Chapter 109 To Bring or Not to Bring: Choosing Books for a Book Fair

One thing I like about preparing to exhibit at a book fair is that it forces me to look through all of my books and decide which ones are worth packing up and bringing to the fair. It reminds me to pay close attention to condition and to visual appeal as well as to historical or literary significance. Unlike selling books on the internet, where written description is only sometimes accompanied by an image of the book, the customer actually gets to see the books you’re offering for sale up close. His choice of book is not solely based on the bookseller’s written description, but on his own judgment of the book itself. I try to choose books for a book fair with that in mind, and I save some books I think of as “pretty books” just for book fairs.

I also set aside for book fairs books that are difficult to find — dare I say rare — for book fairs. I can then showcase that book in my glass display case, where it will, I hope, catch the right person’s attention. There are few feelings better than matching up a book with a person who has been searching for it for a long time, and that’s an experience I hope to have at the book fair.

I try to bring to book fairs books I haven’t yet catalogued and listed on my website. Given my exceedingly slow rate of cataloguing, this isn’t hard to do. Most of my books are uncatalogued, though I am happy to report that many are now priced. That’s progress, albeit slow.

I think my Dante books would look beautiful displayed at a book fair, but since I plan to put those in a print catalogue, where they will also look beautiful, I won’t be bringing most of them to this fair.

I also try to bring books in a few different subject areas — Pioneer Women, Western Americana, San Francisco, Childrens, Decorative Bindings, etc. because I don’t know for sure what customers want to buy. I want to appeal to as many different customers as possible. I’m not sure whether the better strategy wouldn’t be bringing a lot of books on one particular subject to a large fair like this one. I’ll let you know how it worked to bring books from a diverse group of subjects.

The most beneficial thing about scouting one’s own shelves for book fair inventory is that I see more clearly now some of my early purchasing “mistakes”. By “mistakes” I am referring to books that have been listed but haven’t sold, books whose condition isn’t quite good enough for me to offer for sale and be considered an antiquarian bookseller, books that I bought on a hunch but which turned out to be nothing significant. Each time I prepare for a book fair and look at my books one by one, I cull and clean out these “mistakes” as well, usually donating them to a library. After all, I need to make room for the books I will likely purchase at the book fair.

Would you bring this book to a book fair?

Chapter 108 Strange Book Fair Superstitions, Or, Lunacy and the Arrangement of Books, Redux

I spent today removing books from their various hiding places around my house and beginning to fill up my “test bookshelves” in preparation for the book fair on February 9 and 10.

My test bookshelves are as many folding, portable bookshelves as I think I can fit in my half-booth (three or four) filled with all of the books I hope to bring to the book fair. The week before the fair, I set up the portable bookcases in the living room and start loading them with books. Should I group them alphabetically? By size? Color? Spine out or face out?

As you know from my extensive past experience exhibiting at exactly one book fair, I then spend ridiculously inordinate amounts of time arranging the books on the test shelves to see if they all fit, to cull the books that do not fit, and to determine which books should be displayed face out instead of spine out. At the last book fair, I sold some books to other booksellers before the fair opened, which meant that my test shelf arrangement had to be totally re-arranged at the opening of the fair.

Based on this experience, I realize I don’t need to have a pre-arranged book layout before I arrive at the fair. If I have to re-arrange my display before the fair opens, it is probably a waste of my time to pre-arrange the books before the fair. Yet, I continue to compulsively fill up my test bookshelves yesterday, today, and tomorrow (and probably next week, too). Pre-arranging the books has become a part of my book fair superstition, something I do in hopes of good sales, much the same as a baseball player who wears a certain pair of “lucky” socks that he wore the last time his team won the game. It’s that idea of, “If it worked last time, maybe it’ll work this time.” I’ll let you know if that idea proves true after the fair.

Test bookshelves last week:

Test bookshelves this week:

What I hope bookshelves look like by time I get to the fair:

See you in the stacks!

Tomorrow: To Bring or Not to Bring — Choosing Books for a Book Fair

Chapter 107 Research, Research, Research

Research is all I did all day long today. I have a few special items I’m planning to bring to the book fair next weekend, and I want to include descriptions with each. I like to have printed descriptions next to the items I place in my glass display case and for items over $100. And, yes, writing these descriptions allows me to list any books not sold at the fair on my website immediately when I return home.

I invested a good deal of my book money in reference books in 2007, occasionally against my better judgment, as purchasing reference books sometimes meant not much money was left to buy books to offer for sale. Today, that investment began to pay for itself. Among a few of the references I used today:

Carter’s ABC For Book Collectors (good for looking up things like the difference between a joint and a hinge and unopened vs. uncut pages)
American Book Prices Current – CD-ROM version (shows past 30 years of book auction records)
Sabin’s Dictionary of Books Relating to America
The Streeter Catalogues
The Eberstadt Catalogues of Americana
Storm’s A Catalogue of the Everett D. Graff Collection of Western Americana
Cowan’s A Bibliography of the History of California
Adams’s Six Guns and Saddle Leather
Wagner/Camp/Becker’s The Plains and the Rockies: A Bibliography
Howes’s USiana, 2nd edition
Notable American Women
Scharnhorst’s Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Bibliography

I was so happy to have these resources at my fingertips. I didn’t find the information I was seeking in every case, but in many cases I did. It was very satisfying indeed.

See you in the stacks!

Chapter 106 Reasons Why Work With Books Didn’t Happen Today

1) I rested yesterday, trying to cure a bad cold (and trying to watch Jane Austen movies), and didn’t do any chores.

2) I spent the morning catching up on chores — empty dishwasher, three loads of laundry, vaccuum, clean bathrooms, fold laundry, bathe dog.

3) I planned our meals for the week, made a grocery list, and went shopping.

4) I spent 90 minutes (NINETY MINUTES!!!) this afernoon helping my sons with school homework (I was a teacher. I value homework, but, really, 90 minutes for a fourth grader who has already been in school from eight until three seems rather excessive!!).

5) I took Tom to basketball practice and Huck to Cub Scouts.

6) I finished up planning details for a bridal shower I’m throwing this weekend (my youngest brother is getting married in a couple of months).

The good news is that I did do a small bit of preliminary internet research for that book I’m thinking of offering for sale at the book fair and I thought about a business plan while driving around doing errands. Does thinking count as work?

The other good news is that I am now caught up on household chores. Tomorrow while Tom and Huck are at school I will be able to work on books and books only!

I wonder how much homework pioneer children had?

Tomorrow: Back to all things bookish!

Chapter 105 Cough Cough, Sniffle Sniffle

It’s going to be a very light post today, as I awoke sneezing, sniffling, and coughing to the sound of — what else? — rain. It’s been raining nearly two weeks straight now (which is actually a good thing — minimizes the concern of summertime drought). I recently learned that for the next several Sunday nights on the program Masterpiece Theater on PBS, a film version of the novels of Jane Austen will air. I’ve been recording these the past few weeks, and have Persuasion and Northanger Abbey stored up in the DVR. Tonight’s episode is Mansfield Park.

So, while I’m not usually one sit around and watch television, the combination of bad weather, bad cold, and good movies means you’ll find me holed up with a cup of Earl Grey under a blanket. I don’t like to get sick, but think that if I must be sick now, it means that I should be well in plenty of time for the upcoming book fair on February 9 & 10. I would really hate to be sick for the book fair.

I’ll be back tomorrow, I hope with health and sunshine restored.

Chapter 104 Let the Lunacy Begin, Or, Planning for My Next Book Fair

Two weeks from today I will be setting up my booth at the San Francsico Antiquarian Book, Print, and Paper Fair. That means I’m starting to think about how my booth will look and what books I want to bring. I love to do this! I’ve already managed to convince Thoughtful Husband, Tom, and Huck to assemble the rest of my portable bookshelves:

Pay no attention to that container full of Legos on top of the bookcase on the left. It is not offered for sale at this time.

Now I can focus on choosing the books to fill bookcases. As you know from the last time I did a book fair this is a fun, if painstaking, process for me. I have most of my books priced this time, and I need to write descriptions for some new stock, but for the most part, I will be choosing books and deciding where and how to shelve them. I even have a ready-made supply list this time.

Things to Do Before the Fair

1) (Convince Thoughtful Husband to) get shelves assembled. Check.

2) Talk with my booth-mate, Jeanne from The Book Prowler, about display options. Check.

3) Order glass display cases for booth. Check.

4) Select enough books to fill 10 or 11 boxes and to make people shopping from the 200 or so dealers at the fair want to take a closer look when they see my booth. Working on it.

5) Review supply checklist and re-fill any needed supplies. Haven’t even thought about this until now.

Undoubtedly, there’s much more to do, but it’s late, so that’s enough to think about for one night.

Have a good weekend, and see you in the stacks!

Chapter 103 More Zany Ads from the Nineteenth Century

If you will, please indulge me in some more book cataloguing fun. I’m still cataloguing those twelve Overland Monthly magazines from 1887-1889. The advertisements are alternately instructive:

Ad for mining equipment.

amusing:

I’m afraid to ask what these are for.

confusing:

I think this is some type of early asthma inhaler.

and poignant:

There are many ads like this one, for bookstores. When I saw how many San Francisco bookstores and bookbinders advertised in one magazine, I truly realize that there are far fewer bookstores currently open in San Francisco — perhaps everywhere.

See you in the stacks!

Chapter 102 Book Cataloguing Fun

I spent the bulk of my work time today cataloguing 12 issues of The Overland Monthly Magazine from 1887-1889. Founded by Bret Harte in 1868, The Overland Monthly aspired to be like Atlantic Magazine. Though it ceased publication in 1875, it returned in January 1883, labelled “Second Series,” and was published in San Francisco until July, 1935. Early work written by Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, Jack London, and Edwin Markham, among others, was published in the journal. Each month the magazine featured profiles of Western locales like Monterey, Fresno, Santa Rosa, Mt. Shasta, San Diego, Los Angeles, Alameda, and San Francisco along with stories of pioneers or those who had been in the gold mining camps. It’s an interesting piece of Western Americana, and you can see that it was probably intended to convince out-of-state people what a great place the West was. I plan to bring these to the book fair in San Francisco next month.

There are book reviews at the back of each issue, and I spent a good deal of time checking each one for reviews of early works by any of the authors mentioned above. What intrigued me the most, though, was the fold-out map of the then seven-year old University of Southern California (USC) in the back of one issue:

And the fantastic illlustrated advertisements:

It’s an ad for an early version of rogaine!

How do you think they transported this large bottle of perfume to California?

Note the bear rug on which the girl stands. Just what I’d want to see if I lived on the East Coast. I could live in the rugged West and own a bear rug but still have my 400 gallon jug of perfume with me. (I’d need it to ward off the stench of all of those stinking miners.)

I spent at least as much time reading all the ads for fun as I did checking to see if any well-known authors had published pieces in the magazine.

There were also ads for cures for consumption:

And, my favorite, an ad for flea killer. Fleas were notorious at one time in the Bay Area — there is even a street in my town named Alameda de las Pulgas (Spanish for “Avenue of the Fleas”). Again, just the thing to make me want to move out West if I lived back East in those days.

See you in the stacks!

Chapter 101 As NASA says, “It’s a Go!”

Late last week, I got a phone call from the high school where I used to teach English. Since I stopped teaching in 2000, I get this same phone call about once a year, offering me my teaching job back. Sometimes teachers quit unexpectedly or go on maternity leave mid-year and the school needs an immediate replacement. Sometimes enrollment grows and they need an additional teacher. I loved teaching and I loved my school, and I am always flattered that they want to ask me back for more, so there wasn’t much holding me back from wanting to return each and every time they’ve asked.

Except two small kids who I wanted to be with every second and who would then need day care, which — at last check a few years ago — actually cost more than my teacher’s salary.

Except my own rather low tolerance for being pulled in many directions at once.

Except my lack of time (20 hours or so per week outside of teaching in the classroom) to grade papers and prep lessons at home after work, when my family demands my full attention.

Except, while I love teaching, I hate the ridiculous politics involved in weekly faculty meetings, department meetings, and academic committee meetings which add quite a few more hours and quite a bit more stress to your teaching load.

Except I didn’t have time attend my students’ sports games or theater productions or chaperone their dances the way I could before I had a family, when teaching was my life. (This may sound like an extra, but all good teachers of adolescents know that occasionally supporting them outside of the classroom helps them to connect inside the classroom.)

Except I discovered while home the past eight years that I want to be an antiquarian bookseller.

Too many exceptions to make for a job performance that would make either me, my family, or my school’s principal unhappy. Though I taught part-time after the birth of Tom, after I had Huck, I decided to stay home with my children until they were both school age and then re-evaluate my career plans when my youngest son entered first grade. Huck began first grade in September, but my plans for becoming an antiquarian bookseller began long before that time. As you know, I spent a couple of years reading everything I could about books and bookselling. I never told the school about my plans because I wasn’t sure I could make it work. Antiquarian bookselling was still a dream.

When I decided I wanted to be a bookseller — a job that would allow me to work from my home and to determine the amount of hours I could put in each week — the first thing I did was send a letter to the Bibliophile email list, a sort of bulletin board for booksellers and book collectors, asking:

What are your thoughts? (I have already taken under advisement someone’s comment a couple of weeks ago that the best way to make a million dollars selling books is to start with two million.) If you could do it over, would you become a bookseller again? Am I realistic to think I can make a go of it? (I plan to start with an inventory of 300 or so books.)

You are probably well aware by now (at least if you’ve read this blog before) that I got numerous responses, some positive and some negative, all insightful. I always figured I could return to teaching as a possible back-up. During the years that I’ve been on “maternity leave” (almost eight, lol), I’ve taught summer school twice, substituted occasionally, graded extra papers at home for other teachers, and tutored a few students in order to keep my relationship with the school (which, ironically, is also my alma mater — but that’s a story for another post). I made a little extra money for doing so and also kept up my skills. Through careful and slow shopping over a few years, that money enabled me to collect enough books to start my business.

I officially started Book Hunter’s Holiday as a business a year ago. Since then I’ve found that working from home fits my family’s needs best right now. I can work during the day, pick kids up myself at school at 3 and be available to supervise homework, friends coming over to play, and soccer practice. I can also make sure a decent dinner gets put on the table most nights. I like it this way. But, I’ve also found that if I am to consider myself serious about being an antiquarian bookseller, it needs to be high on my list of priorities, with some activities getting jettisoned. I did not teach summer school this past summer. I went to the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar instead. In September, I resigned from my last tutoring job (which I did at night after the kids went to bed). I built a website and started to blog about my business instead. The money from teacher-like activities tapered off, but I could focus on building my book business, which, if it’s successful, will bring in other money.

Last week, when the call came about teaching again, I swallowed hard before I replied. Took a breath. Thought it through once more.

I said, “No thanks. I’ve started my own business and I really need to focus on that at this time.”

Do I really think I can make a go of it as a bookseller?

If I believe in this business and if I believe it’s a good fit for me — and I absolutely do — then I need to put my money where my mouth is, and give the business my full attention during working hours. This is scary.

It means no more paycheck-subsidized acquisitions of books.

It means that I have to sell enough books to acquire the books I want.

It means I have to act like a real business; my business must be self-supporting or it is simply a hobby.

It means that, other than adopting an abandoned farm, I have no Plan B. Bookselling is Plan A, B, and C.

To which I say, “It’s a go!”

Ready for lift-off!

Chapter 100 Are There Any Books Whose Chapters Exceed Double Digits?

One hundred posts on this blog. Can I still keep my book conceit and refer to each post as a chapter, or is it awful to have chapters in the triple digits? When I started blogging in September, I wanted to keep a record of what it was like to start an antiquarian book business. I realize that my life outside of books sometimes finds its way into these posts, because I also want a record of my family just as they are right now and because my family and business life currently overlap. I thank those non-family members who read this blog for being indulgent when my posts digress from the usual bookish topics.

If you’ve been reading regularly, thank you. If you’ve just discovered this blog, feel free to browse through the archives (right sidebar). Mostly, this blog is just a collection of my thoughts on bookselling, which are, at this time, the thoughts of a beginner who wants to learn more. I find great fulfillment in what I do for a living, and I hope that, above all, you get a sense of that in my writing. Perhaps you’ll want to become an antiquarian bookseller or book collector, too? The world needs more of us. In addition to the fact that antiquarian books are fun, selling and collecting them are also small (but sometimes important) acts of preserving and transmitting culture and history.

I don’t know where my bookselling adventures will lead me (that’s half the fun, isn’t it?), but I will continue to pursue my bookselling career, even when I make mistakes along the way, and write about it here.

Today, I am thinking about some of the books I plan to bring to the upcoming San Francisco Book and Paper Fair. I try not to get too attached to the books I’m selling, but there is one find in particular — my first really good find from back when I was just beginning to collect and scout for books — that I am considering offering for sale at the fair. I don’t have a big attachment to this book itself. It does not fit in with my larger specialities of Dante Alighieri or Western Americana or Pioneer Women. The collector part of me, the part that gets so excited over a good book find, is sentimental because this book was my first good find and it encouraged me to keep trying to be a bookseller at a time when I wasn’t sure if I had the skills it takes to be a good bookseller. The collector part of me wants to keep it for that reason alone.

The other part of me — the practical, bookseller part — says: “Sell this book. You need money to print and mail your Dante catalogue, and selling this book will allow you to do that. This is a business, and you need cash flow to move your business forward and get your catalogue and your name exposure. Since this title doesn’t fit into your areas of specialty, what’s the point of holding onto it?”

I’m not sure there is a point to keeping this book. It really doesn’t belong in any of the areas in which I sell books, but it’s a great book. Common sense tells me it’s time to offer it for sale. Common sense also tells me that just because I offer it for sale at a book fair doesn’t mean it will sell. I might still have it after the fair. The final thing my common sense tells me is that I’ll really know for sure whether it’s as good a find as I think it is if the book does sell at the price I ask. Would that not be the best tangible reminder of the fact that I had the skill (and luck) to find the right book at the right price in the right condition?

What would you do?

In an effort to be professional, I’m not going to name the book in question until after I sell it — whenever that is. I’ll let you know if I decide to offer it for sale at the fair and if it does indeed sell. If you want to know before that, you’ll have to come by my booth at the fair.