you know you are older than dirt when...

... you remember when Alibris was an INTRANET site called Interloc.

...you remember the time when selling an out of print book on Amazon was accomplished by Amazon calling you to confirm the book was available and then sending you a check BEFORE you shipped the book to their customer. (Amber was my Amazon buyer.)

...you had a question or problem with your inventory on the ABEBOOKS website you would call them on the phone and talk with the programmer/owner to get a fix.  (Miss you Rick Pura!)

Holiday Sales

Well, it's been a surprisingly busy holiday, with the largest number of orders coming in on Thanksgiving day. It makes a nice ending to the slower than usual sales rate for November. Here's hoping that the orders continue to be strong for Cyber Monday.

Taylor's Antique Mall Update

I thought I'd post an updated picture of my little book corner in the basement of Taylor's Antique Mall in Ellicott City.

I wanted a small space, where the books could be browsed, so the shelves are not arranged in any particular order and the books are a mixture of children's and adult titles, with some ephemera and childrens' magazines (Humpty Dumpty, Jack and Jill etc) tucked in the bin in the corner.

To keep the space easy to browse, I'm going to fill the remaining shelf space, but I probably will not add any more shelving. I may add a bit more lighting though and some more holiday decorations!

Full Circle

I started selling books by catalog in 1993 and joyfully migrated to Internet sales in 1996. In the early days of bookselling on the internet, I sold books through Interloc, Abebooks and Bibliofind. I even sold books to Amazon when their out of print department consisted of someone calling on the phone and asking if a book was available and then sending you the payment, PRIOR to shipping the book.

Flash forward to present: Interloc is now Alibris, Bibliofind was bought by Amazon, neglected to death and then shut down, and in this year alone, Abebooks bought Chrislands (which hosts my bookstore site) and less than 2 months later, ABE itself was bought by Amazon.

And me? I will be publishing my first print catalog since 1995, which will hopefully be mailed out in January 2009.

A Little Mental Health Break

Well I just got back from a 3 day mini-break, I did not go far but spent the 3 days reading, sleeping and NOT WATCHING THE NEWS!

Now rested and ready for (hopefully) the start of the holiday season.

Which brings me to my point; it is very easy with a home based business to always be at work and working, that way can lead to burnout ...however you choose to do it you need to find a way to take some time off.

I'd really rather be reading....

We've finally started the slow and tedious process of uploading images of our online listings. The process is slow because it is hard even with help to find the time take the blasted pictures and tedious because we are not only uploading them to our own store at windyhillbooks but are also sending them to a couple of the large book database sites.

I know we are late to the game getting pictures of our books online, but with over 12,000 books it was daunting even thinking about getting started. We finally started uploading on Feb 1st and have approximately 250 images to date, it will be interesting to see how long it is going to take to get this finished.

More Images of Childhood- Juvenile Dustjacket Art 1940's - 1950's

After a few years dealing with children's books a dealer can usually date a book (at least by decade) by illustrator art alone. Here are a few examples of 1940's and 50's dj cover art from books in my inventory.


Trudy Terrill Eighth Grader by Bernice Bryant. Dj by Alice Carsey. Published by Bobbs-Merrill, 1946.
















Old Charlie by Clyde Robert Bulla. Illustrated by Paul Galdone. Published by Crowell, 1957.













That Jud! by Elspeth Bragdon, illustrated by Georges Schrieber. Published by Viking, 1957.

On ebay and other sites

There are many professional booksellers that maintain an active presence on ebay both for the selling and the buying of inventory. If you believe ebay's hype theirs is the only marketplace that matters on the internet.

Although I do occasionally sell, and even more rarely buy on ebay, and I've also experimented with there very pricey ebay stores option, for the most part I've, (forgive the pun) opted out of ebay. The reason is not so much based on their fee structure or even the fact that I seriously resent the zeal in which they try to shove the use of Paypal down dealer's throats; it is due to the fact that I'm a compulsive auction watcher, if I have an item listed or I'm planning on bidding on an item, I'm constantly checking the listing and sulking if I feel the treasure I'm selling is not being appreciated. Believe me sulking in a woman my age is not an attractive thing.

More succinctly, even without compulsive auction watching or any other form of procrastination, no small book selling operation will be able to do equal justice to all online markets, the decision of where the majority of effort should be focused is a personal choice and a bit of a moving target.

Promoting your own website, Amazon, Alibris, Abebooks or other database sites, ebay or some of the smaller auction sites, offline catalogs, presence in a brick and mortar location, blog promotion, acquiring inventory, there are myriad areas demanding attention and the amount of attention needed will not only vary with the type of operation but also with the time of year. At its best being an independent book seller is as much of a balancing act as a high wire artist performing without benefit of a net; awesome when everything is going smoothly but always one small miscalculation away from disaster.

2007 Baltimore Antiquarian Book Fair

Every year, roughly in conjunction with Labor Day, there is a massive 4 day antique show held at the Baltimore Convention Center. Along with the hundreds of antique dealers there were 60 or so Antiquarian Booksellers who showed their treasures.

I only managed to sneak a one day visit to the show this year, more to visit the dealers I know than to buy books (the buying budget is a tad tight at the moment). I was there early on Saturday and while it did not seem crowded, it did appear that both the antique and book collectors were buying.

Some of my favorite book people who had booths:



Michael J. Osbourne specializes in books on City Planning and Urban design. His booth was hopping the whole time I was there!










Drusilla of Drusilla' Books specializes in children's books and always has a wonderful booth with customers that come each year just to see her books. She also has a great shop on Howard Street in Baltimore.














At Drusilla's booth I was lucky enough to meet Mr. Steven Loew the owner of Gadfly Book and Paper Conservation. I only hope someday to have something so rare and wonderful as to need his expert services.















Dan and Jan Riker of Basset Books are used and out of print booksellers also from Columbia, Md. In fact they live less than a mile from me!












Greg Williams of Walk A Crooked Mile Books in Philadelphia was there again this year. Greg also specializes in children's books and I've sold books to him off and on since the late 90's and still have not got to Philadelphia to see his store.













Me- gravitating to my natural habitat; which is anywhere that there are books and COFFEE!

"The best fertilizer for a field is the footsteps of the farmer...."

and

"the devil is in the details..."

If you plan to operate on online or catalog book selling business it is a good idea to keep faith with both these concepts.

Keeping on top of your inventory means more than repricing; you have to maintain the books in the condition described and in a way which allows you to find them easily once they sell. Also plan on some sort of inventory numbering system, even in the out of print and collectible market, you will end up with a surprising number of duplicate copies which will usually not be interchangeable.

It also means tracking your costs, not just inventory cost, but packing material, shipping costs, online fees, ALL expenses....the devil is indeed in these details.

And finally, expect that sometime in your book selling career that there will be an economic downturn, or a system failure or a family emergency or some combination of disaster scenario and keep funds and contingency plans in place for when something does happen.

What Makes a Bookseller?

One of the things I like the most about being a bookseller is the wide spectrum of people who can claim the title (proudly or otherwise) of Bookseller. I know Booksellers who have advanced degrees in literary fields and Booksellers who came into the business through the increasingly rare, rare or used book trade. There are booksellers who "migrated" in from other collectibles markets, (though these days the migrations seems to be running the other way), and those that started as collectors of a particular genre or subject, who started selling books to pay for their collecting. All the different backgrounds and life experiences results in a somewhat motley and definitely eclectic group of people called Booksellers.

Since I have my weekend glass of wine and am in the resulting pontificating mode I've decided that the one single determinative feature that distinguishes a Bookseller from a person with a stack of books and and internet connection is not background, training or knowledge, but the strong belief that reading, like breathing, is a fundamental requirement of life. Without the passion for reading and books you would be better off selling tires....

Reference Books- Picture Books

Barbara Bader's AMERICAN PICTURE BOOKS FROM NOAH'S ARK TO THE BEAST WITHIN is a must have for any dealer or collector who wants to become more knowledgeable about children's picture books. Published in 1976 and currently out of print, this book is an illustrated history of the development of picture books in the United States.

Children's Book Awards

As a bookseller it is important to become familiar with the winners of the various children's book awards; today's winner can be tomorrow's most looked for book, especially in the case of the Newbery and Caldecott Awards winners.

Tracking the award winning authors and illustrators also helps keep you aware of which new authors and illustrators may have a collectible value in the future. This can be especially true if an author's first book wins recognition. An immediate example that comes to mind: Catherine Called Birdy by Karen Cushman was the author's first book and was a Newbery Honor book in 1995, she then won the Newbery Award in 1996 for her second book, The Midwife's Apprentice.

Some of the children's book awards that I have found handy to track:

• Newbery
• Caldecott
• Printz
• Coretta Scott King
• Boston Globe-Horn Book
• New York Times Best Illustrated
  

(Although I also try to keep track of the British, Canadian and Australian award winners the flat truth is no matter how wide the internet or how global the market, books, especially children's books, are still regional, or as the old saying goes they "follow the flag".)

One That Got Away....

About 10 years ago I was processing a collection of mostly children's books when I came across an adult title in the box. The book was titled A GRIEF OBSERVED by N.W. Clerk, publisher was Seabury Press and the book was not only in fine condition, it looked to be completely unread.

I sat at the computer and did a quick read of a couple of chapters of the book, which appeared to be by a religious gentleman discussing the loss of his wife. I processed the book, put a price of about $20 on, based on it's condition alone and was very surprised when it sold immediately. Of course the second person who called (not emailed) to order the book was very sad that it sold and happy to point out to me that the "religious" gentleman's real name was C.S. Lewis.....

(It's not the gross underpricing of the book that bothers me as much as the fact that I read some of it and did not recognize the writing style. For crying out loud, I specialize in children's books!)

Bookselling Tips

The following are some bare minimum requirements for the setting up and running a mail order book business:

If you have more than 6 books you need a plan to keep your inventory organized, and you need to be consistent in using that plan. Every dealer has had the situation where a book has sold and then could not be found, trust me there will be a certain point where your inventory will be too large to trust to your memory.

How you store your books is your choice, but they need to be in a dry, cool and clean place if you want them to be in the same condition when you ship them as they were when you described them. Also beware of sunny windows, they will fade dustjackets and even books spines with time, some colors (yellow and blue in my experience) will fade even more quickly.

Invest in the Zempel reference book on how to distinguish a first edition. The small McBride pocket guide is also very handy for book scouting but unfortunately is currently out of print.

Take some time to become familiar with the traditional bookselling terminology, you may never use them in your descriptions, but you really should be familiar with the terms.

Beware of creep or slip in your condition descriptions. When processing a stack of books it is very easy to start describing the condition of the books relative to each other instead of relative to the standard of Fine in a Fine dustjacket.

a dinosaur grumbles

I love selling books online in the internet age, if only for the shear diversity of the books I sell and the locations I ship them. Since the advent of online selling I've shipped to every state in the U.S., almost every Province in Canada and a good many countries around the world.

In today's mailing alone I shipped books to Washington D.C. and Washington State, Virginia, Oregon, New Jersey, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Spain and also right here in Maryland. Quick and easy, upload the book description to the online mega database sites, get the email notification of order, pull, process 'n pack and out the door. And totally, totally boring.

As tedious as pre-internet catalog sales were to compile, publish and send, I really miss the personnel contact I had with my collectors. Each group of collectors had their high spots, the books or the authors than "made" a collection: Primrose Cummings and Walter Farley for the horse collectors, Sally Watson and Rosemary Sutcliff for historical fiction, Dare Wright for dolls etc. With catalog sales and a toll free phone number, I was able to find books and help build collections, and also enjoyed many a long conversation "talking books".

Ironic really, but I feel I had more real interaction with my collectors, was more "in tune" with the hot spots of the different genres when I lived on a rural property in Iowa (pre and early internet) than I do now 20 minutes from Baltimore.