Rare Book Monthly

Articles - November - 2007 Issue

Changing Hats in the Book Business

The Wright Book is shifting course to meet the times.

The Wright Book is shifting course to meet the times.


By Karen Wright

From the day I learned how to open a book -- maybe about two years of age - until now, I have been a bibliophile. I expect I'll pass on to Bookhalla, (book lover's heaven) with a book in my hand. So, in 1990, when I got a chance to go to work for one of the best bookstores in the world, Powell's in Portland, Oregon, I jumped on it. I started in shipping, worked up to section head, spent a couple of years as administrative assistant to the boss-man, decided it was silly to work in the office when the biggest bookstore in the country was downstairs, and moved on to become an assistant manager of one of their stores.

Eventually, we moved from Oregon to Eureka, California, where I had the good fortune to immediately go to work for Eureka Books. The eight years I spent at Powell's taught me a lot about the book business, but the two years I worked for J.B. Bowden at Eureka Books taught me about books. J.B. was a stickler for searching long and hard through mountains of reference books to price a book correctly. Keep in mind that this was pre-Internet or, at least, just at the beginning of its rise to fame. Eureka Books did not even have a computer when I worked there, so I was forced to learn to price my books the old-fashioned (correct) way. I couldn't just jump online and see what some other idiot was pricing a book for and then undercut him by two dollars.

When we moved from Eureka back to northern Nevada, we bought a house with a great daylight basement and big French doors. For a while, I had a nice little bookstore there, but it was just enough off the beaten track that it was hard to make a success of it. It is a blue collar tourist town, too, so even if one had a bookstore, it was hard to get people to buy books. They preferred hokey T-shirts! Rents downtown were too pricey for my budget, and I knew that I couldn't afford the rest of the overhead that comes with a store (old story), so I began selling online. I still sell by appointment, but now I'm mostly online. I specialize in "...otanies" and other books on how-to-do stuff such as jewelry-making, ornamental welding, gardening, art, cookbooks, and the like. I used to find a great book at a flea market or thrift store that I could buy for $1 to $5 and make a decent profit, say $5 to $10. For about two years I did pretty well. I priced my books at mid-range, described them very carefully, and, I'm proud to say, I never had one returned "not as described."

After a couple of years, however, the Internet began to be flooded with cheap books. I found that some of the really nice books that I had, most particularly art books that had been priced moderately at $10 to $50, were now online for $1 to $5. I would find a great book at a flea market, pay $5 for it, expecting it to sell for $8 to $10 and get home to find it was online for $2. The thrift stores were pricing their books higher and higher, belying the name "thrift store." ABE, Alibris, and Amazon were not just charging a percentage of the sale price anymore, but also charging a monthly fee whether or not they sold any books for me that month, and then they had the nerve to put books on "administrative hold" because they felt my pricing wasn't competitive. So essentially, if I bought a book for $5.00 and had it on sale for $9.00, and they had four others online for $1.38, they wouldn't put my book online if they thought it was priced too high. Now that stinks! Never mind that my book cost me $5.00, it was in pristine condition, I cleaned it, put a Mylar cover on it, and I knew that the description was absolutely accurate. With all my costs, I would end up paying someone to buy my book.

Rare Book Monthly

  • Sotheby'sSell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts Sotheby'sSell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: The Shem Tov Bible, 1312 | A Masterpiece from the Golden Age of Spain. Sold: 6,960,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Ten Commandments Tablet, 300-800 CE | One of humanity's earliest and most enduring moral codes. Sold: 5,040,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: William Blake | Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Sold: 4,320,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: The Declaration of Independence | The Holt printing, the only copy in private hands. Sold: 3,360,000 USD
    Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: Thomas Taylor | The original cover art for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Sold: 1,920,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Machiavelli | Il Principe, a previously unrecorded copy of the book where modern political thought began. Sold: 576,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura, ca. 1639, a very fine pre-publication manuscript. Sold: 381,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Henri Matisse | Jazz, Paris 1947, the complete portfolio. Sold: 312,000 EUR
  • Leland Little, Jan. 22: The First Issue of Robert Frost's A Boy's Will, In Extremely Scarce Binding.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Knight's An Account of the Remains of the Worship of Priapus.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: First Edition of Locke's Important Treatise Some Thoughts Concerning Education.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: The Richly Illustrated First French Edition of Voyages de Corneille Le Brun par la Moscovie, en Perse, et aux Indes Orientales.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Scarce First Issue of An Account of the Province of Carolina in America, Finely Bound and With Celebrated John Speed Map.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Humphrey's An Historical Account, Complete with Scarce Folding Maps.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: First Edition of Chamberlain's Scarce Civil War Memoir The Passing of the Armies.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: A Rare Photograph of David Bruce Brown and #48 Fiat.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: George Cruikshank (England, 1792-1878), Archive of Sketches, Notes, and Letters.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Extremely Scarce Copy of Die Samländische Ode (The Samland Ode), Signed by Max Pechstein.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Andy Warhol's The Thirteen Most Wanted Men Exhibition Catalogue.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Edward Ruscha (American, b. 1937), Every Building on the Sunset Strip.
  • RareBookBuyer.comWe Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide RareBookBuyer.comWe Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
    RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
    RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
    RareBookBuyer.com
    Specialized in Purchasing
    Institutional Collections & Deacccessioned Books
    RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
    RareBookBuyer.com
    Specialized in Purchasing
    Institutional Collections & Deacccessioned Books
    RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
    RareBookBuyer.com
    Specialized in Purchasing
    Institutional Collections & Deacccessioned Books
    RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
    RareBookBuyer.com
    Specialized in Purchasing
    Institutional Collections & Deacccessioned Books
    RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide

Article Search

Archived Articles

Ask Questions