Why I Belong to the IOBA

In the quiet darkness of a late fall night, circa 1923, my grandfather Charlie and his family packed their belongings and quietly left Birmingham, England. Times were not good in Birmingham for union organizers and efforts to bring a reasonable standard of living to the bakers there came at a very high price.

Charlie and family moved to Glasgow, Scotland. The small used bookshop that he started there was stacked to ceiling with dusty shelves which held a mixture of magazines, books, old toasters, and soft-core British pornography. The bookshop was eventually taken over by my aunt and I visited there a few years before she died.

Perhaps my own relationship with books and selling them was genetic. Coincidentally, I also spent several years as the chief negotiator for a teachers’ union. Times had changed and, happily, I didn’t feel the need to flee Fort Dodge, Iowa – at least not because of my union organizing activities.

The IOBA booksellers are gently tied to one another, even though much of what we do is rather solitary. Our days may be spent hunting for books, keying in data, and dealing with sales orders. The ‘Independent’ aspect of our work is significant. Paradoxically, we are united in our sense of personal freedom and charting our own course. When we buy a book (or a thousand) we rely on our personal intuition and knowledge to determine if we’ll be able to convert that book into a profit. Much of our day-to-day survival rests on our own shoulders.

But not entirely.

Being part of an association of like-minded people provides a sense that we’re not in it alone. While there may be 15,000 independent online sellers, it’s comforting to know some of them e-personally. It’s also significant that those who choose to join together share a commitment to quality, service, and a code of ethics. As a group we independent people make a statement of our commitment to a standard of excellence.

It’s a good business decision to let others know that you stand for something. Our customers are people who are interested in knowledge and education. It pays us to be knowledgeable and educated about what we are doing. There is no better way to accomplish this than by joining together.

There’s a fair amount to know about the art and science of our business, especially since little more than a decade ago our business model didn’t even exist! Through association with others in the field we each have the benefit of shared experience, such as learning about the cutting-edge information that can have a positive impact on our business. Frankly, why keep reinventing the computer chip, or the wheel, when others can provide you with some of the basics?

My involvement with IOBA has enhanced my work. It’s been an association that has given me a great deal–and offers the potential for much more. IOBA is a unique organization that is dedicated to serving our shared interests. It helps each of us be a little bigger and have the potential to be a little more independent than we were without it.

My membership in IOBA has been of substantial value to me. We face increasing challenges in our business on a day-to-day basis. The explosion of the digitized world continues to provide tremendous opportunities as well as significant challenges. One of the challenges affected many of us when a few months ago a major on-line service had a significant glitch and interruption of service. Potential changes in postal regulations could impact the shipping of our books we sell. Together, we can learn how to deal with any adverse effects on our business, and have some potential to impact issues as they emerge.

As we know, right now anyone with a book can be a bookseller. For better or worse, it’s what allowed most of us the opportunity to become a part of this field. Is there more to what we do than the very simple act of offering our goods in the market? I believe that without our willingness to ‘associate’ with one another in our common best interests, we will merely be reactive to the market place. Our potential strength and effectiveness lies in creating opportunities to make a difference in the market place and, ultimately, to influence that same marketplace. There’s a lot for us to think about!

IOBA offers an expanding array of education and services to the on-line community. It provides substantial value for all of us. I’m dedicated to trying to help our association increase that value, because membership in IOBA is among the best investments an independent on-line seller can make.

David Friedman is President of the Independent Online Booksellers Association (IOBA), owner of Bibliotique, and can be contacted at http://www.bibliotique.net

Why a Successful Book Collecting Magazine Is Good for Your Business

One evening in late April, after a full day at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair, I stepped into one of those famous newsstands in Manhattan-600 square feet jammed with thousands of different magazines on floor-to-ceiling racks.

You can find almost any kind of magazine in these places. This particular shop, on Madison Avenue, had an entire display devoted to watch collecting, with five magazines and a few once-a-year special publications. The shop also stocked two magazines for pen collectors, several each for stamp and coin collectors, a couple of antiques titles, and even a magazine for Yu-Gi-Oh card collectors. (If you don’t know any children between 8 and 14 years old, you may not be familiar with this insanely complicated Japanese card game that holds the elementary and junior high set in its thrall.)

But I digress.

My point is this: Among the thousands of magazines being published, you won’t find even one about book collecting on any regular magazine newsstand. Yu-Gi-Oh-yes. Watches-more than you can read.Coins-how often do you want it? Weekly, monthly, bi-monthly?

Book collecting? Fuggedaboudit.

That’s a large part of the reason that I started Fine Books & Collections magazine three years ago (as OP magazine-see The Standard, vol. IV, no. 1 and vol IV, no. 3). I collect various kinds of books but I’m generally interested in book history, fine presses, other book collectors, and what’s going on in the auction rooms. I wanted to know more about books and book collecting, and there simply wasn’t a publication that covered books in a broad way. I subscribed to some of the specialty publications, and there are quite a few-for miniature book collectors, collectors of diaries, Scottish books, modern first editions-but nothing with broad appeal and wide distribution.

Ours is a small operation, connected by the Internet. I edit the magazine from Eureka, California and my business partner, a magazine publisher, works out of offices in Durham, North Carolina. The publication is designed in Manhattan and printed in New Hampshire. This arrangement allows us to cover book news and events on both coasts.

Many people think that putting a magazine together entails printing stories people send in. In fact, less than a fifth of the stories we run in the magazine were sent to us. We commission the vast majority: I hire writers or researchers to do stories on particular topics. The typical feature will go through six drafts, will be fact-checked by two people, and copyedited by four or five. It’s an intense and time-consuming process.

Nick Basbanes, a veteran newspaper reporter and the author of A Gentle Madness and many other fine books on book collecting, recently commented on the rigorousness of our editing process. “I am astonished at the depth of your fact-checking,” he wrote. Why are we so nitpicky? Because I know that book collectors and dealers rely on us for accurate information.

At a point in time when many people are predicting the end of print, it might seem strange to start a new magazine. However, I think there’s never been a better time to be a book collector and that means there’s never been more of a need for a book collecting magazine. It’s true that price competition and the increase in hobbyist sellers has hurt the bottom line of many professional booksellers.

On the other hand, the power of the Internet is giving collectors the tools to build collections like never before. No collecting field supports as many e-commerce web sites as book collecting and online book auctions are vibrant and healthy. The transition to web-based commerce has been difficult for dealers but the opportunities available to collectors will be good for the trade in the long run.

Yet the hobby has a very low profile in the public eye, perhaps lower than at any point in the last century. This state of affairs is partially due to the Internet, which has fragmented the rare book world. We can now easily buy books on another continent, and as a result a lot of us no longer shop at the used bookstore around the corner. As more and more commerce goes online, the person-to-person interactions that are so important to building relationships and for educating both collectors and dealers are diminishing.

Where can new collectors turn for information about collecting? Where can dealers learn about books beyond their areas of expertise? Those learning experiences used to come from open shops. Every year there are fewer of those and people travel less: Why scout in person when you can surf the ‘Net late at night from home in your p.j.s?

This is where a magazine fits in. One of our goals is to help knit the book world together by bringing our readers the voices of the many men and women who love books. You may not have an opportunity to talk with the head of the New York Public Library, but we can and did. We also talked to Google, booksellers, academics, book historians, the head of the National Library of Scotland, auctioneers, executives at Abebooks and Alibris, and collectors. And that’s just in the most recent issue. Where the Internet tends to separate, Fine Books & Collections can help bring the antiquarian book world together, to introduce our readers to the range of current opinion and research on books and the hobby we enjoy so much.

In the last 12 months, we’ve gone from black and white to full color and from 36 pages to 60 for our July/August 2005 issue. While we’ve increased circulation three-fold in that time, it isn’t nearly enough to sustain a viable, general interest magazine for book collectors-the sort of magazine that can hold its own against the glossy watch magazines on newsstands in Manhattan. We believe that a magazine that appeals to the broad spectrum of book collectors and dealers will be good for book collecting and will attract new collectors into the hobby. My business partner and I have made a significant investment in this venture because we think it is worth it from a business standpoint. We are also both long-time book collectors who want the hobby to thrive and for new collectors to take it up.

I know there are some skeptics reading this, so I’m ready to put my money where my mouth is. We know from past experience that most people who try Fine Books & Collections like, and many of you will, too. We invite you to join us, and we’ll send the readers of the IOBA Standard a free first issue, with no obligation. Just follow this link: http://www.finebooksmagazine.com/freeissue

If you like the magazine, you’ll also get our best subscription price, just $19.95 for your first year. This offer is not available on our web site – you must use the link above. Consider a gift subscription for your best customers: they’ll remember your generosity with every issue.

Scott Brown is the editor of Fine Books & Collections magazine. He collects books by R. K. Narayan and Gary Soto.

#magazine #services

The History of Abracadabra Bookshop

I went into the book business after having taught at a local college for a number of years and having seen that the future looked bleak. Faculty were being cut and I knew there was no possibility of another job in my field: Colorado and Western History. What else could I do? I loved books. I had been collecting modestly in my field, and had several hundred books on Colorado and the West, so I started what I called The Western Americana Bookshop. For the first few years I ran the business on the side and still taught, which meant I did not have to take money out of the business – just as well! I knew little of the book business but learned as I went along. There were no book schools like the annual event in Colorado Springs, at that time, so it was pretty much ‘learn as you go.’ Twenty-eight years later I still learn and I still love it. It sure beats ‘working for a living’! And, like the guy who won the lottery, I will hold on until the money runs out.

I started Abracadabra Bookshop in 1977 and the first location was in the Nepenthes Cafe on Market Street in Denver. After buying out Stage House II in Boulder, we moved to new quarters on Court Place, above the bowling alley. Dealing with the owners, Hare Krishna, was not pleasant, so we purchased a Victorian house on West 32nd Avenue and moved our growing stock into the Carriage House in 1980. We stayed there very happily until 1994, when, bursting at the seams with over 50,000 volumes, we moved to 32 South Broadway. This was a learning experience for us. Despite being the busiest street in Denver, Broadway did not increase our sales. It did, however, increase the amount of theft!

Frustrated by theft and other problems such as lack of growth – we did a study which showed that only 2 percent of the population of Colorado were book buyers – we decided in 1998 to move to Texas. We located in the pleasant Gulf Coast town of Rockport, known for great fishing, year-round sailing, and good seafood. We knew that a small town of 15,000 would not have the over-the-counter sales of Denver, but hoped the growing Internet would help. We were quickly surprised at how good over the counter sales were! We were soon doing 1/3 of our Denver sales. Texans are readers and the other Texas dealers were friendly and helpful. Good people.

However, there was a dark side to the Texas experience. Texas taxes are very high. A latent law allowing used books to be taxed as inventory was activated in 2003 and this meant we had to leave Texas. The Tax was 2.6% of the value of your inventory, and the law allowed taxing authorities to check your income tax records to see what you claimed. An idea of how devastating this can be seen in one item – a set of Octavo Audubons valued at $40,000 would produce $1000 a year in tax! We had to leave. I was getting very good at packing up and moving books. When we moved from Court Place to West 32nd, with 30,000 books, it took a week, shelf to shelf. West 32nd to Broadway, with 50,000, was accomplished in 10 days. Denver to Rockport, with 80,000 books took 10 days to pack, a week to ship in two tractor trailers, and 3 days to get back on the shelf. Rockport to Denver, with approaching 100,000 books, took 5 hours to pack, 5 days to ship, 2 days to re-shelve, and the rest of our lives to alphabetize! If anyone needs guidance in this area, please feel free to call.

So, back to Denver in 2004 and a new location at 7030 East 46th Avenue Drive. Colorado Taxes are among the cheapest in the nation, thanks to a man named Bruce. It is a good place to be in the book business and, with the Internet, location is not nearly as important as it used to be. We are able to buy well here, although Rockport produced some amazing finds, such as the 1st Edition of William Morris’sWell at the World’s End in Very Good condition!

We provide a complete book service, with close to 100,000 volumes in stock, a free book search, and our books are listed on the ‘Net with several services. We do several book fairs every year, mostly in Texas. This brief account of our history would not be complete without mentioning my wife, Marcy, whose contributions after leaving the National Park Service have been marvelous, and over the years such great employees as Diane Kennedy, Joan Riddel, Russ Wiese, Jon Snurka, Caren Eno, Jack Plante, Katie Mclean, Melody Field, Melinda, Dan Gorski. and others. As always, we are always interested in purchasing good book collections.

Alan Culpin is the owner of Abracadabra Bookshop & Booksearch in Denver CO and can be contacted at (303) 733-5700, orders@abrabks.com”, or http://www.abrabks.com

#brickandmortar