Tool of the Trade. Part I

This is a charming and important book about Pacific exploration. I read it once -- so long ago I’ve forgotten precisely why it impressed me. However, at my advanced age I don’t need to remember details. All I need to remember is that it’s an important title and, roughly, how much it might be worth in today’s market. For the rest I can go to The Hill Collection of Pacific Voyages.

Every trade has its tools. As surely as the mechanic relies on his socket wrenches, or the dentist his drill, we booksellers depend on our reference books. And the Hill Collection is one of the best of them.

Kenneth Hill made his money in Big Oil, advising people like J. Paul Getty and Armand Hammer. He began collecting Pacific Voyages in the 1960s, and his keen intellect, advanced organizational skills, and relatively deep pockets enabled him to assemble a world-class collection in short order. He donated his collection to the recently formed University of California at San Diego in the mid-1970s. The collection was cataloged, annotated, and published in three volumes between 1974 and 1983.

No one had ever compiled such a thorough list of printed voyages, and no one had previously taken the pains to write such detailed and accurate notes, describing the particularities of each title and often placing the individual work in the greater context of world history and politics. People in our trade realized immediately what an important reference book it was. I bought my set at auction for $750 in the late 1980s. $750 was a lot of money back then, but the Hill Collection has repaid that investment hundreds of times over.

Still, it was a rather difficult book to use. There were three different volumes of listings, the listed titles were not numbered in any sequential way, and there were some titles missing. Indeed, much to the annoyance of the compilers, we booksellers would not hesitate to brag that a title we were offering was “not in Hill.” They claimed they were simply cataloging a collection, not writing a comprehensive bibliography. And anyway, they were adding to the collection continuously.

All this got remedied by a second, revised, edition published in 2004. Errors have been corrected, new titles have been added, and the disparate volumes have been combined into a single alphabetical listing, with each title having its own reference number. It’s a vastly improved work, a model of what a bibliographical reference book should be. I’m even mentioned in the “Acknowledgements” section though, as with Jacobs’s book, I’ve forgotten why.

Here’s Hill’s note about the book:

And here’s my description:

Jacobs, Thomas Jefferson. SCENES, INCIDENTS AND ADVENTURES IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN... DURING THE CRUISE OF THE CLIPPER MARGARET OAKLEY, UNDER CAPT. BENJAMIN MORRELL. NY. 1844. b/w plates and ills. xi-372 pp. “Clearing up the mystery which has heretofore surrounded this famous expedition, and containing a full account of the exploration of the Bidera, Papua, Banda, Mindoro, Sooloo, and China Seas, the manners and customs of the inhabitants...” Jacobs left the ship in Singapore and returned home to write this book which is, according to Hill, “apart from the vivid accounts of the islands and ports visited, an early and clear declaration of what was soon to become the U.S. policy of Manifest Destiny” - Hill 876. And Morrell, of course, was a character in his own right. (In his note to Morrell’s Narrative of Four Voyages Hill notes that he had been called “the biggest liar in the Pacific. – See Hill 1186.) Ferguson 3844. Howes J-38. Smith J.6. Scattered foxing, light water stain, but still a Good-VG copy. The large folding view of Canton is loose but present, with an old closed tear along one fold and no loss.

Next week I’ll talk about how I priced this book, and the tools I use to price books and manuscripts.

A Niche Closes Up

More about the photo at the end of this week's entry.


There was a front page article in the Gloucester Daily Times this week about the closing of Peter Smith Publisher. That name may not mean much to you, but he was an innovator in the publishing world, and the history of his business provides an interesting commentary on the dynamics of the book trade.

At the age of fourteen Peter Smith left an orphanage in New York City to work as a page boy in the periodical room at Columbia University. Subsequently he found work as a runner for a used book firm - probably one of the shops on 4th Avenue, the famed “Booksellers Row” – then used the knowledge he gained there to start his own book search service, mostly filling institutional requests for scholarly titles.

In the course of his work Smith noticed there were certain books much in demand and impossible to locate. Finding a niche that had eluded almost everyone in the business up to this time, he scraped his limited capital together and began reprinting hard-to-find titles, starting in 1929 with “Slave Songs of the United States.”

He moved to Gloucester in 1952. In the 1960s, as a part of the Great Society, the federal government dumped millions of dollars into publishers, colleges, and universities for the purpose of reprinting rare texts, or disseminating same. Smith’s business burgeoned. At its high point he was sending catalogs to 25,000 libraries around the world.

Some titles he simply reprinted because he liked them or thought they were important. Others, he’d list in his catalog and, when sufficient demand arose, print a run. He had a proprietary arrangement with the venerable Murray Printing Co., and they’d print short runs for him – 500 to 1000 copies – bound in that distinctive Peter Smith green or orange buckram. They weren’t pretty, but they were solid copies of otherwise unobtainable texts. When the paperback revolution came along, Smith adapted. He formed a close relationship with Dover and began repackaging their paperback reprint titles into hardbacks for libraries.

He was an old man when I met him, but still a fiercely independent – almost eccentric – thinker. He was also a kindly person with a gentle sense of humor. He loved dogs, and fed every stray dog in town at his office door. He detested Nixon and Agnew, and the war in Vietnam, and for its duration he would ship, gratis, any package anyone wanted to send to a serviceman over there. I painted his building, did bad carpentry jobs at his house, and generally hung around like one of his stray dogs. He gave me work and, more importantly, books, including classic reference works like Evans and Church - invaluable Peter Smith reprints that I still use today.

He died in 1982 and his daughter took over the business. She had a distinguished background in publishing, and was a hard-nosed businesswoman, but in the end the prevalence of internet used book services and Print On Demand did her in.

There's a punch line to this story, and it makes me a queasy even as I write it. As a part of shutting the business down, the daughter made some inquiries, but could find no one who wanted to purchase her stock – 45,000 copies of Peter Smith’s great reprints. She wound up donating them – giving them away – to a company named GOTBOOKS, a huge Internet penny bookseller. They take donations like hers and sell sell them on the web at bottom dollar, making their money on postage and their net profit through huge volume.

So POD and the Internet ate the company of the man who pioneered the modern scholarly reprint.

Sic transit...

Here's a bonus item I picked up recently. I thought it was an album of snapshots of Bermuda. When I got it home I discovered it was an album of snapshots of Bermuda and Nantucket. A lucky double for me. It will probably not be reprinted, though it's a good bet some of the images will eventually be digitized and made available over the you-know-what.




Photographs. ALBUM OF BERMUDA AND NANTUCKET SNAPSHOTS. Circa. 1900. Hamilton Harbor, vessels therein, local scenes, donkeys, “View taken on day of burial of Queen Victoria,” St. George’s, Ireland Island, and an icebound “NY Harbor on arriving” at the end of the Bermuda voyage. A total of 92 albumen photos of Bermuda, each measuring roughly 4 x 3 inches. Followed by 45 similar snapshots of Nantucket, mostly domestic architecture. A wonderful, very personal, album. $850

Chowder

Up early Saturday to load the car and drive through crisp air, bright sun, and blazing autumn colors to Northampton, Mass., site of the 2010 MARIAB Book and Ephemera show. I was in fine fettle when I arrived at the Smith Vocational School just outside Northampton, and I noticed my colleagues were, too. The beautiful weather had gotten the best of us. As usual the promoters, Flamingo Eventz, had done everything they could to make move-in as smooth as possible. They even provided afternoon pizza, snacks and soft drinks to revive our flagging energy.

I set up my booth in about fifteen minutes and began scouting the floor.

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, I make my living at events like these by buying, not selling. While the show is setting up I buy things from other dealers and take them home to sell to you. When the book fair opens to the public, my work is pretty much done. I might meet a few old friends, or sign up a new customer or two. But book fair sales for me are few and far between. I’m just too specialized.

Scouting a fair requires a sharp eye, a knowledge of the quirks and tendencies of other dealers, an instinct for the material, and the stamina to keep focused on the task at hand for five or six hours. Being in the right place at the right time also depends on dumb luck.

I put in my time and did my job to the best of my ability. By the end of the fair I’d written twelve checks. However, they totaled only $2200. There simply wasn’t any top-notch material on the floor. Some fairs are like that. (Though I did score a mostly full bottle of bad Irish whiskey, given up in disgust Saturday night by colleagues Peter Stern and Bill Hutchison.)

Still, my purchases, though modest, were varied and interesting, the kinds of items we refer to as “chowder” – a wholesome blend of diverse ingredients, but nothing you’d want for a main course. Inevitably this is reflected in the contents of my catalogs. For every rare delicacy, there are three or four servings of chowder. This is largely beyond my control. Rare books are called “rare books” because they’re, well, rare. All I can do is try to buy so that the chowder is flavorful.

The fair opened at 10 A.M. and ran until 4:00 o'clock that afternoon. There were about 300 attendees in total and sales, I’m told, met expectations for most of the dealers. They certainly met mine. I sold one pamphlet. This afternoon I got an email from the buyer of that pamphlet. He wanted to return it. I told him he could certainly return it, but that I was keeping the money.

At 1:00 P.M. I adjourned to the Toasted Owl with colleague Lin Respess, one of the best book fair scouts in the business, to watch the Patriots game. He had a burger. I had a pulled pork sandwich. If chowder had been on the menu we might have ordered that.

Flamingo Eventz concentrates on keeping their dealers and customers happy. But they do little if any local advertising. This MARIAB show continues to be a relatively healthy one because the dealers are proactive in sending out cards and notifying customers, and because it has been held in the same venue for a number of years.

I believe this is a vital factor in the success of all provincial shows. They need continuity. They need to be held at the same time in the same place every year. People need to be conditioned to think, “Oh. It’s mid-October. Time to go to the MARIAB Book Fair.” Cambridge, Trinity, Concord, Greenwich Village – every successful independent provincial fair has been successful in part because of this continuity. In these tough economic times perhaps enterprising promoters might strike long term deals for good venues at reasonable prices. The resulting continuity might help revive provincial book fairs from what sometimes seems like death by gradual starvation.

Now, back to the chowder. Here are a few toothsome ingredients:

Trowbridge, W.P. and Henry Hall. REPORT ON POWER AND MACHINERY EMPLOYED IN MANUFACTURES... Wash. 1888. b/w wood engraved plates and ills. 4to. variously paginated (about 500 pp.) This is part of the Tenth Census. It concerns the industries of the U.S. and includes lengthy, detailed and well-illustrated chapters on marine engines and steam vessels in the merchant service, and the ice industry of the U.S. Of related interest in a section on the manufacture of engines and boilers, similarly illustrated. Together these comprise about 200 pages of text. The rest of the volume is devoted to mill working machines and the textile industry. Ex-lib. Text VG. Bound in government cloth. $125

Broadside. “THE SMALLEST BOAT THAT EVER CROSSED THE ATLANTIC OCEAN.” Folio sheet 11 1/4 x 8 1/2 inches. The top third of this sheet is an engraving of the ship-rigged “Red White and Blue,” with two men lounging beside her to give an indication of scale, “taken from a photograph made at the Crystal Palace, London.” The text brags that the 29 foot vessel made an Atlantic crossing in 34 days “against head winds and during very tempestuous weather.” Indeed, Google has unearthed an 1866 newspaper article documenting this voyage, which was apparently undertaken to promote “Ingersoll’s Great American Boat and Oar Bazaar” - as it is styled in this broadside, with “over 100 race, row, sail, fancy, ship and metallic life boats on hand.” Unusual. $150

(See top of page for illustration). Uyeda, Dr Kazutoshi. (Editor). ADMIRAL TOGO: A MEMOIR. Tokyo. 1934. Color and b/w plates. 4to. 347 pp. Elaborately produced tribute to Togo, a Japanese naval officer who died in 1934. The exaggeration of the tribute is odd by western standards. The cover title is “Admiral Togo. The Hero of the World.” The book contains twenty-two color plates, many of which are abstracts and landscapes having nothing to do with Togo or the Imperial Navy. Articles by different authors examine the great man’s “spiritual side,” or see him as “the Crowning Glory of Japanese Culture.” His historical naval endeavors are also covered - in the most fawning terms. A curious artifact from pre-war Japan. VG in black and gray patterned cloth binding with gold highlights. VG in original cardboard slipcase, which is worn. $350

The Other End of the Spectrum

This book is described below. We hope you'll visit us, and maybe it, at the Pioneer Valley Book and Ephemera Fair, Sunday Oct. 17, from 10 am to 4 pm. Smith Vocational School, 80 Locust St (Rt 9), in Northampton, MA.

Since the beginning of the summer this blog has been chronicling the ins and outs of my work in the antiquarian book trade at Ten Pound Island Book Co.. I’ve made the point that the internet has radically altered the landscape in which this business takes place, and that, at the end of the day, it has left people like me with only two options. Either I get really big and benefit from economies of scale, or I become small and focused, occupying a niche that the internet has somehow overlooked.

Because I’m not a very good businessman or administrator, I’ve opted out of the “big” approach and concentrated on the niche market – buying and selling stuff that’s unique or at least rare enough that there are few or no competing copies on the internet. Of necessity that business model, and much of what’s been written here, pertains only to rare books, documents and manuscripts.

But the antiquarian business accounts for only a fraction of the traffic in out-of-print books. There is a robust trade in common, cheap, modern books too, and I suspect it dwarfs the antiquarian business in dollar terms. Students, hobbyists, researchers and randomly curious individuals are looking for all sorts of modern books. None of these books cost much, but there are a lot of them, and they all add up.

A man named Michael Savitz has just written an article about this branch of the trade in the online journal “Salon.” The article is called “Confessions of a Used-Book Salesman” and it’s fascinating.

Savitz says he uses a barcode scanner hooked to a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant, or handheld computing device - Picture a smartphone without the phone connection). The thing reads a book’s ISBN and compares prices of other copies available on Amazon. (This pricing information is stored on his PDA in a previously downloaded database.) This tells him whether or not to buy the book he’s just scanned.

As the “Confessions” in the title makes clear the article, while full of sound information, is written in a semi-humorous way. The author keeps referring to the fact that most other kinds of dealers and book scouts, as well as readers, scholars and librarians, think of him and his colleagues as pond scum. He freely admits to not reading the books he buys, not even looking at them beyond determining their physical defects. He doesn’t have to know anything to do what he does, and to some people this is a bad thing.

But it fills me with wonder. Savitz claims to work up to 80 hours a week, plowing through library sales and thrift shops, ceaselessly scanning barcodes, taking his finds home and vetting them for physical condition, pricing them (probably an increment lower than the cheapest copy online), and putting the listing on Amazon (there is a software program that uses the barcode information to do this automatically. The only thing Savitz might have to enter is information about the physical condition of the book.) I don’t look down on him at all. Like some efficient microbe he finds what’s viable in a pile of waste and converts it to food (or dollars. Savitz says he can make up to $1000 a week doing this.)

What I wonder is: How come he hasn’t gone crazy? How long until he does go crazy?

I’m glad he’s doing it and not me. And, as long as he sticks to his barcodes, there’ll be plenty of other stuff left for my species of microbe to pick through and try to convert to energy.

Speaking of scrap-heaps, recycling and the like, here’s something that was rescued from the scrap-heap more than 100 years ago, probably by one of Michael Savitz’ ancestors.

Hakluyt, Richard. THE PRINCIPAL NAVIGATIONS, VOYAGES, TRAFFIQUES AND DISCOVERIES OF THE ENGLISH NATION... Lon. 1598. Small folio. 2 vols. bound together. (22), 596; (4), 312, 204 pp. Poor man’s Hakluyt, or one for the spare parts bin. This is the first two volumes of the first issue of the second, 1598-1600, edition of Hakluyt’s great work. It contains the first state title page to Volume I, 4 (of 16) pages preliminary matter to Volume II, followed by Volume II complete in two parts. In addition to 12 pages of preliminary matter to Vol. II, this copy also lacks the Cadiz voyage, the map, and all of Volume III. See Quinn, “Hakluyt Handbook.” Hill 743. Sabin 29598. Church No. 322. The title page to Volume I and several other pages show repairs; all are evenly tanned. There’s not much more to be said for this book. It is what it is - a broken copy of one of the most important collection of voyages ever published. Offered at about 1/15 of what it would cost if the other third of the book were here. Bound in 19th century half morocco over marbled boards with gold spine lettering, some rubbing and wear. $1000

Catalog Noir

Researching and cataloging books and manuscripts for Maritime List 196 has got me buried in the Past… back with John Paul Jones as he shoots Lt. Grubb one more time for trying to strike colors on the gallant Bon Homme Richard; or on a seemingly endless whaling voyage through the Bering Strait, gamming with the rest of the fleet, keeping a nervous eye on the ice; or occupying Tampico during the Mexican War under a milquetoast Commander Connor; or sailing for California in 1850, hoping to strike it rich.

When I come up for air at cocktail hour each day, I hardly know where I am. Then I look around and see Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel & Palestine, the housing market, the unemployment rate, the Tea Party, and those damned New York Yankees, and I want to jump back down that rabbit hole as fast as I can. I suppose that’s one of the attractions of a job like mine – it offers relief from the ugly realities that surround us. Now that I think of it, you probably read and collect for much the same reasons. Escape, diversion, a different perspective.

But any serious student of the past knows that it, too, can be a challenging landscape, full of unexpected, and sometimes unpleasant surprises. Such is the case with three manuscript items I cataloged yesterday.

The first one was a marvelously informative journal kept by an enlisted man on a destroyer in the 1920s. Wesley Herington was a Storekeeper aboard the USS Hale during her goodwill cruise to Europe and the Med., and he stayed with her when she returned to the States. He was a good story teller and I realized, as soon as I began reading his journal, that I had struck paydirt. Here was a bona fide look at Navy life as seen through the eyes of an enlisted man! But as I read on, I began to develop a dislike for Herington. He was a mean-spirited grind and a cheapskate – at one point he “got rid of” a girl he thought was costing him too much money. Worst of all, he was a racist, with a prejudiced streak far beyond the norm even for those days. The last lines of his journal astonished me: “We keep our bedding & bags in the storeroom we work in because the S-Division of which we are part, has no compartment except the one the “M.Atts” use. Who wants to stow bags among a bunch of spicks and niggers? Or sleep around them without a gas mask!” The journal, for all the information it imparted, left a distinctly unpleasant aftertaste.

The second was a scrapbook documenting the naval career of Lois “Tommy” Thompson, a vivacious, competent WAVE who qualified for Yeoman Second Class in just two years. It’s a wonderful collection of photos, souvenirs, and even her rating badge, tracking her domestic and professional life. But the final entry in the book brings her happy years to a screeching halt.


Finally, here’s how I wrote up the description of the third item:

“Manuscript. PAPERS BELONGING TO ADM. YATES STERLING PERTAINING TO HAWAII, 1931. Approximately 300 typescript pages. Sterling was an outspoken and controversial Navy man who served throughout the first half of the 20th century. His last public appearance was in 1944, when he tried to emerge from retirement at age 72 to fight in WW II. Toward the end of his career Admiral Sterling served as President of the Naval Examining Board at Pearl Harbor. In this capacity he had to deal with the muck that the American presence inevitably stirred up. This thick file runs from the end of 1931 to late 1932 and covers in harrowing detail the rape of an American Navy wife by Hawaiian thugs. This is followed by Sterling’s lengthy analysis of the crime and its aftermath, in the course of which he notes that their defense lawyer was paid thousands of dollars by unknown anti-American sources. The incident is serious enough to be reviewed by the Secretary of the Navy, who decrees “The present problem is Territorial in scope.” More documentation follows, including a review of dozens more “sex cases.” A racial basis for the crimes is revealed. When the defendants for the rape were taken to the police station, crowds gathered, and there was “some little fear that violence might be attempted.” This opened Official eyes and a long list of “Newspaper Clippings Concerning Local Conditions in Honolulu” was compiled. On January 8, 1932 one of the rapists was shot by two navy men, possibly with the help of territorial police, and the fuse to the powder keg was lit... This account reads like a novel, as events unfold of their own volition and Navy officials struggle to understand and control them. Sterling's report closes with citations of more unfavorable newspaper articles between April and June 1932. Bound in manila folder marked Confidential”

Troubling accounts, all three of them, yet each one fascinating in the particularity of its darkness. The past has a texture all its own.