Chapter 117 2008 San Francisco Antiquarian Book Fair, Part 2, Or, Reality

Yesterday I wrote about how I entered the exhibition hall at the book fair and wondered about my own potential as a bookseller. As a small bookseller who brought only about 200 books to the fair, I was thrilled to be there, but I realized that a big fair with 200 or more exhibitors offered a challenge. Would my books stand out or be lost in the shuffle? I wondered if I’d sell more books than I did at the smaller book fair in Sacramento last September, the first book fair I ever did. I wondered if it was appropriate to compare the two fairs. Each fair is different. As San Francisco was only my second book fair, I didn’t have a lot of basis for comparison. Instead, I compared myself to Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger, the Notre Dame football player whose persistence in his pursuit of a dream brings him great fulfillment — not fortune, not fame, not a pro-football contract, but something greater — fulfillment. I felt inspired to be in the presence of some truly great booksellers and happy to be at the fair.

I decided that if I ever expect to be a successful bookseller, I had better quit spending my time ruminating over dreams of bookselling grandeur and do the practical thing — get to work unloading eight bookcases and eleven boxes from The Book Mobile. My boothmate Jeanne from The Book Prowler arrived soon after, and she (thankfully) brought an entire army of support — her husband Gary, her daughters Eliza and Jessica, and her sister-in-law Laura.

With all of this help, we were set up in no time — shelves assembled, boxes unloaded, and a couple of special touches. Laura cut a beautiful art paper to the shape of the shelf in our glass counter cases and laid it in for us. It was a lovely background for the fragile ephemeral items that went in the glass case. Gary made the most beautiful wood bookstands for Jeanne — made them!!! They were lovely. He also very generously made a beautiful wood business card holder for me. Thanks, Gary! (P.S. Gary, if you are reading this, you could go into business making these lovelies for booksellers and collectors. They are that beautiful.) Jessica and Eliza unwrapped books from the copious amounts of bubble wrap and helped place them on shelves. It was so nice to have help and to have a full and busy booth. My friend Mr. Z. had a booth near ours, too, so there was lots of bookish banter across the aisles.

Below: A close-up of some of my shelves at the fair.

You might remember a book I referred to before the fair. It was my first really good “find” as a bookseller, and I had assembled a small collection of five items around this book. In order to raise the necessary funds needed to print the Dante catalogue in color and to buy some new stock, I decided the time had come to sell this little collection. I catalogued it thoroughly, following the advice of another bookseller who once told me that when I have something amazing to sell to “describe the hell out of it.” Five typed pages and many hours later I had a small catalogue of each of the items in the collection.

Another bookseller who was aware of my collection and the fact that I planned to offer it for sale asked me to set it aside for him before the fair. In the midst of our set-up frenzy he came over to see if I had remembered to bring the books. He looked at my material and we negotiated a price and the collection was sold before the books ever hit the shelves. I don’t want to tease you. I would really like to tell you what the items were, but as I sold them to another dealer who plans to re-sell them, I feel it unprofessional to do so. When I think about it, I would not like another dealer to sell me a book I plan to re-sell and then to publicly state, “That used to be my book. She got that from me.” (i.e. she only has that great book because I found it first.) Once I buy the book, it’s mine. So, in an effort to do unto others, I’ll have to keep quiet about it for now. I hope you understand. And I thought you would like to know that I did sell the book at a good price and that the proceeds will help me finish that when-will-it-ever-be-published Dante catalogue.

I was a little sad to say good-bye to my first valuable book “find”. It kick-started my pursuit of bookselling as a career. I missed it so when its new owner walked away with the collection — until I got a nice check for it. Hey, this bookselling thing is exceptionally fun when it pays! I’d like to do that again.

I rationalized that selling this small collection would not only generate some income but it would also make room for new finds. From what I have observed, booksellers who don’t continue to acquire new stock stagnate and people quit visiting their booths at fairs because they always offer the same things for sale. I knew that a book fair with material offered by 200 dealers would be a good place to find hidden gems, and I spent the rest of the day in search of them.

I had a few more pre-fair sales to other booksellers on set-up day, and I spent the afternoon shopping in the booths of other booksellers, looking for new books to acquire. I found two books about Westerner’s visits to Russia — one from 1877 and one written and inscribed by the author of Mary Poppins. Collecting books by Westerners who visited Russia or the Soviet Union is a personal interest of mine, but it looks like enough interesting material exists that it may generate a future catalogue. While there were many amazing books offered for sale, I was a bit disappointed not to find more books that I thought would be a good fit for Book Hunter’s Holiday. (There aren’t many of us booksellers selling pioneer women or Dante — consequently not always a lot of stock from other booksellers.)

At the end of the day, I met up with my friend Penny from Vandello Books. She flew down from Seattle to attend the fair, and we met in Union Square and went to a wonderful Italian dinner. San Francisco is a great dining city. There are more food snobs here than there are book snobs, and the restaurants try to rise to the challenge. Delicious!

After dinner, I walked back to the hotel where Jeanne and her family and I were staying, feeling fulfilled.

Tomorrow: 2008 San Francisco Antiquarian Book Fair, Part 3, Or, The Fair and The Finds

Chapter 116 2008 San Francisco Antiquarian Book Fair, Part 1, Or, Potential

When I arrived at the Concourse Exhibition Center early Friday morning for set-up, I walked into an empty exhibition hall. There were a few other booksellers there, but their booths were largely empty, pale receptacles of the vibrant book stalls they would become as the day progressed. I checked in with the fair organizers and found my booth still empty, as my boothmate Jeanne Jarzombek of The Book Prowler had not yet arrived. In those last few moments of calm and quiet before set-up began, I took a minute to appreciate just being able to exhibit at this fair.

While I shivered in the cold air of the almost empty exhibit hall, I was reminded of the 1993 movie Rudy, which starred the diminutive Sean Astin as Notre Dame football great Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger. If you’ve never seen the movie, Rudy is a small-statured young man (5′6″ and 165 pounds) whose lifelong ambition is to leave his blue-collar, factory town and play football for the (awesome, totally awesome) Fighting Irish. Because of his poor academic skill, the idea of his gaining admission to Notre Dame is slightly crazy. Because of his size, the idea of playing football for the Irish is completely ludicrous, something which others frequently remind him.

After three rejection letters, Rudy finally does gain admission to Notre Dame. He earns a spot on the team as the guy the real players practice against, getting hit hard every day for three years. He is never allowed to play in a real game. Then, in the final game of the final season, because his teammates demanded it of the coach, Rudy is permitted to play for two downs. Though he is not a marquee player, Rudy’s tenacity and heart during the three years he’d been used as a team punching bag had won him fans among his teammates. At the end of that game (took place in 1975 in reality), Rudy is carried off the field on the shoulders of his teammates. He is, to date, the last Notre Dame football player to receive that honor. It sounds sappy, and it is, except it’s a true story. I dare you to watch the movie without caring and without crying and without being inspired.

Take a look at the Rudy movie poster above — where he’s standing on the empty field in an empty Notre Dame stadium, taking it all in and dreaming of what might be. When I got to the (almost) empty, cold, cavernous exhibition hall on Friday morning, I felt like I had stepped into that poster. I stood in a cold empty hall that would, the next day be transformed, filled not with thousands of cheering football fans, but with thousands of bibliophiles like me. I was just happy and amazed to be there, and, like Rudy standing alone on the big-time field at Notre Dame before he plays, I thought about the potential a big fair offers a small bookseller like me. Would I sell the most books of any seller there? Would I find the unrecognized treasures that every bookseller looks for when shopping at a book fair? Would other booksellers even know who I am or visit my booth? Would anyone buy any of my books? Probably not. As a new, small bookseller, I would likely be overlooked. I was, as usual, filled with anxiety over these issues, but mostly I just wanted to stop and think about what might be and to be grateful to be a small part of it.

The last time this particular fair was held in San Francisco — two years ago — I found a babysitter and spent couple of free hours walking through the fair on its last day. I was not a bookseller, but I knew I wanted to be one. How, I wondered, do you become an antiquarian bookseller? How do you find enough good books? How do you get admitted to be an exhibitor at a fair like this? I probably would never be allowed to do it. I wasn’t known as a book collector. I barely said two words to the dealers I bought books from at the fair. I didn’t know any other book collectors. (That shyness thing again.) I was told by some (non-booksellers) that a stay-at-home mom could never expect to compete on the same level as the marquee sellers who offer rare treasures at every fair. It was too late for me to try to get started in the bookselling game. Many sellers have been involved with books from a very young age, learning at the knees of fathers and grandfathers, and here I was at a not so young age, with my own children at my knee, trying to get a start. I could never expect to become as expert as they are.

What hubris — and it is hubris — allowed me to utterly disregard all of these valid fears and admonishments, I do not know. I just know that I wanted to be an antiquarian bookseller so much that I didn’t care whether I could be a top-tier bookseller. I want to be a part of the antiquarian book world, regardless of how well-known of a bookseller I ultimately become. If you’ve read my blog before, you’ll know that in the months following that fair, I joined email lists, found a bookseller willing to mentor me, went to the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar, etc.

Does this make me a marquee bookseller? I certainly think not. Not even close. What it made me was someone who could be a small part of a larger team. I’ve since made friends with dealers of all kinds and and even occasionally sold books to those marquee sellers, those much higher in the bookseller food chain than myself. You know the ones. They are the quarterbacks who call the plays in the antiquarian book world, and everyone knows who they are and speaks their names with reverence, passing on the legends of some of their best book plays. Even though I’m not (yet) one of these sellers, it’s (usually) a real thrill and honor to sell them a book (or two or three or more).

The best thing of all, though, is that in the past two years I’ve met other new booksellers like me. There are actually quite a few of us. My boothmate Jeanne is one of them. If you are intimidated at the prospect of exhibiting at a book fair, find another bookseller and share a booth. It is great fun and great comfort to have someone to be new with. We had a great weekend, and we both realized we were so happy to be a part of the fair.

Will I ever be carried out of a book fair exhibition hall hoisted on the shoulders of my fellow booksellers? I don’t know and I don’t care.

I’m just thrilled to be a player in the game.

Player #45, The real Rudy, playing in his only game for Notre Dame, and so happy to be there.

Booth #717, Me (left) and Jeanne (right), new booksellers, exhibiting at the San Francisco Antiquarian Book Fair together, and so happy to be there.

Tomorrow: 2008 San Francisco Book Fair, Part 2, or Reality

Chapter 115 ZZzzzz…….

It’s midnight on Sunday (Monday morning?), and I just returned home from the fair. (I left on Friday morning). Lots of fun bookseller dinners. Lots of fun at the fair and all kinds of exciting things to report. The thing is, I have to take kids to school early in the morning (around 7:30) and I am exhausted. So, excuse the delay in posting (especially any one waiting to hear about the San Francisco Antiquarian Book Fair). I have a lot to say about the fair, and I promise to post in more detail tomorrow.

For now, the short part of the story is:

1) Yes, it was a “good” fair.
2) Yes, I had a great time with other booksellers and book collectors.
3) Yes, I sold that book.
4) Yes, I bought a few great items.

More tomorrow. For now, off to sleep and catch some zzz’s. Thanks for your patience.

Chapter 114 Ready, Set, Go!

The books are in boxes, my suitcase is almost packed, the dinner dishes are washed and put away. I’m so excited for the book fair. I’m ready to go!

Here’s how my supply checklist looks tonight:

I finished packing my books and bookcases this evening. Special thanks are due Tom, Huck, and Thoughtful Husband for helping with the heavy lifting.

Huck’s reward for helping me put books in boxes — popping some extra bubble wrap. Seven year olds are so easily entertained!

Thoughtful Husband loaded all eleven of my boxes and all eight of my bookcases into the Book Mobile. You rule, T.H.!

I’ve still got to finish typing and printing a small catalogue (five items — very small collection of nice material) and I need to pack the rest of my suitcase. I’ll be staying in The City for the weekend. (The capital T in “The” and the C in “City” are not typos. I am a fourth generation San Franciscan — even though I live in the suburbs — and was always taught by my forebears to call it The City, as though there is no better place on earth. There isn’t. Except maybe an abandoned farm.) Thoughtful Husband will be staying home with Tom and Huck this weekend and chauffering them to a Cub Scout meeting, a basketball tournament, and a friend’s birthday party. I’m hoping they’ll find a chance to come visit me Sunday afternoon.

Set-up begins at 9:00 a.m. Friday. I’m ready. Let’s go.

Wish me luck. Please.

See you at the fair!

Chapter 113 Almost Ready

The test shelves for the book fair are almost ready:

The mylar dustjacket covers are applied.

The books are priced.

The requisite celebratory (or consolatory, depending on sales) chocolate is packed:

The hoping/wondering whether anyone will want to buy one (or more) of my books has set in.

The knowledge that I’ll be meeting new booksellers during set-up on Friday both thrills and terrifies me. (Don’t worry. I promise to behave better than I did last time.)

The knowledge that I’ll also see some booksellers I already know is quite reassuring, and I’m looking forward to being with other booksellers .

Tomorrow I’ll put the books into boxes so I’ll be ready to leave early Friday morning. This takes a lot of boxes, a fair amount of bubble wrap, and strong arms. I have no idea how those of you exhibiting at this fair from the East Coast get everything packed and shipped. It must cost you a fortune. I’m lucky. I get to drive to this fair.

See you in the stacks, or, if you live nearby, at the fair!

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 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 95 A Short Book Review and The Week Ahead

Last week I mentioned a new book I was reading: Fifty Acres and a Poodle, by Jean Marie Laska. Here’s what I said about it:

So, I went to Border’s today and here I sit now, enthralled with the new book I selected. Stunningly, it is not a book about books. It’s a book about my other favorite subject: what it would be like to be a pioneer woman and live on a farm. It is Jean Marie Laska’s Fifty Acres and a Poodle: A Story of Love, Livestock, and Finding Myself on a Farm, and it is hilarious (somewhat remniscent of The Egg and I). It’s easy reading, smart writing, and just a joy. Though I really can’t afford the sleep deprivation, I sense an all-nighter coming on. I’ll let you know tomorrow if it was worth skipping sleep for.

Today I realized that I never told you whether it was worth skipping sleep to read it.

Apparently not. I tried to read it at bedtime, and read over 100 pages, but then fell asleep around midnight. This is not due to the quality of writing, which was excellent, but to my inability to stay up all night the older I get.

I finished it the next night, though. Obviously, a book about an urban woman who buys a farm on a whim will not appeal to everyone, but I found it to be intelligently written and very humorous. It was a nice light read, and a break from the books about books that I usually read. The author’s honest account of realizing a dream — owning a farm — is also my dream, which I’ve told you about before. Remember this purchase in Sacramento last September? My Plan B if bookselling is a complete and total failure?

I did pretty well with my list of priorities last week, and did catalogue one book per day. Here are a few of the things on tap for this week (at least in the bookselling realm):

+ List at least one book per day
+ Make sure I have enough boxes to bring my books to the San Francisco Fair
+ Buy a weekly planner/calendar to be used for bookish scheduling only
+ Begin pulling books and ephemeral items I plan to take to the San Francisco Fair. Make sure each is priced, described, and, if needed, labelled properly.
+ Convince Thoughtul Husband that it is his marital duty to assemble three portable bookcases for me to take to the fair. Pretty please?
+ Install (gulp) Quicken on my computer to use in conjunction with BookHound. (There is a chance that this could take up my entire week, given my technical skills, but let’s be positive and hope not).
+ Write a draft of my next article for BookThink.

Tomorrow’s post: Bookseller etiquette — yes, there is such a thing!

See you in the stacks!