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

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Sacramento's Spring Book Fair, Eugene's Spring Book Sale... and a Word About Pricing - By Karen Wright Sacramento Fair promoter Jim Kay. By Karen Wright This year's first annual Sacramento Spring Book Fair was quite a success, according to Jim Kay, the show's promoter. I asked Jim how the show went. "Pretty well, we actually had more people than we did at the September Fair. It was sort of a surprise since this was the first time that we've done the spring show and it was in a month that people were not used to coming to it. I did give out thousands of free passes to get customers in." I asked him if he planned to continue doing the show twice a year and he said that he will and encouraged all booksellers to participate as it is less expensive than many, has a great venue, and is very friendly. We arrived early Friday afternoon and set up. One of the hardest things about fairs is to know what to bring. If I bring lots of Western Americana -- my specialty -- then that's what everyone else brings and there's a glut of it. If I bring cookbooks and garden books, there will be a wealth of them about. Last fall, I didn't bring any orchid books, and, of course, several people asked for them, so, this time I brought lots of orchid books because the Sacramento Orchid Society is very active, and I emailed them twice to notify them that I had more than 20 excellent orchid books that they could see at the book fair. I got one orchid book collector and he's not even in the society. I think it has something to do with Murphy's Law. My new rule of thumb is to bring the nicest, most eclectic books I have and hope for the best. There were not quite as many sellers as the Fall Fair brings in, so we had a bit more space to move around and do some displays, which was nice. I think the more books that are face-front tend to sell. Once we were set up, we walked the grid to see what everyone else had brought. There was lots of great stuff. In particular I found a whole lot of Mark Twain in several different booths. Discovery Bay Books in Walnut Creek had some very fine looking British firsts of some of Twain's work. We live in Mark Twain country, so I'm always interested in what is out there. I only bought a couple though because they were priced too high, even with a dealer discount, to make any profit on resale. More about that later. There was a new gal, Liz Pollock, from Santa Cruz this year. She's been in business since 2007 and this was her first show. Her store is called The Cook's Bookcase. She has unique and out-of-print books on cooking and wine, with a large section on French cooking. She also has books on food technology, agriculture and crops, letterheads and bills of ladings, and the like. She had a nice collection of reasonably priced cookbooks and she told me that she did pretty well. We discussed the "condition" of books and she told me that as long as the books were in moderately good condition, she would buy and sell them as she really enjoyed "putting the cookbooks in the hands of people who would use them." She has a webpage, www.cooksbookcase.com, but it isn't in working order as yet.
Sacramento's Spring Book Fair, Eugene's Spring Book Sale... and a Word About Pricing - By Karen Wright Liz Pollock's The Cook's Bookcase. I sold a complete mish mash of things, so now I still don't know what to bring next time. I think we broke even, but of course, we bought books, too, so there went the profit. We found a couple of new restaurants; The Squeeze Inn, which has smashingly good cheesy, cheeseburgers and the downtown Sacramento P.F. Chang's, which is a chain, but really good food and wines. The following week, we headed to Eugene, Oregon, for the Eugene FOL Book Sale. It was interesting, and I think it may bring in more people than even the Palo Alto Friends sale does. However, they do a couple of things that drove me to scream. First, they expect you to show up at 5 a.m. to get your early number so you can get in line at 9 a.m. There were actually 5-6 people who spent the night in the line, sleeping in bags in chairs in the damp, cold, Pacific Northwest so they could get the first five or six numbers and they looked pretty rough in the morning. I think that is a bit too much for me. One of them was a very annoying, pushy woman who, when she wanted a book, would sort of hip-shove someone else out of the way. No manners, that one! We came at 4:30 a.m., got numbers 39-40, and went back to the hotel to sleep a couple of hours. We were damn glad we had done that awful awakening when we got there at 8:45 and were the 40th in a line of 300+ eager beaver booksellers. Yikkes! They let a hundred or so in at a time, so we got in early and there were lots of quality books, many of which were overpriced, but in very nice shape. I bought four boxes, mostly western Americana and miscellaneous odd stuff that I couldn't resist. They have a terrible way of pricing the better books, however. They use those yellow dot stickers and then put scotch tape over those. They usually stick them under the Mylar covers on the good books or on top of the Mylar. But, in some cases, they stuck them directly on the d.j.s and they are a #$%^& to get off without trashing the covers. And, since I scan all covers for pictures before I take them downstairs to the bookstore, and all my Goo-Gone and stuff is downstairs in the store, I have to take them down, clean them up, then drag them upstairs again to scan them. It's damn nuisance and I know many better ways of protecting books from shop lifters. They do have a really good check-out system. Dealers had their own checkout desk and a place to back in the cars to load without having to stand in the general sales line for an hour. I recommend checking it out if you are anywhere nearby as they did have a good selection. By the time we left to head to Portland, they were down to mostly OK books, but nothing great and there was still a long line of folks waiting to get into the sale. We went to McMennamin's in Eugene right by the Willamette River for dinner. McMennamin's has dozens of restaurants in Oregon and Washington and the food is always good. They take historic landmark buildings and turn them into restaurants, theaters, or both. You'll find them online. So, the food was good, but Motel 6 was very noisy (too close to the freeway) and next year we will go to a different one, but that night we and the dog were too sleepy to care.
Sacramento's Spring Book Fair, Eugene's Spring Book Sale... and a Word About Pricing - By Karen Wright Karen Wright's The Wright Book. We jumped on the freeway and headed to the Gresham (and outskirt of Portland) FOL sale but it had opened at 10 a.m. and we didn't get there until noon, so most of the good stuff was gone. We found a couple of fun things and one very wonderful Cajun Creole Cookbook that must weigh 15 lbs. Before I leave you for a month or two I just want to say something about prices. I'm sure I'll generate comments on this, but don't get after the folks at AEMonthly, this is strictly my opinion. I'm not looking to get anyone's wooly knickers in a twist, it is just an observation. Bookselling has changed over the past ten years so that, in some cases, I barely recognize the business I was in fifteen or twenty years ago. When I say bookselling, I don't mean the very elite antiquarian market. That is still experts selling to experts, whether they are booksellers or book collectors. I'm talking about general bookselling. We go to most of the shows on the West Coast every year, or at least, every other year. I have to wonder at the booksellers who are still pricing their more common books at pre-Internet prices. Sure, that book was once worth $30 when there were thirty copies available in the whole world, but now there are 3,000 copies online at $3 each. I frequently hear booksellers complaining that they aren't selling any books. I am not surprised. I can't tell you how many folks come into my shop and look for a while, pick up a book that I am charging $7 for (and probably paid $3.50 for) and they say, "Why should I pay $7 when I can get this book for $1 online?" My standard comment is; "You'll pay about the same for the book after you include shipping and you'll have to wait at least five to ten days to get it. And you don't know, when you buy online from the $1 sellers, what condition the book is in. If you get a lemon, it will be more expensive to return it and wait another week or two, or forever, to get a good copy." Sometimes that scores with them, sometimes not. Booksellers' prices at shows don't make too much sense to me. They go to book shows and price an unsigned, recent, first edition John Grisham, of which there were probably five million printed (and which one finds in every thrift store in every town) at $20 to $30. Do they not want to sell any books? Would they rather go out of business than lower prices? Heaven knows, they bitch nonstop about how they don't sell anything at shows. They price an old, raggedy copy of Taylor's Gardening Book at $25. What's up with that? I hate it when I have to take a book I bought four years ago for $5 and put it online for $5.50, or even less, sometimes. ABE or Alibris will eat $1 of that or more. But, I don't have much choice when I see 20 copies for $1, $2, $3. I think that we, as booksellers, must get with the times and try to either stop selling common books at fairs or start lowering prices. I'll be happy to hear your comments, maybe for a future article, at wrgtbook@yahoo.com. And don't put on your snippy hat, I'm just asking for opinions. Ta, ta, till next time.

Sacramento's Spring Book Fair, Eugene's Spring Book Sale... and a Word About Pricing

- By Karen Wright

Sacramento Fair promoter Jim Kay.

By Karen Wright

This year's first annual Sacramento Spring Book Fair was quite a success, according to Jim Kay, the show's promoter.

I asked Jim how the show went. "Pretty well, we actually had more people than we did at the September Fair. It was sort of a surprise since this was the first time that we've done the spring show and it was in a month that people were not used to coming to it. I did give out thousands of free passes to get customers in."

I asked him if he planned to continue doing the show twice a year and he said that he will and encouraged all booksellers to participate as it is less expensive than many, has a great venue, and is very friendly.

We arrived early Friday afternoon and set up. One of the hardest things about fairs is to know what to bring. If I bring lots of Western Americana -- my specialty -- then that's what everyone else brings and there's a glut of it. If I bring cookbooks and garden books, there will be a wealth of them about. Last fall, I didn't bring any orchid books, and, of course, several people asked for them, so, this time I brought lots of orchid books because the Sacramento Orchid Society is very active, and I emailed them twice to notify them that I had more than 20 excellent orchid books that they could see at the book fair. I got one orchid book collector and he's not even in the society. I think it has something to do with Murphy's Law. My new rule of thumb is to bring the nicest, most eclectic books I have and hope for the best.

There were not quite as many sellers as the Fall Fair brings in, so we had a bit more space to move around and do some displays, which was nice. I think the more books that are face-front tend to sell. Once we were set up, we walked the grid to see what everyone else had brought. There was lots of great stuff. In particular I found a whole lot of Mark Twain in several different booths. Discovery Bay Books in Walnut Creek had some very fine looking British firsts of some of Twain's work. We live in Mark Twain country, so I'm always interested in what is out there. I only bought a couple though because they were priced too high, even with a dealer discount, to make any profit on resale. More about that later.

There was a new gal, Liz Pollock, from Santa Cruz this year. She's been in business since 2007 and this was her first show. Her store is called The Cook's Bookcase. She has unique and out-of-print books on cooking and wine, with a large section on French cooking. She also has books on food technology, agriculture and crops, letterheads and bills of ladings, and the like. She had a nice collection of reasonably priced cookbooks and she told me that she did pretty well. We discussed the "condition" of books and she told me that as long as the books were in moderately good condition, she would buy and sell them as she really enjoyed "putting the cookbooks in the hands of people who would use them." She has a webpage, www.cooksbookcase.com, but it isn't in working order as yet.

Sacramento's Spring Book Fair, Eugene's Spring Book Sale... and a Word About Pricing

- By Karen Wright

Liz Pollock's The Cook's Bookcase.

I sold a complete mish mash of things, so now I still don't know what to bring next time. I think we broke even, but of course, we bought books, too, so there went the profit. We found a couple of new restaurants; The Squeeze Inn, which has smashingly good cheesy, cheeseburgers and the downtown Sacramento P.F. Chang's, which is a chain, but really good food and wines.

The following week, we headed to Eugene, Oregon, for the Eugene FOL Book Sale. It was interesting, and I think it may bring in more people than even the Palo Alto Friends sale does. However, they do a couple of things that drove me to scream. First, they expect you to show up at 5 a.m. to get your early number so you can get in line at 9 a.m. There were actually 5-6 people who spent the night in the line, sleeping in bags in chairs in the damp, cold, Pacific Northwest so they could get the first five or six numbers and they looked pretty rough in the morning. I think that is a bit too much for me. One of them was a very annoying, pushy woman who, when she wanted a book, would sort of hip-shove someone else out of the way. No manners, that one! We came at 4:30 a.m., got numbers 39-40, and went back to the hotel to sleep a couple of hours. We were damn glad we had done that awful awakening when we got there at 8:45 and were the 40th in a line of 300+ eager beaver booksellers. Yikkes!

They let a hundred or so in at a time, so we got in early and there were lots of quality books, many of which were overpriced, but in very nice shape. I bought four boxes, mostly western Americana and miscellaneous odd stuff that I couldn't resist. They have a terrible way of pricing the better books, however. They use those yellow dot stickers and then put scotch tape over those. They usually stick them under the Mylar covers on the good books or on top of the Mylar. But, in some cases, they stuck them directly on the d.j.s and they are a #$%^& to get off without trashing the covers. And, since I scan all covers for pictures before I take them downstairs to the bookstore, and all my Goo-Gone and stuff is downstairs in the store, I have to take them down, clean them up, then drag them upstairs again to scan them. It's damn nuisance and I know many better ways of protecting books from shop lifters.

They do have a really good check-out system. Dealers had their own checkout desk and a place to back in the cars to load without having to stand in the general sales line for an hour. I recommend checking it out if you are anywhere nearby as they did have a good selection. By the time we left to head to Portland, they were down to mostly OK books, but nothing great and there was still a long line of folks waiting to get into the sale.

We went to McMennamin's in Eugene right by the Willamette River for dinner. McMennamin's has dozens of restaurants in Oregon and Washington and the food is always good. They take historic landmark buildings and turn them into restaurants, theaters, or both. You'll find them online. So, the food was good, but Motel 6 was very noisy (too close to the freeway) and next year we will go to a different one, but that night we and the dog were too sleepy to care.

Sacramento's Spring Book Fair, Eugene's Spring Book Sale... and a Word About Pricing

- By Karen Wright

Karen Wright's The Wright Book.

We jumped on the freeway and headed to the Gresham (and outskirt of Portland) FOL sale but it had opened at 10 a.m. and we didn't get there until noon, so most of the good stuff was gone. We found a couple of fun things and one very wonderful Cajun Creole Cookbook that must weigh 15 lbs.

Before I leave you for a month or two I just want to say something about prices. I'm sure I'll generate comments on this, but don't get after the folks at AEMonthly, this is strictly my opinion. I'm not looking to get anyone's wooly knickers in a twist, it is just an observation.

Bookselling has changed over the past ten years so that, in some cases, I barely recognize the business I was in fifteen or twenty years ago. When I say bookselling, I don't mean the very elite antiquarian market. That is still experts selling to experts, whether they are booksellers or book collectors. I'm talking about general bookselling. We go to most of the shows on the West Coast every year, or at least, every other year. I have to wonder at the booksellers who are still pricing their more common books at pre-Internet prices. Sure, that book was once worth $30 when there were thirty copies available in the whole world, but now there are 3,000 copies online at $3 each.

I frequently hear booksellers complaining that they aren't selling any books. I am not surprised. I can't tell you how many folks come into my shop and look for a while, pick up a book that I am charging $7 for (and probably paid $3.50 for) and they say, "Why should I pay $7 when I can get this book for $1 online?" My standard comment is; "You'll pay about the same for the book after you include shipping and you'll have to wait at least five to ten days to get it. And you don't know, when you buy online from the $1 sellers, what condition the book is in. If you get a lemon, it will be more expensive to return it and wait another week or two, or forever, to get a good copy." Sometimes that scores with them, sometimes not.

Booksellers' prices at shows don't make too much sense to me. They go to book shows and price an unsigned, recent, first edition John Grisham, of which there were probably five million printed (and which one finds in every thrift store in every town) at $20 to $30. Do they not want to sell any books? Would they rather go out of business than lower prices? Heaven knows, they bitch nonstop about how they don't sell anything at shows. They price an old, raggedy copy of Taylor's Gardening Book at $25. What's up with that?

I hate it when I have to take a book I bought four years ago for $5 and put it online for $5.50, or even less, sometimes. ABE or Alibris will eat $1 of that or more. But, I don't have much choice when I see 20 copies for $1, $2, $3. I think that we, as booksellers, must get with the times and try to either stop selling common books at fairs or start lowering prices. I'll be happy to hear your comments, maybe for a future article, at wrgtbook@yahoo.com. And don't put on your snippy hat, I'm just asking for opinions. Ta, ta, till next time.