Chapter 15 Book Fair Finds

One of the best parts of selling at a book fair is that you’re there ahead of the general public. Booksellers at last weekend’s fair set up on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning before the fair opened. One reason I planned the layout of my book display at home before the fair was so I could get set-up quickly and then go shopping and buy more stock from other booksellers. I’ve been told that much, if not most, of the dollars spent at a book fair are spent between booksellers buying from one another. I sold one whole box of books to other dealers, relieved that I would have one less box to tote home. But then I refilled the empty box with purchases from other dealers at the fair — and half of another box, too.

I had several fun finds at the fair. Shopping at a fair is like having 50 mini-book shops in one location. Best of all, as you get to know other booksellers, they learn your interests, and sometimes they bring a particular title just for you. Before I show you some of what I bought, I should tell you that, as my business grows, I plan to specialize in Western Americana, Dante Alighieri, and Pioneer Women. I know. It’s a very eclectic (perhaps eccentric) mix, and it will likely be refined over time, but these are the subjects I enjoy. Here are the books with the prettiest covers that I bought at last weekend’s fair:

First, we have my Plan B if bookselling is a complete and utter failure:

I can’t help it. It’s the Laura Ingalls Wilder in me. (I think I mentioned before that I liked those Little House on the Prairie Books so much that I once wanted to leave sunny California for snowy DeSmet, South Dakota, where the real Laura grew up.) Unlike Laura, I would be a horrible farmer. I hate dirt, I’d whine if I lived next to manure, and I’d hate cooking large meals for dozens of ranch hands. Still, I am just in love with the idea of a farm. Of course, it is probably obvious by now that my little red barn would be a book barn, not an animal barn.

Next:

I like women pioneers because they suffered and overcame hardships, disasters, and plain bad luck far worse than any 20th/21st century American woman has experienced and they did it without whining. Often, they emerged triumphant. Frequently, they valued their families above all else, including themselves. Always, they make me look like a sissy. And they remind me when I’m having a bad day to suck it up and press on.

Next:

Yosemite. The crown jewel of California. And, yes, this one was written by a woman, too. She arrived in Yosemite, and liked it so much that she cancelled her plans to go to Hawaii and stayed for three months, writing journals and letters to her family about its now legendary beauty. Sounds crazy, but just go there and you’ll never want to leave either.

Finally:

I love the title. Why don’t we say “a-” in front of words anymore? We could add a nice, poetic tone to our dialogue, saying things like, “Let us go a-booking today!” when hunting for new stock. And that picture is lovely. Oh, yes. This one is also written by a woman settler.

I did buy quite a few other books, including two crucial reference books I need. And I haven’t forgotten about that reference book post I talked about last week. I’ll get to it in the near future.

See you in the stacks! Happy hunting!

Chapter 14 Book Display at My First Book Fair, or Musical Shelves

My alarm was set for 6:00 a.m., but I woke up at 5:00, with thoughts of book displays, sales tax rates, and “What if no one buys any of my books?” running through my head. I sat up in bed and watched the sun rise out the window of the hotel room. I’m usually up with the sun to get Tom and Huck off to school, but I rarely take time to sit and watch the sun rise. I tried to be patient and appreciate the moment. Last year at this time I was trying to pick a name for my business, to evaluate and describe my stock, and to learn how to sell books from a website. I was too intimidated to actually speak to dealers I met at the book fairs I attended just for buying purposes. This year: I have a business, I know a few dealers personally, I have been to the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar, and I am selling books for the first time at a book fair. I left for the fair’s 7:00 a.m. set-up time, relieved to see that I was not the very first bookseller there.

Booksellers had a chance to set up most of their booths on Friday afternoon, and after lugging in four bookcases and eleven boxes of books and book stands for my half-booth, I got most of my display worked out. As I began to put items in the glass case, other booksellers came to browse my stock. Several made purchases right away, and a veteran of many book fairs told me, “They know you’re a new bookseller and they haven’t seen your stock, so they come looking to see what they can find and to see if you’ve priced anything too low so they can make a good profit on it.” I was so pleased to have sold a few items before I had my display set up, I didn’t care that it ultimately changed some of my display plans. I quickly tried to re-arrange my shelves in an attractive way before the fair opened.

After all those previous posts about shelving at book fairs, here are the photos of how I ultimately decided to display my books:

A photo of the full booth. Since I had only a half-booth, I shared booth space with Carpe Diem Fine Books, ABAA from Monterey. That’s Mary Hill behind her glass case. My shelves are in the back. Hers are to the right.

My glass display case, including a close-up.

A few close-ups of my bookshelves:

Once the fair opened at 10:00 a.m., it was a busy day with brisk sales. Every time I sold a book, I had to re-arrange some of my set-up to fill in the gaps so the other books on the shelf didn’t tip over. Next fair, I will bring more than 10 boxes of books, so I can fill in the gaps with new stock rather than re-arranging and playing musical chairs, or should I say musical shelves, with my books. I also needed more book ends (I brought three pair, and four would have been perfect and stopped my constant re-arranging) and book stands (I brought twelve small (4″) stands and six large (6″) stands. Another six of the small stands would have meant that I didn’t need to try to stand books up and hope they didn’t just fall over.) In case you need stands, too, I got mine here.

I printed medium-sized table tent cards and used those to help customers determine what sections a book might be in (Americana, Decorative Bindings, Pioneer Women, etc.), but never did end up alphabetizing anything. I focused on an attractive visual presentation that would (I hoped) lure buyers into the booth to check out the books more closely. My sales were good (well — they surpassed my goal, which was to cover my costs. I don’t yet know what other dealers would determine to be a “good” fair). Aside from the sales, the high point of my day was to hear some customers who don’t know how much time I spent on developing a good display remark, “Your books are beautiful.” and “What a great display! I just love this pioneer women stuff!” One couple came back to my booth three times and I hand-sold them more books each time. I can’t imagine a better day!

Finally, I want to add a special thank you to my fellow Colorado Seminar friends MaryLou Sullivan of Black Swan Books and Jeanne Jarzombek of The Book Prowler for their reassurance when I agonized over shelving arrangements and for coming to the fair. And I’m grateful to Colorado faculty members Ed Glaser of Edwin V. Glaser Rare Books and Chris Volk of Bookfever.com (and also an exhibitor at this fair). I’d also like to thank Mary Hill of Carpe Diem Fine Books for sharing booth space with me even though she’d never seen my stock before. Thanks also to Brian Cassidy, Bookseller and Vic Zoschak of Tavistock Books, who have provided lots of good advice from the beginning.

A very special thanks to Jim Kay, who organized, coordinated and promoted all of the details for the Fourteenth Annual Central Valley Book Fair. I heard other veteran dealers remark several times that the foot traffic was the most they’d seen at this fair in about a decade. If you live anywhere in Northern California, a regional fair like this is an excellent place to try out a book fair. I highly recommend it! See you at next year’s fair!

Lots of foot traffic at the fair!

Tomorrow: Book Finds at the Fair

Chapter 13 The Velveteen Bookseller, or, Why New Booksellers Should Sell at Book Fairs

Do you know the story of The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams? To quote Wikipedia (and please, to those new to bookselling, don’t ever rely solely on Wikipedia for important bibliographic research): “A boy receives a Velveteen Rabbit for Christmas. The Velveteen Rabbit is snubbed by other more expensive or mechanical toys, the latter of which fancy themselves real. One day while talking with the Skin Horse, the Rabbit learns that real is not how you are made; rather, a toy becomes real if its owner really and truly loves it.”

I came to think of myself as somewhat like the Velveteen Rabbit at the Fourteenth Annual Central Valley/Sacramento Antiquarian Book Fair this past weekend. For the first time, I sold multiple books to actual “civilian” customers. When you work out of your home, as I do, you’re working in a bit of a vacuum, wondering if the books you’re choosing are good enough or interesting enough for anyone else to spend their hard-earned cash to purchase. Sure, if you have good books and price your books appropriately, other booksellers will buy them, and that is a wonderful and necessary thing, but it does not, in my opinion, make you a “real” bookseller. A real bookseller has, in addititon to many fellow bookseller customers, other, non-bookselling customers to whom she can introduce books she just knows they’d buy if they knew about them. (Yes, I know there are many additional qualities that make a “real” bookseller, but indulge me for purposes of this post.)

Exhibiting at the book fair this weekend allowed me to display many of my books to many potential customers at one time, quite a different venue from the internet, which is not user-friendly for the casual browser and where a customer is usually seeking out one specific title instead of many. One extraordinary benefit of a book fair is that it allows a bookseller to hand-sell a book. This means that when a customer expresses an interest in a particular author, subject, or title, you’ve got the book — plus more material related to it that your customer perhaps didn’t even know about. If you’re lucky, the customer will buy multiple items to which you’ve introduced him. If you’re extremely lucky, you may even be able to open up a whole new area of collecting for the customer. I had such an experience at the fair this weekend, and it was wonderful. I liked the opportunity to hand-sell a book so much that I now wish I could find a space to open a shop in my too-high-rent town.

How is this at all related to The Velveteen Rabbit, you ask?

Though I’ve been studying books and bookselling for some years and have had my own business since January of this year, I felt like a “real” bookseller when I walked in and saw my booth, the first inside the entrance, with this sign:

It was so fulfilling to see my business, made real in print and with shelves of books, alongside the placards of other booksellers whom I respect very much.

I felt like a “real” bookseller when random customers walked by and complimented my books and display (not so much lunacy after all) and then bought actual books they’d not seen before from me, a bookseller they’d never heard of before the fair. And, of course, the other booksellers who bought my books helped make my fair a great one, too. I’m just trying to encourage those new booksellers chained to a computer, virtual booksellers, to become real and to give book fairs a try.

I know I have a long way to go to become a good bookseller, but attending that fair this weekend was not only good for my business and for customer development, it was great to know I could connect people with books they love. And that’s why I love this business.

Tomorrow: Report on the Book Fair

I’m Back

I’ve returned from the Sacramento Book Fair, and I have so much to tell you. I also have to remove sold books from inventory and upload some new books to my website before I can do something fun, like report on the fair. More coming late today!

Chapter 12 Revved up and Ready

It’s 8:30 a.m. here in California and I’m just getting ready to drive to Sacramento (about 2 hours from my house). Late last night, when all was packed, I ended up with ten boxes of books. That’s probably way too much for a half-booth, and some boxes won’t even make it to the shelves, but as a teacher I learned early on that it is always better to be over-prepared than under-prepared.

My husband was nice enough to bring home a hand cart from work that I can borrow for the weekend. This will make things so much easier during load-in and load-out. I definitely need to add: 1) hand cart and 2) thoughtful husband to my book fair supply list.

I’ll leave you with a couple of pictures. Remember this?

Now it looks like this:

I told you I clean it off so we can eat there every night. It was so messy in the original photo, though, that I thought I better prove it.

I’m still working on Huck, trying to convince him that a bowling pin is just not a suitable fall centerpiece for our dining room table, but he’s having none of it.

And that corner? That messy, messy, corner.

Now it looks like this:
Didn’t know there was a large vase behind all that commotion, did you?

I’ll leave you with one last photo before I go: the back of the bookmobile loaded up with boxes, folding bookcases, and handcart. I’m ready. Wish me luck!

Coming Sunday: The Fourteenth Annual Central Valley Antiquarian Book Fair — A Full Report

Chapter 11 Fine Books, Rhinos, and the James Bond of the Rare Book World

My youngest brother is a Project Engineer for a large commercial construction company. He is currently working on a project to update and upgrade the San Diego Wild Animal Park. Lest you think this is just an ordinary zoo, it is a different kind of place, where animals normally seen only on an African safari roam free and together in a large park. That is to say that different species are not fenced off from one another (except the human species). Visitors take a tram that is well-protected in which to observe the animals in, if not a completely natural habitat, one that is a bit less artificial than a traditional zoo. This project has required my brother and his co-workers to work on a daily basis in very close proximity to rhinos, cheetahs, leopards, monkeys, and antelope. As he explains it, there’s nothing like a cheetah hanging on a tree branch about 15 yards away while you’re trying to eat a BBQ lunch that you just know he can smell.

Between the animals and the large machinery, he has a fairly exciting job. Like most people who only buy books as reading copies, he imagines the rare book world to be a somewhat sleepy place inhabited by librarians and old men who smoke pipes and wear tweed jackets. When I told him about all of the controversy in the book world over the Davy Crockett letter and the Bishop Philpotts Library, he remarked, “I guess the rare book world has as much intrigue as the world of James Bond — only instead of national security, it’s culture that’s at risk.”

In book fair news, this James Bond of Booksellers is busily packing the books into boxes this evening and is almost ready to load up the bookmobile and head off on her first mission, er, I mean book fair. That likely means a couple of days blogging break. I’ll tell you all about it when I return. If you miss me, you can watch this 30 second video promo done by the Wild Animal Park to get a feel for what it’s like there.

See you in the stacks!

Chapter 10 Book Fair Supply List, Or, Don’t Forget the Books

I’ve finally finished pricing books, at least those I am bringing to the fair. What a good feeling it is! Most are also described and catalogued in my database. I decided after we put the kids to bed that I would work on the supplies I need for the fair. Here’s my final list:

1. Books (ok, that’s obvious, but thought I’d list it for the sake of completeness)
2. Folding/portable bookcases
3. Acrylic book stands (or whatever type you use). I have a dozen small (4″) ones and six large (6″) ones from here.
4. A few extra mylar dustjacket protectors.
5. A box of extra books in case I have so many purchases my shelves appear “thinned out”. (I know. I am exceedingly optimistic.)
6. Fragile and expensive books and ephemera for glass display case.
7. Printed book descriptions/prices for books in glass display case.
8. Glass cleaner for glass display case.
9. Business cards and business card holder.
10. Blank invoices/receipt book.
11. Book Hunter’s Holiday stamp to stamp blank invoices.
12. Pens and pencils.
13. Erasers.
14. Stapler
15. Scissors
16. Tape
17. Calculator (look up the sales tax rate for your fair venue ahead of time).
18. Batteries for calculator.
19. Gooseneck clip-on lamps for each bookcase.
20. Cashbox or box with a lock on it.
21. Optional: McBride books or other small reference or price guides.
22. Surge protector for plugs.
23. Extra lightbulbs for lamps.
24. Resale certificate cards.
25. A sheet for customers to sign up for your mailing list, if they desire.
26. Signage for your booth, if needed.
27. Table covers if not provided by fair organizers.
28. Instructions for fair — load in time, booth number, floor plan, etc.
29. Map and directions to fair and hotel for collapsing in Friday night.
30. Bookmarks, if you use them.
31. Print catalogues (I don’t have any of these yet, but I will soon.)
32. Labels/signs for the sections of your bookcases: Western Americana, Children’s, Pioneer Women, etc.
33. Bags and sold stickers if not provided by the fair.
34. At least two empty boxes for bringing home all of the purchases you’ll make at the fair.
35. Bookends for shelves that aren’t quite full. (I am bringing 3 pairs of bookends.)
36. Bubble wrap for fragile books.
37. Camera (so you can see how I finally decided to shelve my books and layout my half of the booth).
38. Change — I was advised by another bookseller to bring about $200 worth.
39. Pre-printed labels that say “signed” to attach to the spines of the mylar dustjacket protectors of signed books. That way your customer will know the book is signed.
40. Mylar tape (holds a book open to a particular page).
41. Book cradles (used to support a book that is displayed open to a particular page).
42. Chocolate (ok, that’s optional. But not for me.)

There’s another really good supply list here at the IOBA website. Thanks Sue Gallagher and Julie Fauble.

Two other good pieces of advice for which I am grateful:

1. Shop during set-up. Get your books out quickly so other dealers can shop through your things, but once you are set up, get your own bargains — I mean, books — before the general public and other dealers go shopping.

2. From Joyce Godsey at the Bibliophile Bullpen:
“I have posted some book fair advice on the bullpen in the past
but the one thing of vital importance..
bring THREE shirts.
one to sweat in setting up.
a clean one for the fair
and another one to sweat up while breaking down.
(you won’t want to put the 1st one back on).”

This is a neat little crate with wheels I got at Staples on clearance. It’s good for the non-book type supplies:

If I get to the fair and discover I have forgotten anything crucial, I shall throw myself on the mercy of the other booksellers I know. Then I’ll come home and update this list.

Chapter 9 Bookplates and Rabbit Trails

I’ve been trying hard to finish pricing all of my books for Saturday’s fair. One inexperienced bookseller mistake I have made was to buy books and shelve them without pricing them. As I add books to my website, I price them. However, I haven’t had time just yet to price and properly catalogue all of them. The upcoming book fair is getting me closer to caught up, and from now on, I will price the books and describe books as I buy them (sure I will). I have priced about 100 books in the past couple of weeks. That means I look at the price I paid for the book, research the book — in some cases extensively — write a description, choose a price and save it in my Bookhound database, which keeps track of all of my books and sales. I also print the descriptions for books over $100 and lay them inside the books so that a browsing customer can understand why that book is significant and worth $100 or more. While pricing books with the deadline of the fair in mind has been good for getting me caught up, it has been detrimental in another way — not enough time to do as much research on each book as I would like.

Just to clarify: I’m not talking about research as to whether a signature is authentic or whether a book is truly a first edition. I always complete that sort of research before I sell a book or I don’t offer it for sale. I’m talking about the kind of research that is always interesting and that in a few cases can add value to the books you sell.

I bought the book below at a book fair a couple of years ago. It has a beautiful cover, and American women in the 1800s is an area in which I want to specialize. I bought the book, put protective mylar around it and shelved it.

Today, two years after its purchase (eek!), I began the research to price this particular book. It’s a story written for the author’s descendants so they could know the “truth” about life in Virginia before and during the War Between the States. Both the verso and recto of the front endpapers had bookplates. I always research the names of people on bookplates and previous owner names pencilled in the book before I price it. You never know when that could be someone important.

Here are the bookplates:

I Googled the name on the plate, Harold Chandler Kimball, who looks to have been a man from a prominent Rochester, New York family who were in the tobacco business. He appears to have graduated from Harvard and died in World War I. Interesting, but not really of value to this particular book. What is more interesting is that an image of the first plate appears in my Google search. His bookplate is featured in a book about bookplates: The Rise of the Book-plate, Being an Exemplification of the Art, Signified by Various Book-plates, From its Earliest to its Most Recent Practice by William Goodrich Bowdoin. 1901. A Wessels Company.

I’d love to take the time to look at this book. The entire thing is online, text and images, and it’s filled with beautiful bookplates. Click on the title above to see what I mean. It turns out this Harold Chandler Kimball’s bookplate (he had several different ones) was designed by Claude Fayette Bragdon. Now I Google his name. He was a New York artist, architect, and author. I also discover a great blog, Bookplate Junkie. Time spent (and this is only on Google. I haven’t checked any real, book references yet): 30 minutes, most of it looking at all of the different bookplates people list online. I still have to determine a price for the book.

Now, mind you, I’m not complaining. I love to do this type of research, and it’s one of the things I like most about bookselling. The rub is knowing where to draw the line on that research. With just this one book, I had several different rabbit trails of information I could pursue. Was Harold Kimball Chandler a descendant of the author whose book holds his bookplate? Did Claude Fayette Bragdon become well-known for his bookplate designs? Will we ever really know the true meaning of the Voynich Manuscript? Don’t be lazy. Google it. I’ve just written 1,000 words on research here. Put them to good use. (By the way, even Googling something is still kind of lazy. Always check your reference books, too.)

Because I need to take this book to the fair, I must draw the line here, and I’ll never know the answers to those questions. It’s hard for me to do that, and failure to do thorough research could in some cases allow one’s customer to buy a goldmine at a bargain price. As a seller, that’s hard to stomach, but as a buyer it’s a great feeling. In this case, if the buyer has significant information I haven’t turned up that adds value to the book, I can only congratulate the astute buyer.

Only ten more books to price, but just looking at the example of A Girl’s Life in Virginia, you can see that thorough research takes time.

Lesson learned: Research and price books as you acquire them, or a couple every day!

It’s now 12:15 and I have to pick up kids from school at 3P.M. After they get home, I put the books aside for the day so I can help with homework, making snacks, and hearing about their day. Then it’s off to guitar lessons, and finally it’s time to cook dinner and get them ready for bed. Whew! After that, I’m ready for bed, or at least for some relaxation:

Yes, it’s a book-shaped teapot. Yes, I know it makes me a book geek, and yes, I am PROUD to be a book geek. (Just wait until you see the mug I drink from. But I don’t want to reveal all in one day). Yes, I love my book teapot and my daily cup of Earl Grey served from it. Even more relaxing is a piece of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Chocolate Bar to have with the tea, but in my frenzy of research and anxiety over shelving this week, I’ve already devoured my chocolate allotment!

See you in the stacks!

Chapter 8 Lunacy and the Arrangement of Books

I posted the question I asked about shelving at a book fair to the Bibliophile List and the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar List last night. Now, I’ve mentioned before that such lists can be helpful. When I awoke this morning I already had 15 different messages advising me on shelving ideas, packaging methods, and book fair supplies. I am still determining which method of shelving will be best for my books at this particular fair, and I’ll post photos of my ultimate decision.

And, I’m telling you again: If you are a new bookseller, you simply must be a part of an email list. They have often stopped me from reinventing the printing press, so to speak. If you want to become well-informed about such controversies as the benefits of spine-out vs. face-out shelving and alphabetizing vs. just grouping books by subject, then sign up now! (If, however, you are a non-bookselling friend or family member and reading this and your eyes are glazing over at such arcane bookselling information, then stop reading now. Just be happy that I take the time to think about how I want to present my business to the world.)

At the recent Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar in August, I had the great privilege of being instructed by Terry Belanger, founder of Rare Book School at University of Virginia and a 2005 MacArthur Fellow. (I promise to post another time about both the Colorado Seminar and the Virginia Rare Book School, because both are amazingly helpful to new booksellers.) While I was mulling over all of these responses, it occured to me that Professor Belanger has already written a book on the very subject of arranging books and it was perhaps written with me in mind:

Belanger, Terry. LUNACY AND THE ARRANGEMENT OF BOOKS.
New Castle. Oak Knoll Books. 2003. 8vo. stiff paper wrappers. (ii), 24 pages.
A humorous and poignant essay on the idiosyncrasies of book arrangements by collectors over the centuries. Professor Belanger treats the reader to some of the idiotic methods of categorizing and shelving books. One gem from an etiquette book of 1863 decreed that a perfect hostess will see to it that the works of male and female authors be properly segregated on her book shelves. Their proximity, unless they happen to be married, should not be tolerated. This book will bring a smile to the face of any bibliophile. Belanger, founder of the Book Arts Press, is the University Professor and Honorary Curator of Special Collections at the University of Virginia. First edition, third printing.
Price: $ 10.00, or, in my case, priceless.

You can order your own copy from Oak Knoll.

Below, you can see why I need this book and need it now! My folio sized books are on the top shelf of my sons’ closet, right next to the box I use to store other treasures — their artwork and schoolwork. While I like to think of it as keeping my treasures together in a safe place, perhaps it is lunacy?

Now, for those of you who live in homes with attics, basements, and rec rooms and are wondering why I would store books on a closet shelf: I need to keep the books I sell out of little hands, and I live in a house that is “only” about 60 years old. Like most post-WWII suburban homes in California, it has no attic, no basement, and very few closets or built in shelves. What, you ask, can a house like this small tract home offer to a bookseller? It’s California location has sunshine and beauty almost 365 days a year and is only a couple miles from helpful grandparents who like to babysit when their grandchildren’s mother goes to book fairs. Lunacy? You be the judge.

Chapter 7 Shelving Dilemmas at Book Fairs

I was looking forward to posting my book fair supply list and talking a bit about using the appropriate reference books to research and price, but I’ve run into a bookcase dilemma while working today. Read on.

Since the upcoming Sacramento Antiquarian Book Fair will be my first, I’ve been experimenting with potential shelf layouts of the books I plan to bring:

I will probably be removing the books on the middle shelf of the middle bookcase and leaving them home in order to turn a few more pretty books face out.

I have divided the books I’m bringing into categories — Western Americana, Western Poetry, Books by or about Pioneer Women, Children’s Books, and Fine Bindings. Each shelf will likely be labeled by category. Most sections have 50 books or less. Do I need to alphabetize the books within each section?

I ask because the books look better when grouped according to size or binding type, or even face out on the middle of the shelf. I think that a good visual presentation is what initially pulls customers into the booth. However, I don’t want to pull a customer into my booth and then make it difficult for him to find a particular book. To make it clear, the books will still be grouped by category, just may not be alphabetized within their category. I’ve tried to think back to other fairs I’ve attended (and even the one fair I worked at for another bookseller) and I just can’t recall how the books are organized on the shelves.

When you organize your own books at book fairs, do you alphabetize them by author or do you place them so that they look good as a whole on the shelves or some combination of the two?

And, if you’re in the Sacramento area on September 15 and would like to stop by, I’d be happy to send you a free pass. Just let me know. chris @ bookhuntersholiday . com.

Thanks in advance for the advice.

See you in the stacks!