AE Monthly

Article Archives Search

AE Articles


What's Up and Coming with West Coast Bookstores? - By Karen Wright Steve Blackmer of Chanticleer Books By Karen Wright I bopped on down to the Sacramento Antiquarian Book Fair from my high-on-the-hill shop in Virginia City, Nevada, a mere 2-1/2 hour drive. It was held September 16th at the Scottish Rite Temple and Bruce McKinney will tell you all about it. In fact, I finally had the pleasure of meeting and talking to our esteemed (but retired) leader for the first time. I have been a contributor to AE Monthly for a couple of years now, but we had only met in emails. Bruce and I discussed the book business for quite a while, but he was busily doing surveys so we parted company and I headed for the main showroom and the forty plus delicious book stands that awaited me there. I had been assigned to do an article not on the fair, but on bookselling and its future according to a random selection of booksellers who were at the Fair. The question I started with was "How long have you been in the book business and how old were you when you started?" and I went on from there, more or less. I began by talking to Steve Blackmer from Chanticleer Books in Sonoma. I have known Steve for some years and have stopped in his store several times or run into him at PBA auctions. Steve began in the book business in 1982 working in someone else's store. Then in 1984, he opened his own store. He has always sold really high quality, general, used books and has recently begun to do more scholarly and collectible books. My second query was "What percentage of your sales are you doing on the Internet?" Steve said about 50% of his sales are online. He does do his pricing with research online, but finds that he is particular enough about what he buys that he doesn't run into what I call the "16 cent syndrome" which is where one buys a really good book in near new condition for $2.00 at a thrift store or garage sale and then finds it for 16 cents on Albiris or ABE. I asked Steve if he buys online. "Yes," he said, "but not a lot." My next question was what he felt about the future of bookselling; brick and mortar stores, internet, or book shows? He thought about it for a minute; "All of the above, but there will probably be more online, less brick and mortar. Not just because of the internet, but because rents are getting so high that it's harder to justify a store. Fewer people are coming into stores and just about everyone makes use of the internet so they don't have to go in a store. There is a rather steady decline in the bookstore business."
What's Up and Coming with West Coast Bookstores? - By Karen Wright Lori Hughes, the "Cookbook Lady." He had an interesting comment about Powell's Books in Portland where I worked for seven years. He wondered how they could still thrive and buy huge lots of books and bookstores in the Bay Area. He surmised that, "A third or more of the books they buy they probably already have 20 copies of. They do a lot of online selling, but it's hard to believe they are competitive online as they don't describe condition." Steve noted that he phones them first before he buys and has a clerk go and get the book in hand. "One time when I called about a Winston Churchill series book I saw online it turned out that it wasn't even the right book, the publishing date they listed was before the book had even been published. The other time they had a rare California county history book with a picture on the website. I called to order it and they told me the picture online wasn't for the copy they were selling, the one they had was not the one they advertised." Last question was: "Do you think you will stay in the book business until you drop dead?" "Oh yeah, I'll always be in it," he replied, "I may retire but I'll still stay in it in some way." On down the rows of booksellers, I caught up with Bea and Peter Siegel, a mother/son bookselling team from Walnut Creek, California, who are moving to Corvallis, Oregon. Peter is all ready there, but Bea, his mom, will be moving up soon. "I intend to be in the book business 25 years from now," said Peter when I asked him if he was planning to stay in it. "I'm concerned about where the new generation of buyers and sellers will come from every time I do these shows. I started scouting books when I was 12 years old. I've been in the business off and on for forty plus years, the last fifteen with my mom. We were in Santa Monica and did fine with my old customer base and institutions which I still have, but I'm not seeing a lot of new customers and not a lot of new blood and new money coming into the book business." "How much of your business is done on the Net?" I queried. "About one-third," he said, and when I asked if he priced from the Net he said, "Very rarely. I don't pay that much attention to internet prices, rather I trust my own experience. It counts for a whole lot more. If I sell a book several times for $125 but see it on the internet for $75, I still price it at $125 because for me it is a $125 book and I can sell it for that. When buying, I do pay attention, though. For instance, when I'm pondering a book on eBay and look it up online and find a comparable copy for $25, I don't bid $75." "Makes sense to me," I said.
What's Up and Coming with West Coast Bookstores? - By Karen Wright Susan Lupkin and Robert Gavora. My next question was "What do you think about the future of bookselling?" "I honestly don't know," Peter answered. "I'm committed to it. I'm a little bit less worried than some dealers as I have assiduously cultivated the institutional market so that I have good relationships with research institutions all over California which I hope to broaden now that I'm out of California. My base with special collection librarians and the like pays the rent, utilities, and things, and I worry about profit later. I don't know many people who get rich selling books. One reason we are moving to Corvallis is that I rely on my wife's continuing job at Hewlett Packard and her good sense of humor which allows me the luxury to continue doing what I do." My next seller was one dear to my heart as I carry a lot of vintage and ethnic cookbooks, and she had a nice selection of both. Lori Hughes, "The Cookbook Lady," who works out of El Sobrante, California, sells books and antiques from estate collections. She buys collections or whole households. She does almost all of her sales at shows. I asked her if she expects to stay in the business for a long time. She said, "Yes, I love books, but I also do antiques. In fact, I do about twenty shows every year. But I love books the best. People who come to book shows are really focused on what they want. At antique shows there's more diversity and variety of items, they may not know what they want, and it's more work to pack and unpack." I asked how much of her book business is on the internet. "My whole book inventory is listed on ABE. I do a good business on ABE. I also do internet research on Biblio and ABE, then price about middle-of-the-road." She thought she did about 15% of her business online and the rest at shows. "People still like to look at things, touch them, and make sure of condition, not just base their choices on written descriptions." "With the number of fly-by-night dealers online who don't know the difference between "Fair" and "Very Good," that seemed to me to be a good policy," I said, "and one I adhere to."
What's Up and Coming with West Coast Bookstores? - By Karen Wright Christine Volk and Shep Liams of Book Fever. Lori said she has been talking to some show promoters and they're all struggling. "I think that the internet has had a big impact on bookselling. Some book dealers are willing to take over for the show promoters so we can continue to have shows." I asked about the future of the biz. "We might eventually not have many brick and mortar stores. Rents are so high in California and taxes are not good for small business people. We hope things get better. Workman's Comp. and real estate will have to change and not be so expensive if we are going to keep brick and mortar stores." I noted that most of the dealers I know and have talked to at the show were about 45-70 years old, myself included, and I asked Lori if she is seeing a lot of new, young faces in the book business; and if she felt that they were people who really knew anything about books, or were only retail clerks nowadays. She said she agreed that there weren't many. She compared the antique part of her business where she said, "I see a lot of turnover, people retiring but other younger people who come in. I don't see that many in the book business and I do five book shows a year." I was starving by that time, so I grabbed a bit of lunch at the Gunul's J. Street Café which is just a short distance from the Scottish Rite Building wherein the book fair was housed. They have really great European Bistro-type food with a Californian and Mediterranean touch. I recommend their individual pizzas. Back at the Temple, the show was going great guns. Fat and happy, I picked my next victims, or rather, interviewees, two folks from Talent, Oregon, Robert Gavora and Susan Lupkin who specialize in railroads - especially in the West, illustrated children's books, western Americana, sci-fi, and other general titles. Robert didn't start in the book business until he was 40 and has been in the business full time for 23 years (though he doesn't look his age.) He plans to stay a few more years. He doesn't have an open store and does his business strictly online and at shows. "I started with mail order catalogs and when the internet came along I simply switched over. People do stop by appointment now and then, though, and I get some phone orders."
What's Up and Coming with West Coast Bookstores? - By Karen Wright none He said that he thinks because overhead is so high there will be a decline in brick and mortar stores. "Oh, there will always be stores because people like to browse, see, touch, so there will be stores, maybe more for higher end books." I asked what he thought of books on demand. "Completely negative," he averred. There isn't much more to say, you can find the book itself out there for much less than on demand." Robert let slip that his partner, Susan Lupkin, was a bookbinder. She's been doing it for four years after several years of training with bookbinders in San Francisco. She said she is most proficient with cloth, but now is branching into leather binding and rebacking. My antennae went up and I thought that would make a good article for another day, and Susan said she knew two other book binders in Oregon. Stay tuned in the future, I often get up Oregon way. Meanwhile, back at the ranch...er, Temple... Strolling again, I found Maxwell's Bookmark. I had to talk to Bill Maxwell because his logo incorporates one of my favorite Grouch Marx quotes: "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend, inside of a dog; it's too dark to read." Bill said that pretty much sums up his philosophy of books and life. We agreed that a sense of humor was pretty well a necessity to be a bookseller. Maxwell's Bookmark was the oldest (1939) independent new and used book store in San Joaquin County. "When," I asked owner Bill Maxwell, "did you start in the book business?" Bill said that he got started about two weeks out of college in 1975 where he had just earned a Bachelor's Degree in politics at U.C. Santa Cruz. He rather haphazardly accumulated books, haunted bookstores and then went to work at Harvard Used Books on skid row in Stockton, which had been there since 1922. He started his own store in 1978, bought the Bookmark and then went on to buy Harvard Books in 1981, which he finally closed in 2001. When his lease was up on the Bookmark in 2003, Bill said; "I would come in in the morning and fill all my internet orders and be in the black, but then my staff would come in and by the end of the day in the shop, we would be back in the red, so I closed the store in 2003, culled about 1500 of the very best books I had, had a giant clearance sale, and got rid of most of my 10,000 books. Since then I have had about 1500 to 3500 books online and have been working from home and have been doing okay." Now he does most of his sales on the internet and has a part-time day job as Archivist for the Bank of Stockton's 20,000 photos, where he maintains their collection.
What's Up and Coming with West Coast Bookstores? - By Karen Wright none "How about the future of the book business," I asked, "where do you think its going?" "I think its okay, its going to be different. My internet sales tanked in April when I pulled my inventory from ABE because of their high prices, but it was going south before that. The book business hadn't changed for 500 years, then the internet came along and set it on its ear. In this country, especially California because of corporate paradigms, which don't translate to the used and rare book business, the cost of business is so high that unless you are doing a big volume, it's not worth the effort. The only brick and mortars that can survive are those who have established a big client base and a big internet market share such as The Strand, Tattered Cover, or Powells. Independent new book stores are going belly-up; they are really struggling. Why pay the costs to open to the public when you can do business on the Internet in your jammies." He noted that he had been contacted by other book sellers who want to open co-ops such as the one in Grass Valley, California. "There is safety in numbers and it's like an ongoing book fair," he said. "Book fairs are more important to the real collectors and hard core book people, and to the new people who really get the bug. It's not satisfying to buy online; it's a sterile experience." Bill told me that he does about 3-4 book fairs a year and all are local in California such as Sacramento or the Bay Area. "What about on demand books," I queried, "what do you think of those?" "There may be a niche for that sort of stuff." he answered. "The technology is pretty cool, punch in a number and it spews out a paperback on the other end. It probably helps not to have to pay inventory tax or deal with remainders or the pulper. Publishers will continue to make fine press and art books, ephemerals, and etcetera. The manuscript market will probably tank because everything is done digitally. It is great for university students who hopefully can break the stranglehold of the textbook companies who gouge and rip-off students." I thanked Bill for his interesting viewpoint and slipped on down the aisle where I ran into Christine Volk and Shep Liams from Book Fever, used and rare booksellers who specialize in African Americana, modern firsts, poetry, sci-fi, women authors, mysteries, and kiddie lit.
What's Up and Coming with West Coast Bookstores? - By Karen Wright none "It all started when I bought a couple of books at a cooperative in Sacramento. We sold one of the books the next day for a good price and loved it; we were hooked. I quit to do it full time and then got Shep involved," Christine said. "We began selling books online in the CompuServe Book Forum, which was before the internet," continued Christine. "Then in 1998 we moved to the Sierra foothills of Amador County in the wine and gold country. It was near Ione and Sutter Creek. We built a 'book house' where we have 50,000 books crammed into a 1,500 square foot space on a 10 acre hilltop and we've been there ever since." She also noted that they have about 4,000 books in an antique mall in Jackson. She said they buy at shows, from small collections or estates, library sales, and other bookstores. They love to travel so they don't want to open a shop. They went to a sci-fi convention recently and even bought books there. "We get significant repeat business and have a few direct customers. We try to cultivate customers the old-fashioned way," said Christine, "with print catalogs on different topics which we enclose with each order. It makes us stand out a little bit." Shep specializes in sci-fi and Christine does everything else. "Shep is the computer guy who keeps our complicated system working." Shep told me that Christine had just finished teaching a class at the Colorado Book School. Well that's it, kids. At this point, my feet hurt and I felt that I had a pretty good cross sampling. Besides it was nearing the witching hour of 5 p.m. when the show would close. There seems to be a pretty universal feeling that the brick and mortar bookstore is going to struggle and that the internet and book shows are going to be the principle ways to sell books in the future. I think it is sad, but true. I will always want to touchy-feely a book before I buy it, but now and then I do buy on the Net, but carefully, very carefully. I vowed to do the fair myself in 2007, so come on down and see me and we'll talk books!

What's Up and Coming with West Coast Bookstores?

- By Karen Wright

Steve Blackmer of Chanticleer Books

By Karen Wright

I bopped on down to the Sacramento Antiquarian Book Fair from my high-on-the-hill shop in Virginia City, Nevada, a mere 2-1/2 hour drive. It was held September 16th at the Scottish Rite Temple and Bruce McKinney will tell you all about it. In fact, I finally had the pleasure of meeting and talking to our esteemed (but retired) leader for the first time. I have been a contributor to AE Monthly for a couple of years now, but we had only met in emails. Bruce and I discussed the book business for quite a while, but he was busily doing surveys so we parted company and I headed for the main showroom and the forty plus delicious book stands that awaited me there. I had been assigned to do an article not on the fair, but on bookselling and its future according to a random selection of booksellers who were at the Fair. The question I started with was "How long have you been in the book business and how old were you when you started?" and I went on from there, more or less.

I began by talking to Steve Blackmer from Chanticleer Books in Sonoma. I have known Steve for some years and have stopped in his store several times or run into him at PBA auctions. Steve began in the book business in 1982 working in someone else's store. Then in 1984, he opened his own store. He has always sold really high quality, general, used books and has recently begun to do more scholarly and collectible books.

My second query was "What percentage of your sales are you doing on the Internet?" Steve said about 50% of his sales are online. He does do his pricing with research online, but finds that he is particular enough about what he buys that he doesn't run into what I call the "16 cent syndrome" which is where one buys a really good book in near new condition for $2.00 at a thrift store or garage sale and then finds it for 16 cents on Albiris or ABE. I asked Steve if he buys online. "Yes," he said, "but not a lot."

My next question was what he felt about the future of bookselling; brick and mortar stores, internet, or book shows? He thought about it for a minute; "All of the above, but there will probably be more online, less brick and mortar. Not just because of the internet, but because rents are getting so high that it's harder to justify a store. Fewer people are coming into stores and just about everyone makes use of the internet so they don't have to go in a store. There is a rather steady decline in the bookstore business."

What's Up and Coming with West Coast Bookstores?

- By Karen Wright

Lori Hughes, the "Cookbook Lady."

He had an interesting comment about Powell's Books in Portland where I worked for seven years. He wondered how they could still thrive and buy huge lots of books and bookstores in the Bay Area. He surmised that, "A third or more of the books they buy they probably already have 20 copies of. They do a lot of online selling, but it's hard to believe they are competitive online as they don't describe condition." Steve noted that he phones them first before he buys and has a clerk go and get the book in hand. "One time when I called about a Winston Churchill series book I saw online it turned out that it wasn't even the right book, the publishing date they listed was before the book had even been published. The other time they had a rare California county history book with a picture on the website. I called to order it and they told me the picture online wasn't for the copy they were selling, the one they had was not the one they advertised."

Last question was: "Do you think you will stay in the book business until you drop dead?" "Oh yeah, I'll always be in it," he replied, "I may retire but I'll still stay in it in some way."

On down the rows of booksellers, I caught up with Bea and Peter Siegel, a mother/son bookselling team from Walnut Creek, California, who are moving to Corvallis, Oregon. Peter is all ready there, but Bea, his mom, will be moving up soon.

"I intend to be in the book business 25 years from now," said Peter when I asked him if he was planning to stay in it. "I'm concerned about where the new generation of buyers and sellers will come from every time I do these shows. I started scouting books when I was 12 years old. I've been in the business off and on for forty plus years, the last fifteen with my mom. We were in Santa Monica and did fine with my old customer base and institutions which I still have, but I'm not seeing a lot of new customers and not a lot of new blood and new money coming into the book business."

"How much of your business is done on the Net?" I queried. "About one-third," he said, and when I asked if he priced from the Net he said, "Very rarely. I don't pay that much attention to internet prices, rather I trust my own experience. It counts for a whole lot more. If I sell a book several times for $125 but see it on the internet for $75, I still price it at $125 because for me it is a $125 book and I can sell it for that. When buying, I do pay attention, though. For instance, when I'm pondering a book on eBay and look it up online and find a comparable copy for $25, I don't bid $75." "Makes sense to me," I said.

What's Up and Coming with West Coast Bookstores?

- By Karen Wright

Susan Lupkin and Robert Gavora.

My next question was "What do you think about the future of bookselling?" "I honestly don't know," Peter answered. "I'm committed to it. I'm a little bit less worried than some dealers as I have assiduously cultivated the institutional market so that I have good relationships with research institutions all over California which I hope to broaden now that I'm out of California. My base with special collection librarians and the like pays the rent, utilities, and things, and I worry about profit later. I don't know many people who get rich selling books. One reason we are moving to Corvallis is that I rely on my wife's continuing job at Hewlett Packard and her good sense of humor which allows me the luxury to continue doing what I do."

My next seller was one dear to my heart as I carry a lot of vintage and ethnic cookbooks, and she had a nice selection of both. Lori Hughes, "The Cookbook Lady," who works out of El Sobrante, California, sells books and antiques from estate collections. She buys collections or whole households. She does almost all of her sales at shows.

I asked her if she expects to stay in the business for a long time. She said, "Yes, I love books, but I also do antiques. In fact, I do about twenty shows every year. But I love books the best. People who come to book shows are really focused on what they want. At antique shows there's more diversity and variety of items, they may not know what they want, and it's more work to pack and unpack."

I asked how much of her book business is on the internet. "My whole book inventory is listed on ABE. I do a good business on ABE. I also do internet research on Biblio and ABE, then price about middle-of-the-road." She thought she did about 15% of her business online and the rest at shows. "People still like to look at things, touch them, and make sure of condition, not just base their choices on written descriptions."

"With the number of fly-by-night dealers online who don't know the difference between "Fair" and "Very Good," that seemed to me to be a good policy," I said, "and one I adhere to."

What's Up and Coming with West Coast Bookstores?

- By Karen Wright

Christine Volk and Shep Liams of Book Fever.

Lori said she has been talking to some show promoters and they're all struggling. "I think that the internet has had a big impact on bookselling. Some book dealers are willing to take over for the show promoters so we can continue to have shows." I asked about the future of the biz. "We might eventually not have many brick and mortar stores. Rents are so high in California and taxes are not good for small business people. We hope things get better. Workman's Comp. and real estate will have to change and not be so expensive if we are going to keep brick and mortar stores."

I noted that most of the dealers I know and have talked to at the show were about 45-70 years old, myself included, and I asked Lori if she is seeing a lot of new, young faces in the book business; and if she felt that they were people who really knew anything about books, or were only retail clerks nowadays. She said she agreed that there weren't many. She compared the antique part of her business where she said, "I see a lot of turnover, people retiring but other younger people who come in. I don't see that many in the book business and I do five book shows a year."

I was starving by that time, so I grabbed a bit of lunch at the Gunul's J. Street Café which is just a short distance from the Scottish Rite Building wherein the book fair was housed. They have really great European Bistro-type food with a Californian and Mediterranean touch. I recommend their individual pizzas.

Back at the Temple, the show was going great guns. Fat and happy, I picked my next victims, or rather, interviewees, two folks from Talent, Oregon, Robert Gavora and Susan Lupkin who specialize in railroads - especially in the West, illustrated children's books, western Americana, sci-fi, and other general titles.

Robert didn't start in the book business until he was 40 and has been in the business full time for 23 years (though he doesn't look his age.) He plans to stay a few more years. He doesn't have an open store and does his business strictly online and at shows. "I started with mail order catalogs and when the internet came along I simply switched over. People do stop by appointment now and then, though, and I get some phone orders."

What's Up and Coming with West Coast Bookstores?

- By Karen Wright

none

He said that he thinks because overhead is so high there will be a decline in brick and mortar stores. "Oh, there will always be stores because people like to browse, see, touch, so there will be stores, maybe more for higher end books."

I asked what he thought of books on demand. "Completely negative," he averred. There isn't much more to say, you can find the book itself out there for much less than on demand."

Robert let slip that his partner, Susan Lupkin, was a bookbinder. She's been doing it for four years after several years of training with bookbinders in San Francisco. She said she is most proficient with cloth, but now is branching into leather binding and rebacking. My antennae went up and I thought that would make a good article for another day, and Susan said she knew two other book binders in Oregon. Stay tuned in the future, I often get up Oregon way. Meanwhile, back at the ranch...er, Temple...

Strolling again, I found Maxwell's Bookmark. I had to talk to Bill Maxwell because his logo incorporates one of my favorite Grouch Marx quotes: "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend, inside of a dog; it's too dark to read." Bill said that pretty much sums up his philosophy of books and life. We agreed that a sense of humor was pretty well a necessity to be a bookseller.

Maxwell's Bookmark was the oldest (1939) independent new and used book store in San Joaquin County. "When," I asked owner Bill Maxwell, "did you start in the book business?" Bill said that he got started about two weeks out of college in 1975 where he had just earned a Bachelor's Degree in politics at U.C. Santa Cruz. He rather haphazardly accumulated books, haunted bookstores and then went to work at Harvard Used Books on skid row in Stockton, which had been there since 1922. He started his own store in 1978, bought the Bookmark and then went on to buy Harvard Books in 1981, which he finally closed in 2001. When his lease was up on the Bookmark in 2003, Bill said; "I would come in in the morning and fill all my internet orders and be in the black, but then my staff would come in and by the end of the day in the shop, we would be back in the red, so I closed the store in 2003, culled about 1500 of the very best books I had, had a giant clearance sale, and got rid of most of my 10,000 books. Since then I have had about 1500 to 3500 books online and have been working from home and have been doing okay." Now he does most of his sales on the internet and has a part-time day job as Archivist for the Bank of Stockton's 20,000 photos, where he maintains their collection.

What's Up and Coming with West Coast Bookstores?

- By Karen Wright

none

"How about the future of the book business," I asked, "where do you think its going?" "I think its okay, its going to be different. My internet sales tanked in April when I pulled my inventory from ABE because of their high prices, but it was going south before that. The book business hadn't changed for 500 years, then the internet came along and set it on its ear. In this country, especially California because of corporate paradigms, which don't translate to the used and rare book business, the cost of business is so high that unless you are doing a big volume, it's not worth the effort. The only brick and mortars that can survive are those who have established a big client base and a big internet market share such as The Strand, Tattered Cover, or Powells. Independent new book stores are going belly-up; they are really struggling. Why pay the costs to open to the public when you can do business on the Internet in your jammies."

He noted that he had been contacted by other book sellers who want to open co-ops such as the one in Grass Valley, California. "There is safety in numbers and it's like an ongoing book fair," he said. "Book fairs are more important to the real collectors and hard core book people, and to the new people who really get the bug. It's not satisfying to buy online; it's a sterile experience." Bill told me that he does about 3-4 book fairs a year and all are local in California such as Sacramento or the Bay Area.

"What about on demand books," I queried, "what do you think of those?" "There may be a niche for that sort of stuff." he answered. "The technology is pretty cool, punch in a number and it spews out a paperback on the other end. It probably helps not to have to pay inventory tax or deal with remainders or the pulper. Publishers will continue to make fine press and art books, ephemerals, and etcetera. The manuscript market will probably tank because everything is done digitally. It is great for university students who hopefully can break the stranglehold of the textbook companies who gouge and rip-off students."

I thanked Bill for his interesting viewpoint and slipped on down the aisle where I ran into Christine Volk and Shep Liams from Book Fever, used and rare booksellers who specialize in African Americana, modern firsts, poetry, sci-fi, women authors, mysteries, and kiddie lit.

What's Up and Coming with West Coast Bookstores?

- By Karen Wright

none

"It all started when I bought a couple of books at a cooperative in Sacramento. We sold one of the books the next day for a good price and loved it; we were hooked. I quit to do it full time and then got Shep involved," Christine said. "We began selling books online in the CompuServe Book Forum, which was before the internet," continued Christine. "Then in 1998 we moved to the Sierra foothills of Amador County in the wine and gold country. It was near Ione and Sutter Creek. We built a 'book house' where we have 50,000 books crammed into a 1,500 square foot space on a 10 acre hilltop and we've been there ever since." She also noted that they have about 4,000 books in an antique mall in Jackson.

She said they buy at shows, from small collections or estates, library sales, and other bookstores. They love to travel so they don't want to open a shop. They went to a sci-fi convention recently and even bought books there. "We get significant repeat business and have a few direct customers. We try to cultivate customers the old-fashioned way," said Christine, "with print catalogs on different topics which we enclose with each order. It makes us stand out a little bit."

Shep specializes in sci-fi and Christine does everything else. "Shep is the computer guy who keeps our complicated system working." Shep told me that Christine had just finished teaching a class at the Colorado Book School.

Well that's it, kids. At this point, my feet hurt and I felt that I had a pretty good cross sampling. Besides it was nearing the witching hour of 5 p.m. when the show would close. There seems to be a pretty universal feeling that the brick and mortar bookstore is going to struggle and that the internet and book shows are going to be the principle ways to sell books in the future. I think it is sad, but true. I will always want to touchy-feely a book before I buy it, but now and then I do buy on the Net, but carefully, very carefully.

I vowed to do the fair myself in 2007, so come on down and see me and we'll talk books!