Bookselling sure has changed

in many diverse ways since opening my first used and rare bookstore in 1976. Time was when opening the door for business and having enough desirable inventory on hand to sell to those passing by was enough to earn a decent living.

Downtown Cleveland was still quite alive throughout the 1980's and most of the 1990's, before retail stopped on a dime a few years prior to the dawning of the 21st century.

Advertising in the telephone book, word of mouth, and good customer service all helped grease the wheels of commerce, and allowed us growth and stability in this time honored trade of bookselling.

On the rare book side of the ledger, only a few hundred of us antiquarians plied our trade in the United States of America, and we knew each other well enough for sizable purchases amongst ourselves to transpire with a handshake or telephone call.

Good luck today in this matter.

The internet has managed to make every last rag picker, and housewife a budding A.S.W. Rosenbach or William Targ, and with no training or apprenticeship of any sort these parasitical neophytes are instant booksellers.

The temerarious nature of these part-time, house bound biblio-peddlers is horrifying to one who has spent the better part of a lifetime paying on a lease and considering bookselling a career, not a profitable hobby.

I go on record as supporting any person who possesses the temerity to start up an open door bookstore in this day and age.

This bricks and mortar approach to bookselling was always an option, and the charm and value of the education an open door shop surely offset any of the rewards garnered by the "specialist" or catalog only booksellers working from their homes.

The postwar Cleveland, Ohio of my youth had a great downtown bookselling community, and the seven to ten odd bookstores that it was comprised of formed enough cache to draw clients from the surrounding area to around the world in their day.

When I was employed by one of these firms, Kay's Bookstore, in 1970 we had open evening hours on Mondays and Thursdays, and customers did visit and shop. Publix Book mart was another fine open shop, and like Kay's had an interesting mixture of used, antiquarian, and new books for sale.

An assortment of used stores existed in lower rent areas of downtown, and a few true world class antiquarian book concerns existed street level as well. Other American cities had similar bookstores, and a great days fun was often spent visiting these retail stores for fun and profit.

A great way to finance a small vacation or trip abroad was to match one's book knowledge against the field of play consisting of a bookseller's open store and its contents, often resulting in the acquisition of a gem or two and a tidy profit.

Needless to say the internet has changed this style of book gathering once and for all.

The internet has spawned a new variety of biblio-sleuth, one who flits about with a battery run hand held device, checking titles and bar coded ISBN numbers to the physical book, waiting for the machine to spit back it's fiscal verdict while the party holding the device possesses no more of an iota of knowledge or care for it's content save the monetary result.

It is due to this prevalent modern book hunting climate that I no longer have much interest in opening the door to this bookstore to such sordid characters, and when I do see these hand held devices in the paws of their holders in a public space I am moved towards nausea of a physical and existential nature.

I encountered an old colleague the other morning and the subject of library discard sales came up in conversation.

She mentioned that she had thought of me when attending one of these affairs recently and she was told by the holder of one of these afore said hand held devices that he was reserving a large trove of books running the length of four six foot tables for this electronic scrutiny while they volumes in question while the books were still stacked below their for-sale tables, unsold and just for this greedy biblio morons scrutiny.

I no longer attend these sales due to the fact that such scavenger beasts would not fare very well in my opinion, and push come to shove, I would find his position of review before purchase unacceptable and act accordingly.

The other reason not to attend such functions as these library sales is that most all of the offerings are pre-picked and purchased by the volunteers who work them. Ditto, the thrift stores, charitable sales, flea markets, and most of the other second hand public sale repositories.

We have a plethora of books to choose from and make available for sale, and prefer selling books to buying books these days.

-- Bookselling time. --

Seeing that the basis of this article concerns commerce and economics, we are proud to offer a copy of one of the most important books of twentieth century intellectual thought by Freidrich Hayek, THE ROAD TO SERFDOM.

Don't take my word concerning this book's importance; both the New York Public Library and The London Times listed this book as one of the 100 most influential books of the twentieth century.

The copy we offer is neatly signed by Hayek, and would prove to be a significant addition to any bibliophile's library.

Hats off to all you brave booksellers who open your doors to the public and have the verve to earn a living the old fashioned way.

The Hayek title we offer seems to mirror to some extent the fiscal climate of the contemporary bookseller. The modern bookseller is serf to the internet and a percentage partner, often only by choice of the internet outfit who steers the sale towards the bookseller.

One of the reasons I choose bookselling instead of another career, was the freedom it offered, the daily stream of knowledge it provides, and the laissez faire nature of commerce that it provided prior to the internet.

Chances are great that due to the rather ugly nature of life in downtown Cleveland, Ohio these days, and the sad and pervasive poverty that afflicts the citizenry we will not be opening our doors to the hand held devices of the modern biblio-putz and putzettes of the world anytime soon.

Old Erie Street Bookstore remains on the sidelines, waiting to get called onto a level playing field in a city that is choking to death from it's excessive bad planning, and inability to hold it's brighter youth or attract any venture oriented entrepreneurs due to the greed and stupidity of the current roster of bad civic actors and greasy politicians that pose about town telling their glorious self serving tales.

Best wishes to John and Kim, all my Family and you the faithful customer who has helped me learn and survive to date in this bookselling trade.

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