New Age Book Sellers

There are many types of book dealers. When one uses the words “book dealer” to someone who is not in the business, what is often pictured is a poorly lit and cramped bookstore in the poorer side of town, with shelves sagging from the weight of too many dusty but beautifully hand carved leather wrapped collectibles. In the corner of the store is an over stuffed chair, with a goose neck lamp looking over the shoulder of the dealer, who sits and puffs on his pipe while reading.

This well educated and well read, slightly grumpy (but in an oddly kind way) old timer is more at home with his books, and the store cat, than with customers. He knows that the customer really does not understand his books, and he hesitates to sell them – preferring to adopt them to a good home. He is as independent as his cat (maybe that’s why he likes the store cat – they share a secret). When he does finally sell a book, it is for lots of money, and he takes great care in preparing the book for it’s long and dangerous journey to its new home.

Wrapping it in plain paper and tying a string lovingly around the package before passing it over the cluttered counter to the eager and very happy customer. His strong sense of independence does not allow him to ACT like he really needs the sale – even if he does.

I’m sure that such places exist. I know that such dealers exist. In fact, I’ve been there. I am describing a scene that I’ve seen (sorry about the pun). From talking to others in my industry, I know that they are just that kind of dealer, or close to it. They are everywhere: on every continent, in every country on the planet.

The modern traditional dealer has an on-line presence, but he brings many of the ideas and customs of the dealer from a hundred years ago with him into a new millennium.

A different kind of dealer has emerged. I call him the New Age Book Seller.

The biggest difference between the contemporary book seller and our old curmudgeon is that our new age seller is a businessman first. The skills that he brings to bear to sell his wares could easily be applied to any commodity. He views the books he has in stock as inventory. He has no emotional ties to his inventory. He recognizes that a book has no soul and no feelings. He sees a book as a tool, like a wrench or a car. It has a use, and it has a useful life. When it becomes valueless because of age, condition or obsolescence, it should be discarded to make room for inventory that has value (i.e. can be sold).

He buys in bulk, by the truckload for pennies per unit – knowing full well that a third of the purchase will be worthless, and will therefore be destroyed. This is reflected in the price he pays for a book. He does not “donate” books – he sells them or he destroys them.

Most, if not all, of his inventory is paperbacks. A third of it is Historical Romance, another third is Science Fiction. He knows that the reason there is so much Historical Romance out there is because a lot of people read it. Bored housewives and old women who just adore Danielle Steel and Nora Roberts. Pimply faced kids who can’t wait for that next StarTrek episode. Middle aged men who will re-read that Robert Heinlein classic until it falls apart. Youngish pierced and tattooed females who wear all black and truly believe that Anne Rice and Stephen King are the ONLY authors in the world. These are the customers of the New Age Book Seller.

His store is on-line. He has a couple of thousand square feet of warehouse space in the light industrial section of town. His “store” is sandwiched between a carpet cleaning business storage facility, and a guy that rebuilds marine engines. Across the street is a propane storage facility, so the “neighborhood” always smells bad. But, it doesn’t matter because he only goes there twice a week for three or four hours to pull the orders and prepare them for shipping. It’s not unusual to see an open can of beer on the shipping station desk and the TV blaring a football game as he wraps the last two days’ orders.

His office is nice, because that’s where he spends most of his time. There is a network of state of the art computer equipment. He spends at least half of his time marketing. He uses pop-up ads, swaps links with other non-bookselling websites that share demographics, and utilizes email marketing (some people call this spamming.) While he complies with the law, he is acutely aware where the line is, and purposefully gets as close to it as possible in his marketing strategies.

While our traditional book dealer might sell five or ten books a week, our New Age dealer must sell that in one day just to break even, and he is not in business to break even. He demands profit so he has to sell twenty or thirty books – every day. His overhead is much higher; he spends so much on shipping the IRS doesn’t believe his tax filings and he gets audited most every year.

He is a practical expert at computers, a generalist. He knows how to do much of what needs to be done, but more importantly – he knows when to not spend too much time learning to be what he isn’t. He figures that if it takes him six hours to learn how to do it, and he can pay a professional $100 to do it in an hour, he’ll hire the professional. He knows he’ll make much more than $100 in six hours doing something more productive.

His approach to dealing with a customer is much different too. While our wizened traditional book dealer appears to be in no big hurry to sell a book, the New Age Book Seller is always in a hurry. Time is money. “Speed and profit” is his motto. He hits the cash register as often as possible. If sales slow down, he gets busy. In fact he works harder when sales are slow than when they are roaring.

The New Age Book Seller admires the efficiency of MacDonalds – not necessarily their cuisine. He notes that there has never, ever been a MacDonalds restaurant that has failed – gone out of business. He tries hard to emulate their operation, and apply its assembly line efficiency to his business. He sells brain candy, empty calories for the empty craniums that he serves. He also copies their approach to customer service.

I was in a MacDonalds once. I got a Big Mac meal deal for $3.95 – when I got back to my seat I looked down at a cardboard box that was only half full of french fries, um, I mean freedom fries. Well, I want ALL of my fries. I went back up to the counter and pointed out that I didn’t get a full measure. The clerk shrugged and gave me another one. I now had one and a half orders of fries. No complaint right?

Well, our New Age Book Seller takes the same approach. If someone orders a paperback Patricia Cornwell book, and two weeks later he gets an email that says, “The book was in poor shape, and it arrived late, and the story was awful” he refunds the buyer’s $3.95 because it just isn’t worth a whole lot of his time. If it happens too often with the same customer, he politely invites the customer to shop somewhere else. If the customer consistently takes up more than his allotted few minutes per purchase of customer service time, he is a liability. Liabilities need to be referred to his competition.

Should the customer get the same service as the one who is spending $100 on a rare coffee table book about tall sailing ships? Of course not. And the traditional dealer MUST treat his sale differently. He can’t just go to the shelves and get another copy and give it to the customer if it is damaged in transit. He has to take extra care in everything from confirming the financial transaction information to packaging for shipment and insuring. The New Age Seller drops the book in a paper envelope and mails it – and if it gets damaged in transit, he ships another one or refunds – or both.

Our New Age Book Seller is a capitalist. He works equations all day long in his head. “Is what I’m getting worth MORE than what I’m giving up?” and “Can I have someone else do this job cheaper than what my time is worth?” and, “Yea, it’s a beautiful book – I wonder what it will sell for, and cost to ship?”

While the dealer and the seller have a lot in common, they are also as different as night and day. They are as different as two restaurants. One where you are seated by a waiter with a freedom accent and the cheapest bottle of wine is a day’s minimum-wages – and the hamburger stand uptown where you fill your own paper cup with soda pop. The traditional dealer believes that it is much less work to sell one book for $100 than ten books for $10 each. I wonder if that’s true, but to each his own. We both serve a need – or we wouldn’t both exist.

The New Age Book Seller is looked down upon by the traditional dealers. I’ve heard us described as “drek dealers” and “penny dealers”, and worse. But we serve a need, we fill a niche.

Since we make a hundred small decisions every day, a bad decision is not earth shattering. If we miss an opportunity, we learn from it and keep an eye peeled for the next one because it’s right around the corner. It is fast paced, fun, and profitable, and much to the chagrin of the traditional dealer – we are here to stay.

Chuck Pierce gub@shasta.com

Things You Don’t Know Can Cramp Your Style

So, the other day I was chewing the fat with this guy, this book collector guy, you know, and in the middle of emailing the conversation back and forth this guy he comes right out and just gives me a URL for a Roman numeral converter. Without even asking if I needed it, or wanted it or anything. And like, it gave me like the weirdest feeling, you know? I was shocked for like an entire ten minutes. I mean, I may not know much but I KNOW my Roman numerals.

I have since found that there are many Roman numeral converters on the net. Why is that? Has American education devolved to the point where Roman numerals are considered higher math? I think I learned how to convert them back in third grade. Granted there were nuns and corporal punishments involved and until I discovered I was a bookseller, they weren’t good for much of anything except reading inscriptions on buildings and the thing at the end of the movie next to the MPAA rating. But now it is just something I can do subconsciously. It’s really hard to imagine that it’s not common knowledge anymore.

There are a lot of basic skills a good bookseller should have, being able to convert Roman Numerals is one of them. Even if you have to you make up a post-it crib note and put it on your monitor, do it, because eventually you just have to do it all by yourself on the fly. When you’re standing in a crowded aisle of a book sale holding a crappy ex-Harvard-library copy of Frankenstein it’s good to know it DOES say 1836 on it. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing…and most especially when you don’t have it.

Another useful asset is a basic knowledge of Latin. Now, I am not saying you need to be able to stand up in from of the class and conjugate “amo, amas, amat” like an “O” level student, but to be able to distinguish the verbs FROM the nouns is a good start. Epigraphs still pop up in Latin from time to time and for those of you 21st century booksellers who don’t know what an epigraph is, you have bigger issues at hand. Besides if Latin wasn’t still a valuable asset, why would Harry Potter be translated into it? Huh? Nevermind. Trust me, it’s a good thing and it can’t possibly hurt you.

Speaking of epigraphs, versos, and appendices: learn the proper terms for the PARTS of a book. You learned the proper names for all YOUR body parts. Why not do the same for the thing you supposedly hold most dear? And don’t be alarmed when you find that people who publish books, people who collect books and people who print books have different terms for the same parts. Parts is parts, use good reference works, like Carter’s ABC’s of Book Collecting and the first chapter of Chicago Manual of Style. Oh yeah, BTW: the Internet is NOT the end-all and be-all of information, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. GET SOME REFERENCE BOOKS.

And speaking of the Chicago Manual of Style… learn how to write a proper catalog listing or bibliography. You need to know the correct forms and terms before you can go off and start inventing your own abbrevitions. THIS: “cvrscuff,crnrbmp&edgefeather, H2Owaving,edg’fthr&spinecrs LibraryHB, dw/DJ.Ins.cvrpg.cutout,typical-mrk&stmp”….IS BAD. Can you hear me in the back? If you don’t have a good manual of style by anybody in the house, look up listings by long established booksellers like those in the ABAA. Learn by example. You can’t tack up an unprofessional listing of a valuable book on any old database and expect people to take you seriously; that’s how accidents happen.

Another thing that not enough booksellers pay attention to, which I don’t think even has a name, but is the ability to recognize non-English languages by sight. You know that table that everyone cruises past at a booksale? The one over next to reference? It’s covered in books that aren’t in English; you may not be able to read any of the books, but it is helpful to know if something is in Icelandic or Farsi or Sanskrit. At least it will make you feel all superior while you browse. Oh yeah and guys, those books that look like they are written in some gothic script language, guess what? It’s pre-1930’s German using the Gothic typeface, and if you look around you can find an old Cassel’s English/German-German/English Dictionary in the same typeface (which I don’t think anyone produces anymore.) If I am not mistaken a German first edition of Nietzsche would be in this typeface…but how would YOU know?

That’s all I can think up at the moment. I am well past the deadline on this thing and if I think about all the knowledge that used to be passed from learned bookseller to apprentice bookseller wanna-be that isn’t I get all wound up and start hollering at the computer screen, but that could be just me.

Searching for Ulysses in Greek Or, How I Spent My Summer Vacation

This past August, my wife and I made a long awaited trip to Greece. For the first time in many years, this vacation would represent an almost two week break from the book business. No email, no checking orders, no buying books, no schlepping books, no arranging to have books shipped. There was one exception. I personally collect copies of James Joyce’s Ulysses in various editions and translations, and intended to pick up a copy translated into Greek to add to my collection.

We boarded the plane on a rainy Sunday afternoon, and I did what I always do when forced into a cramped seat and with a safety belt fastened tightly around me–I fell asleep. For some reason I can read almost anywhere except on airplanes. My wife, in contrast, does most of her reading in the air. Needless to say, when we arrived in Athens around noon on Monday, I was rested and ready to explore the city, while she was eager for a hotel room and a long nap. Thus, I had a perfect opportunity to check out the bookstores and purchase my copy of Ulysses.

In my years of business travel, I have discovered that concierges are often excellent sources of information about local bookshops. After checking into our hotel room, I went down for a consultation with our friendly concierge. He was a bit surprised that I was looking for store with books in Greek when it was obvious to him that I did not even know how to say the word “book” in his language, but he pulled out a map and highlighted a street in the center of Athens, right in back of the University.

The street with the bookstores was three subway stops from the hotel. I stepped out into bright Athens sunshine, and saw the Acropolis looming in the distance. Trusting my sense of direction considerably more than my ability to read the subway signs in Greek, I opted to try to walk, using the Acropolis as a point of reference. I walked for about half an hour and decided that it was time for an ice cream break. I scanned the storefronts and was surprised to learn that in spite of the sun and the heat, there were no ice cream stands in sight. The news kiosk had a freezer with pre-packaged ice creams, so I bought one, sat on a bench and ate it. It tasted like a good humor made with skim milk instead of cream, that had been thawed and re-frozen at least three times.

I pulled out my map and tried to figure out where I was. This was no easy task, since my map was in English and the street signs were in Greek. Much to my chagrin, the Acropolis proved to be an illusory point of reference, and I discovered that I had just walked half an hour in the wrong direction.

One of the things that I learned from Leopold Bloom was the value of carrying food in my pockets. Power bars have replaced beef kidneys since this is, after all, the twenty-first century. I threw out most of the ice cream, and walked the half hour back to the hotel munching on my tasty high protein, low carb treat. Now I was ready for anything, including the subway. The platforms were large and not crowded. In less than one minute a train pulled into the station and within five minutes I disembarked at my destination.

I walked up several flights of stairs to the street level and found myself directly across the street from the university. In front of me was a familiar sight–a Starbucks Cafe. I walked in and order an iced coffee to go. The large sign over the counter was identical to the ones in the United States, except that it was in both English and Greek. I was so impressed that I whisked out my digital camera and took a picture of it. The counterman became irate and almost confiscated the expensive 256K photo disk in the camera. He told me that the prices on the sign are confidential information and should not be photographed.

Iced coffee in hand, and camera intact, I crossed the street and headed towards the university. On a small side street just in back of the main campus, I saw a large bookstore. I went up to a clerk and politely asked he had a copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses in Greek. He signaled for me to wait, then disappeared to the back of the shop. A few minutes later a different clerk appeared, who asked me in English how he could help me. I told him what I was looking for and he too disappeared, returning shortly with a copy of the book. It was a very large format paperback, not unlike the actual first edition of Ulysses, with French flaps. It was all in Greek, but I could decode enough of the letters to know that it was the item I was looking for.

“How much?” I asked.

He replied “Thirty-five euro.” I was taken aback, as this was quite a bit of money- about 40 American dollars, and for only a paperback. I thought it over for a minute, then reached into my wallet and took out a credit card and handed it to him. “Sorry” he said, “the telephone lines are not working well, we can’t accept credit card payments.” I did not want to use up all of my cash the first afternoon, so I decided that since the book was readily available, I would come back and get it another day. I was already long overdue back at the hotel, so I left the shop, and headed toward the subway.

The next morning we boarded a bus for a five-day classical tour. Each night we stopped in a different town, Nafpoli, Olympia. Delphi, etc. and each time we stopped for I went looking for a bookstore, but without success. These towns had shops that sold a few books, mostly popular novels to read on the beach, along with suntan lotion, hats and other necessities. If I collected John Grisham or Stephen King, I would have been in luck, as each store had wide selections of their novels in Greek translations. There were also many editions of Greek versions of the Kama Sutra, with the instructional illustrations taken from ancient vases. In Delphi, when I passed the tree that marked the site of the original oracle, I leaned over and whispered, “Where can I find a copy of Ulysses in Greek?” There was no response. I did notice a spider spinning a web in some of the dead branches, but she was no Charlotte, and there was no hidden text.

We arrived back in Athens late Saturday afternoon, just after the bookstores had closed. They would not re-open until mid-morning on Monday, by which time we would already be aboard the ship heading to the Islands. Greece may be the ˜cradle of civilization” but they still have not discovered the value of the late-night book-cafes that dot the landscape of even small cities across the United States.

On Sunday, I did manage to find one open bookshop in the flea market district. It was a large, dark, cavernous basement store filled with piles of dusty (and musty) old books. The shop clerk spoke little English and did not understand my question when I asked if he had a Greek translation of Ulysses. Instead he pointed me to the English language section, which consisted of dog-eared paperbacks abandoned by young English speaking visitors attempting to travel lightly by abandoning their books as they finished them.

The next morning, by the time the shops had opened we were on a bus speeding toward the port of Pireaus. Once aboard the ship, and settled into our stateroom, I decided to skip the orientation, grab a book and head for the pool deck. Topless sun bathing was strictly prohibited, so I decided to walk around and check out what the other passengers were reading. Perhaps I would find a copy of Ulysses and try to persuade its owner to sell it to me. I am familiar enough with the novel to tell them the ending. In fact, I can quote the last sentence verbatim. I quickly discovered that the reading selections of Europeans on Greek cruise ships are what Americans call “beach reading” – mostly light bestsellers, advice books and the occasional long Russian novel.

We arrived in Mykonos, late in the afternoon. With its reputation as a haven for writers and artists, I was sure there would be a well-stocked bookshop. We found pelicans, windmills, cobblestone streets with whitewashed shops, and a magnificent sunset, but no books. The next day, I did find a bookshop on the island of Patmos, but it mainly contained souvenir picture books for the religious pilgrims who flock to the island, and a few popular novels. I did not want to return home without buying at least one book, so I purchased an English translation of a historical novel about Alexander the Great, that I had seen at least three people on the boat reading in different languages.

We spent the third day on the island of Rhodes. The city of Rhodes is quite large and has its own university. We spent the morning on an organized tour of the old city. At the end I asked the tour guide where I could find some bookshops within walking distance of the dock. She pulled out a map and pointed to a neighborhood that she described as the sophisticated shopping district. After lunch on the boat, I dropped my wife off at the archeological museum and headed for the bookstores. I found two large bookstores, but both of them were closed for the remainder of the afternoon. The typical shop on Rhodes is open from 10 A.M. to 2 P.M. then closes for lunch and reopens from 5 P.M. to 8 P.M. I did manage to find an ice cream shop with excellent soft ice cream then headed back to the museum to pick up my wife. We were not due back at the boat until 5:30, so we headed for the beach. This time, the sun-bathing was topless, so there were few readers to survey. We left the beach at 5, so I could stop at the larger of the two bookstores on the way back to the boat. By the time we reached the shop it was well after 5, but the windows looked dark. The door was locked, so I peered in through the glass and saw a light on in the back room. I banged on the door, and an elderly gentleman appeared, and opened the shop. After I explained to him what I was looking for, he confessed that it was really his daughter’s shop, and he was not very familiar with possible contributions in her stock. He called her at her home, and she explained to him where the book would be if she had it. We walked over to the section, but there was no Ulysses. In fact, there was no James Joyce at all. By this time I would have settled for Portrait of the Artist, or even The Dubliners. Sadly, we raced back to the boat empty-handed.

I had no luck on either Crete or Santorini, and my last chance was at the Athens airport. The airport bookshop had a nice selection of world classics in Greek. If I was looking for Hemingway, or Faulkner or even Virginia Woolf, I would have been in luck, but Leopold Bloom’s musings in Greece are even scarcer than punctuation in his wife Molly’s famous soliloquy, and I returned home with nothing to add to my Joyce collection.

A few weeks later, when I was labeling the photos from the trip, I picked up a picture of the site of the oracle, and realized that it had been right. There was no response, because I could not obtain a copy of the book in Greece. Then, I remembered the spider web. Eureka! I logged onto the Internet and went into the worldwide web. I did a search on Athens bookstores and sent a few email queries looking for the book. The first dealer who responded wrote that he could not accept credit cards, but I could send a money order in Euro. I went to a local bank, but had no luck obtaining a foreign money order. Fortunately, the next day, I received an email from a different dealer who had the book and accepted credit cards. I sent him the information, and 5 days later a pristine copy of Ulysses in Greek arrived, identical to the one that I had passed up that first day in Athens. (The price, including shipping, was even the same as I would have paid in the store.) Up on the shelf it went, next to its cousins in Hebrew, Turkish, Rumanian, etc.

Next year, I would like to fulfill another dream, and visit Mainland China. While it would be easier just to log onto the web and order a copy of Ulysses from a bookstore in Bejing, it would only spoil both the fun, and the mystery of the chase. Joe Perlman, Editor LIABDA (Long Island Antiquarian Book Dealer Newsletter)