Bookseller Heaven; or The Thirtieth Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar
- By Karen Wright
Faculty and students paying close attention to Seminar Director, Rob Rulon-Miller.
By Karen Wright
When I wrote an essay about why I should be awarded a scholarship to the Thirtieth Annual Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar, way back last winter, I didn't really expect to get it. I assumed there would be a zillion people with better essay skills applying, and I forgot about it. My surprise was complete when I got an email from Kathy Lindeman, the Coordinator for the Seminar, telling me that I had won a week in the shadow of Pike's Peak. I had absolutely no idea what I was in for, but right up front, before I go into great detail, let me just say that even in college I have never had a learning experience so completely utopian. I'm still blissed out and my faith in my chosen profession is renewed ten times over. I went there thinking that after eighteen years as a bookseller, I knew a lot about bookselling. I came away much humbled, after realizing that I didn't know nearly as much as I thought I did. Therein lies my tale.
We skidded in late from the airport to register on Sunday night then grabbed a bite to eat at the college cafeteria. Now this cafeteria, I'm happy to say, was nothing like any cafeteria in which I've ever eaten. They had a well stocked salad bar, a breakfast bar, a grill, a stir-fry stall, a Mediterranean snack bar, a pizza bar, a meat and potatoes cafe, and a fairly constant supply of fresh, raw veggies and fruit. It was amazing, and a happy occasion since we were eating most of our meals there.
After dinner, there was a get-acquainted reception. We all introduced ourselves and then listened with interest to the keynote speaker; Hannes Blum, CEO of ABE Books. The recent announcement that Amazon had just co-partnered with ABE was of great interest to all of us, especially since there was a large contingent of dissatisfied Amazon users present. Blum fielded questions very carefully and noted several times that the two companies have not yet had time to discuss what changes - or lack thereof - they may make in their policies. We gleaned that ABE will probably handle more of the antiquarian and rare books and that Amazon will probably be responsible for the day-to-day sale of less lofty used books. After a couple of glasses of wine, a chocolate dessert, and a day on the plane, we were all ready to walk the three blocks to the Colorado College Inn. Our residence for the week was a former 'pay-by-the-hour' motel, bought by the college, rehabbed, and converted to summer student housing. It was quite nunnery-like, with single beds, no TVs, and no frills, but it was clean and had air conditioning. Besides, we were all so exhausted by the end of each day that I think we could have slept on a bench in a bus station.
It would take a week to give you a blow by blow account of each class, so I will hit the gist of each talk and you can email me if you want more details.
Monday we started in promptly after breakfast with the most basic of bookseller info; how to handle books including things as simple as how to open a rare book, how to shelve and unshelve it, sleeve it (if necessary), and a few other basic procedures. The segment on shipping covered what supplies to use and where to find specialized materials. We were also cautioned on where NOT to ship and why, and how to check an order that might seem a bit dicey.
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Bookseller Heaven; or The Thirtieth Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar
- By Karen Wright
Dan Gregory of Between the Covers provides technical advice.
Before I go any further, let me just say that we were privileged to have thirteen expert, professional faculty members from every phase of the book world; experienced librarians and archivists, long-time rare booksellers, ephemera experts, a bookbinder, a rare book school instructor, and a computer genius. Let me just apologize to the wonderful faculty right now if I don't get all your plaudits and expertise straight. There is not enough room in the article for the knowledge and proficiency you all displayed. During and after each of our lectures, we were given plenty of time to ask questions and the entire faculty showed great humor and patience with our queries and comments. I'm sure that on occasion some of them were rolling their eyes back in their heads.
The diversity and expertise of the students was also quite interesting. These book people came in all shapes and sizes and they came from all over the U.S. and Canada. There were librarians, book conservators, archivists, novice and experienced booksellers, people from Friends of the Library, and staff from the online bookselling monster, Barnes and Noble.
We were offered many pounds of reference materials, all of which had to be trundled home because we couldn’t bear to leave any of this valuable stuff behind. They included lots of individual store catalogs and several reference books such as Ahearn's new tome which will be most helpful as I venture into the world of appraisals. Perhaps some of the most valuable resources we were given were leads to the many online reference sites. Networking was heavily stressed from the beginning of the seminar until the last gasp, and the value and processes of various kinds of partnering with other booksellers was explained in great and fascinating detail. For some reason, it had never occurred to me to call up a fellow bookseller and see if they wanted to go fifty-fifty on a collection was that too expensive for me to buy alone. Duh!
Our next lesson was Book Selling 401, presented by Rob Rulon-Miller, the Director of the seminar. He has been in the book business since 1969 and owns Rulon-Miller Books in St. Paul, MN. His co-speaker was Kevin Johnson who has Royal Books in Maryland. They answered some important questions. What makes books rare or important and where are these books found? What is a first edition and how does one determine it? What is the significance of signatures, inscriptions, laid in ephemera, and the like? How do appraisals work and who can do them? Where can a bookseller go to get more information about how to evaluate books?
The material we got from Dan Gregory from Between the Covers Books was not only timely, but amazingly easy to understand considering I'm a technological numbskull. He is THE computer and technology guru for the book business according to several faculty members, and one of them confided to me that he'd steal him away from Between the Covers in a New York second, if he could. Dan's discussion of how to prevent data loss, what file formats to use, how to design and print catalogs, and how to output Internet data, was invaluable stuff.
We received a twenty-two page checklist of reference works used in the antiquarian book trade and how to use them, from Dan DeSimone, Curator of the Rosenwald Collection at the Library of Congress. His cohort in the discussion was Professor Terry Belanger who is the founder and director of the University of Virginia Book Arts Press and Rare Book School, and honorary curator of Special Collections there. Their good-natured bantering kept us all chuckling while we learned. They included handbooks, price guides, and bibliographic manuals on book collecting, publishing history, specialized catalogues, book and book art history, and chronologies. It will take me weeks just to get them all in my database.
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Bookseller Heaven; or The Thirtieth Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar
- By Karen Wright
Ed Glaser and the writer, Karen Wright.
We needed a little break from all this heady info, so Dan DeSimone and Angela Scott, an expert book conservator and book binder from Washington, D.C., regaled us with a hands-on exhibit of books, binding styles, materials and techniques of printing, binding, illustration, and the like. By this time I felt like someone had blown a balloon up in my brain and I was very ready for the picnic dinner and early-to-bed that followed.
Terry Belanger opened the next morning's classes with a two-part discussion of the bibliographic description of books. He outlined the terminology, formats, collation, history of books, and online resources that all good booksellers need to know. This included a discussion of illustrations, condition, and pagination which was punctuated by each of us attempting to fold a single piece of paper into a duodecimo (12mo) format, as was done by all those fat friars in antiquarian times. By this time, I was boggled but thrilled by the ancient art of book making.
The afternoon practicum on How to Catalog a Book was presented by Rob Rulon-Miller who was joined by Tom Congalton, owner of Between the Covers in Gloucester City, NJ. Tom is an expert on the modern first edition phase of bookselling. This included a student's clinic on book descriptions and we were privileged to snoop through several shelves of beautiful antiquarian books that Rob had brought all the way from Minnesota. We were each asked to pick a book and then try to determine its value. This was where I figured I'd be good, as I am pretty efficient at using reference materials and I've been cataloging books for a long time. Maybe not, too! The book I chose was from 1838 and had to do with deer hunting in Scotland. I fell in love with the woodcut illustrations. I did pick up on the fact that it was a second edition and had been rebound, but it took me longer to run down the information on that one book than it does to do a whole box of books at my shop.
After the break, Angela Scott and Dan DeSimone showed and told about conservation and preservation of books including a fascinating slide show on how books are repaired by conservators. They also talked about whether and when one should repair a book or recover it, and if so, what repairs should be made by novices and what should go to a professional conservator/binder.
After a quick dinner, we were treated to a shuttle trip to Hooked on Books, a local bookstore owned by faculty member Mary Francis Ciletti and her husband, Jim Ciletti. Since Mary and Jim and their great bookstore will be an article by itself in the near future, I won't say too much here, other than they gave a really good, down to earth, no-nonsense talk about how to operate a bookstore.
On the third day, Dan Gregory gave another lecture on the technological aspects of the book trade - photography and scanning books for catalogs or the Internet. Later, Dan DeSimone encouraged us to consider selling books to libraries and other institutions. I guess I never really gave it much thought, though I do sell books to our local state archives and do some appraisals and consignments for them. This whole subject was of vast interest to me and to a number of other attendant booksellers since we are always looking for new selling venues.
Our next discussion by Ed Glaser was a very comprehensive lecture on evaluating and pricing books. I was particularly interested in listening to his talk, not just because of the subject matter but because the scholarship that I won was named after Ed from Edwin V. Glaser Rare Books in Napa, CA. He has been a faculty member since the start of the seminar thirty years ago, and this was the first year that his scholarship was offered. I was quite proud and honored to be the first recipient and to meet this gentleman who is an internationally known specialist in rare and important books on science, technology, and medicine. I thought he might be a bit scary and erudite for a little bookseller from the Wild West, but au contraire he was friendly and outgoing, as were all the faculty. But I digress.
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Bookseller Heaven; or The Thirtieth Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar
- By Karen Wright
Michael Ginsberg (left) and David Margolis and Jean Moss.
Since many attendees were Internet booksellers, Chris Volk, from bookfever.com in California, had a lot of valuable tips and tricks to impart to Internet booksellers. She talked about different venues, i.e. Alibris vs. ABE, PayPal vs. credit cards, and all the other pros and cons of search engines, proper descriptions, commission costs, and "hidden" costs of selling online, and how to effectively list and keep track of books. At the end of the day, we were ready for an evening away from the College, so several of us walked the short distance to downtown and had dinner at the very excellent Everest Tibetan restaurant.
At the beginning of the week most of us couldn't imagine how we would survive the hectic pace and cram all that necessary knowledge into our tiny brains. By the time Thursday came around, we were not sure we wanted this delectable feast of information to end.
I have never collected or sold a lot of ephemera. It is a very special part of book and antique selling, requiring a lot of expertise, a lot of patience, and a lot of space, which I don't have. David Margolis and Jean Moss from Santa Fe, NM, however, have made that their specialty and they are world renown for their twenty-five years of knowledge of prints, photographs, and printed ephemera. It was quite interesting to hear about this subject upon which I was completely ignorant. They were so passionate about their profession that it made me want to consider delving into little trinkets and bits of paper. I couldn't resist going up to Jean at the end of the lecture and telling her, with a straight face, that I guess I better stop throwing away my ephemera. She didn't laugh, just looked a bit horrified. I would not throw away that sort of stuff, of course, but would take it to my antique dealer friend who "gets it" and sells it.
Michael Ginsberg has been in the antiquarian book trade since 1956. His discussion and demonstration of book auctions was really comprehensive and fascinating. It included a live auction of goods (mostly books) and services (a yummy gourmet dinner with the faculty), the proceeds of which were donated to local libraries. I do occasionally go to auctions, but I have to say that I'm very cautious. If I cannot make a profit on an item, and I'm not buying for my own collection, I stop bidding when "auction fever," as I call it, infects the crowd.
However, before the auction was over a number of people who are not so cautious managed to help the seminar raise nearly $5,000 for local libraries, and I did buy one book for too much money, but it was for my granddaughter, so that's okay. I would have killed to go to the faculty dinner, but that privilege went to a bookseller who had more money than I did. Dinner for two for $1000 was a bit out of my league.
After lunch, Dan Gregory regaled us with ideas on how to market our book business. We got tips on Internet selling, web pages, catalogs, advertising, professionalism, quotes, things to include with an order, and solving problems with customers. He finished with this bit of wisdom; "No one likes to be sold, but people love to buy, so give them reasons to be YOUR customers."
There followed a lively discussion on problems in the book trade led by the whole faculty. We examined forgeries, fakes and stolen book problems, and what to do when you know a book is a forgery or fake - don't buy it - or when a book is stolen - try to prosecute the person! Again, networking was stressed and encouraged.
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Bookseller Heaven; or The Thirtieth Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar
- By Karen Wright
Lois Ganner and Cynthia Williams demonstrate that book people come in all sizes.
That evening, those of us not eating in the rarified air of the faculty dinner, were offered a bookstore tour of all the other bookstores in town. We hit the Everest Tibetan restaurant again first, and then off we went to ogle more books. I, of course, bought too many at Adventures in Books, which is a new store owned by Bill Porter, a very knowledgeable bookseller, who gave me a discount I couldn't turn down. All in all, I bought from several dealers and got some great books. I had to media mail them home since my suitcase was already way too heavy. I can hardly wait until they arrive.
The last day, boo hoo! By this time, I was so enthralled that I could easily have stayed another week, though I think the faculty would have dropped in their tracks. We talked a lot about scouting for books with Michael Ginsberg. Tom Congalton gave us a great run-down about book fairs. Kevin Johnson worked with us on consignment selling, which was of great interest to me as I have just recently begun consigning books. After lunch, Chris Volk had the arduous task of trying to keep our attention (i.e. keep us awake) with regards to the very important and often neglected phase of bookselling - accounting. As a former accountant, she did a great job of making it almost comprehensible to most of us. And last, that afternoon we filled out an evaluation of the course and then got to the final fun stuff, a round table discussion with the whole faculty.
"Every thing hath ende," as Chaucer said, and our lovely week was no exception. The farewell dinner and award of certificates that evening was really quite emotional as most of us knew what an incredible event we had just been privileged to participate in and how lucky we were to have been there.
To all of you serious book folk; collectors, sellers, librarians, etc. who think you might like to attend one of these seminars, contact Kathy Lindeman, the very amenable, efficient, and organized local coordinator at klindeman@coloradocollege.edu or Sue Gallagher, sue@gcbooks.com. You won't regret a minute of it and you will come away a humbler, smarter, craftier bookseller.
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