Nancy Johnson, Bookseller, Denver, CO

“I sell books about antiques.” “You sell antique books? I have an old school book that was my grandmother’s.” “No, I sell books ABOUT antiques, not necessarily antique books.” And so a typical conversation with a stranger ends—the same conversation for thirty-one years!

Fortunately, the collector, the antique dealer and the book lover recognize what I sell, and their enthusiasm for my specialty has been my profession since 1977. My father, Walt Johnson, started promoting his COLLECTORS’ EXTRAVAGANZA® Antiques Shows in 1969 (that’s Dad in the photo!) and in the mid-1970s expanded his shows to cities outside our home base of Des Moines. Those shows needed a reference bookseller, and on February 25, 1977 in Denver, with three boxes of books I bought (using some left-over money from my college savings account) I became our show’s book dealer. I bought those titles just on a feeling they would be good sellers, and I actually sold out during that antique show, something I would never again do!

“The Library” served its owner well for nearly twenty-five years, but as the business changed, so did I, and Nancy Johnson, Bookseller replaced “The Library.” With my home now in Denver and warehouse in Strasburg, Colorado (30 miles east of Denver) my shows now stretch from the Great Lakes to the Pacific. That three box inventory has also changed—the inventory is now some 75,000 books, at least 90% of which are on antiques, collecting, decorative arts and fine art. We still promote antiques shows as well, and our Denver Show is held at Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum, so I have a growing inventory of aviation titles and material, including some ephemera, pertaining to the American West.

I have never operated a bricks-and-mortar store, as the nature of my specialty has always mandated that the bookseller take the books to the collector (at antiques shows and book fairs) instead of the other way around. I drive to all my shows and fairs, sometimes with a cargo trailer in tow, and although I still set up a large display, I can only bring a portion of my inventory to the event. Selling online allows me to better serve my existing show customers and to find new customers who would never see my books in person.

Since that first day of selling in February, 1977, I have always considered myself a professional. I belong to the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association (MPIBA) and IOBA, which I joined because of IOBA members I met at the San Francisco Antiquarian Book & Paper Fair. I liked the concept of IOBA because it allowed me to be me, with more emphasis on the way I conducted business than the square footage of a walk-in facility. I participate in the member’s discuss lists and have learned a great deal from other members. And I have just applied to list through IOBAbooks. In addition to the shows in which I exhibit, I sell on my own web-site, nancyjohnsonbookseller.com, and on AbeBooks.com.

My Mom, Frances Goodman Johnson, was always an enthusiastic volunteer in my business. When she passed away in 1997, we established a private foundation in her name. The Foundation is supported by our family businesses and very generous contributions from friends. “Mom” works in the area of literacy and reading programs, as well as working with the Iowa Commission on the Status of Women to provide small scholarships and financial aid to young women of need.

My Dad is 81 years young, a World War II and Korean War veteran who is also a retired police officer. I am fortunate to have two wonderful families in my life in Colorado. The young lady pictured with me, Brandy Hoffstaetter (age 6) is learning how we write an online listing at her home in Greeley! Dawn Warren (age 11), in Strasburg, along with her mother, Laurie, is very helpful in locating books to be shipped to our great online customers. These girls love books, and that is music to my ears!

Nancy Johnson operates Nancy Johnson, Bookseller out of Denver, CO and can be reached at http://www.nancyjohnsonbookseller.com.

IOBA Standard, Summer Edition 2007, Volume 8, No. 3.

Brian Cassidy, Bookseller, Monterey, CA

My first bookstore job was at Iowa City’s Prairie Lights. I was attending the University of Iowa Writers Workshop and working in a bookshop helped support my “plans” of becoming a writer. While there, and though I didn’t realize it at the time (or at least wouldn’t have used the term), I began collecting books: haunting the bargain tables for good buys (once even finding a third printing of Olympia Press’ two-volume Lolita for five dollars), and stalking authors who read at the store to sign my books. Iowa City also had several excellent used bookshops and I began hunting their aisles for books cheap enough for even a poor graduate student to afford. Two years later, I left Iowa with significantly more books than I arrived with.

After graduation, and now in California, my “plan” was to teach full-time. But when all I could find were part-time adjunct positions, bookselling again helped support me, this time at Monterey’s Bay Books. Soon galleys, ARCs, and proofs—a new interest, perhaps especially because they were free—began piling up around the house. I spent many of my lunch hours at one of the three used bookshops within walking distance. The book collection grew.

And when my wife’s career brought us to Colorado, Denver’s Tattered Cover occupied me while I looked for what I “planned” to be my “real” work: teaching, maybe writing, or some combination of the two. At least that’s what I still hoped. Yet by the time we left Colorado, I found that I had risen to the positions of both buyer and Poetry Events Coordinator at the Tattered Cover, and I began to wonder if perhaps bookselling was not in fact itself the plan.

After all, for several years I had been supplementing my book buying with amateur book-scouting, and had become rather adept at shuffling titles from one Denver area used bookshop to another for increasing amounts of cash or credit. So when my wife and I decided that I would be the stay-at-home parent for our daughter, the idea of online bookselling, of this scouting project writ large, occurred to me. I had a good start-up inventory from my years of teaching, collecting, and working in new books: advance issues, signed books, lucky finds from used shops. And my wife liked the idea of clearing some of the many books from the house (insert bookseller laughter here). But this would only be for extra income, of course, nothing permanent. That was the plan, anyway.

But despite all of this, and much to my wife’s consternation, the book piles around the house have only managed to grow. So much for plans. Pity the poor bookseller’s spouse. Not all plans have been abandoned, however; I have not completely stopped writing. This past year, I have written a series of articles on my time as a stay-at-home father for a new parenting magazine, Baby Couture. In July of this year, I’ll be presenting a paper at the annual conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP).

In his recent book The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, Louis Buzbee writes, “No child sets out to become a bookseller.” But somehow, in that meandering way that seems common to all booksellers, I have become one. And will remain so. At least, that’s the plan.

Brian Cassidy operates Brian Cassidy, Bookseller in Monterey, CA and can be contacted at http://www.tomfolio.com/mall/BrianCassidy.

IOBA Standard, Summer Edition 2007, Volume 8, No. 3.

Cathy Graham and Serena Wyckoff of Copperfish Books, LLC

Hi, we are Cathy Graham and Serena Wyckoff, owners of Copperfish Books, LLC, in sunny southwest Florida. Before going full time in January 2006, we had “real” jobs and sold books online as a hobby. Well, as often happens in this business, the hobby grew and we said a not-so-tearful goodbye to the time clock.

Becoming Booksellers

We have both always loved books—reading them, looking at them, touching them, collecting them, and just having them around. And yes, hanging out in libraries and bookstores has been one source of fun. So the book connection is easy to see. But online retail? At first glance, our professional backgrounds don’t seem directly connected. But maybe they are in a round-about way. Publishing, teaching, social work, languages, and communications all have elements of sales, business and books. And our histories of constantly seeking to learn and to change—these are qualities of the online retailing industry. Still, neither of us had imagined that we would be selling books online today.

Cathy had early interests in language arts. After serving in the US Air Force as a foreign language analyst, she completed her undergraduate degree and became a secondary school language teacher. Eventually, Cathy moved on from teaching to a corporate sales job in telecommunications. The sales job blossomed into personnel management and training, which she enjoyed for several years.

Then Cathy returned to school to earn a graduate degree and struck out on her own as a training and development consultant. The creative freedom of freelancing was intoxicating and a major motivator for maintaining an entrepreneurial work life. During this time she started selling books online, listing those from her own collection that she no longer wanted. After the thrill of her first sale, Cathy was hooked. Once she finished selling her own, she started hunting elsewhere for more books she could sell. She started building an inventory—shelves and piles of books everywhere. And it was fun! Bookselling began to replace Cathy’s work as a consultant.

Serena came into bookselling from another angle. With a BA in English, she had planned a career in book publishing. After graduation, Serena attended the University of Denver Publishing Institute, an intensive graduate-level course that focused on all aspects of book publishing. She worked as a clerk in a bookstore and a freelance proofreader, and took a job in the permissions department for a publishing firm. But her interest in publishing waned. Serena decided she wanted to help older people and so got a job at a retirement home. She went back to school for a master’s degree and spent several years as a geriatric social worker.

Serena left social work, ready for change once again. She did general office work before landing a job with a nonprofit. She transitioned from a help desk position to one in web services, where she developed and maintained the organization’s web sites. The job was pretty cool; she learned a lot and felt that she made a difference in helping the organization improve communications both within and to the outside world. A few years ago, Serena started selling books online as a hobby with Cathy. That’s how she got hooked. Eventually, she decided to leave the 9-to-5 world and start Copperfish Books with Cathy. She feels that it was one of the best decisions she had ever made.

About Our Company

Copperfish Books, LLC, sells all kinds of books: fiction and nonfiction, current and out-of-print, books for adults and youth, audio books, books in English and in other languages. We also sell CDs, DVDs, videos, and even a few maps. Our sales are worldwide through Alibris, Amazon, Biblio, Buy Bundle, and Half. At this point, we don’t sell directly through our website (www.CopperfishBooks.com), but plan to do so in the future.

While specialization is encouraged by many in the industry, we have not yet developed our own. Nonfiction titles are our most profitable and interesting offerings. Our personal preferences also color our inventory. Serena likes books about unusual crafts, film, nature, and out-of-print biographies of people not generally well-known. Cathy likes translations, first novels, small hardbacks, and unusual or attractively bound or printed old books in foreign languages (like the two boxes of Russian books stashed in the garage). Out of our varied interests we hope someday to develop a specialty or two. At this point, however, we try to stock whatever we think will sell.

When someone buys one of our books, we want them to be delighted with their experience. We make sure our packaging, shipping, and communication is just what we would want as buyers. Every so often we’ll get an email (not just feedback) from a buyer telling us what our book has meant to them. One woman was thrilled with the book about growing giant pumpkins that she bought for her husband. She wrote us several times to let us know how his pumpkin was coming along! We love to hear stories like that.

Satisfying Work

Copperfish Books is a great source of satisfaction for both of us. When we clean and repair books, it feels like we give them new life; when we sell them, we give them new homes. Books are something you can’t help but love!

Having our own business is both fun and demanding. The independence is great and the lack of office politics is so refreshing. We work longer and harder than when we worked for someone else. But we really enjoy the work and are excited about building and improving our business.

Online bookselling is fast-growing, ever-changing, and challenging. We both like having work that we can “sink our teeth into” and that allows us to be creative and to learn. And learning is such a big part of having a successful business. We constantly educate ourselves about online retailing, bookselling, book repair, inventory management, publishing, and so much more. Online bookselling is neither easy nor a way to a fast buck. But it is truly satisfying work. Running our own business, being around books, feeling satisfied with our work—what more could we ask for?

Cathy Graham and Serena Wyckoff operate Copperfish Books, LLC, out of Port Charlotte, FL and can be contacted at http://www.CopperfishBooks.com.