From the editor
Father Richard Reed of St. Gabriels Bookstore
A Guide to Improving Your Online Book Sales
Seeing Shelley Plain: Memories of New Yorks Legendary Phoenix Book Shop
The Team Behind Books Tell You Why
Ephemeral Assays: Pulp Frisson
Ethics & eBay – No, Really: Perspectives from a Modern Library Collector
House Calls, Estate Sales and Auction tales
Caite Stevens of Vivarte Books
The Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar
Addendum
Welcome back to the IOBA Standard, which has been on a bit of a hiatus. I read somewhere once that hiatus often means goodbyatus, but we are back with a new team, a new look, and ambitious plans. If you ever come across premier issues of periodicals, take a look at the opening remarks. Back in the early days, they used to call this the plan of the magazine, where rosy intentions are announced. These messages are remarkably similar through the decades, though the language was far more erudite and flowery a century or two ago.
The Standard was first published in 2001, which makes it about forty years old in dog or internet time, and IOBA is for the most part an all-volunteer force, so a breather was not out of order. Going forward, our primary goal is to put out four increasingly substantial issues per year, in January, April, July, and October. We will continue to solicit a wide variety of lively articles on matters pertaining to the noble and hopefully lucrative profession of bookselling. We will broaden our scope with, among other things, more international content, and more views and news you can use.
This is an exciting time for the Independent Online Booksellers Association. As many of you know, IOBA was formed out of concern for maintaining traditional bookselling values and standards in the face of a rapidly changing online selling environment. Many of us feel caught in the middle, with a glut of books and unqualified or unscrupulous booksellers on one side and the creeping corporatism of the major search services on the other. The web can be a great real-time pricing tool, and we can display our wares to the entire world, but lots of problems are cropping up too.
IOBA is here as a natural byproduct of the online bookselling industry. It provides various tools for learning the trade, it requires meeting certain reasonable standards for membership, it has a code of ethics, and it has a dedicated board of directors and committee members. As IOBA grows, it hopes to provide the traditional advantages of a trade association. This includes member benefits, acting as a clearinghouse for information, taking an activist role when warranted, and uniting professional booksellers under one umbrella for the benefit of buyer and seller alike. That last bit can be difficult, as getting opinionated and occasionally cantankerous booksellers together has been likened to herding cats, but thats why Independent is in the title.
IOBA is also here to help earnest new booksellers get started. Although we find rumblings about the changing book trade going back for centuries, surely we are in the midst of the greatest upheaval since the advent of the printing press, due largely to the internet. Some overnight booksellers dont care about traditions and standards, and might as well be hawking Beanie Babies or fake watches. Others are anxious to learn and grow. The old guild or apprentice system is breaking down, partly because many bricks and mortar stores were driven out of business by urban blight, chain stores, high rents, and now the relative ease of selling exclusively online. While many of us might aspire to join the prestigious Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America or one of its international counterparts some fine day, and to perhaps open a shop of our own, that takes time, effort, and dedication, not to mention the proverbial handling of one million books. Im told that at a recent book fair banquet, a former ABAA president conducted a poll of the booksellers present. Of more than fifty, only four were under the age of forty-five. He asked who would mentor the future generation, with so many B&Ms closing. With so many online-only dealers joining the profession, this is where IOBA can make a big difference. In addition to the services previously mentioned, one of the projects we are working on right now is a formal mentor program.
The Membership Chair reports a recent surge in new membersfrom 185 last August to 215 in February to the present number of 290 and counting. Joining IOBA is very inexpensive . . . only $60 per year. One fairly new member benefit is listing your inventory through IOBAbooks.com, also very reasonable ($15 a month for 10,000 books, for example, with a modest sliding scale below and above that figure). IOBAbooks.com does not interfere with the buyer-seller relationship, it offers credit card processing, it charges zero commission, and it is currently searched on BookFinder. Crafty booksellers could cover their entire yearly fees by listing some very scarce, collectible, and commission-free titles exclusively on IOBAbooks.com. Many members are reporting very respectable sales.
Ive come to view IOBA as a safe harbor in a sea of uncertainty. It wont sell out, and it has our best interests at heart. A recent highly interesting thread on the IOBA Discuss list on why members have joined was inspiring enough to get me to volunteer for this editing job. We are setting a goal of 500 members (and the more of them that list on IOBAbooks.com the better). That is a big increase from 290, but the time is right. And if some of the search services can claim tens of thousands of members and counting, there is no reason why IOBA couldnt grow to several thousand strong by 2010. For more information, please visit our home page at www.ioba.org.
As for this issue, we start off with a major tutorial on internet bookselling from Brendan Sherar, the proprietor of Biblio.com; followed by an entertaining look at hunting Modern Library specimens in the steamy and often fetid jungles of eBay. From the Reference Desk section, another ephemeral assay, on pulps; and the first in a series of reviews by the editor on books about bookselling. We crack open the Tool Box for a look at personalized inventory database management by IOBAs talented Chris Volk; followed by a preview of the 2006 Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar, where Chris has just been invited to join that distinguished staff of bookselling professors. There are three fun IOBA bookseller profiles. Rounding things out, an Errata section takes up uncustomary residence at the rear of the work in question, with an emphasis on where we can find good stock and how we can learn good lessons.
Special thanks to Shirley Bryant, the first editor of the public version of the Standard and my current mentor in this endeavor, the previous editor Michael Watson, our great and patient new webmaster Rayburn Taylor, and the president and board of IOBA.
Hello, I am Father Rick Reed, the Pastor of Saint Gabriels Chapel and online bookstore. Our aim is to meet and greet each customer with the golden rule of treating others as we would wish to be treated. I opened our online bookstore as an extension of our ministry to all! As a bookseller and book reader, I love books of all kinds and wish to spread this love of reading and learning to everyone I come in contact with.
I was not sure where to start when asked to do an autobiography. I sat down and prayed, and began to put some thoughts on paper. This is almost as scary as when I was asked to write my life story for chaplain training, for when I did as I was told, I thought thats nice, but what impact did all that have on your life? Books have shaped me and guided me throughout my life. Good and not-so-good books, but lots of them.
A little about myself. I am an Orthodox Catholic Priest, have been married to Carol for just over 33 years, have two grown children, and six grandchildren. I have been in the ministry for ten years now and serve as a Hospice chaplain as well as at two local hospitals as an on-call chaplain. I also serve as a priest at Holy Trinity Celtic Orthodox Church, and I am an online bookseller. In shortI am kinda busy. I was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio, was gone for many years, and then returned back about four years ago to take care of family.
I began a career in the medical field 35 years ago and have served as a surgical and x-ray technician, as well as in radiation health, emergency medical, and field medicine, including several administrative positions. For around 25 years I served in the US Military, retiring from the US Navy six years ago. I served in many different settings and capacities including Desert Shield/Storm; the first Gulf War in a US Marine Corps field hospital; staff positions; joint military; hospitals and clinics; as well as with a Marine Corps Expeditionary Unit Medical Planner.
I have two Masters Degrees as well as a smattering of experience just living and I am still wondering what will happen tomorrow. Okay, that really gives everyone a good picture of what I have done.
Over many years I collected books and soon developed my own large library. My collection included books on many different topics to include Christianity, Religion, Military, Survival, Medical, Marital Arts, Weapons, Wilderness, and History. This love for books grew into my dream of owning and running my own bookstore. Not being able to actually open a B&M store, I turned to online bookselling and have found excitement and my passion! I joined IOBA almost a year ago when I first started in the business. Oh, and yes my books moved with me over the years from place to place.
I guess you can say I have served my fellow man (and woman) all my life, and owning and running an online bookstore is just an extension of that service to my fellow humans; ones who have a thirst for reading and knowledge. One of the books I had to read in high school was Fahrenheit 451. I detested that book almost as much as I did 1984. I was once told by a teacher that she wanted to see me ten to twenty years down the road to see what I turned into, because I kept saying there had to be a better way and society was not going the way I thought it should. Well I am not sure how much I actually changed in these many years, though my love for reading and books grew and grew until now I am able to say they have become a major part of my life.
Let me please give you an example or two of how books have helped to change and enhance my life. I was raised Roman Catholic, and drifted from my faith. As study and reading took place, I eventually became an Ordained Pentecostal Minister ten years ago. Four years ago my faith and beliefs were challenged and I ended up in Sudan in East Africa for six months, assisting and teaching in a Bible College. After that I began to read and study. Eventually after careful study I returned to the Catholic faith, Old Catholic and then Orthodox Catholic. Without the written word, the Bible, and other early Church Fathers writings, I may never have had the opportunity to read and study. My whole life was changed.
While serving in the US Navy I had the chance to teach survival. Many men have written about their challenges to survive a variety of situations, from prisoner of war to wilderness and desert survival. These men put their experiences into words and print. I was able to read and study those works, becoming a better instructor and person in the process as I learned from their challenges and life-changing decisions.
Reading books has changed my life, and now I have the opportunity to share these wonderful books with the whole world, for the life of an online bookseller is truly global. The first book I sold was to a gentleman in Germany, and since then I have sold many books to customers overseas as well as throughout the entire USA.
Oh, I didnt say I could writethough that is another goal somedaybut this is my story!
Postscript since this was first submitted. After careful consideration and prayer, we have decided to relocate to New Port Richey, Florida. It has been a nice challenge to pack up our household goods and the bookstore and move 1100 miles. I have been told this is an excellent area in which to obtain books for my store. God has continued to bless us. As I have put things on vacation with the online listing sites, we have had four orders in the past two days. We didn’t want the customer to have to wait, so we searched, found the books (that was fun), shipped them out, and then resealed the boxes again. We will be all moved in and back online by the time you read this.
Father Rick Reed operates St. Gabriels Bookstore and can be contacted at http://www.christianbooksonline.us.
