Over the years, I have gathered a lot of books. Most of them are now for sale. Some of them, of course, we want to keep. But then there is that middle group, that we are not sure what to do with.
They fit several categories.
1. Books that have no market value. These are books that list on other dealers’ websites at $5 to $10. Or they are books whose condition makes them unsalable.
2. Books that have market value, but where there are so many for sale, that the idea that someone would buy one from A. Richard is remote. These are books that may sell for $30 to $40, but where there are twenty or more listed for sale. If we had a physical store, we would hold on to these books for on-site customers. But we don’t.
3. Books that may have some value, but are so large or heavy that their shipping cost would either make them impossible to sell or would absorb most of the profit.
We have all three.
I am sitting next to a pile of books that we will probably donate to one or another charity for their annual book sale. Each of these books is a book of interest. I think.
Let’s look at a few of them, picked at random.
1. The Official Guide Book to the New York World’s Fair of 1939. Clearly of interest, but there are many for sale, and the condition of this one is far from the best. Did you attend the 1939 Fair? Did you go to the Junket Food Products Exhibit, and get to see how Junket Quick 4 minute Fudge is made? Did you meet the Liberty Girl at the air-conditioned Macfadden Theater? Did you see Lucky Strike cigarettes being made? How about the 150 cows in the Borden Company exhibit, where the cows got milked on a merry go round? Of course, all the states had their buildings, as did most foreign countries. My mother visited the fair. She was in the Czechoslovakian exhibit at the very time the staff was told that Hitler had taken over the Sudentenland. She said that the shock and tears were unforgettable.
2. A first edition, with dust jacket, of Sinclair Lewis’ late novel “Bethel Merriday: a Novel of the Young Girl on the Stage”. Not one of his better know books, this might explain why there are so many of these for sale for $20 or less. “That was the first time that anyone ever called her an actress—June 1, 1922, Bethel’s sixth birthday. There was no spotlight, no incidental music, and her only audience were her mother and a small dog looking regretfully through the window of a boardinghouse. But she was sensational….” Doesn’t make you want to go on, does it?
3. “The Penn Country and the Chilterns” by Ralph M. Robinson, published in 1929 by John Lane the Bodley Head, Ltd., and illustrated by Charles J. Bathurst. This is a tough one. On the one hand it is easy: it is not a book you would most likely be interested in reading and there are a surprising number for sale. But on the other hand, it is a very attractive book. It is a little oversized. It is in quite good shape. The paper stock is of very good quality. And the art work is attractive. It looks like a somewhat rare, and desirable, book. Apparently, it isn’t.
4. The 11th printing of Nabokov’s “Lolita”. Here’s one you would want to read, but you can buy it for a dollar.
5. “The Story of South Africa” by John Clark Ridpath, published in 1899. A gargantuan book, halfway between a normal volume and a coffee table book with over 600 pages. An elegant book, that would cost about $40 on the web, our copy is, to put it simply, falling apart.
Each of these books at a used book sale should make someone happy. And the best thing we can do, considering how much we have in stock, and our tight shelf space, is to give them away.
