Used book store
Rob & Olive Wood
I am interested in setting up a used book store. Would be a family run
affair. Not sure our small town will make it worth while though. Any
suggestions on who to start, where to get books, etc., etc.
Any help would be greatly appreciated,
Rob Wood
Scot Kamins
Rob,
There's been a thread running in this newsgroup forthe last week called
"Any used bookstore owners out there?"
Perhaps you could read that thread first before reposting what questions
you have left.
Scot Kamins
..................................
Maintaining the Modern Library Collecting Website
http://www.dogeared.com
which is supported by the Pavilion City Mall
http://www.pavilioncity.com
paghat
Open with a big stock & a quality stock or expect to fail. If you open
with good stock then everyone who buys something they really wanted will
come back repeatedly & often & you're in like flint (unless you can never
replace good stock with equally good stock). If everyone who shows up
realizes your store is pathetic, they will look around in disgust won't
check back in for at least a year, & then only to figure out how in hell
you lasted that long.
Shops that succeed tend to be one of two types: First are those with a
good to great stock in a high foot-traffic areas with big parking lots,
the type of location that permits a well-stocked used bookstore to they
sell hundreds & hundreds of books each week so that the high rent doesn't
kill them, & who have a large phonebook ad that makes the store look more
likely to buy books than the next ten stores that can't even only afford a
visible ad pretending "We Pay More For Your Used Books!"
The second type that lasts for years & years is off the beaten track with
a really huge dusty stock with thousands of square feet to stock just
everything but because the building is run-down or in a terrible location
costs next to nothing so it doesn't matter that on some days business
sucks cuz rent is a measily $200 a month & you can live in the crawlspace
if you have to.
Less likely to succeed, but it happens, is a small shop in a so-so
location paying the going rate for insufficient square footage & therefore
restricted to paperbacks & every book CAREFULLY & conservatively chosen
for being sought-after authors in as-new condition for used prices,
insuring fast turn-over.
All others close the day their first-year lease runs out, unless the owner
wasn't married so could skip town earlier.
So wait until you don't have to ask "where do I get books". While it is
true it doesn't take a great deal of skill to run a bookshop, & most folks
who run them are nose-picking cross-eyed weirdos with no salable skills,
there's a level of know-nothing that just won't do. If your'e still at the
point of having to ask "how do I get my zipper closed" or "where can I get
my stock" that probably means you're not quite ready.
Even though I'm going to list a few places generalist brick & mortar book
dealers get their stock -- & this is going to be the best "where & how"
list anyone ever saw (she said with her usual humble demeanor) -- this
list really won't help you if you didn't know a bit already, as a flat
list of "where" doesn't really get you to the true heart of the matter.
Most of the "wheres" are obvious, & the success of it is in inexplicit
details.
Before ever you look for a location for your shop, you should already have
crammed-full the guest room, a storage fascility, the attic, & the
basement with books gleaned from:
1. Yard sales. Be first to arrive, be picky, be a die-hard & do go
yard-saling persistently. If it's too much trouble, then quit right now.
2. Your own bookshelves. If you don't already have a gigantic batch of
books yourself, you probably lack the simplest knowledge of books &
authors & won't be of much assistance to people asking elementary
questions like, "duh, uhk, do you have any william gibson?" If you do have
the knowledge, then you already have a shitload of interesting books, &
some of them you don't really need to keep any more, indeed some of them
you have long wished you could get rid of but knew the local used
bookstore wouldn't pay enough so you kept them. Now's your chance.
3. Bookstores that are going out of business. There are in any 200 mile
radius in any given year at least two & maybe a dozen morons akin to
yourself who thought it would be a dandy idea & great fun & totally easy
to run a bookstore. At the end of their first year they have a 50% sale
followed by a dime-a-book or dollar-a-shopping bag "Doomed Loser Sale".
Shave your head like a buzzard & buy everything that has a chance of being
resalable & kick that would-be shop-owner in the stomach on your way out.
4. Library sales. Don't get marked-up exlibs, it'll make your shop look
like a shithole, but library sales include all the donated books dumb
people thought would be processed for the library's shelves. Some of those
will be in fine condition & very resalable & cost you a pittance.
VOLUNTEER to help out at these sales & you get first dibs on the non-crap.
5. Successful booksellers. This supposes you ever really liked books &
therefore know many established booksellers & they know you. If they don't
think you're a pest who jabbers a lot about books but never buys one, then
many of them will be happy to sell you, cheaply, duplicates from their
stock, & stuff still in the backroom they've never bothered to shelve. A
lot of it will be common but if you're starting out you need common stuff
too IF people are known to buy it -- but more, the "extras" or cast-offs
in a well-established successful store can be very good stock since a
store doesn't get to be a good one by taking in a lot of crap that never
deserved to be shelved in the first place. If these successful booksellers
think you're a fool they'll want to pawn off book clubs, recent but
jacketless hardcovers, & unsalable old fiction with broken hinges, which
you will accept with a smile if you're the fool they tagged you being. But
if they like you, & you're not a fool, there's always more salable books
coming into an established shop than can be shelved, & they'll be glad to
help out wholesaling boxes full of okay-to-good stuff. Also if you plan to
have some specialty which these other booksellers don't strongly share,
you can risk paying a slightly expensive price for ideal top-end stock if
it's really YOUR specialty & you expect to be able to get at least $25 &
maybe $100 for titles someone else, who doesn't know that one specialty
area, only wanted $5 or $15 for.
6. General auctions. A way to get a shitload of crap but show up early,
see what lots have enough good to justify the weight of the bad, & bid
low. If there are too many other beginners bidding on book lots, this is
one of the first sources to lop off your list, as trying to outbid fools
for stuff that was likely marginal to begin with is called cockfighting,
not stock buying.
7. Fellow book collectors. Again, if you've an honest love of books, then
you know many other people with an honest love of books. And everyone who
loves books has bought way more books than was ever sensible to buy. Tell
all your book-lovin' buddies you want to buy what they no longer want. If
their book interests are not moronic, then even their cast-off books will
already be cream, & having been read only once, probably in nearly-new
condition.
8. Church bazarres & school rummage sales. As with yard sales, arrive
first, be picky, don't get lazy & skip any. Most medium-sized to big
cities have at least one annual blow-out giant book rummage sale run by or
for a school district or church. Those are always worth driving a hundred
miles to scout. And for these giant book rummage sales, as with library
sales, if you volunteer to help, you'll be there ahead of the ENORMOUS
crowds & you'll get first-dibs on the non-crapola.
9. Remainder book catalogs. The generically named "Book Sales" catalog
sells remainders for a dollar each or less. There are a half-dozen
remainder houses that issue catalogs & the dirt-cheap prices in these
catalogs is TWICE what a bookseller has to pay. Catalog says this $25 book
is remaindered for $5, but that means you pay $2.50. If you're careful
you can get nearly as-new stock for cheapo & it can spice up a used
bookstore with fine dustwrappers. If you select badly then you have the
same easily obtained stuff everyone else has & your price will be higher
than on Barnes & Noble's remaidner table. There is an academic remainders
company that sells stuff rarely seen on remainder tables per se -- these
are books originally issued for $75 a pop available for $5 to $25 (before
big book trade discount atop that). One can seed a very excellent folklore
section or develop a high-end history section with help from academic
remainders. Often these remainders aren't really going out of print &
still sell in big university bookshops for the full $75 price -- it's just
that some university publishers figured they only need 300 copies in
storage & needed the room for other things so sold off a couple hundred
from the backstock. But even without these very high-end remainders, the
dirt-cheap Book Sales people frequently have the last of a relatively
limited number of books & if you know which those are, you can get
near-future scarce items for a dollar each as-new. I once stockpiled about
25 copies of a Thomas Ligotti book for one dollar each. Long gone now &
how I wish I'd bought fifty or a hundred! But it is just as easy to buy
something that is going to be worth one dollar everywhere for years to
come, so ponder every purchase.
10. Goodwill & Thrift Stores. Many of these places have a scheduled
evening when books are processed & shelved -- the next morning, during the
first half hour they are opened, is the only day when the shelves have
stuff better than worthless book clubs & religious shit. At the biggest
Goodwills the morning after the shelves are restocked, book buzzards will
be waiting at the door before the store even opens. They will run to the
book section elbowing one another to glean anything that might resell.
They look & act creepy. But face it, you're entering a business where
creeps have the edge. So start competing with those other buzzards, & find
out which shops have regularly scheduled shelving practices so you can be
first to see new stock. Some thrifts you will soon realize are not worth
visiting ever: the time-to-discovery ratio is too low -- but the ones that
are worth it are gold mines for the generalist eager to buy low & sell
high & you'll know right away you've found such a shop when you discover
that showing up before opening means you get to stand in a little crowd of
scruffy mumbling greasy-haired guys who weekly scout the restocked
shelves.
11. Hurt Books from specialty publishers. Since I'm no longer a generalist
I can share this -- for years I kept it under my hat because it only works
because not many booksellers ever figure it out. I put this one low on the
list so that anyone not really interested will never make it this far into
this article. When I had a walk-in shop, one of the many reasons I had
better stuff than anyone in town was because I did something nobody else
knew to do. I wrote to publishers whose entire lines of trade paperbacks I
knew I could resell for two-thirds cover price almost as fast as I could
shelve them. These included "New Age" publishers of kabbalah, angel books
& the like; publishers of gay & lesbian books; publishers of Sufi &
Buddhist books; publishers quality cookbooks; publishers of ninja &
martial arts; publishers of wacky sasquatch & conspiracy books ... & I
asked them if they could sell me their returns & shopworn copies cheaply.
I frequently got lists from these publishers with the coolest stock on
earth offered for nickles on the dollar. Some specialty publishers
(especially those with high-end literary lines) are well-organized to
offload hurts & returns & don't need a small-potatos buyer like you;
others never had anyone ask before & are delighted to get rid of a few
boxes of books that are taking up room. Even if you're small potatoes,
though, you have to be able to take at least five copies of everything
offered though, or you're wasting their & your time. But very-little-worn
trade paperbacks in salable categories for no more than a dollar each, you
CAN and should invest in five copies each.
12. Annual book expositions. There are a couple huge book fairs for NEW
book PUBLISHERS that occur each year. These can be worth airfare & hotel
room to attend. At these events they are giving books away left & right to
promote them -- many with the authors present to sign them. Snarky
disgusting used booksellers arrive with push-carts to fill up on freebie
signed books. Your fair membership will be color-coded so the exhibitors
will know by the color of your badge, no one will tell you, is color
coded: the exhibitors will know by your badge color if you're a snarky
used bookseller (despised), an author-guest or street walk-in (liked
somewhat), a new bookstore owner or worker (liked a bit more), or a
regional book distributor (loved, loved, loved). So when you sign up to
join, fib if you can, you don't really want to be color-coded "pariah."
But they'll recognize what you're up to even so. You just gotta buck up &
not mind being regarded as a disgusting wart as you fill up that
push-basket with freebies! Get them signed! Go through the line five times
to get five copies of the signed big-name-star who by your third time
through will know what an ass you are -- worth it when you find out how
fast you can sell those autographed copies for above cover price & cost
you nada. Also, there will be remainder exhibitors -- they'll be nice to
you & will have extra-large exhibition discounts, lower even than their
usual dirt-cheap prices.
And finally:
13. Book shops that just opened on that day, run by beginners who won't
last out the year. EXCELLENT source of stock!! They will open with some of
the best books from their own collection offered for way under value. As
soon as all the other booksellers in town buy these opening-day treasures,
the poor beginner will never again have enen one book of merit, so get
there early.
Now except for #11 & possibly #12 you should've known the rest of this
stuff already, even as a rank amateur, & since you did not know, then I
suspect you're doomed to fail, & will begin (at best) fitting #13 & a year
later fitting #3 -- but what the hell, you're still at least contributing
to the ecology of the thing. There are more nuances to doing it right than
simplified instructions can never convey. Nevertheless, I can think of a
couple individuals who were the stupidest would-be booksellers on the face
of the planet who really just should've put a bullet in their own brains
they were SUCH fabulous failures. Yet after failing in two, three, even
four locations with the crappiest stock imaginable, suddenly something
clicked, & it all fell together for them part luck part surviving their
protracted learning curve. And today they are huge successes contributing
to the cultural fabric of their cities or neighborhood AND successful
enough to buy a home or blow a few bucks in a casino. So miracles do
happen. The rest will find themselves opening later & later in the
mornings, & already snockered when they do finally turn the open sign
around.
Much of the above 13 sources drop off the list if/when your shop actually
succeeds against all odds. In time you'll rely not exclusively but
increasingly on whoever saw your lie in the phone book, "We pay more than
anyone for your used books." The endless parade of people with cardboard
boxes of books to sell you will some days be glorious, other days a
nightmare, you may even have to put a sign on the door "buying books on
Tuesdays only!"
But starting out, all the above, & a bunch of other stuff, CAN get you a
first-rate opening-day stock so that it will really look like you knew
what you were doing. And to keep good stuff on the shelf even after you've
been gleaned by better-practiced booksellers than yourself. Those methods
can also get you the worst crap any ignorant lughead ever tried to pawn
off on the public, so it does help to already know that it's very hard or
impossible to sell book clubs, forgotten science fiction writers in skinny
60s/70s paperbacks, cookery pamphlets, encyclopedias, romance novels
unless for a dime, westerns, marked-in childrens books, or anything truly
grubby. Many a successful bookseller knows about books NOTHING except the
names of authors who'll sell -- these are real business people who know
how to run a business & books are just commodities not treasures of art &
intellect. These philistines frequently do better than the book nerds who
expected the public to buy what is good rather than what is popular. But
if one knows NEITHER about books NOR about business, then what chance do
they have. So take the free Small Business Administration course when next
they have that locally. DON'T sign up for any expensive "how to run a used
book store" workshops -- those are run by scamps who figured out they can
sell the course much more easily than they can sell the books, & it is not
worth their price to tell you about brodarts & library sales &
ego-bullshit about how cool you are for wanting to be an antiquarian
bookseller.
-paghat the ratgirl
--
"Here dwell souls that did neither evil nor good."
-Inferno
Randy Burns
though since I don't have a store I can't really use it. This is a list
well worth keeping and if it doesn't answer the question, then nothing will!
Randy
--
paghat <paghatS...@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:paghatSPAMMENOT-...@soggy72.drizzle.com...
> In article <3bd7...@news.hamilton.net>, "Rob & Olive Wood"
> <hun...@nque.com> wrote:
>
> > Hello everyone,
> > I am interested in setting up a used book store. Would be a family
run
> > affair. Not sure our small town will make it worth while though. Any
> > suggestions on who to start, where to get books, etc., etc.
> > Any help would be greatly appreciated,
> > Rob Wood
>
Markoc...@sublimino.com
Your post was so good I almost cried! Bravisse!
Mark
Max Johnson
the most interesting and informative (no bull-shit) posts that I have ever
read. Max
----------
In article <paghatSPAMMENOT-...@soggy72.drizzle.com>,
paghatS...@netscape.net (paghat) wrote:
Open with a big stock & a quality stock or expect to fail. If you open
> with good stock then everyone who buys something they really wanted will
> come back repeatedly & often & you're in like flint (unless you can never
> replace good stock with equally good stock). If everyone who shows up
> realizes your store is pathetic, they will look around in disgust won't
> check back in for at least a year, & then only to figure out how in hell
> yrnings, & already snockered when they do finally turn the open sign
> around.
>
>
> -paghat the ratgirl
>
> --
>
Mike Berro
posts. It's too big to go into the FAQ, but I can make a page for it and
link to it, unless Paghat wants to do that herself.
I suppose it's not strictly about collecting, but the question is definitely
frequently asked, and I know few collectors who haven't at least daydreamed
about owning a store (usually after winning the lottery.)
---Mike
rec.collecting.books FAQ
http://www.rcbfaq.com
"Max Johnson" <mar...@qwest.net> wrote in message
news:BI5C7.1435$Tt3.3...@news.uswest.net...
Trevian Bookshop
Virtually everyone who opens a shop is going to price their good stock
with reference to internet prices, and the prices will consequently be too
high for walk-in traffic and too high for other dealers. Dealers' purchases
are very important for any shop's business.
Geoff Baere
Trevian Bookshop
paghat wrote in message ...
paghat
<mikebe...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I haven't read it yet, but I'm sure it's useful, as were some of the other
> posts. It's too big to go into the FAQ, but I can make a page for it and
> link to it, unless Paghat wants to do that herself.
The article was flow-of-thought but before I finished I already knew I'd
rewrite it later & deposit it at my website under the "booksellers &
bookselling" essay section. Soon as I've a moment to do a more careful
draft (since it's even more typo-ridden than usual) it'll be added to the
clutch of bookseller essays which are indexed here:
http://www.violetbooks.com/essaylist.html#d
I'm really glad some folks liked the piece.
-paghat
> I suppose it's not strictly about collecting, but the question is definitely
> frequently asked, and I know few collectors who haven't at least daydreamed
> about owning a store (usually after winning the lottery.)
>
> ---Mike
> rec.collecting.books FAQ
> http://www.rcbfaq.com
>
>
> "Max Johnson" <mar...@qwest.net> wrote in message
> news:BI5C7.1435$Tt3.3...@news.uswest.net...
> > Paghat, I've never sold a book and probably never will but this is one of
> > the most interesting and informative (no bull-shit) posts that I have ever
> > read. Max
--
Mike Berro
news:ttiqgdg...@corp.supernews.com...
> Excellent post, as usual, but why no mention of the internet?
> Virtually everyone who opens a shop is going to price their good stock
> with reference to internet prices, and the prices will consequently be too
> high for walk-in traffic and too high for other dealers. Dealers'
purchases
> are very important for any shop's business.
I've found that, in general, and 9/11 notwithstanding, the internet has
substantially lowered book prices. I generally find lower prices on ABE than
in my neighborhood bookstore (or even the remainders section of the chains.)
The few hypermodern "highlights", such as Colfer and Fforde, are merely
exceptions.
---Mike