The Hairy Who Sideshow

Hiya bookies, a couple of quick photos of this legendary book, which sold about 45 minutes after I posted it online. Still, I thought some people might not know what it looks like, so here's a couple of photos I took.

The book was printed by Galaxie Press in 1967 and was compiled by Chicago artist Tom brand to showcase up and coming art talent of the time. My copy was in prime condition, really nice, but nice or not it was the only copy on the internet. Now if I can just turn up a copy of the sequel.

Book Descriptions Part Two

Good Morning bookies! Truth be told, I'm writing this blog to procrastinate on cutting the lawn. After attending school for the last year and a half, tending to 4 dogs since Christmas, arranging my website and getting it off the ground, buying and transporting the latest collection of books, not to mention sorting them...well, the yard is a mess. And it must be done. But maybe I can avoid it for another twenty minutes.

So, back to the book descriptions. Yesterday's blog looked at how things have been done, now let's take a brief look at the current state of things and how you can avoid the scanner people, amateurs and hobby sellers to ensure you get the book you want.

First, when you use a book search engine such as Bookfinder.com, you have to understand that you're going to be overloaded with junk sellers, and they will usually be the lowest priced. You can usually tell pretty easily who they are. Scanner people, in particular, have a macro that is automatically installed on every book they sell. It typically reads something like this: "May have marks, writing, damage, may be ex-library." When you see that, run from it. See, all of those disclaimers are because these people don't actually bother to look at the book they are selling. No, what they do is scan the bar code, then their computer lifts the book's publishing data from a database, maybe puts up a stock photo, and loads their macro description to the book's entry. In essence, it's automated book selling. Who knows what you are actually getting when you order such a book; certainly the seller doesn't, because they don't care.

The condition of books sold by such people is usually the dreaded 'Good', as we discussed yesterday. Good ain't good, but the people running such businesses either don't know that, or don't care. So remember, unless you really don't care about the condition of a book, or it is so rare that you will take whatever you can get, avoid 'Good' like the plague. And if you see 'Fair'...get immunized, quick!

'Acceptable' is probably the most moronic descriptive term in use today. What on Earth is 'Acceptable' supposed to mean? Great, awful? Acceptable to whom? The origins of this execrable nonsense goes back to the early days of Amazon.com, when people started loading their used books to the site. For some reason known only to the wunderkind programmers at Amazon they thought 'Acceptable' was a good default condition for a book. Who knows why, or what they thought it meant. Now you see it everywhere, and it still has no meaning whatsoever. It's not a book term, it's not even a collectibles term, it's a nothing term. If you see this, use great caution buying from the seller.

And then there are the two newest abominations, 'Standard' and 'Mint'. ' 'Standard'...so just what the hell can that mean, anyway? I have no idea. It sounds more like a transmission, so maybe it's mechanical. Who knows? Was the book immersed in a petroleum-based viscous fluid? Whatever they meant to indicate, what it tells you, the customer, is that the seller has no idea what he or she is doing.

As for 'Mint'...good grief. It's a book, not a coin. Or a breath freshener. 'Mint' has no place in a book description. But what's even more fun is when it say something like, "Good. Mint. Used. Writing in book." That's an actual description, by the way. If translated into literal terms it would mean, "Not good. Unused and perfect. Used. Writing inside the book."

So there you have it. The book sites like ABE and Alibris have allowed the market to become the mess that it is today. Heck, Alibris now uses Monsoon, the software that automatically reprices a book if someone undercuts your price, regardless of edition condition, or anything other factors. It's the same sort of idiocy that caused the stock market crash a while back, when computers created a crisis that did not actually exist. But fortunately you have sellers like those associated with The World Book Market to help you navigate the very muddied waters of 21st century book buying. You don't have to thank us, just buy a book!

Richard Sala's NIGHT DRIVE

Flash- coming soon, photos of the ultra-rare self-published first book by famed alternative artist Richard Sala, Night Drive. I discovered a pristine signed copy of this in the new acquisitions I am going through, and have listed it for $99.95. I'll try to get photos up soon so future fans can see what it looks like.

Book Descriptions Part One- The Way It's Been Done

Good morning bookies! It's a hot morning in Memphis after a very surprising but welcome thunderstorm last night; the grass has grown six inches in six hours, I think. I was up at 3 am letting Sadie out, which is very unusual. Sadie is our Pharaoh Hound-mix rescue with the bum leg who is probably the sweetest dog we have ever owned, but for some reason she really had to go outside at 3 am. For obvious reasons that was the preferred alternative among my choices.

Anyway, I was thinking about the proliferation of book descriptions out there on the web these days and how bizarre some of them are, what they mean, what I think they mean, and what they should mean. I decided a ready reference list for my bookies might be useful in helping them judge exactly what condition a book they are interested in might actually be, since so many 'dealers' currently out there have no idea what they are doing. An example of my own experience is that a few years ago I bought a box full of John Ringo first editions on Ebay, including the very hard to find Gust Front. The books were described as 'Like New.' In fact, however, half of them were ex-library and the others were, at best, Very Good. I was POed. The guy wound up giving me most of my money back and I kept the books, telling him that I considered it fraud, but I really think the guy was some doofus with no idea what he was doing. This list is for you, then, the bookie, the customer who buys books because you love them and expect the 'dealer' to be just that, a professional dealer.

Keep in mind, these are not necessarily the terms I use. The ones I do use I will put in bold red letters. So, without further ado, the list:

Brand new- Straight off a bookstore shelf. Might be in publisher's shrink wrap. Zero flaws. Has not been read, or even leafed through to any great extent. Brand new is not a term I use often, but others seem to use it more than it warrants.

Like new, or as new- Slightly different than Brand new in my mind. Maybe a cover doesn't lay quite flat, or some other very minor difference, but still a bright, unread and pristine copy.

Very Fine - I do not use this term, but to my mind it is synonymous with 'Like New'.

Fine - A traditional term that means a book without flaws, the jacket is bright, the spine is straight, the corners are not bent. It may have been read once, carefully, but the reading did no damage and left no marks. This has traditionally been considered the highest collectible grade, although 'Like New' and 'Brand New' would obviously be at least as nice. Copies in any of the grades Fine or above should command a premium price.

Near Fine - Not long ago, this term was not used by established sellers, and it requires a short explanation as to why not. In the days before the internet, the used book business was a fairly small knot of dedicated people, many of whom knew each other. Book searching was a big part of that business, and within such a relatively small community there was a high degree of mutual understanding. The term Near Fine was not used at all because it was not needed. With the advent of the internet, however, it came into common use.

Near Fine means a nice book that would be Fine if not for one small flaw. In a jacket, perhaps there is some light shelfwear (the rubbing that occurs when a book comes in contact with a hard surface, usually another book on a shelf), maybe there is some light soiling. It's a very attractive copy, just not quite Fine.

Very Good - The book has been read and shows it. There's no terrible flaw, the front free endpaper has not been cut out, for example, or the spine is not broken, but neither does the book resemble a Fine copy. Although still a collectible copy, it would not be mistaken for pristine.

Good - Now we come to what is easily the most abused term on the internet. Let's concentrate first on what Good actually means to booksellers. Simply put, and to borrow the definition of others, "Good ain't Good." A 'Good' copy is one that is heavily used and shows it. The boards might be worn through in places, there could be a severe spine lean, or it could have heavy water damage. Major flaws are present. It is considered a collectible grade only in the case of ultra-rare books. Find a 'Good' condition Shakespeare First Folio while rummaging about in someone's attic and it will have value. Otherwise, it means a pretty well beat up book, although it may be suited for a reading or research copy.

However, the term 'Good' is used quite often by all sorts of hobby sellers these days, and it's how you can tell someone who knows what they are doing from someone who does not. If, by 'Good', the dealer means their copy is a nice one, then you automatically know they are an amateur who has no experience or aptitude for grading books. Maybe their 'Good' copy is actually 'Fine'. Or maybe it's actually 'Good', which ain't good. Either way, when you see this be dubious of the seller's ability to accurately convey the condition of a book. Mostly you see this on Amazon and Ebay, where the people don't know what they are doing.

For example, a few weeks ago I went to a house where the lady had a garage full of books. Boxes and boxes of books. She had bought some inventory from a used bookstore that went out of business and decided she wanted to be a book dealer. The ones in the garage were what was left over after she culled them. I checked them anyway, and found some very nice, very expensive books that she had no idea were valuable, because she had no idea what she was doing. Sure, this benefitted me, and I was glad for it, but it illustrates the larger point that this woman could not even cull her own inventory, so how could she properly describe a book on the internet? More than once I have seen a title that I wanted at a very good price, only to back off when it was described as 'Good.' Either the dealer had no idea what 'Good' meant, in which case they didn't know what they were doing and I could not trust their judgment, or the book really was a 'Good' copy, in which case I didn't want it.

Fair - Time was, you almost never saw a book described as 'Fair', because in bookseller jargon 'Fair' means 'beat to a pulp.' A 'Fair' copy may literally be falling apart. Lately, though, I have seen more of these. All I can tell you is, caveat emptor. A 'Fair' book may still be useful for research, or because of some odd association. I recently sold a 'Fair' copy of a rare Marine Corps title that was worn out by a recruiting station, but those notes and stamps are what made it valuable to the purchaser. So there is a place for such books, but don't be mislead. Know what you are buying. 'Fair' is not a collectible grade.

Poor - If you need me to tell you what this means, there is probably no point in doing so. But for the sake of completeness, a 'Poor' copy is even worse than a 'Fair' copy, completely destroyed and good for little except lining your garden before you put down compost. I can't remember ever listing a 'Poor' copy.

Ex-Library - This one is tough. An ex-library copy is considered not a collectible grade, by definition. And yet, to some degree I disagree. I have seen some XLs that were never read and were awfully nice. If you collected a given author, say, Robert Crais, and you turned up a nice ex-library copy of Lullaby Town, it would really look nice on a shelf until you could find (or afford) a collectible copy. Yet ex-library copies still have the card pocket, or stamps or other things libraries put in books. Yuck. However, one value in an ex-library copy of a collectible book is the jacket. Very often, the jackets are in nice shape, and if you can get those stickers they insist on putting everywhere off without damage, you can then marry that jacket to another copy that might be collectible but without a jacket.

For instance, I have a copy of Jon Jackson's hard-to-find first novel, The Diehard, without a jacket. If I could find an XL with a nice jacket, I could then clean that jacket and marry it to my copy. (Note: whenever this is done it must be noted. That is, if the jacket is a substitute. That would read something like this: 'Fine copy married to Near Fine Jacket.' If the jacket is not the correct state for the book, that, too, must be noted. That might read: 'Fine first state copy married to Near Fine second state jacket.' If you don't understand 'states', we'll get to that in future blog entries.)

Whew! Hope that helps people. In Part 2 we'll examine the knuckleheadedness present in today's bloated internet book buying scene.

Website up and running at last

In response to the thousands upon thousands (what? Me exaggerate?) of inquiries about how the website is coming along, the answer is: it's up and running. You can actually load up your shopping cart with under-priced goodies, and I can now actually process your credit card transaction. I know what you're thinking, 'wow, Bill is on the cutting edge, isn't he?' And, of course, the answer is 'yes!' I've got all the latest tech stuff down pat. I'm even thinking about getting a flatbed scanner, how's that for cutting edge?

Billthebookguy.com

But the truth is that getting a website together without spending mega-dollars isn't easy. I still can't edit the thing myself (not that I could even if I could) but supposedly that day is coming soon. There's all sorts of changes I want to make. However, at this point it at least functions as a fully operational ecommerce site. And why's that important? Because this removes the middleman from between me and my customer. As time has gone on, ABE, Alibris, Amazon, etc., have all made it harder and harder for the end user, you, to communicate directly with the seller, me. They don't want us to know about each other, because if we deal directly with each other, they don't get a cut of the transaction.

The eventual business model they would like to see is for me to go out and find all kinds of products to sell, using my money to buy them, and then me send them (at my expense) to their warehouse, where they will then sell them and ship them and send me a cut. In other words, have me do all the work while they collect much of the money. Think it won't happen? It already is, in the form of Fulfillment by Amazon. And if you enter that world, you enter the surreal realm of books described as 'Good', or 'Acceptable' or, God forbid, 'Standard.' In bookseller parlance, 'Good' is the lowest collectible grade and means 'not so good.' If books described this way really are 'Good', then that means they are in bad shape. But if the seller actually means they are in a better condition, then by using the wrong term you know they are a hobby seller and don't actually know anything about books. In which case, why do you trust them to describe one accurately?

'Standard' means...well, I have no idea what it means. As far as I know 'Standard' is a type of transmission and has nothing to do with a book. What really is amusing, though, is the term 'Acceptable'. To whom, exactly, is the book 'Acceptable'? Who makes this judgment? The truth is, 'Acceptable' has no more meaning than 'Standard', but it's the value that Amazon automatically applies to many book conditions, regardless of what the seller says. Why? Because some programmer with no knowledge of books whatsoever made that decision, and Amazon is too big to care whether it's accurate or not.

Which brings us back to my website, and others like it. The World Book Market is a consortium of booksellers from around the world who feel that properly described books at fair prices will always have a place in the world. We want knowledgeable customers to have a place to buy books where they may be confident that the seller knows what he or she is doing, and if there is a problem, then it will be handled promptly. Membership is invitation only.

Yeah, I know. How did I get in? All I can tell you is that you can fool some of the people, some of the time.

Scanner People pods?

Morning bookies. Why does hot coffee taste so good on a blazing hot day when you're sitting in the A/C watching the grass turn brown? After all, you're only a power outage away from shriveling up yourself.

In thinking about my recent screed about the scanner people, it did occur to me just how useful such a tool could be for someone who actually knows their business already. Like me. It could help cut down on all of those tempting books I buy that look so wonderful, but are selling for less than a dollar on the net. You know the ones, where the first 50 entries for sale all say something like, "May or may not have tool marks. May or may not be ex-library. May or may not have food stains. Good condition, mint, acceptable, a great copy, might be falling apart." These are canned descriptions that scanner people and mega-listers put on every single book in their inventory, because they can't be bothered to inspect them. The computer prices them, then their software monitors the internet, and if another copy comes available cheaper their machines automatically undercut the new price. But, since the new guy probably has the same software, they respond by cutting their price and so on, until the bottom has been reached and there is a glut of crappy copies all cluttering up the website so that the better copies are all on page 2 of the search results, all sold by a bunch of people who could just as easily be selling tires or Hummel figurines.

Some business, huh?

But with a scanner, maybe I could avoid buying those books in the first place. I could use the scanner to avoid the scanner people. I like that concept, using their own technology against them. So we'll see, I might think about that one, and if I do get one I'll let you know. But I recognize that it could also be dangerous, a slippery slope into bookseller hell.

Some Days You Get the Bear- Part 2

A sweltering good morning to you, bookies! In response to the thousands of requests I get for a peek inside the life of a bookseller, I thought I would elaborate on yesterday's scouting trip. I don't do a lot of book-scouting these days, mostly because I'll be going through the collection I bought back in April for most of the summer. But yesterday I made an exception and hit two estate sales, one of which was held by a company I had sworn never to buy from again because they are too expensive. Yeah, well...

At the first one I bought a bunch of books on North American Indians. It happened this way. Before the sale I asked a lady who worked there if there were really thousands of books, as advertised. She went inside to check and said they didn't know, but told me there were books in the den downstairs and also some Indian books upstairs. She said this to everybody, but apparently I was the only one listening. Anyway, when the sale opened most of the book dealers and collectors were milling about the fairly modest quantity downstairs, and when nobody was looking I ducked upstairs where the Indian books were in a separate bookcase. By and large such books are not worth much on the secondary market, unless they deal with very specific topics. Some of these did, such as Bob Blankenship's self-published two volume history of the Cherokee titled Cherokee Roots. I priced the set at $13.95. I would tell you that this puts it lower than any other set on the market right now, but you already knew that, because that's what I do. I found some other nice general stock items on Indians and Cherokee, but the other nice find upstairs is a lovely copy of William G. McLoughlin's The Cherokee Ghost Dance, first edition hardback. I was excited because this is a fairly scarce book to find in such nice shape. I put $23.95 on this one, which is probably too cheap, but what the heck. If you feel guilty buying it for too little you can leave me a tip.


At the same sale I found a beautiful copy of Kathy Moses' reference book for art collectors published by Schiffer and titled Outsider Art of the South. Once again it's a beautiful copy, only this one is signed and inscribed by the author. I put $29.95 on it, and at that price it won't last long. Schiffer is known for making elegant and expensive books that are built to last a lifetime and this one is no different.

I almost did not attend the second sale. The morning was in the low 90's by 9:20 or so when I left the first one, I was hungry and really needed another cup of coffee. But at the last moment I decided to drive the ten miles or so and see what was up. This sale was also in a nice area of Memphis and lemme tell you, the place was mobbed. The online ad had shown some Nazi memorabilia (see yesterday's blog entry for details) and I had thought there could be some WW2 books there. And there were. But there were other books, too. I cleaned up.

First, I wound up keeping 20 or so of what I bought for myself. (I'm a collector too, you know.) Among these was Nathaniel Chears Hughes' The Battle For Belmont: Grant Strikes South, first edition hardback, signed and inscribed by the author, as well as a beautiful signed, inscribed copy of Harold Leinbaugh's The Men of Company K. Winston Grooms' Shrouds of Glory, From Atlanta to Nashville, The Last Great Campaign of the Civil War, first edition with signed bookplate tipped in. But the big prize was a nice copy of Donald Brownlow's Panzer Baron: The Military Exploits of General Hasso von Manteuffel, hardback in a nice jacket. There was even a reprint copy of Conquer: The Story of the Ninth Army. Gads, what riches. And that's just the stuff I kept.

The books up for sale are a virtually pristine copy of Kemmons Wilson's Half Luck and Half Brains, first edition, signed and inscribed by Wilson. I put $29.95 on that and frankly even I think that is too low. A Fine signed first edition hardback of Pat Summit's Reach For the Summit, $37.95. And a really cool privately printed memoir from Charles C. Jacobs, Jr., signed hardback in gorgeous blue cloth with gold lettering, titled Memoirs of a Country Lawyer. The beloved Mr. Jacobs died in, I think, 2009, aged 90. I almost kept this one, because Mr. Jacobs was a Marine artillery officer in such battles as Saipan and Iwo Jima. I put $37.95 on the book, which seems too low to me, but if it doesn't sell I may wind up keeping it.

It was a fun day alright, but don't get the idea that's how it usually happens. It isn't. My pile of common stuff that I won't list is pretty deep and wide. I am wrong frequently. However, the good news is that I'll be having a huge garage sale soon and all of those beautiful books will be priced to go quickly, probably a buck a piece. So keep your eyes open and, in my meantime, check out my website if you haven't lately. http://www.billthebookguy.com

ADDENDUM: So, I went back to the second sale from Saturday this morning, Sunday, for half price day. The stuff that was left was great, really great. A second copy of Charlie Jacob's memoirs, which solves the problem of me wanting to keep the first copy. His mother or grandmother's ultra-rare work The Master of Doro Plantation, of which not one copy is available anywhere on the internet, several more rare and expensive WW2 books. One was a very rare copy of We Were the Line, A History of Company G, 335th Infantry, 84th Infantry Division by Clifford H. Matson, Jr. & Elliott K. Stein. There are no copies of this book on the net either, but since I'm keeping it for my own collection I'll value it at $50 for replacement purposes, although I don't know if that's accurate. Last, but surely not least, a book printed in Berlin in 1940 describing the composition of a German infantry division. That's right, printed in 1940 Berlin, capital of the Third Reich. Cool stuff.

The ride of the scanner people

Hiya bookies! Summer might not be here yet, but summer is here, if you know what I mean. It's hot outside! Ain't it grand?

Several months ago I bought a collection consisting of at least 3,000 books, at a guess. So, naturally, I woke up this morning and decided that what I needed was...more books! So I went to an estate sale, got there about 45 minutes early and was surprised to be 2nd in line. They advertised 1,000's of books, which in reality was more like 300 or so, but I doubted the whole 1,000's thing anyway. While in line I chatted with a new bookseller I had never met before, a nice guy who had already met some of the other sellers. The time passed fairly quickly, although by opening time of 9 am it was getting really hot out there.

So, anyway, as we're all mulling about looking at books, I realized the new guy was one of the Scanner People. Regular readers know how I feel about them; I don't get it. Why sell books, if you aren't going to bother learning about them? Why not sell some other widget, if all you're going to do is let a bar-code scanner tell you which books are worth money and which ones aren't? Heck, if a book doesn't have a bar-code, you're clueless, and most books don't have bar-codes. Like I said, I don't get it.

I bought a box of books at that first sale and went to a second, although I debated this because I was getting hungry. But I had seen some Nazi memorabilia in the photos advertising the second sale, and some books, and I figured that a guy who collected Nazi stuff was into WW2 books, so I went. As it turns out, the guy didn't collect the Nazi stuff, he took it off the battlefield when he was in Europe with the 84th Infantry Division. And, just as I had suspected, he had some great books. I bought two boxes full, with some stuff genuinely rare, and other stuff signed by some cool people. When I post them you'll see some neat new stuff in my history categories.

And not one of them had a bar-code. I've often used the example of the scanner person who scanned a copy of Cold Mountain and walked on, since the book went through about a million printings and there are thousands of them out them you can pick up for nothing. Why bother looking at it? Except, I did. And it was a rare first edition. Pristine, in fact, unread. And signed. I let it go for $100, which is cheap. But, as my website says, that's what I do. And the scanner person? He didn't have a clue what he missed. Just as he would have walked right by all of those great books at the second sale today.

What a shame.

For him, not for me. For my part, I hope he keeps using his scanner and never learns a damned thing about books. He was a nice guy and he probably makes good money doing it his way. More power to him.

I guess.