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This post was writen by Guy Weller of Mr. Pickwick’s Fine Old Books.

This latest fee increase by ABE is ridiculous - I would have been far happier to see them increase their monthly rentals than applying this absurd sort of hit on the shipping component.

A great many sellers will increase their shipping charges at ABE, which will have the inevitable effect of costing some sales which climb through the buyer barrier of resistance, and any such lost sale costs ABE 8% of the book price + 5.5% across book and shipping combined on their credit card skim.

The average sale at ABE is around $US 13 and I guess the average shipping component would be about $US 5 or so. So on each $18 combined sale ABE currently reaps $1.04 + $0.99 in c/card fees at 5.5% or $2.03 (which is 15.62% of original book price).

Under this new scale the respective amounts will be $1.44 + $0.99 or $2.43 (or 18.69% of original book price).

Many booksellers will increase their shipping charges to compensate, and this price increase to customers must inevitably cost some sales, as the shipping climbs through the buyer resistance level.

I am not suggesting that buyers will abandon the site in droves, but look at the math:

For every sale at the average price lost due to increased shipping costs (and there will be SOME of these) ABE loses the $2.03 it would have netted had that sale proceeded.

It makes a mere extra $0.40 from each (average) sale processed under the new scale, and would need to “hold” 6 sales for every sale lost due to buyer shipping resistance before it actually made a revenue gain of $0.37 across the 6 x $18 = $108 gross revenue.

Obviously ABE will not lose 1 sale out of 7 (14%) due to this move, but it will lose SOME, and the anticipated revenue increases will therefore turn out to be in a significant part illusory for this reason, since each sale lost negates the next 6 made in terms of potential increased revenue.

In online planning, it is madness to increase shipping charges - you are MUCH better off running with a slightly higher price and lesser (or even “free”) shipping charges.

In fixed-store retail planning, it works the other way around - all the focus there is on the “advertised price” and very little on the half-hidden extras like delivery, installation, paid-for extended warranties etc.

ABE goofed when it introduced the c/c 5.5% (note that they are now actually reducing that on $500+ orders in partial recognition of this mistake).

They SHOULD have increased the commission then to 10% and introduced MAPS at 3.5%, which would have been a much easier “sell” to booksellers, and given them a much stronger income bedrock.

I don’t mind the idea of a corporation looking to fee increases to fund its growth, nor the prospect that the shareholders of a corporation deserve a decent return on the capital they have invested in infrastructure and providing the services on which we all to some extent depend.

I DO object to half-witted strikes in the WRONG fee areas, which this one is.

Shipping rates can be looked up on the Internet from most countries, and often are by our bookbuying customers to make sure we are not “rorting” them with extra loadings in that area.

Already I have to pay ABE’s blasted 5.5% on my c/card component of shipping, or 4% more than I was previously paying my provider.

Now I am hit with an extra 8% “fee” on this shipping - 12% loading in all on the publicly advertised and easily accessed postal charge (about $25 from Australia to the UK for an average book).

If I pass this on in full to my customers, it will not be long before some of them start querying why I am “loading” the postal costs so excessively, and they will be most dubious if I tell them that I am actually being taxed on this supply cost via my listing site.

They will conclude I am just taking a skim for myself - I would conclude the same thing myself if I were buying at ABE, and not in possession of the facts.

So this move is technically, philosophically and practically bad for ABE, and for all those who list there.

Higher costs and fees from ABE? I can live with that.

Ramping shipping costs to customers higher?

Strategic madness.

Cheers,

Guy Weller

Mr. Pickwick’s Fine Old Books

Seasonal religious displays

Lots of bookstores have a Christian fiction section. However, in some areas it may be a good idea to have a section devoted to another religion rather than lumping it into the “other” section. Often you’ll see sections devoted to Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, or general “eastern religions”.

If you don’t have enough books to make it a standard section, so you may just want to do a display around the appropriate holiday when interest peaks. Here you can see a seasonal display aimed as unusual group, the Pastafarians:

This display pretty well hits the key points of a seasonal display.

• Food for the celebration - pasta & beer in this case

• History and biographies of notable members of the religion- pirates being the best choice for Pastafarians

• Items related to the religious tenants- thus the books on evolution, the US Constitution, satire, skepticism, and global warming

• A festive decoration- candy and pirates go together

You can use that basic list to set up a similar display to appeal to your local religious community. Make sure to set your display up at least two weeks before the holiday. For Pastafarians, you’ll want thins set up for April 1^st and September 19^th.

If you really want to go the extra mile, consider setting up a special holiday page featuring your selections. You can see an example of a holiday page. 

For more info on Pastafarians, be sure to visit The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Last time I spent a lot of time complaining about the lack of progress in
internet selling over the last 10 years. I think the criticisms were
fair, but I also have a number of ideas for improving the process. Keep a
few things in mind as I go through some of them - they are all serious
ideas, at least insofar as I thought about them seriously whether they
were prima facie ridiculous or not; they all are intended to point to a
deficiency in current systems; they are all my ideas so if you use one and
make a whole lot of money you can send royalty checks to:

Tom Nealon
c/o Pazzo Books
4268 Washington St.
Boston, MA 02131

Clicks and bricks, bricks and clicks - people throw these around, and they
are certainly descriptive of a business that operates both real world and
virtual stores, but what they lack in practice is a true synergy between
the businesses. I know for our shop that we’re really just running two
largely parallel businesses out of the same location. Sure you get a
certain number of people who found a book online and swing by to pick it
up, but by and large, the clicks and the bricks remain pretty discrete
from each other. There’s a book shop in Cambridge (MA) called Lorem Ipsum Books that opened
to beta test an online selling system (now called Ka-Zam). I’m not sure what they’re
doing now - as far as integration - except that all books are priced
online and in their shop by the same algorithm, and they used to talk
about having an audio component (bells, whistles, croaking frogs) in the
store whenever a book was sold on the internet. I’m not sure exactly how
this is working for them - I know the software is starting to move, and
the shop, which opened about 6 months after ours 5 years ago, is still
there, so it can’t be too bad. This seems like a nice start (even if my
Luddite streak prevents me from being excited about algorithms pricing my
books), but lacks the real connection that seems necessary.

So I had this idea - why not install robotic cameras in the shop, let them
run up and down the shelves on tracks and photograph the inventory. Every
night the camera automatically activates and wends its way through the
store - depending on your store set up you may need a couple cameras or a
strange variety of wall mounted camera tracks (though shop owners would no
doubt quickly learn to set up their stores for maximum camera efficiency)
- and photographs your inventory, generating a seamless image that’s
zoomable and dragable for easy browsing. At the end of its trip through
the store, the camera would lock itself up in a handy and attractive
housing at the end of one of the shelves.

For all of us who own shops but don’t put all of our books online for a
variety of reasons (economy, lack of time, low online prices, laziness), a
link to this virtually real store (in lieu of the rather ineffective “We
have thousands of other books offline, why not drop us a line and add to
your order”) would no doubt produce a bevy of add on sales to internet
orders. It would let locals browse at night and send in holds on books
they’d like to buy, allow near locals to look around and see if it’s worth
the trip, plus solve that age old question “Are there mischievous sprites
moving books around at night so that I can’t find them in the morning?”

The Book Spider (below, an artist’s rendering):

The Book Spider 1.0 will crawl along your shelves at night (or during the
day if you have understanding customers or an internet only business)
using its retractable flat bar code scanner to inventory books by simply
slipping the scanner in between titles. Early features include a dirt and
wear sensor for grading (reverse engineered from cutting edge vacuum
cleaner technology), a GPS sensor for positioning (that can also be used
for book location with our handy palm-top add-on) and a removable flash
memory stick (though we recommend running on Blue Tooth). It’s true that
pre-ISBN books are a problem, but we have solutions in the pipeline:

A de-shelving accessory along with an OCR system that can scan and
recognize title and copyright pages. Coupled with our Edition/Points of
Issue add-on (only $199.95 and $24.95 a month!), the Spider is proven 99%
accurate in correctly identifying editions (studies at a noted mid-western
University show that ABE sellers are only 37% accurate so this is pretty
good).

For those sellers who, and who can blame them, view pre-ISBN books as too
much trouble, a camera accessory that will photograph the offenders and
upload them to ebay for sale - templates with helpful descriptions like “I
found this in my grandmother’s attic and it seems really old” or “Rare and
valuable but a little dirty - $99″ are included with the accessory (only
$349.95!).

Linking shipping weights and photos to books, while clearly the future of
bookselling, is a pain in the ass. We try to take photos of books that
merit photos - though when you’re making your way through a large pile of
new stock, there are a variety of arguments against taking photos that can
occur to you. With this in mind, a flatbead scanner, photobooth, scale
combination would be awfully useful. Put the book on the scanner or
upright for a photo, it will weigh the book, drop the images into a
pre-arranged folder for auto upload, and import the weight into your
database. All photos are optimized for the internet and pop up for
preview - nix the bad ones, take another angle, and they’ll all be
attached to the record currently being edited in your database. This
seems easy - can someone bang this together for me?

Finally, and I’ve complained about this before and will no doubt do so
again, book sellers continue to price books according to supply rather
than demand. At best we use some combination of old print catalogs,
incomplete but useful books like Ahern’s Book Collecting, American Book
Prices Current, and experience with titles to supplement the prices we
find for a book online. In truth though, most titles are priced according
to what we find at ABE or Amazon, because even the best price guides
contain only the slimmest representation of what a book seller runs into
on a daily basis - especially at the lower end. This is pretty backwards
- with all the sales information floating around the internet, no one has
been able to harness it to improve pricing techniques past what they were
50 years ago - even all the fancy algorithms being used are just based on
supply with no demand component. The problem, of course, is that ABE et
al horde this information as if it were pure gold - which, ironically, it
is, but for book sellers not for them. What I would like to see is a book
selling cooperative that would share book price information amongst
themselves - even 500 booksellers (or less than 4% of the 13,500 that ABE
boasts) sharing 10,000 - 20,000 listings each would be enormously and
immediately useful. It’s a clear move into the future of online book
selling, and would start to move all of us away from the tyranny of the
A’s.

There would be difficulties in convincing book sellers to share their
data, but the current state of affairs only benefits the listing sites who
have kept a monopoly on sales information. No individual seller, no
matter how competent, can match the information harvested by these sites,
and while a used book seller union (I hope I don’t lose my capitalist
membership card for suggesting such a thing) is one of those mythological
creatures, much talked about and much mocked, banding together for
discrete and specific purposes like sharing pricing data, could also be
the beginnings of that as well.

That address for royalty checks again, just in case you misplaced it while
reading this:

Tom Nealon
c/o Pazzo Books
4268 Washington St.
Boston, MA 02131

www.pazzobooks.com

…And that’s about it. My name is Larissa Swayze and I am a book-selling virgin.

Even as a child, every autumn when the small town I grew up in held its town-wide garage sale, my used copies of Sweet Valley Twins went untouched. I hear the word Flyleaf and think of the female-fronted Texas rock band. When faced with acronyms such as ABA, ABAC and IOBA, I have to turn to ever trusty Google to decipher. I have never worked in a bookstore or attended a book fair. Is there some kind of omniscient booksellers’ newsletter I can subscribe to that will inform me of important things I should know and events I should attend? Perhaps it can also include a step by step guide entitled, “Selling Books for Newbies: How to Turn Other People’s Words into Your Cash.” Thankfully, I’m not quite naive enough to believe that immense riches will befall me through this endeavor. At least not monetary riches – but that’s okay. Because what I’m in it for, is the glory. The passion. The same reason I assume (or at least hope) others who are fortunate enough to do it for a living are:

The love of books.

I love to look at them. Smell them. Hold them in my hands. Discuss them. Collect them. Scold those who dare to disrespect them. And most importantly, I love to read them. I just want to be around them as much as possible. Currently, the only book in my vicinity is the Alberta Building Code of 1997 and my friends, Shakespeare it ain’t.

So how do I begin?

My recent trip to a tropical destination was supposed to be an intellectual quest of sorts. Read some books about books; come up with “The Plan”. Of course, what ended up happening was a lot of staring blankly out into the ocean and drinking free Brahma. I am no closer to a solution now than I was when I set out on my journey.

I’m just going to have to find myself a bookselling Yoda. Someone who can show me the way or, at least give me a job in their bookstore. (Anyone?) If I can’t find a mentor, then I suppose I’ll just do what any other booklover would – turn to the written word. I’ve already found 17 how-to guides on Amazon that I’m positive will assure me bookselling is easy and anybody can do it.

Leaving my comfortable and well-paying desk job for a strange and unknown world, where people speak another language and know things I don’t, really won’t be so different from visiting a foreign country. All I have to do is soak it all in because fortunately, I don’t believe in mistakes. Basically, at this point, nothing can go wrong.

Right?

[editor’s note: Help us welcome Larissa to the group here by leaving a comment for her, or maybe a job invitation??]

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This Saturday, here at Colette’s:
Good Food + Hungry Minds, we’re attempting to set
a Guinness World Record for ‘the most romances
sold in one business day by a brick and mortar
independent bookstore.’ And we don’t even sell
romances. This all came about when we purchased
another used bookstore which served as the seed
for our endeavor. My brother came back from one
of the packing trips and said that we had ‘more
than a cord’ (4′x4′x8′for those who don’t know).
Initially, we offered to sell them to two other
booksellers but they only wanted to give us
pennies a book (in trade). No thanks. My partner
was looking at the stack and said, “There must be
some kind of record here.” Voila, we contacted
Guinness, filled out the paperwork and received a
claim number and permission to proceed. (You
can’t even legally say you are attempting to set
a Guinness record without their written
permission.) The truth is, I just wanted
permission to say we were planning beat or set
the record for the PR value. Setting a record is
gravy. We attempt to maximize every event we do
here at the store. For ‘Hearts in    A(c)Cord’
(yes, we know it’s cheesy), we’ve stacked the
books into a cord and a half. Great Visual.
They’ve been up for one week. Paperbacks are $1
each and HB are $2 each. We’ve added some first
edition hardbacks that worth $25-$35 on the net.

Here are the parts of the event:
1) There is a prize for the person who guesses
closest as to how many books are in the stack
without going over. Runs until opening on
sale day.
2) We’ve put out a Call to Artists to create a
piece of art in any medium that incorporates at
least one romance novel. These are due 3/31. They
will be juried and hung for the April Artwalk
(more PR) where the People’s Choice will be
awarded.
3)The three records we are attempting are…
the most romances sold in one day….the most
romances sold in one minute …and the most
romances sold to one man in one
transaction…(this is the one people are having
the most fun with.)
4) Half of all proceeds are being divided between
two local charities serving women/children in
abusive situations and the local food bank.
With two days to go we’ve got lots of media
attention,our charities are spreading the word
through their lists. Our vendors and our bank, as
well as the local chamber of commerce are helping
spread the word. We have to have ‘witnesses’ for
Guinness, so we chose from the media, the chamber
and the local police department.
We’ll let you know how we do after Saturday.

Keep reading,

Jessica L. Lloyd-Rogers
co-owner/business manager
Colette’s: Good Food + Hungry Minds
3229 Broadway, Suites H & I
North Bend, OR 97459
541-751-1475
fax: 541-751-1475
www.goodfoodhungryminds.com

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A trio of happy booksellers—Gayle Shanks from Changing Hands in Tempe, Arizona, Elisabeth Grant-Gibson from Windows a bookshop in Monroe, Louisiana, and Betsy Burton from The King’s English in Salt Lake City, Utah

Elisabeth Grant-Gibson and Betty Jo Harris of Windows a bookshop in Monroe, Louisiana with Augusten Burroughs

Authors Andre Dubus III and Mary Roach sign galleys of their upcoming books

Back at the end of January, I attended Winter Institute 3, hosted by the American Booksellers Association.  This event has become one of the premiere bookseller education and networking opportunities of the year.

This year we were in Louisville, Kentucky, home of Churchill Downs, which seemed like a perfectly appropriate place for 500 booksellers to gather.  After all, no one knows risk, chance, and the dream of a big pay-off like an independent bookseller.

One of the most interesting sessions I attended was the one on Print on Demand.  I have to admit that I chose that session with great reluctance and a foreboding sense that whether I had any interest in the topic or not, this was something I needed to know more about.  In fact, I learned a great deal and it was among the most valuable panels I heard.

Let me pass along a few statistics that I found—well, stunning, to be honest.  In December 2007, Ingram’s Lightning Source  printed 1.2 million units.  Yes, that’s million.  The average print run was 1.8 copies.  The average turnaround time was 12 hours.  Now, I know that lots of us have gripes about Ingram, particularly when an order doesn’t happen quite the way we think it should.  But come on.  They printed 1.2 million books with an average turnaround of 12 hours.  That’s. . .impossible.  But they did it.

So what does POD have to do with you, as an independent bookseller?  Other than getting cranked over the fact that such books are hard to order, cost too much, and often have a short discount, what meaning is there for you in this whole area of publishing?  That was my question.  That’s why I went to the session.

The applicability to those of us who are booksellers was twofold.  Partly, there were suggestions for bookstores becoming the route for those local people who have a book they want to publish.  In addition, there were possibilities for bookstores to publish or republish books of local interest.  We all know of those books that we could sell over and over again if we could just get them or if somebody would just reprint them.  Well, for those books which are old enough to be in the public domain, there’s an opportunity knocking on our bookshop doors.

The presentation included a case study featuring Kelly Estep, manager of the Bardstown Road branch of Carmichael’s Bookstore right there in Louisville.  The example she discussed was a reprint that her store undertook of a book on the architecture of Louisville, published in the early 20th century.  The project began with one battered copy of the book, which Ingram scanned in, set up, and reproduced.  The photograph reproductions were decent, and a long unavailable treasure is now available again.  Kelly Estep also mentioned that there was an upcoming architecture organization meeting in Louisville this year, and that it would be easy to create a custom cover for a minimal additional fee (about $50 if my notes are right) that would be specific to that conference, in the event she could broker a deal for the organization to purchase copies for all attendees.

The costs for such projects vary depending on whether the “publisher” can provide the book on disc or whether scanning is necessary.  But for a few hundred dollars, bookstores can become publishers and greatly increase their markup on certain books that can be local bestsellers.  Ingram also offers a distribution agreement, which then makes it possible for that local book to be available through Ingram’s entire distribution system, and in these days of the world at your fingertips, that can help sell books as well.  And I kind of like the idea of Ingram having to write a check to us for once.

Print on Demand won’t be for everyone, and there are certainly other sources to go to for this service.  But the argument made at this session was compelling, and I would recommend that anyone this strikes a chord with visit Lightning Source to learn more.

Elisabeth Grant-Gibson
www.Windowsabookshop.com
www.thebookreport.net 

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A trio of happy booksellers—Gayle Shanks from Changing Hands in Tempe, Arizona, Elisabeth Grant-Gibson from Windows a bookshop in Monroe, Louisiana, and Betsy Burton from The King’s English in Salt Lake City, Utah

Elisabeth Grant-Gibson and Betty Jo Harris of Windows a bookshop in Monroe, Louisiana with Augusten Burroughs

Authors Andre Dubus III and Mary Roach sign galleys of their upcoming books

Back at the end of January, I attended Winter Institute 3, hosted by the American Booksellers Association. This event has become one of the premiere bookseller education and networking opportunities of the year.

This year we were in Louisville, Kentucky, home of Churchill Downs, which seemed like a perfectly appropriate place for 500 booksellers to gather. After all, no one knows risk, chance, and the dream of a big pay-off like an independent bookseller.

One of the most interesting sessions I attended was the one on Print on Demand. I have to admit that I chose that session with great reluctance and a foreboding sense that whether I had any interest in the topic or not, this was something I needed to know more about. In fact, I learned a great deal and it was among the most valuable panels I heard.

Let me pass along a few statistics that I found—well, stunning, to be honest. In December 2007, Ingram’s Lightning Source printed 1.2 million units. Yes, that’s million. The average print run was 1.8 copies. The average turnaround time was 12 hours. Now, I know that lots of us have gripes about Ingram, particularly when an order doesn’t happen quite the way we think it should. But come on. They printed 1.2 million books with an average turnaround of 12 hours. That’s. . .impossible. But they did it.

So what does POD have to do with you, as an independent bookseller? Other than getting cranked over the fact that such books are hard to order, cost too much, and often have a short discount, what meaning is there for you in this whole area of publishing? That was my question. That’s why I went to the session.

The applicability to those of us who are booksellers was twofold. Partly, there were suggestions for bookstores becoming the route for those local people who have a book they want to publish. In addition, there were possibilities for bookstores to publish or republish books of local interest. We all know of those books that we could sell over and over again if we could just get them or if somebody would just reprint them. Well, for those books which are old enough to be in the public domain, there’s an opportunity knocking on our bookshop doors.

The presentation included a case study featuring Kelly Estep, manager of the Bardstown Road branch of Carmichael’s Bookstore right there in Louisville. The example she discussed was a reprint that her store undertook of a book on the architecture of Louisville, published in the early 20th century. The project began with one battered copy of the book, which Ingram scanned in, set up, and reproduced. The photograph reproductions were decent, and a long unavailable treasure is now available again. Kelly Estep also mentioned that there was an upcoming architecture organization meeting in Louisville this year, and that it would be easy to create a custom cover for a minimal additional fee (about $50 if my notes are right) that would be specific to that conference, in the event she could broker a deal for the organization to purchase copies for all attendees.

The costs for such projects vary depending on whether the “publisher” can provide the book on disc or whether scanning is necessary. But for a few hundred dollars, bookstores can become publishers and greatly increase their markup on certain books that can be local bestsellers. Ingram also offers a distribution agreement, which then makes it possible for that local book to be available through Ingram’s entire distribution system, and in these days of the world at your fingertips, that can help sell books as well. And I kind of like the idea of Ingram having to write a check to us for once.

Print on Demand won’t be for everyone, and there are certainly other sources to go to for this service. But the argument made at this session was compelling, and I would recommend that anyone this strikes a chord with visit Lightning Source to learn more.

Elisabeth Grant-Gibson
www.Windowsabookshop.com
www.thebookreport.net

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Every once and a while we like to present something other than books to help stoke your imagination. Our video presentation of philosopher Dan Dennett is a great example.

Today we want to introduce you to The World Wide Telescope. It’s a revolutionary technology being given to everyone this spring. Both these videos come from a truly incredible website called Ted.com You should make it a regular stop. (The video is a little dark at the begining, let it continue as it improves quite a bit- also the intro is quite loud)

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A Cautionary(?) Tale: Or, There are no Morals in Book Selling

We all get jumpy at times - especially if you have an open shop and you start to see your monthly rent running like a cab meter in your head every time you close your eyes and it’s been a week of customers few and far between, mostly browsing or idly thumbing through the bargain rack. Funny too, because it looks like there are humans outside, wandering about, some look like they might have a few coins in their pockets jingling about, but the cash register collects dust. The same certainly happens online - we have those weeks where the orders just stop and you’re forced into that familiar bookseller position of concocting stories about why this is happening.
Bad Weather
School vacations
Economy looks sketchy/Stock market is down
ABE has disappeared my books
Amazon disappeared my books
My books are terrible
I knew this day would come, everyone just stopped reading at once.
Once we got a book about dead people - how only the dead can see the dead, etc. and became convinced that we and our customers were dead and that explained all the people walking blithely past the shop - they just couldn’t see us. Sometimes the simple explanations are best.
Anyway, I was having one of these months last year - not a week, a whole month of dreaming of drowning in unsalable books, wondering if I should start selling something sensible like Pokemon cards or malt liquor - and it was compounded by the beginning of the housing slump which meant we weren’t getting calls to clean out houses and our stock was starting to feel thin and a little stale. So, I noticed an interesting auction on Ebay - someone was getting out of the book business and selling 20 some odd thousand books cheap, real cheap. I knew they’d mostly be terrible old bookstore stock, but for the price if they were only horrible, it was going to be a win. A win involving back breaking labor, but a win nonetheless.
So we exchanged a few emails with questions about the books - found out they were from a few shops that went under, that the current owner was getting out of the book business to concentrate on Civil War textiles (note to file: There was probably an alarm that should have gone off in here somewhere, but I present my foolishness unadorned for your benefit) sounded like they’d been cherry picked somewhere along the line, but still a nice bunch of dreck, as they go. We decided to go for it - this despite (or because of) the fact that I’d just had my first child and was saddled by fatherhood, lack of sleep, and the pressure to get this business going, pronto.
Every time something is going to go terribly wrong, there are foreshadowing missteps that not only make you cringe when you look back, but also provide ample time to anticipate your undoing. This time we get a call for delivery only it’s the wrong day and they have them on a truck without a lift. We’ll need to pay $200 and they’ll put them on the right truck - and deliver them next week - no problem, what’s another $200, right? This is why they call if hemorrhaging money not spewing money. So the books arrive on 20 some odd pallets at the storage location we’re using, and we start to go through them. It takes about six seconds to realize we’ve been had - then about ten minutes of working up a scenario where it isn’t as bad as we think and salvageable, don’t worry, only to backslide into the realization that:
1) It’s at least as bad as it seemed as first
2) We are now the proud owner of 20,000 useless books
3) It’s apparently (who makes these laws) illegal to set fire to books at storage facilities or to throw them onto the conveniently located railroad tracks.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. What happened is they didn’t send a mixed bunch of mostly terrible books like we’d hoped, but sent boxes upon boxes of remainders. Bad ones. The sort that looked like they were born as remainders - the book equivalent of straight to video. Around 15,000 of the 20 some odd thousand books were 14 titles - the rest were as advertised - dreck with some high points. So what to do? File a Paypal claim - email the seller (maybe it was a mistake), etc. But it wasn’t a mistake - and Paypal, bless their furry little hearts, doesn’t refund shipping costs. This is funny, of course, because 2/3 of the cost of the books was shipping. What’s not funny is that with no loading dock, and no forklift, shipping the books back is going to cost more than the whole thing cost in the first place. You can rent a forklift but between the cost and the all too vivid image of myself operating it and the ensuing damage to the storage facility, nearby cars, loved ones, pets, it seemed like a bad idea.
I contemplate loading them into a U-Haul and delivering them myself to the seller - perhaps covering them in feces and setting them on fire so that when they went to step on them to put them out…I contemplate other things that my mother wouldn’t approve of. I move on…no, I really don’t, I’m stuck there in bileville for quite some time, imagining divine retributions, natural disasters…bad thoughts.
But this isn’t good for me - not to mention that it’s pointless. I got screwed, the wheels keep turning, so we move to the mitigation of disaster phase.
1) Try to put some boxes on Ebay in bulk - one book is in some mild demand and we can move a few boxes for $10-20 a piece. This is not a good use of time.
2) Find someone to take the rest off our hands - as I’m sure most of you know, this is much more difficult than you’d think. Americans love free stuff - unless it’s books or PBS.
3) At least clear out the storage facility so that the nightmare where I’m stuck behind a pile of remainders and someone forgets I’m there and locks me in overnight, ends.
4) Try to find a moral in this.

1-3 were doable - 4? I’m not sure. While generally an optimist, I must admit that a positive side of this one was becoming hard to identify. Most of the lessons that I could have learned from this - don’t buy bulk lots on Ebay, don’t take on 20,000 books without looking at them - I either had learned already or had proven resistant to. I knew these and had decided after much thought that this was the exception. Ha. Is that a moral? Too early to tell. What complicates matters - and what caused me to revisit my blunder, was that we’ve been going through the last 20 or so boxes of cast offs and ne’er do wells (we whipped through the first 150 or so, but it was as if, despite ourselves, we didn’t want it to end and the last of the boxes festered downstairs, became powerful as we avoided them) and pulled out a scarce signed copy of a Hollywood memoir. Sold it three days later for $800.

If I stop thinking about it now, this will have to pass for a happy ending.

—
Pazzo Books
4268 Washington St.
Roslindale, MA 02131
pazzobooks.com
617-323-2919

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