component, emphasizing the obvious but perhaps most important virtue of honesty, in this but of course all facets of application, membership and business itself. We are reminded that everything is confidential and that subtleties of one’s financial situation are to be shared with transparency, safe in the knowledge that the board is taking one’s privacy quite seriously.

Now to the dotted i’s of the application, we are able to see the actual form on Susan Benne’s desktop and are taken through this line by line, a most helpful process. First things first, a bookseller needs a minimum of four years in the trade, established by the date of one’s tax ID.

Following that, the nature of stock, sponsors, letters and additional references. This is the heart of who we are as a bookseller and a business person. Questions were asked regarding site visits, most prospective members would establish a relationship with a local ABAA member (in good standing of course) for a literal walk through of one’s stock, as well as sponsorship from other ABAA members that we have a long distance or virtual relationship with.

The biographical essay, essentially a one page “who am I”, should address how we found bookselling (or how it found us!), essentially what led us to the trade and what our former professional life experience brings to bookselling.

The hypothetical evaluation is an important essay, and it this point we are introduced to Sunday Steinkirchner to speak to this. She shares that she prepared to apply for about three months, and shares her specifics for the biographical and evaluation essays. For the bio, they are looking for our professional or academic background and/or our transition into the bookselling world. How did we acquire our knowledge? Who did we work with or for? What is our specialty and what are our qualifications? Much like a college entrance essay, we are explaining both who we are and how we got there.

She addressed the appraisal essay, or the hypothetical evaluation and explains that here, as we write an evaluation of a virtual collection, we have room to share our knowledge and approach with regards to our speciality or author focus. We would share what references, price guides and bibliographic materials that we would incorporate in the assessment, and offer the type of questions that we would ask a collector, thereby summarizing how we handle the evaluation of a collection.

Brian Cassidy touched on one important piece of the application puzzle, that of finding the necessary sponsors and references within the day to day of our business. He spoke personally of his sponsors to better give us an idea of the many ways relationships like this can burgeon. His first sponsor came from interaction and eventual collaboration (working at a fair) with an open store ABAA dealer. His second sponsor was born via CABS, and his third contacted him after receipt of one of his catalogs. It’s intriguing to hear of the many roads that lead to sponsorship and relationships as well as friendships within the trade. And so with that we are advised to look: 1. locally 2. through sales to dealers, which we may want to actively pursue 3. via fairs, notably ABAA but all, both in exhibition and attendance 4. CABS enrolment and 5. through catalogs, even in their simplest forms.

With this large plate of food for thought, the presentation segment of the webinar wound down, with chat and emailed questions trickling in. Two closing thoughts that were shared by the faculty were the importance of interesting as opposed to merely valuable stock, and a noting of the very valuable resources that are available for applications and potential members to educate themselves further: the ABAA newsletter, the listserve and CABS.

It was a pleasurable, fascinating hour and fifteen minutes, with exceptionally detailed answers to many burning questions. There are few aspects that would make the experience better, just my observations and thoughts from the hip.

1. I would have, as the email urged, spent a bit more time getting to know the webinar platform, such as muting/unmuting the voice, experimenting with the layout of the participants, and manoeuvering within the virtual desktop of Susan Benne. I played around with phone vs. computer audio to find which was clearest, etc.

2. Some of the faculty’s audio was quite poor, which I realize cannot be helped midstream, but this is as requested, the good, bad etc. I would love to see as many full video streams as possible, as this brings a true virtual seminar feel that can’t be paralleled.

3. Perhaps I missed it, but I didn’t feel much interaction with other participants, and I did not see most of their video, perhaps most had this disabled or perhaps I did not have the settings correctly adjusted. I would have like to say hello to my fellow inaugural alumni.

Let’s end with the great, which was basically 99.9% of the 75 minutes, I’ll leave the math to someone else.

The faculty was superb and a big thank you to each for volunteering their time and energy (let’s face it, if they were talking to us, they weren’t cataloguing anything!)

I feel much more comfortable with the process, and honestly feel that I could write or call any of the faculty and speak at ease with them about bookselling in general. This is special, important, and as many spoke to, the beginning of a blossoming network in the trade.

With regards to the importance and vitality of the ABAA itself, the pulse of our noble industry: this was duly noted and left me with total certainty that if bookselling is part of my long term plan, the ABAA must be as well. It was an honor and a pleasure to participate in this, which was well planned and offered as a courtesy and received as such.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared here: http://www.ilab.org/eng/documentation/546-abaas_first_official_webinar_for_antiquarian_booksellers.html. The next ABAA webinar is scheduled for Sept. 21st, 2011 at 2pm ET. Anyone interested should contact Janine Moodhe or Susan Benne at hq@abaa.org.]

Pazzo Books of West Roxbury, MA

My brother and I started fooling around with the idea of starting a shop in early 2002. He was finishing up at Rutgers and my days of fruitfully mucking about with the stock market (back when you could do that – and even say it out loud) had ended with a gasp and a sputter. Before that I’d been a (para)paralegal, a telephone operator, a line cook, a dish washer, and, very briefly, an 11th grade English teacher. I used to tell people that we were aiming to explore our ambivalent relationship with capitalism, but really, I just didn’t want to go back to work for someone and I was fast approaching an age where doing something as self destructive as opening a bookshop was going to be difficult (or at the very least, a difficult sell to my lovely, supportive, but ultimately sensible, wife). So for the better part of a year, with no earthly notion what we were doing, my brother and I went (separately: he in New Jersey and me in Boston) to weekly FOL sales, yard sales, barn sales, library downsizings, and the occasional dump, collecting the books to open our store with.

Did I mention that we didn’t know what we were doing? The problem was, that we both had studied English Literature (I’d even bombed around graduate school in Albuquerque to the tune of 38 credits), so far from recognizing how little we knew about the book business, we thought we might be experts. We also knew next to nothing about selling books online. I had been selling some “first editions” on Ebay, my sole reference being the little McBride’s pocket guide, but we didn’t really game plan for the internet (insofar as we game planned for anything). This was going to be, we supposed, a bookstore where humans walked in and bought books. Ah, youth.

Where were/are you located?

At the time we were living in Jamaica Plain, a Boston neighborhood that at the time was teetering on the line between colorful and gentrified, but rents had skyrocketed there. We looked around and settled one neighborhood further out from downtown in Roslindale, a subwayless urban neighborhood of triple deckers and single family homes. It was a quirky space and over the years we experimented with art openings, coffee shops, and even a skee-ball machine, but what it really had going for it was a 2000 sq. ft. dry basement. As you might imagine, we quickly realized that if we were interested in paying our bills, we were going to have to either open a speakeasy down there, or embrace selling online. So the basement was piled high with boxes of books from clearing out houses as people cashed in on their rapidly appreciating properties (this was 2003) and moved out of the city. We were indiscriminate and vigorous in those days, and our education in the book business was grimy but effective. When we first went online, we sold general stock like crazy on half.com, but as our stock diversified (and Ebay killed half.com only to replace it with zombie half.com) we added ABE and eventually Amazon, Alibris (since abandoned), Biblio and others.

In the middle of 2008, we moved the store one more neighborhood out (running away from rent increases) to the West Roxbury neighborhood. By 2025 I should be in Rhode Island. And in 2010, my brother moved on to work with the social enterprise bookshop More than Words, so now Pazzo is me and the occasional local urchin tricked into shelving some books.

When did you join IOBA?

I joined IOBA in the Summer of 2011.

Describe your business. For example, do you have any specialties?

Early on we decided not to really specialize, wanting to stay relatively omnivorous, but years of buying books that interest me has led to areas of concentration in early science and medicine, literature (some 20th but generally 18th and 19th) and illustrated books. A strange sort of a hobby cooking from old cookbooks has led to a specialization in early cookery books (which I can go on and on about, be warned!).

Size of stock?

I’ve had right around 8,000 books online for years – culling, space issues, and acquisition speed seem to conspire to keep it right around there. After 8+ years of running the walk in shop and the internet as increasingly parallel businesses, they each definitely have their ups and downs. Without the internet the shop would have long ago ceased to exist (putting aside the notion that without the existence of the internet, the shop would be fine), and the internet does allow a 24 hour business that is very appealing (especially for pathological order checkers like myself who get a charge out of every $25 order). No matter how often I try, adding better books to the shelves rarely draws more customers in, but if you add more online stock, it certainly works which is appealingly simple. If it wasn’t for the store, the anonymity of selling online would get to me, I’m sure – once in a while it’s nice to put a face to an order – but consistently, my least favorite aspect of selling online is finding a place for all the books. Real Estate in Boston being what it is, it’s a constant shuffle to find somewhere to put all of this stock, and since the move to smaller, more affordable quarters, it’s been a squeeze getting all of the books situated on site.

Biggest challenge currently facing the trade?

Though used bookstores seem to have weathered the storm of closings better than new shops, rents, disinterest and the internet have thinned our ranks considerably. With libraries increasingly leaning towards the multi-media, I sometimes wonder where new readers and collectors will come from. It’s possible that new technologies  will allow the sort of discovery online that you can now only find in libraries and shops – that moment of serendipity when your eye passes over a neighboring shelf and finds something that you never imagined existed, but I’m not holding my breath. Maybe a new generation of book fairs and festivals will pick up the real world slack? But I remain incautiously optimistic.

Tell us about an interesting item you currently have in stock.

A reprint of Lohrmann’s 1878 masterpiece “Mondcharte in 25 Sectionen” (he completed the chart ca. 1824 but it was not  published until Schmidt collected it in 1878) one of the loveliest 19th century moon maps. The actual map that he drew is in one piece, but it was published in 25 sections and, somehow, seems more lovely and moonlike for it.

What was your best or favorite find as a book dealer? How and where did you come across it?

Certainly not my most profitable, but I dug a pamphlet out of a table lot at a “pick” auction years ago that still warms my heart to think of. The great utopian socialist Robert Owen, famous for his rejection of religion and superstition as elements of control and repression, wrote this crazy spiritualist piece late in his life called “The Coming Millennium” (1855). It was as if all his striving and hard work at creating a world where workers weren’t exploited left him with this grand, nebulous hope that was expressed in this pamphlet that was everything he had spent his life railing against. Splendid and confounding.

John Howell for Books, Los Angeles, CA

What is the name of your business and when was it started?

John Howell for Books started on January 1, 2005.

Where are you located?

Los Angeles, California. We live in a National Historical Landmark Property called the Village Green. If one were traveling West on the 10 Freeway from downtown, one would take the La Brea South Exit. East of Culver City and North of Baldwin Hills. People living Downtown, Hollywood, or points north and east think of the area as “On the way to LAX.”

Size of stock?

Generally speaking, my on-line listings hover in the 950 to 1,100 range. Currently I do not have my own web-site, so 900 are probably tired listings languishing on Amazon, ABE, Alibris, and the like. This of course does not take into account the thousands of books languishing in storage, which anyone in the So Cal area who would like to pick up some raw inventory on the cheap are welcome to inquire about.

When did you join IOBA?

Early 2010. I had known about it for about a year or two before I applied. It has been a very positive experience because for the previous few years I had been pretty much focusing on getting my on-line operations going and running smoothly, but having wider contacts in the trade is very important and productive.

What is your professional background? How did you come to the book business?

I have degrees in History from California State University, Fullerton and UCLA. European Church History and US Colonial History, respectively. When it became apparent in the early 1990s that I would be an ABD (all but the dissertation), I started casting about for work. My first job was with Barnes and Noble. My second job was for an ABAA rare book dealer, writing catalogs. That evolved into an 8-year gig, and when it was over I began buying and selling books on my own account.

Describe your business. For example, do you have any specialties? Employees/partners? Open shop? By appt.?

Basically, I work out of my home, which is a small (under 1,000 square foot apartment converted into a condominium complex in the 1970s) so currently no partners or employees. I have been working with California fine press materials, and miniature books; my first printed catalog, May 2011, included 113 items issued by the Book Club of California. Because this type of material is not a particularly hot seller on the third party venues I have been selling through, I have been doing more book fairs. I will be exhibiting at the LA Printer’s Fair on October 1st and then one week later at the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair on October 8th and 9th.

Tell us about an interesting item you currently have in stock.

Currently I have a presentation copy of Victorien Sardou and Emile de Najac’s Divorcons! Comedie en Trois Actes, Paris, 1883. Sardou was an important writer for the French stage in the late nineteenth century. This play was a send-up of French divorce laws which were then under revision. The copy I have was one of 30 copies printed on Holland paper, but is unique since it is illustrated by hand with watercolors throughout the text. Even the parchment-covered boards are illustrated by hand.

What was your best find as a book dealer? How and where did you come across it?

Perhaps my best find as a book dealer was an edition of William Blake’s Poetical Sketches published in London by the Vale Press in 1899 on vellum. Of a total edition of 210 copies, there were only 8 printed on vellum; the copy I had was bound by the Dove’s Bindery. This was one of a lot of books I purchased from an estate sale in Los Angeles. Also among the books was a first edition of Robert Browning’s The Agamemnon of Aeschylus, London, 1877, with a manuscript letter signed by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I’m still weeding through this collection, but perhaps I have already found the highlights.

What are the best and worst aspects of selling online?

I used to think that the worst aspect of selling online were the commissions paid to online venues like Amazon and ABE, and a concurrent loss of autonomy to the same players. But, it takes time to build up a clientele that one can call one’s own. As I branch out and make more contacts within the trade, I am finding that the 15% to the online venues feels comfortable compared to the 20% expected by colleagues. But one has to keep these things in perspective; since it has long been the case that most book sellers make most of their sales to other book sellers, and one needs to keep churning one’s inventory, the challenge for me right now is merely maintaining the cash flow to sustain myself in the trade.

Biggest challenge currently facing the trade?

I’m not sure I am able to speak for “the trade” as a whole, but I suspect that a challenge all used book sellers are facing has to do with new media, online and electronic texts of varying stripes, and the transition we are in with the world wide web becoming an ever growing part of peoples lives and more and more of the cultural heritage being available electronically. I’m just an observer. I have no idea how and if the ball will ever come to rest. But it’s fun to watch!