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<b>Bonhams:</b> MANDELSHTAM, OSIP. 1891-1938. Autograph Manuscript, 2 pp, [Petersburg,] January 1913, entitled

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Susan Heller: Book Dealer at the Crossroads - By Bruce McKinney Publisher's own set of Works of Robert Burns By Bruce McKinney Three years ago I started a conversation and friendship with Susan Heller of Cleveland, Ohio. She was one of the early members of AE and bit by bit, in telephone conversations began to speak of her interest to retire. I was aware of others at the same stage and in time made a trip to Ohio to see three dealers at, approaching or just past this threshold. We met in May 2006. For forty years she'd been Susan Heller of Pages for Sages and for the past five years alone. Her husband, Haskell, died in 2002. Susan didn't set out to be a book dealer. She was going to be a school teacher but personal interest and circumstances intervened and a book dealer is what she became. It was a career she shared with her husband who was also an M.D; she the public person, he the inside man. It made for a durable partnership that unearthed and sold many important books and produced two children who today are the brightest stars in her night sky. These were also the most tumultuous decades in the history of bookselling although it didn't start out that way. Susan had an eye for quality and bought books carefully. She or Haskell wrote descriptions and she then mailed catalogues to her client list. If material didn't immediately sell, so be it. Such books were a good investment. Over the decades she accumulated fine material across the entire horizon of book collecting, filling the basement, the attic and the family room to overflowing. She loved to buy good books and in the early years selling them was easy. The advent of the internet in the 1990s changed everything. At first online access was simply an insider's way to locate material and seemed a blessing. But descriptions of books for sale quickly surged onto the online sites at a pace far outstripping buyer interest and what began as a blessing became a curse. Even memory, the bookseller's most reliable tool, now became the unseen enemy, relentlessly reminding sellers of what a book had brought. Surely mine will bring this price in time, the down turn an aberration, not a trend. And so prices were held higher than the market justified and sales declined. For this book market was different; much larger and impersonal. Anyone could post and some days it seemed like everyone was. It was less and less a relationship business; more and more simply about the copy and the price: a business of artists that became a business of accountants. In this now the third year since Susan first discussed retirement she is going to sell her home and move into a community of the retired and elderly where she can enjoy some peace and potentially much friendship, be less concerned with daily chores and more focused on fun. Not that she'll slow down that much. She'll remain busy but without the pressures and obligations. She has decided its time.
Susan Heller: Book Dealer at the Crossroads - By Bruce McKinney Historias De Las Indias De Nueva Espana... Driving this decision is a place just four miles away where friends she has known all her adult life live. Her home is simply too much house and too much responsibility, the chores that twenty years ago were shared now hers alone. To move she needs to sell her inventory of almost 15,000 items. From a set price and a sale date unknown the pendulum swings and it now becomes on a date certain at a price unknown. In the book business it is almost always this way. It's a great affair but a treacherous divorce. It's why so many book dealers and book collectors die with their books on the shelves. The triage that follows is more easily done by they who feel no loss. Over the past several years she has continued to post and to sell online but, as it is for most book sellers, it's a slow process. She laughingly estimates needing a hundred years to clear the shelves, an indirect way of saying the next stage, forced sales, is at hand. More than a year ago, New York dealer John Dolan made a substantial purchase. Recently he described Susan as a tough negotiator and, "at that time not ready to seriously discount to move the material." Now Susan has sent a few of her more prized items to Aspire Auctions of Cleveland to be auctioned electronically over 8 days: May 11th to 18th. They are accessible via a link at the end of this article. On Aspire's site they are accessible from the 4th. It's a test and the market will soon render a preliminary verdict. She'll then send more material to the block or dispose of it privately. So Susan is one of the brave ones. We have spoken about this many times. Her children lead busy lives and her gift to them is to leave a clean slate, all material converted back to cash, every hope, every dream converted back into dollars and cents. Whatever it will be it will be. She will handle it. She knows that material she deeply values will now, in the arcane mix of auction results, yield bargains to buyers. So be it. It will also yield freedom to move and freedom for her family from clearing the material later. Now, looking to that moment in the not-so-distant-future when the last book is boxed and mailed, Susan grows anxious to move on. What three years ago was a general desire to retire is now the next step and it's one she doesn't want to delay. In the gentle calculus of money versus time, time should always win. Too soon, the money will matter not at all. A list of the material posted with Aspire is found here.
Susan Heller: Book Dealer at the Crossroads - By Bruce McKinney none

Susan Heller: Book Dealer at the Crossroads

- By Bruce McKinney

Publisher's own set of Works of Robert Burns

By Bruce McKinney

Three years ago I started a conversation and friendship with Susan Heller of Cleveland, Ohio. She was one of the early members of AE and bit by bit, in telephone conversations began to speak of her interest to retire. I was aware of others at the same stage and in time made a trip to Ohio to see three dealers at, approaching or just past this threshold. We met in May 2006. For forty years she'd been Susan Heller of Pages for Sages and for the past five years alone. Her husband, Haskell, died in 2002.

Susan didn't set out to be a book dealer. She was going to be a school teacher but personal interest and circumstances intervened and a book dealer is what she became. It was a career she shared with her husband who was also an M.D; she the public person, he the inside man. It made for a durable partnership that unearthed and sold many important books and produced two children who today are the brightest stars in her night sky. These were also the most tumultuous decades in the history of bookselling although it didn't start out that way.

Susan had an eye for quality and bought books carefully. She or Haskell wrote descriptions and she then mailed catalogues to her client list. If material didn't immediately sell, so be it. Such books were a good investment.

Over the decades she accumulated fine material across the entire horizon of book collecting, filling the basement, the attic and the family room to overflowing. She loved to buy good books and in the early years selling them was easy. The advent of the internet in the 1990s changed everything. At first online access was simply an insider's way to locate material and seemed a blessing. But descriptions of books for sale quickly surged onto the online sites at a pace far outstripping buyer interest and what began as a blessing became a curse.

Even memory, the bookseller's most reliable tool, now became the unseen enemy, relentlessly reminding sellers of what a book had brought. Surely mine will bring this price in time, the down turn an aberration, not a trend. And so prices were held higher than the market justified and sales declined. For this book market was different; much larger and impersonal. Anyone could post and some days it seemed like everyone was. It was less and less a relationship business; more and more simply about the copy and the price: a business of artists that became a business of accountants.

In this now the third year since Susan first discussed retirement she is going to sell her home and move into a community of the retired and elderly where she can enjoy some peace and potentially much friendship, be less concerned with daily chores and more focused on fun. Not that she'll slow down that much. She'll remain busy but without the pressures and obligations. She has decided its time.

Susan Heller: Book Dealer at the Crossroads

- By Bruce McKinney

Historias De Las Indias De Nueva Espana...

Driving this decision is a place just four miles away where friends she has known all her adult life live. Her home is simply too much house and too much responsibility, the chores that twenty years ago were shared now hers alone. To move she needs to sell her inventory of almost 15,000 items. From a set price and a sale date unknown the pendulum swings and it now becomes on a date certain at a price unknown. In the book business it is almost always this way. It's a great affair but a treacherous divorce. It's why so many book dealers and book collectors die with their books on the shelves. The triage that follows is more easily done by they who feel no loss.

Over the past several years she has continued to post and to sell online but, as it is for most book sellers, it's a slow process. She laughingly estimates needing a hundred years to clear the shelves, an indirect way of saying the next stage, forced sales, is at hand. More than a year ago, New York dealer John Dolan made a substantial purchase. Recently he described Susan as a tough negotiator and, "at that time not ready to seriously discount to move the material." Now Susan has sent a few of her more prized items to Aspire Auctions of Cleveland to be auctioned electronically over 8 days: May 11th to 18th. They are accessible via a link at the end of this article. On Aspire's site they are accessible from the 4th. It's a test and the market will soon render a preliminary verdict. She'll then send more material to the block or dispose of it privately.

So Susan is one of the brave ones. We have spoken about this many times. Her children lead busy lives and her gift to them is to leave a clean slate, all material converted back to cash, every hope, every dream converted back into dollars and cents. Whatever it will be it will be. She will handle it. She knows that material she deeply values will now, in the arcane mix of auction results, yield bargains to buyers. So be it. It will also yield freedom to move and freedom for her family from clearing the material later.

Now, looking to that moment in the not-so-distant-future when the last book is boxed and mailed, Susan grows anxious to move on. What three years ago was a general desire to retire is now the next step and it's one she doesn't want to delay.

In the gentle calculus of money versus time, time should always win. Too soon, the money will matter not at all.

A list of the material posted with Aspire is found here.

Susan Heller: Book Dealer at the Crossroads

- By Bruce McKinney

none