Marc Monsarrat of Bookmarc Books, Malahat, British Columbia

I got into bookselling by purchasing an existing inventory about four years ago. Nothing spectacular—3,500 general inventory titles. The descriptions had to be re-written, conditions checked and photos or scans taken of the more interesting titles. Very time-consuming, but I felt that if I were to represent these books properly, I had to grade them on my own.

At the same time I was trying to come up with a specialty, because that’s all I heard—“specialize, specialize” from other sellers (Thank You). Knowing I had to specialize meant it had to be in something that would hold my interest, because our enthusiasm and knowledge of our books shows in our listings. Well, one day I walked into a bookstore and found a back room full of Astounding Science Fictions and Weird Tales and Dell Mapbacks and Ace Doubles and thought, now this is something I could specialize in. The combination of the writing and the illustrating, coupled with the era and the politics, etc. really appealed to me. Since then my inventory has almost doubled, mainly in the speculative fiction area, from the 1920s and onward.

The more I began to focus on pulp fiction, the more fascinating the subject became. The authors, artists, publishers and editors combined to make some incredibly thought provoking books and pulps.

The effect of the atomic age on science fiction writing and publishing really opened up the field. It’s interesting to note that many of the authors used pseudonyms in the beginning for a variety of reasons creating a challenge when trying to track down information to chart an author’s progress.

On the weird fiction front we have the triumvirate of Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard. Combine those three with Weird Tales and Arkham House and you have some wonderful stories with even better stories behind the stories.

The market for historical speculative fiction is still growing. There are areas in the world that I sell to more than others. Sweden and Germany spring to mind, as well as Great Britain.

There are specific issues that confront the Canadian bookseller. The main one in my mind is our Canadian postal system which is downright expensive when compared to media mail or m-bags in the US. An American seller can charge $4.00 for shipping and still make a bit, but up here we have to charge $7.00 just to break even on the shipping component. Multiply that by 500 sales a year and you get a sense of how much we have to subsidize our shipping charges just to stay competitive.

Another issue for us is the exchange rate against the US dollar. Four years ago or so, when I first started listing, the US dollar was worth $1.39 against the Canadian dollar; now it’s worth $1.11. That’s a 20 percent drop, for those of us who list in USD. On the positive side, a lot of my purchases and listing fees are cheaper now because of the relative strength of the Canadian dollar.

But there are lots of issues confronting independent booksellers globally. That discussion is best left for another day. I still deal in general inventory as well, because, let’s face it, they sell. Not everyone is a collector and the general public seems to have a voracious appetite for reading, whether it’s for entertainment or knowledge.

My general impression is that most of us didn’t get into this to get rich. What we’re looking for is the ability to make a comfortable income, doing something we love to do. To this idealistic soul, there’s something to be said for the promotion of literacy in this day and age of iPods, Xboxes and downloadable ring tones.

Marc Monsarrat operates Bookmarc Books out of Malahat, British Columbia, Canada and can be contacted at http://www.bookmarc.ca.

John Hardy of Hardy Books, Nevada City, California

I’m John Hardy of Hardy Books, Nevada City, California. We’re in our 10th year of business.

Hardy Books specializes in “All Things Californian” (California history, fine Press, authors, poets, photographers, artists, food and drink, flora, fauna, movies, books to film, photoplay editions, law and order, San Francisco, Yosemite, Sierra Nevada, and on and on), Western Americana, and Books About Books.

As to marketing, we are open by appointment, and on the internet at www.hardybooks.com, which leads prospective buyers to our books listed on www.abebooks.com. Hardy Books is also one of 15 local dealers in a co-operative open shop called Booktown Books & Tomes in Grass Valley, California (4 miles from Nevada City).

My wife Susie and I also produce the Gold Rush Book Fair in May each year at the Nevada County Fairgrounds (“California’s Most Beautiful Fairgrounds”). The 7th Annual Gold Rush Book Fair will be held on May 19, 2007. We have over fifty dealers with all kinds of books and paper material, although the preponderance of the material is Western Americana. The GRBF is on Saturday, with the Dealer move-in on Friday. On Friday night, we host the Booksellers Banquet, a complimentary sit-down dinner for all our dealers held in the historic Masonic Hall in Nevada City. Each year we name an “Honored Guest Bookseller,” based upon “Ethical leadership and scholarship in American bookselling.” The Honored Guest Bookseller is given Booth #1 at the GRBF and we put them up at a local hotel, all with our compliments. Past recipients of the honor have been William Reese Company, The Arthur Clark Company, Emmett Harrington Fine Books, Michael Heaston Rare Books and Manuscripts, Edwin Glaser Fine Books and Michael Ginsberg Books. Visit Gold Rush Book Fair for more details and photographs.

Susie and I attended the eBayLive! Conference in Las Vegas this year and learned about eBay Stores. Hardy Books opened an eBay store several weeks ago and the results are very promising. As one would expect, the eBay folks are very helpful in providing all sorts of templates, marketing tools and suggestions to help one succeed.

I have been a collector of books, primarily Californiana, all my life, as was my father. He was a member of The Book Club of California, as am I. I retired after thirty-five years as a trial lawyer in San Francisco. We bought our house in Nevada City in 1994 and moved here full-time upon my retirement in 1999. Nevada City is a wonderfully restored Gold Rush town, in the Sierra Nevada Foothills, about half-way between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. The area has been designated by Hay-on-Wye’s Richard Booth as “Gold Cities Book Town,” because of the many bookstores, printers, bookbinders and bibliophiles located in Nevada City and Grass Valley.

I’ve attended the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar twice; the first time at the dawn of the internet and the second time after the internet explosion. Other than a long apprenticeship in a famous bookshop somewhere, it’s the best thing that ever happened to the education of booksellers, be they fledglings or seasoned veterans.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the company of all book people, be they dealers, customers, librarians, bookbinders, printers or whatever. It’s a vast club to which we all belong.

John Hardy operates Hardy Books out of Nevada City, CA and can be contacted at http://www.hardybooks.com.

The Team Behind Books Tell You Why

Back in old Europe, many years ago, Andrea and Joachim Koch started collecting books, well before this fascinating hobby took on a much more significant role in our lives. The house was always filled with books, for everyday reading as well as rare items brought back from travels in different countries. Coins were scraped together for those titles more expensive than reasonable to buy. Grandpa’s nineteenth century treasures built the initial collection and made us curious to find out more about a subject that’s been fascinating to the family and has now turned into our business.

After moving to Charleston, South Carolina, in the early 1990s, the historic environment down South continued to foster our love for preserving the values and treasures of times gone by. It didn’t take long for Books Tell You Why to be conceived. Originally a Christmas present for ourselves, the once smallest bookstore in the world expanded rapidly. Books do tell you why, which is for us the raison d’être for reading and collecting them.

Meanwhile, our customers come from all fifty states, and every third book or so is being shipped internationally. Despite dealing with a very traditional product, our infrastructure is anything but. Computer systems accessing a multitude of websites, images for book listings, electronic ordering, tracking and shipping confirmation for all shipments, networking to allow secure access to staff working from remote locations, the highest level of secure payment processing, etc. Wim Wijnen juggles this marriage between traditional and high-tech, making sure that our books can be easily found online, and that our computers, databases, and systems keep supporting our growing operations.

Book buying needs to be easy. Andrea, being responsible for our Customer Operations, works us extremely hard to gain the confidence of our customers, who receive the book they want in the condition they expect at the time it was promised. Few things are more rewarding than to get a Saturday afternoon call and be able to fill an order for a scarce first edition that has to be on the other side of the country on Monday morning to be presented as a gift. Our favorite customer is the discerning collector—discerning in the books they seek as well as the level of service they expect and appreciate.

The next generation, Christopher and Katharina, are beginning to contribute significantly to the daily operations in the order processing and shipping departments, and they put the final touches on a great product on its way to a satisfied collector.

And yes, Joachim is still hunting those same books we were fascinated by as kids in a different language in a different part of the world, such as Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, Eloise, or From Russia with Love. These days, however, we are not satisfied with just having any copy. We chase first editions in exceptional condition, to satisfy the collector in us as well as our customers.

Focus areas of Books Tell You Why include many contemporary works, signed first editions, Easton Press and Franklin Library, biographies, authors such as Saul Bellow, Dan Brown, Jimmy Carter, Ian Fleming, Anne Rice, Philip Roth, John Steinbeck, J. R. R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, and other great authors who tell you why through their books.

Joachim Koch operates Books Tell You Why and can be contacted at http://www.bookstellyouwhy.com.

#brickandmortar