Adventures in Bookselling II

 

One of my nephews asked about what I was reading now. Of course, I always have a stack of books nearby. Some novels, art history, books on art and antiques, and, of course, Galveston history are all in the current pile.

But I thought I would share something that happened several weeks ago. I happened to come upon a collection of books being offered for sale. At first glance, there was nothing special about it. No leather bound classics, no first edition fiction, no coffee-table books. There was no self-help books, no cookbooks, and not a single NY Times bestseller in the bunch.

But to a old book dealer like me, it was a goldmine. Books on trains, WWII airplanes, tanks, riverboats, logging, and canals. CANALS! Hell, in forty years of slinging books, I'd never had ONE book on canals. And here were a dozen or more. And lots more subjects, most of which you'd be hard pressed to find in your mall bookstore.

Whoever had built this collection had to special order half of the titles. The other half had been shopped from used book stores around the country over many years. Many of the books were maybe ten or twenty years old. Some were a hundred and fifty years old. There were books I could quickly sell for twenty bucks, and then there were some worth a grand or more. Just a terrific selection of titles that I would give my right foot for, if I still had an open shop. Or if I had the space to store them.

The books were in 500 banker boxes, totaling about 10,000 books. I was ready to rent a moving truck, drive half way across the country, and hire some local strong backs to load the boxes. I WAS READY!!!

But then reality set in. I'm supposed to be retired. I don't have the space for 500 boxes. And then there's this damn pandemic thing going on. So I passed on them. It killed me to give them up. I hate myself.

So I had a couple shots of Makers Mark (well, maybe more...) and have been moping for the last few weeks. I'm over it now. I survived. Life will go on. But, I gotta tell you, I did look into some store fronts for rent.

Come to find out, I miss the book biz.

Adventures in Bookselling I

So, sometime in the late 1970's, I was working in my first bookselling job in Kerrville, Texas. I had been living at Quiet Valley Ranch where they hold the Kerrville Folk Festival, but had taken the job in town so I could afford a place with real walls, insulation, and HEAT, because winter was coming. 

The bookstore was a really-really small WaldenBooks (a company that later evolved into Borders.) The store had a table in the back displaying publisher markdowns, damaged books, cheap reprints, and other oddments of published folly and/or mistakes. Every couple of weeks, the store would get a shipment of books to restock the table. The shipment might include a solitary copy of a title or as much as five copies of a book. A real hodgepodge. 

One of my first jobs was to unpack one of those shipments which contained five copies of S. Morgenstern's (William Goldman) Princess Bride in first edition hardcover. I guess the publisher was dumping their stock of a non-performing title to free up warehouse space for the next Great Gatsby. Well, I was young and stupid back then, but was getting better all the time. I bought those five copies the next week when I got my paycheck, paying a whole ninety-nine cents a piece. I can't remember if I got an employee's discount. 

Now remember, this was long before the movie came out in 1987. I have no idea why I "invested" five bucks in these books. I wasn't into the 'collectible books' market, yet. I had no clear plan as to what exactly I was going to do with those copies, but I must had had an inkling of an idea. I stashed those books, along with other foundlings I acquired over the next few years. Most of them came from the same 'bargain' tables that every bookstore in the nation has. I bought a stack of Cormac McCarthy's early novel Suttree. This was back when he was still relatively unknown. But I was buying a lot of Texas novelists back then, looking for the next Larry McMurtry. 

WaldenBooks had a fully stocked store in the old Gulfgate Mall that had been closed for five or more years. I was able to get inside and buy boxes of miscellaneous books for something like five bucks each. I ended up with signed copies of old bestsellers, art and photo books, and Texas history (including John Grave's Goodbye to a River, signed, first edition, that went into my personal collection!) I even snagged a handful of Ancel Adams' Yosemite and the Range of Light (all signed, first editions) for about a buck-a-book. I must have bought fifty boxes of CHEAP books, leaving the rest behind because I couldn't fit more in my truck. 

Sometime after this windfall, I started selling bits and pieces of my horde at regional book collector shows in Dallas, Austin and Houston. By then, the movie of The Princess Bride had been released, and demand for my copies were great. I can't remember what I sold them for. Certainly a great deal more than I paid for them. But not near what they're worth today. Those Goldman's were my first foray into the wild and wooley field of used and rare books, so I remember them fondly.