The Cassidy 18: A Bookseller Reflects on His First Year

A little over year ago Brian Cassidy took over the Cannery Row Old Book Co. in Monterey, California and set up shop.

His recent blog post 18 Things I've Learned This Year (Or: 2007, A Bookseller’s Year in Review) is packed with little nuggets of bookselling wisdom and is a must read (and comprehend) for anyone who thinks that the bookselling life might be for them.

The Cassidy 18:

1) I will never run out of books. Never. There are always more books to be bought.

2) A corollary: There are always more GOOD books to be bought. If I feel like I’m not getting many of them, I’m not working hard enough.

3) I will never catalog all the books I have. Never.

4) I will always be messy. Always. Piles of books and paper are my destiny.

5) People who haggle over a five dollar book were never going to buy anything anyway.

6) Books ain’t money. Books don’t even make me money. I make me money. My overhead, time, and expertise create value. Please keep that in mind next time you think I’m being unreasonable offering you $100 for a book I’ll sell for $300. If you would like to rent a space and buy a reference library and catalog your book and list it on the internet and drag it to book fairs and wait who-knows-how-long to sell it, please be my guest. But if you want money today, please don’t insult me by suggesting you’re somehow being cheated.

7) Note to self: never give estimates of what you might pay for books over the phone or via email. ALWAYS have the books in hand first. Related: an annoyingly high percentage of people who bring in their books to “sell” only want a free appraisal.

8) “No, you can’t leave the books I don’t want here. Please, I really must insist. Seriously, have you looked behind this counter?” (See #s 1,3, and 5)

9) A first catalog is like falling in love - everything about it seems easy and fun and exciting.

10) A second catalog is more like marriage - a lot more work and a lot less exciting. But done well (fingers crossed), a lot more satisfying.

11) I still get a little thrill at diving into a box of new acquisition. I doubt this will ever go away or get old.

12) Nor, for that matter, will the little pang of dread when I remember I have to catalog most of them.

13) Shelving books is oddly calming - almost meditative.

14) Book fairs are a lot more work than they look like - a friggin’ lot of work. Two days (at least) to pack, a day to set up, two days (usually) to exhibit, then break-down, maybe a couple of days of travel, and then unpacking all those books you brought once you return. Even one-day local fairs require about a full week of work. Even so…

15) I love book fairs. Being in a roomful of dedicated dealers and serious buyers is just about my favorite way to spend a day.

16) I can’t tell you how many people come into the shop and tell me how great it is that I’m here and how much they love bookstores and how awful it is that so many are closing. Then they leave without buying a thing. This happens at least a couple times a week. I will never get this.

17) Related to #1 and 2: More and more I understand this is a business about customers, not books. To a large degree anyone can get books (witness the explosion of people calling themselves “booksellers”). What separates the successful dealer from the one who bitches and moans all the time? One has customers, the other doesn’t. The question is not whether you have books or not, the question is do you have anyone to sell them to.

18) I love my job.

The Libraries of Power

"Personal libraries have always been a biopsy of power" says Harriet Rubin in her New York Times piece C.E.O. Libraries Reveal Keys to Success.

Some article highlights:

-Michael Moritz, a venture capitalist extraordinaire, whose wife calls him "the Imelda Marcos of books."

-Nike's Phil Knight's mysterious library which exists in "a room behind his formal office" and one that few people have access to.

-Apple's Steve Jobs fancied William Blake.

-Dee Hock, the man who founded Visa, has a 2000 square foot library in his home and who has "on his library table for daily consulting, Omar Khayyam’s Rubáiyát the Persian poem that warns of the dangers of greatness and the instability of fortune."

-Sydney Harman, the Harman of the high fidelity giant Harman Kardon, whose library "is full of things I might go back to... Almost everything I have read has been useful to me — science, poetry, politics, novels. I have a lifelong interest in epistemology and learning."

-Shelly Lazurus, CEO of the advertising powerhouse Ogilvy & Mather, says "I read for pleasure and to find other perspectives on how to think or solve a problem."

The article is a treatise on the power of books in the lives of powerful people. It is not about the high-end book collections of the rich and famous. I suspect, however; that Job's Blake collection was top shelf and that much of it came from the bookseller John Windle, a Blake specialist, who is also featured in the article. I also trust that each library mentioned boasts a few high-ticket gems but these libraries sound like working libraries. Libraries working to help keep these business leaders at the top of their game.

Granted this is an article on C.E.O.'s and appears in the Business Section of the New York Times but I think that Ken Lopez, a bookseller specializing in Modern First Editions, is a bit off the mark when he says "it is impossible to put together a serious library on almost any subject for less than several hundred thousand dollars."

Don't get discouraged you can build a significant library for a lot less money, a hell of a lot less. I promise.

The Interior Designer and the Bookseller

There was a short post yesterday in the Good Questions section of the Apartment Therapy New York website titled How To Start a Book Collection?
The post was from an interior designer whose client has a new apartment with a lot of bookshelves and no books. There were already over 100 comments to the article when I came upon it and most were less than the kind.

Their goal:
A book collection that is "based on his taste, but also be a great collection of classics and aesthetically as pleasing as the work that's gone into the rest of the apartment."

A fair enough request worthy of a referral to a bookseller who offers collection development services. There are hundreds of such booksellers in the Antiquarian Booksellers of America (ABAA).

-Term Alert-
**Antiquarian is no longer synonymous with old books, or old booksellers for that matter, the ABAA is a network of booksellers who sell books ranging from the earliest days of printing to the first editions of Harry Potter**

Granted the post appears on a design site and the language of the post almost frames the request as a design challenge ie:"aesthetically as pleasing as the work that's gone into the rest of the apartment" but I for one am all for encouraging people with disposable income to invest in authors or books they love or in a book that had a profound effect on their life. Not only will they have a tangible reminder but there is chance that it would be a good investment as well.

The antiquarian bookselling trade still has a long way to go in getting the word out about what they do. Has there been any dialog with the interior design trade as to the possibilities? There is much more than books by the foot. Placing a well thought out book collection in a clients home is not going to hurt ones business, imagine the pr possibilities for your business when your client realizes that not only does he enjoy the collection you put together but it has appreciated in value.

Thanks to Maud for the lead

Before Harry Potter It Was Little Nell

If you are looking for a little perspective on the Potter keg that is going to explode on July 21st when the last book in the series is released have a look at Lenore Skenazy's piece in the New York Sun, "For Harry Potter Fans, Time to Enjoy Unkown."

She does a nice job of putting the phenomenon in historical context.

Here are a few Potter puffs:
-It is the most successful series in the history of publishing.
-The forthcoming finale Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has the largest first printing in publishing history.
- A first edition of the first Potter book sold for £9, 000 pounds at Bonhams' this week
- J. K. Rowling makes more money than 90% of all writers combined!
-This will be the first book in history in which most of the copies were sold without the booksellers making a dime.

But, believe it or not, we have gotten this crazy before.

Skenazy reminds us :

"When Charles Dickens finished the last installment of "The Old Curiosity Shop," in 1841, his American fans were so desperate to find out the ending that they stormed the New York piers and shouted to incoming ships, "Is Little Nell alive?"

No, Little Nell dies.

"Dickens readers were drowned in a wave of grief," wrote Edgar Johnson a Dickens biographer.

Daniel O'Connell, an Irish M.P., burst into tears upon reading the end, remarked ‘He should not have killed her,' and proceeded to throw the book out of the train window."

Oscar Wilde had a different take saying "One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing."

We will soon find out what will happen to Harry. There will be an industry built on the ending.

As time goes by the mania will subside and the Harry Potter experience will takes its place alongside the Sopranos, Paris Hilton and the Bush years. All cultural epics, all a sign of the times.

The "Overly Attached Syndrome"

That's the diagnosis given to many book lovers by Alina Tugend in her piece New Ways to Do It Make Giving Away Books a Bit Less Painful that appears in the New York Times today.

"Getting rid of books creates tension for many, although it is often one of the first things people have to do when downsizing or simply trying to organize their lives." says Tugned.

For some, including the author, giving away or selling their books at the appropriate time is a liberating experience. There is little remorse. For others, the disposing of books from their library is one of the greatest of life challenges.

“People have a love affair with their books,” is how Standolyn Robertson, president of the National Association of Professional Organizers, sees it. For the "overly attached" she suggests that people "take photos of the covers of the books and make a memory album" and to try and only keep a small percentage of the books in your library.

For many of us, no matter how many options are available, it will never be "less painful" to release our books into the world.

The piece appears in the business section and feels out of place there. The quandary some people face when having to part with books is far from a business matter. The article seems to cover two phenomena- the process of letting go of your books and the response to the number of extraneous books in the world from the business sector. These are two different animals and each deserves its own cage.

Illustration by Tim Lane, first appeared in Boston Globe

Changing Reading Habits

"Insomniacs used to read, but now they turn on TV and there's 200 channels, with everything from the pope saying mass in Brazil to Girls Gone Wild to QVC selling cheap diamonds" - John Shaver talking about the closing of his shop, Shaver's Books in Huntsville, Alabama, after almost 20 years in business.

"Your heart can lie to you, but your balance sheet won't...The numbers reached out to me and said, 'John, it's time.'" says Shaver.

Shaver also points out that the old mantra for retail success - location, location, location has now evolved to price, price, price and there is no way he can compete with the big box retailers on price point.

Shaver will continue to sell books online and in a couple of antique malls.

Article in the Hunstville Times

Thanks to Shelf Awareness for the lead

60 Minutes Visits An Antiquarian Book Fair

Andy Rooney's essay on the May 20 broadcast of CBS's 60 Minutes was about his trip to the New York ABAA Antiquarian Book Fair. Books, according to Andy, are one of the greatest inventions of all time. "You don't have to read a book to enjoy it. Just having a book is as much a pleasure as having a picture on the wall." (All of us who are readers, collectors, and booksellers can relate to that statement!) Watch Andy's commentary for a glimpse of the NY Fair.

Chuckanut Radio Hour

All businesses regularly change and adapt. For bookselling, the Internet has brought particularly dramatic changes. Books are found and sold through bookshop websites, multi-dealer mega-sites and online auctions. Blogs, information-rich websites, and email are the common tools to communicate and connect.

Some individuals in our Northwest region have created an additional way to reach out to their local book community. In Bellingham Washington, Chuck Robinson and others have begun "The Chuckanut Radio Hour". Robinson is a past President of the American Booksellers Association and owner of Village Books, a book store, cafe, and community gathering spot. This hometown radio variety show features prominent authors and discussions, dramatic readings, and music. So far there have three shows produced at Bellingham's American Museum of Radio and Electricity, attracting between 100 and 200 people. It is broadcast on KMRE, FM 102.3. The next taping is on April 24, featuring author Sherman Alexie.