Two Generations in the Book Trade - Looking back with the dealer’s daughter
- By Susan Netzorg Halas
Three generations Netzorg and Halas, David & Jock, Pete, Rebecca, and Susan, circa 1980.
Part I – Eighty Years and Counting
On April 1, 2011, perhaps just as you are clicking on this file, I will celebrate my 32nd year as antiquarian dealer based on Maui. It was not my original goal to pursue this vocation, but I ended up doing what I knew best and following my parents into the trade.
My enterprise never reached the scale or stature of theirs. But looking back on their fifty years of running the Cellar Book Shop (ABAA) late of Detroit, Michigan together and my more than thirty years running Prints Pacific, Ltd. in Wailuku, Hawaii I find that some things haven’t changed at all, while other things have changed a great deal and the rate of change is accelerating all the time.
A lot of what I know I learned I learned from my parents.
Before there was Google there was my father Morton J. (Jock) Netzorg, the one-man-one-brain-all-purpose-reference-source. You want Expert – We got Expert.
Systems? Meet my mother Petra F. (Pete) Netzorg. At its height my parents’ shop had four workers but my mother ran it with the zeal and focus of a huge conglomerate. She was German, she had her standards. God help the slacker who didn’t perform exactly to her specs.
As for my brother David and I, born 1943 and 1946 respectively, we were along for the ride. The book business was not optional and we learned it literally from the bottom up.
They called it the Cellar because it started in the basement, but in later years it was on the second story over a Black beauty salon in a rapidly declining Detroit neighborhood. Most of her business was by phone and catalog or via ads and lists in the AB (Antiquarian Bookman) a weekly trade publication read with semi-religious fervor by booksellers. My mom's many and faithful clients started with her as lowly graduate students and ended as Professors Emeritus or Director of Library Services. She discouraged visitors, especially visitors without an appointment. She didn’t like “interruptions” which was what she considered most live arrivals to be.
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Two Generations in the Book Trade - Looking back with the dealer’s daughter
- By Susan Netzorg Halas
Jock Netzorg at his desk in the basement.
Jock & Pete Netzorg started in 1946
Jock and Pete opened their shop in 1946, moved it frequently and grew it to become a leading American specialist in books about the Philippines and South East Asia. My mom recalled when they put out their first catalog on the Philippines they had five times more orders than they could fill. When the Viet Nam War came along there was a big increase in demand for books on South East Asia.
By the time they had been in business for 25 years they had clients in 70 countries, a mailing list of 2,000 people who demanded their wares, and corresponded in English, French, German, Portuguese and assorted Filipino dialects.
Both of my parents worked at being “dealers” in the very best sense of the word, and neither of them had an easy time adjusting to life in 20th century America. From the very beginning they were both a long way from home.
My mother was a teen age Jewish refugee when she arrived in the US. My dad was on the last leg of an extended trip from his home town Manila when the war caught him in Lincoln, Nebraska where he met and married my mother. She was 18, he was 30. Throughout their married and business life they split the work.
He Bought and She Sold
Jock bought and Pete sold. He cataloged, wrote the blurbs and set the prices; she ran the staff, kept track of the paperwork, issued the catalogs, schmoozed the librarians and kept the want lists of hundreds, even thousands of clients in her head.
What they could not or did not remember was all recorded in my father's minute handwriting on little 3x5” slips of paper. There was a “slip” for each and every book that passed through their hands and a date and notation for each and every time it made its way to and from our shelves.
On the book side they were each perfectionists in different ways. On the personal side our house, no matter where we lived, but especially in Detroit, was an open door to every Filipino scholar and Asian librarian who could find the way to Six Mile Road.
My parent’s lives had many dimensions: they traveled, exhibited, lectured, published, imported and exported. They sponsored and introduced this one to that one. They got and sent mail by the ton. Our mailmen hated climbing the steps.
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Two Generations in the Book Trade - Looking back with the dealer’s daughter
- By Susan Netzorg Halas
Pete at an Asia studies meeting.
Enter Susan – the dealer’s daughter
I was the original Daddy’s girl, so I naturally fell in love with the buy side at an early age. I went along with him on many of his foraging expeditions which were more or less continuous until the day he died. We were never happier than crawling around the lowest dustiest shelves of some of the grimiest warehouse basements of the most decayed Goodwill sites within a hundred mile radius of Detroit. Neither one of us ever met a box of old paper that didn’t contain a priceless (or soon-to-be-priceless) treasure.
My preference for my dad’s side of the business did not deter my mother from insisting I learn how to type … the better to type her invoices, her mimeograph stencils…her Cellar Arrivals, which was a by-subscription list to paying clients giving an early heads up as to what was “current and choice” on their shelves.
She also was of the firm opinion that children should learn how to pack books, even if that meant they spent long hours in a drafty basement working on a couple of boards slung across a washtub in a place that smelled strongly of garlic because the early packing rooms co-existed side by side with shelves of her home made pickles.
Sayonara Detroit, Aloha Berkeley
The truth was I couldn’t wait to get out of Detroit. I came of age in the 1960s and by the time I was 25 I’d held a whole series of classic training jobs. In college I worked at the Archives of American Art. Later I was a curator at the Herron Museum in Indianapolis.
My favorite beginner job was at the Rare Books Room at the University of California in Berkeley where our stacks were in common with the Bancroft Library. My only duty there was to watch the readers and make sure they did not bring a pen into the room. The rest of the time was mine with full access to two brilliant collections.
We had everything and often in manuscript. I read endlessly. In addition to ‘rare’ books we had Western Americana and Fine Press books and other smaller unique collections. We were also the repository for all the X-rated material which was kept in our stacks for “safety” from prying young eyes. In the farthest back corner was an antique magician’s trunk filled with tricks and apparatus.
I have never again been near anything nearly that fine. Spending time with the really good things gave me an enduring frame of reference and helped me measure, understand and value some of the interesting but lesser goods that later came my way.
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Two Generations in the Book Trade - Looking back with the dealer’s daughter
- By Susan Netzorg Halas
Susan and Pete in Hawaii, circa 1985.
Being a Bookseller was not Plan A
I did not intend to become an antiquarian dealer. I intended to be a writer or an artist (my degree was in Graphic Arts), or even the wife of a rich man who could support my increasingly upscale taste in books, prints, maps, photos and ephemera.
In the early 80s I was for a time a very small publisher with big ambitions. To put it charitably I was ahead of my time, to put it truthfully I was not a success. To put a good face on it - it was Hawaii; it was warm, small and friendly. How far can you fall if you’re already on the ground?
By the end of the 80s I was indeed in the book business and earning a good part of my living from it. Early on I had some good - even some spectacular - sales using the tried and true method – a post card with a quote and a specialty catalog to a select list. I never had a shop. I always sold by mail and phone and like my parents strictly by appointment.
Back in those days I sent a copy of one of my Prints Pacific catalogs to my father. He sent it back by return mail filled with marginal notes pointing out all the errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation. He added his own comments in his small neat handwriting. Obviously there was (and still is) room for improvement.
I stuck to it and I did get better, but never attained their level of expertise. Came the late 1990s and the business changed dramatically with the advent of the internet. I bought a slow clunky computer with a dial up modem. My brother told me about Interloc and later ABE. He pointed me toward the Biblist and I found eBay on my own. The new era was at hand.
Enter the internet
The first few years on the internet were exciting. The internet made bookselling an entirely different occupation. One day we were a small cozy little group of dealers who knew and had always known each other. The next day it seemed as if at least 100,000 new vendors had joined the fold. Most of them knew very little about books. Almost overnight book selling transformed from an honorable but esoteric occupation, to a cutting edge tech-driven way to make money for zillions of newcomers.
Sites like Amazon, ABE, Alibris, eBay all were attractive to a mass audience. These venues expanded exponentially and with that expansion came the deluge both of physical things – the books – and not far behind came a host of new ways to present what had formerly been printed content such as Google books-on-line, the eBook, Kindle, or Nook, which some say will soon replace the traditional book entirely.
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Two Generations in the Book Trade - Looking back with the dealer’s daughter
- By Susan Netzorg Halas
The Netzorg, Lopez & Hallam families c. 1950. Netzorgs top left, Susan on Ambassador Lopez' shoulder
There was also a huge shift in who ran the show. Specialty and antiquarian bookselling in the old days was 100 percent controlled by booksellers. But by the first decade of the 21st century the corporate techies were driving the bus. They became middlemen, controlling the access to the market, setting ever more complex and hostile rules for what could and could not be sold, how it was to be shipped and in what manner and time frame the sellers would be paid (if ever). Each year they took ever bigger cuts as commissions or fees.
The advent of huge databases soon revealed that many things that once were considered scarce were actually readily and cheaply available. In the new scheme of things many books lost their value. Prices slid sharply for most post- ISBN titles and are still going down.
As for actual bricks and mortar book stores, real retail operations with real books and actual employees, large chain or small independents alike withered and closed.
My dad died in 1996, a few years later my mom closed the shop. She sold the inventory to a specialty dealer in Oregon and my dad’s collection of Filipinana to a library in Manila. She lived well and continued to use the Cellar Book Shop name and reputation until her death in 2008.
The Netzorgs kept prodigious records. Not just slips, but correspondence, catalogs, and every other kind of imaginable documentation were all neatly typed and she saved and filed onion skin carbons. Their papers are now at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in the special collections department. I’m not certain if they are accessible to the public, but they are definitely there.
In 1971 my mother wrote a long and detailed article for the AB (Antiquarian Bookman) about the Cellar Book Shop - then 25 years old. In it she told about its philosophy, clientele and history. If you’d like to receive a pdf copy of this article email me and I’ll send it along. (halas@hawaii.rr.com).
I’ve distilled some of the “old” book wisdom that I learned from my parents in Part II of this article which follows.
The New Book Wisdom
The “new” book wisdom changes every half hour with the whims and fancies of the new tech masters. Whatever is coming next is being cooked up by people who don’t actually know or care very much about books, only about their percentage of the deal.
That is where we as book sellers find ourselves today. As a group we are collectively wondering when or if the tide will turn, or which little new gizmo will make our venerable business permanently obsolete.
Where does it go from here? I’m not sure I’m the right person to provide that insight. I’m living on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean where gas is $4.37 cents a gallon and the cost of shipping big things anywhere is going up every day. I’m having a better year this year than last year, and that in part comes from what I’ve learned by talking with many of you, the AE readers, and learning about your interests, experiences and concerns.
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Two Generations in the Book Trade - Looking back with the dealer’s daughter
- By Susan Netzorg Halas
An early Cellar Book Shop catalogue.
Small is Beautiful
My own goal is to have few or no books within the foreseeable future, and certainly to have no more big books by the end of this year.
Thinking of my own current ambitions I am reminded of the story of the two brothers, both well known West Coast dealers, who not long ago successfully closed their business. In a time when many traditional dealers were going broke they came away as rich men.
How did they do it?
For starters they were wise enough to own a commercial building in a desirable urban location and to sell it at the top of the market. Over the years they amassed a huge reference collection and found an eager home for it at a major American university. They owned good books and even at going-out-of-business prices they sold well. They closed up shop and totaled the profits.
But the story doesn’t end there. Within a very short time both brothers were back in the book business.
Today Brother #1 one owns no inventory at all. He was lured back by his old clients. He is now an ‘advisor’ who buys and sells and negotiates for others. In this capacity he’s busier than he wants to be. He is doing as well or better now as a solo act with no books, no shop and no workers than he did as the well heeled partner of a large and famous store.
Brother #2 waited a little while and then he also went back into the book business. He took a seven figure number from his share of the profits and bought about 200 books. They fit onto the shelves of one side of a small room that is now his office. I talked to him last year when he too was doing even better than before.
Neither man has a web site, puts out a catalog, employs a staff or complains about Amazon. Both men started with nothing, learned as they went, knew when the game changed and think small is beautiful. And so do I.
Susan Netzorg Halas can be reached at halas@hawaii.rr.com
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Two Generations in the Book Trade - Looking back with the dealer’s daughter
- By Susan Netzorg Halas
Netzorg bookplate with a very young Susan.
Part II What Me Worry? Tips from the Netzorg Family
Nu? What have I learned? Why am I still doing this? Can you make money in this business? Did anything from 1946 carry over to 2011?
Funny you should ask, I was wondering the same thing. What follows is some personal advice about selling books – most of it was handed down to me by my folks and some of it I picked up on my own. None of it has anything to do with computers.
To those of you without 80 years in the trade under your belt think of it as ancient bookish lore that served us well in the past. Even now, you’d be surprised how much of it still holds true.
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1. What you pay for something has nothing to do with what it is worth.
Zero, Nada, Zip! THIS IS THE MAIN RULE. Engrave it on your brain.
In the past a lot of people have expressed indignation that someone would ask top dollar for merchandise acquired for pennies, rescued from the free box or saved from the dumpster. I had a talk with one collector recently that went like this: How dare some sneaky dealer buy a lot at auction and then turn around and a short time later sell it for three or ten or a hundred times what it cost? The very thought makes him cringe. The nerve of some people!! But my dad's first rule was there is absolutely no relationship between the buying price and the selling price. Once it's yours, YOU assign the value. The more you know the more you see the more you touch the more likely it is you'll find bargains.
2. DON’T FALL IN LOVE WITH THE MERCHANDISE
Since booksellers as a group are often just book buyers who bought too many books it’s easy to see how many of us came to this business.
So the second most important thing to learn is that there are books you have because you like them and they are yours, and all the rest is inventory. The function of inventory is to go out the door and preferably rapidly and at a profit. Remember this and don’t confuse one with the other and you will prosper.
3. TOUCH IT
It's easy to fool your eyes, but it's hard to fool your fingers. In the centuries of printing, papermaking and binding there have been many attractive reproductions and facsimiles. It's hard to spot them visually, but you can almost always tell by touch. The difference between a wood pulp and a rag paper is obvious to your fingers, same with letterpress vs. offset. So feel it, touch it, smell it -- all these are better indicators of how old or genuine something is than appearance.
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Two Generations in the Book Trade - Looking back with the dealer’s daughter
- By Susan Netzorg Halas
Susan learned to appreciate books at an early age.
4. If it was considered beautiful once, it will be considered beautiful again.
This means taste goes in cycles. For the longest time you couldn't give away Elbert Hubbard's Roycroft publications. His entire output bound in limp leather was considered the drek of all drek. Now it’s all the rage. So when you find something odd but out style don’t ask: Is it coming back? Of course it’s coming back, the real question is: When and do I have the time and space to wait?
5. Invest in the 19th century America
My dad thought the 19th century was the great undervalued under-rated era.
So much happened, so much was invented, discovered and explored especially
by Americans from 1800-1899 that it would be impossible to list it all.
But during the 20th century most of the snootier dealers thought the 19th century, especially the late 19th century, was worthless. True, there is an awful lot of junk there, but there is also some spectacular and wonderful stuff and much of this period is still comparatively cheap.
6. If it’s NON FICTION – condition doesn't count
What counts is: Is it all there or mostly all there?
The wisdom of Jock Netzorg goes counter to the prevailing wisdom which says condition is all, and God forbid there should even be the slightest nick to the dust jacket or chip off the spine.
My dad was an expert in buying good books in bad condition, sometimes
falling apart, sometimes without covers, sometimes scribbled or stained or wormed. I assure you in the fullness of time those defects became a lot less important -- especially if the books had wonderful maps or plates or pioneering science, anthropology, or exploration, all highlights of the late 19th century.
Netzorg says: If it’s the real deal, if there aren’t a lot of other ones around, then your ratty copy is better than no copy at all and don’t let anyone else tell you differently. Your job is to describe it well, extol its virtues and price it accordingly.
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Two Generations in the Book Trade - Looking back with the dealer’s daughter
- By Susan Netzorg Halas
An early catalogue for Susan Halas' Prints Pacific.
7. Tell the story
I visit lots of sites and I see many things offered for sale. The standard descriptions tell me everything about a book except the reasons WHY I would want to own it.
To be a seller you’ve got to tell the story, to tell it economically, to tell it in a way that creates desire and to tell it so that your copy, no matter how banged up, cocked and wobbly stands out from the others.
You are not the buyer, you are the SELLER and it’s the seller’s task to tell the story, and for goodness sake if you think it’s a good book make it a good story.
8. When to break
My dad wasn't big on breaking bound volumes but he did think there was a difference between ripping the plates out of a book or magazine and taking it apart carefully and saving it in sections so it could be offered to a wide variety people with a variety of tastes and interests.
So while you might not yearn for bound volumes of Appletons or Harpers or similar periodicals you might very well want that one page with the ad for Darwin's Origin of Species, or the color plates by Maxfield Parrish, or the first appearances of those short stories by Joseph Conrad.
Before you wring your hands over the evil book breakers just remember
that most of the older books really started life unbound – text and plates were printed on separate presses by different methods and only came together at the binders.
I wouldn't advise taking everything apart, there are definitely some instances you are doing yourself, the book and the collecting public a favor by taking it carefully apart. Please notice the word CAREFULLY.
9. EPHEMERA holds its value better than books
Some of you aren't sure what ephemera is or why it’s going up in value while books are going down.
This is the broad category that covers odd bits of paper that were once common and are now often hard to find. Ephemera can be ads, posters, broadsides, handbills, labels, photos, documents, catalogs or any other similar things. Ephemera is a counterpoint to books, it highlights their meaning and puts the work in context. A book collection that includes ephemera is 99 times out of a 100 more valuable than a collection of just books alone.
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Two Generations in the Book Trade - Looking back with the dealer’s daughter
- By Susan Netzorg Halas
Prints Pacific Today.
10. Know your printing processes, inks and papers.
It is impossible to know everything there is to know about books, prints, maps, photos, and ephemera, but you can easily get a pretty solid grip on the different printing processes used in the last 600 years from the woodblock through metal, stone, photo offset to the present digital print-on-demand.
The better you understand the look and FEEL of each of these techniques the
better you will be able to judge the age of and authenticity of the many things that will pass through your hands.
11. When to cut the price and when to raise the price.
My parents were known to lower the price when the person on the other end of the transaction really wanted/needed and would provide a good home for the book(s) in question. They would also sometimes lower the price when people bought many volumes as a lot, or when the book(s) in question had major defects. They offered discounts to the trade and they often paid a referral fee if a customer or colleague helped them make a sale.
They rarely cut the price if things didn't sell. That's because my dad was pretty good at spotting value. His talent was to know ahead of time what was coming next, so often he bought early, well and ahead of a trend. He assumed that eventually that value would find a market and most of the time he was right.
They also didn't lower the price for people who haggled too much. A little bit of haggling is good; it shows interest, spirit and it’s part of the Gestalt of the occupation. A lot of haggling is a turn off. When people haggle too much it’s time to walk away.
Both my mother and father believed that sometimes things were overlooked because they were priced too low. They would talk it over and then raise the price, sometimes steeply, and more often than not those books went out the door.
12. Move it to sell it
Having a slow week? Sales down? Start rearranging your shelves. Start moving your piles. Take what was on the bottom and put it on the top. Take what was in the front and put it in the back.
You might have 70,000 books or 700 but the truth is you can only give your real attention to a few at a time.
If your sales are slow it’s almost always a sign that you have let your stock sit in one place too long. Books respond to being touched, opened and moved.
If you’re an interior decorator and you want a shelf of matched red leather bindings then you can leave your books in one place forever. If you’re a bookseller and you want to make a living, keep moving them around. The more you physically move them the better they will sell.
Reach Susan Netzorg Halas at halas@hawaii.rr.com
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