Used Books of the Future

Sunday was a huge day for me.

At 7:55 a.m. I emailed my editor the corrected text of my novel, The Old Turk’s Load. This would be a happy event under any circumstances, marking, as it did, the completion of a long piece of writing, but in this case the occasion was given extra meaning by the fact that I had been working on the novel for forty-two years.

I began it as a short story when I was in the Navy in 1969. The story circulated among my swabbie buddies who liked it, and encouraged me to continue. I developed a basic theme, and pecked away at it for the rest of my Navy years, then in earnest when I was discharged, living on unemployment and welfare rations. When it was done I sent it in “over the transom” as they say -- no agent, no advance notice, no one to represent it -- to several publishers. In 1971 it was rejected by Pyramid Press in New York. Unlike the other publishers to whom I'd submitted the manuscript, they’d taken the trouble to accompany their rejection with a detailed letter explaining how the book, in their view, could be improved. They said they thought I had potential and invited me to come to New York and discuss the writing business with them.

Instead of being crushed by the rejection or thrilled by the invitation, I was angry. Who were they to think they could mess with my Deathless Prose? Come to New York? Fat chance! Let them hire themselves some other lackey.

Family life and a bookselling career ensued, both severe distractions, but that novel kept nagging me. I made another start on it in 1975, but wandered off course. Then again in 1985. The thing just wouldn’t take shape.

My son got killed in 1992 and to keep from going crazy I investigated his murder. This resulted in a book, a very good book, called Gone Boy that has been in print since 1999. In April 2011, the third edition was published, with a new introduction. This was followed by Demon of the Waters in 2002, for which I received a good whack of dough (those were the days!), and then by Hubert’s Freaks -- which was probably the most fun I ever had writing anything -- in 2008.

Each of these books was generously reviewed by critics and largely ignored by the American public -- I prefer now to think of them as “cult classics.” But the point was made. I could consider myself, with some justification, as a writer. In a way that would make Robert Frost proud, I had integrated my avocation as a writer with my vocation as a bookseller.

I was making used books of the future.

Other projects came and went, but that novel was still back there, bugging me in its incompleteness. In 2007 I had a huge breakthrough with the plot, and got the book to where the first half of it was alive, anyway.

Then, after Hubert’s Freaks came out I said, “All right, dammit. I don’t want to die wishing I’d have finished my novel. This time I’m going to get it DONE.”

So I stuck with it, working on it up in Nova Scotia on my summer trips, in my writing shed in Ireland when we went there each spring, and in a thousand identically anonymous motel and hotel rooms as my book travels took me around America. Early in 2010, I thought I had it, only to realize it was still fatally flawed. I worked on it, hard, all that summer, and by the fall it was finally, indubitably, finished.

By that time, of course, the traditional fiction market had collapsed, along with most of the publishing industry as we knew it. I sent the manuscript to my agent and she sent it back. Sorry, she said, I can’t sell this.

But other changes had affected the industry, and these worked in my favor. I came up with a book design, got my son to execute it on his fancy computer, stole some cover art from a wonderful old pulp fiction thriller, and sent it up to a printer in Maine. A few weeks later I had two hundred copies of a classic looking pulp novel – my novel – to be sent out to friends as that year’s Christmas present.

On a whim, I sent a few copies to publishers who specialized in the kind of stuff I was writing, and much to my surprise and delight, one of them bought it.

The book will be coming out in 2012, published by Mysterious Press at Grove Atlantic.

At last the weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I think I’ll take the rest of the day off.

Catalog as Collage

Ross' Appendix. (See below)

Jed Birmingham is the son of an old family friend, and we became friends through our shared interest in the works of Charles Olson. Jed is a lawyer in DC, I think. I see him every spring at the Washington Antiquarian Book Fair, and at other east coast shows. I know he reads and collects postmodern lit so I sent him my catalog Olson in Print, which he enjoyed mightily. When I talked to him at the recent Boston antiquarian book fair he gave me a copy of the journal he is editing.

It’s called Mimeo Mimeo and, though it claims on its masthead to be primarily concerned with artists’ books, typography and the mimeo revolution, it has a lot more going on than that. The issue he gave me, "No. 5," contained articles about Robert Creeley’s library, Bukowski’s ascent to fame, record albums of modern poets, and Chicago poet Alice Notley. There was a lovely piece about Ed Budowski’s ultimately tragic devotion to his Buffalo gallery and press, and an article by colleague Bill Stewart about how he and Vicky started Vamp & Tramp, foremost purveyors of artists’ books in the country today.


It was a lovely mag. I was proud of Jed and delighted to see how far he’d taken his dream. But there was something else about Mimeo Mimeo that fascinated me.

In its look and feel, its broad intelligence, and its paratactic approach to subject matter, it was surprisingly reminiscent of two other things I’ve been reading lately: Catalog 13 by Lorne Bair,


and Catalog 11 – Printed & Manuscript Americana by Ian Brabner.


Yes, I know. As old fashioned categories go, one is a literary magazine and the other two are booksellers’ catalogs. But based on the evidence of production values and intellectual range, they’re more alike than they are different.


This raises an interesting possibility.

Everyone can see the book business is changing. This is probably its most dynamic era since the days of Gutenberg. But no one has any idea what it will change into. Jed, Lorne, Ian, and colleagues like Brian Cassidy or Adam Davis (Division Leap Books - about whom I blogged last year) may be showing us a way into the future.

The article in Jed’s magazine about Alice Notley begins with a discussion of the difference between “editing” and “curating” – a word Notley cordially and charmingly detests. She says, “Curator is a pukey word suggesting someone in an expensive suit with a clunky amber necklace.” Her definition made me laugh, but it got me thinking.

The Internet diminishes the book’s traditional function as a transmitter of information. The book becomes increasingly a marker of cultural value, more and more an art object, like a painting or an antique vase. As this inevitable change occurs, we book dealers will cease to be purveyors of masses of informational text, and become artisinal consultants, assisting clients in the acquisition of books-as-art-objects. Think of it this way. When everyone had horses, every town had blacksmiths. When cars replaced horses mechanics replaced blacksmiths and blacksmiths, if they survived at all, survived as artisans.

So, whether we like the words or not, booksellers become more artisinal. Their catalogs are less edited and more curated – not in the sense of clunky amber necklaces, but as the selection and arrangement of works that are already complete in themselves.

Catalog 11 and Catalog 13 are as much statements of individual taste as Jed Birmingham’s Mimeo Mimeo.

I’d like to see this trend continue. The selection of objects to sell and the narrative description of these objects can be as artful as the composition of any avant garde magazine. As the book morphs from information container to art object and the bookseller from merchant to artisan, the bookseller’s catalog has the possibility to be more an expression of the bookseller’s individual taste and creativity. More like a collage.

More like a work of art.

And speaking of catalogs, our Maritime List 207 is now available on our website at Ten Pound Island Book Co. The illustration at the top of this page, "Ross' Appendix" is from item #48.

Ross, John. NARRATIVE OF A SECOND VOYAGE IN SEARCH OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE... (AND) APPENDIX TO THE NARRATIVE OF A SECOND VOYAGE IN SEARCH OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE... Lon. 1835. Color and b/w plates, charts, fldg map. 4to. 2 vols. xxxiii, (1), 740; xii, 120, cixiv, cii pp. “...and of a residence in the Arctic regions during the years 1829...1833.” During this expedition, which lasted through 4 Arctic winters, Ross discovered the magnetic north pole. First edition. With 31 plates and charts, several colored. The Appendix, though it styles itself as such, was published and issued separately from Ross’ narrative, and it is scarcer than that work. It concerns the Eskimos and natural history of the areas Ross explored, and features 12 color and 8 b/w plates of natives and animals. Also included are biographical sketches of expedition members. Abbey 636. Arctic Bib. 14866. Hill 1490. Both volumes are bound in original patterned cloth. The “Appendix” is in VG condition; the spine to the other volume has been laid down, and shows light wear. A corner has been cut from the frontispiece of the main volume, without affecting the image. The plates in both volumes are clean, showing some tanning and foxing, as usual. The color plates are rich and deep. A Very Good set overall, not often found together in original bindings. $1500

The Pressure to Perform

Not "Night of the Living Dead" - it's the scrum at the booth of Brattle Books during setup, starring Nicole Reiss


This was, by most accounts, a good Boston Book Fair. Not an all-time great, but not a disaster. Pleasant weekend weather, vigorous promotion, and the lovely human capacity to ignore looming global fiscal catastrophe resulted in frisky, interested crowds all three days of the fair.

Not a convention of undertakers - it's the frisky crowd on opening night

Let us pause a moment to consider this “promotion” issue. Show promoter Betty Fulton (Commonwealth Promotions), and the show’s Godfather Ken Gloss (Brattle Books), were tireless in their efforts at outreach and education in the greater Boston area. Radio spots ran regularly on WBUR, the Boston FM station most attuned to the book collector demographic. Both Fulton and Gloss used October’s widely attended Boston Book Festival (new books) to publicize our own old book “festival” at the Hynes. Dealers like Peter Stern, Commonwealth Books, and Boston Book Co. added to the drum beat, and even non-participating firms like Buddenbrooks made sure their local customers knew about the fair.

Most importantly, promoter and local dealers distributed hundreds, if not thousands, of free passes to the fair. This resulted in a strong showing by the under-forty crowd, upon whom we pin so many of our hopes for the continued health of our trade. The way Gloss explained it, these people might not want to spend $15 to get in to an antiquarian book fair, but with a free ticket the event becomes a destination, a convenient downtown location at which to meet friends, have a drink, and see (perhaps even purchase) some cool books. All this, mind you, is coming out of the pocket of the promoter in terms of potential revenue at the gate. But Betty shrugs it off, preferring to concentrate her efforts on building a stronger event. In fact, according to one of my cub reporters, Peter Stern, attendance was up a bit this year, edging 3500.

The Hynes is a pleasant, roomy venue, and Boston’s location makes our event a convenient stop for European dealers, who invariably add interesting material and good looking women to the mix on the floor. For some reason, perhaps because of Boston’s slightly provincial character, the “pressure to perform” is less than at Los Angeles, say, or New York. Also, this fair’s excellent comfort level arises from the fact that we’ve been in the same venue, with the same promoter, for a decade. The men and women who work the floor during move-in and move-out know the drill because they’ve been doing it for years. Many faces on the staff are recognizable from past fairs, and their relations with exhibitors are likely to be friendly and cooperative rather than adversarial – as they are at a show like Baltimore, where the promoter is new and many of the workers don’t “get it.”

In any event, I would go so far as to say that there are moments when the Boston Book Fair almost seems fun.

Bernice Bornstein and Mardges Bacon


And speaking of fun, the “shadow show” over at the Park Plaza Castle Saturday morning was its usual goofy, poorly lit, but somehow exhilarating book-mosh. According to promoter Bernice Bornstein, setup was as chaotic as ever - saved, in the end, by the heroic efforts of volunteers Bill Hutchison and Garry Austin. The gates opened at 8 AM and a swarm of ravenous, slightly hung over dealers from the Hynes gobbled their way through the books on offer. Exhibitors I spoke with echoed the “good, not great” assessment coming from the bigger fair.


The only tussle I heard about involved a dealer who had a bone to pick with Bill Hutchison. It seemed, in this dealer’s paranoid version of how things proceed, Hutch had given him a bad booth and therefore he’d had a lousy show. Well, here’s a news flash, boyo. You had a lousy show because you had lousy books. End of story.

The end of the story for me came, fittingly, in the last hour of the book fair at the Hynes, during which time two hefty sales nudged my book fair questionnaire answer from “met expectations” to “exceeded expectations” and relieved, momentarily at least, that nasty old pressure to perform.

Here's one of my books that never quite made it off the lot:


LOG OF THE WHALING BARK JOHN CARVER. MAY 31 1875 - MAY 16, 1879. Folio, approximately 200 pp. manuscript entries. Complete log of a voyage to the Pacific and New Zealand. It has no whaling stamps, however two things set it apart. Midway through the voyage, a greenhand recruit named Joseph Fry went crazy, and the log follows his descent in dispassionate, grotesque, detail. This was a bad voyage for captains. The first Captain, Aaron Dean, died of a heart attack. All three of his replacements got sick and were sent ashore, and all of this is recorded in the log - including picking up Capt. Dean’s body at Talcahuano for shipment home, three years after his death. This log comes with original shipping papers, signed by each of the crew, with position aboard and lay specified, as well as a manuscript contract, signed by each crewman, agreeing to the terms of the voyage. These included charges for the medicine chest, insurance, interest on advances, guarantee of cargo and guarantee of pay (an astonishing 2½ %). Though such agreements were regularly struck with crews, particularly in later whaling days, documentation is scarce. $7500

The Eyes Have It

Rare 18th century American whaling log. Details below


Next weekend, November 11-13, the 35th Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair will be held at the Hynes Convention Center. I’ve been busy for a week preparing to exhibit at this event.

After a spring and summer of provincial fairs (the last American ABAA/ILAB book fair was in April in New York) the Boston show provides an excellent opportunity to sift through acquisitions of the past six months, and do whatever is necessary to present them at a major league venue. Mostly this involves research and cataloging – describing each item accurately in terms of condition and bibliographic information. But it’s equally important to compose a concise narrative that places the item in history and explains why a potential buyer should spend his money to own it. A little Mylar and book grease help, and of course good paper people and binders are essential. I use Green Dragon and Currier Bindery.


After a week of thrashing around, I’ve selected roughly $475,000 worth of goods - about $100,000 on consignment, $75,000 co-owned with other dealers, and the rest mine. I like the stuff I’ll be exhibiting; in fact I’m damned proud of it. There are a few high spots, but I can’t really afford to play that game, so most of my material is offbeat, outside the box, and almost certainly not being offered on the Internet by dozens of other dealers.


It’s wonderful stuff. But experience has taught me not to have high expectations for this book fair, or for any book fair, in terms of sales. Given the quality of my stock, I might have sales in the mid-five figures. I might even bump into six figures. But it’s equally possible that I might sell just thousands in Boston, or even hundreds. It’s happened before.

I do my best to describe my material, display it in an attractive manner, and engage potential customers. Beyond that the matter is out of my hands, so I try to forget about sales.

When I see someone who is genuinely interested in the material I have on offer, there’s always something to talk about, and the conversation flows effortlessly – both ways, not just from salesman to victim. Usually these conversations are nothing more than conversations, and that’s fine. They help pass the time. But it happens often enough that, even if I don’t sell five figures at a big show, I’ll meet someone who will spend five figures with me over the years. I might even meet someone who has books like mine to sell. One of the best calls I’ve ever gotten happened in New York when man walked into my booth, saw a copy of Chase’s “Narrative of the most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex” and said, “I’ve got one of those.”

Which brings me to the meat of this essay. The most important thing about these fancy book fairs is that – as Willy Sutton said about banks and money – they are where the books are. I have no idea how much I’ll make selling my goods, but I can be certain I’ll see books I’ve never seen before. I’ll see books and manuscripts presented in ways and contexts that had never occurred to me. I’ll see prices that make me gasp, then double gasp when I see the item get sold.

Book fairs are my education. They are, as Melville said about his life on a whale ship, “my Harvard and my Yale.” But that’s not all.

I’m going to be looking hard, as I walk that floor, for items that I can buy and resell. There are tens of thousands of items of offer; no one can see them all. With any luck I’ll sell a good portion of what I buy on the floor, immediately, to other dealers.

I’ll be putting my Boston Book Fair stock in boxes tomorrow, getting ready to carry them to the Hynes. As I put each one away I’ll say good bye to it, and good bye to the expectation that it will sell next weekend - goodbye to any thought of sales - so that when I walk onto that floor Friday morning at setup, I’ll be clean as a whistle. Undistracted. All eyes.

And if, Saturday afternoon, a customer approaches me and complains that he’s found no interesting maritime books or documents to buy at this fair, I’ll commiserate with him. But I’ll be smiling inside, because that means I’ve done my job.

He’ll be seeing the good stuff in my next catalog.

Here’s an example:

LOGS OF THE WHALE SHIPS HARLEQUIN AND LEVIATHAN, BROOKHAVEN, NY TO DAVIS STRAIT, 1768 AND 1769. Folio, unpaginated. About 200 pp. manuscript entries. This log was kept by a New York man named Nicholas Bailey. The first whaling journal documents a voyage aboard the “Sloop Harlikin from New York” bound for “Davises Strates a Wailing.” June 17, 1768 - Sept. 23, 1768. It ends “att Nantuckit Bar.” It is followed immediately by “a journal of our intended Voige on Bord of the good Schooner Leviathen Jonathan Worth Master… from Brook Haven [Long Island, NY] to Davises Strates a Waleing.” The voyage began May 8, 1768 and ended November 4, 1768. Unlike the prior voyage, this one was very successful. The entry for September 13 gives what I believe to be the first description of a “Nantucket Sleigh Ride” aboard an American whaler.

American whaling logs of this vintage are rare. Sherman cites only seventeen pre-1800 held in American institutions. Very few pre-Revolutionary American logs have ever been offered in the trade, and most of these have been in poor condition or incomplete. The log of the Susanna, 1784, sold at Swann’s in the second Barbara Johnson sale for $18,000 in 1997. It was incomplete, sixteen pages in length. Swann claimed, “This log represents one of the earliest logs in existence and also one of the most complete of the early examples”

Folio in format, unpaginated and covered in a limp sailcloth binding. It contains about two hundred pages of manuscript entries documenting Nicholas Bailey’s career at sea and subsequent activities ashore. Forty-eight of these pages comprise the complete journals of two whaling voyages. Details on request. $105,000


Next week: Boston Book Fair Report