Tuesday, August 05, 2008

pay the band that plays your song

and then there are days like these where men in suits stand above you orange from too much time spent lying in a combination of both sunbeds and sun drenched beaches. It's remarkable how the possession of one thing, money, can seem to be held far more in esteem than another single naturally human attribute. Possessed of a furrowed brow and a tailored jacket & pants to the unnaturally corpulent body, the male stentorian stalks the young retailer carefully and waits to leap to the puffing sweaty attack. Too much?

I've been diving back into the English classics. Is there anything as soothing as a bit of Dickens, comfortable and as paternal as a worn leather armchair in a comfortable room. It's a statement alright as is Austen in all her mind-twisting nihilism. She seems convinced of the need for suffering, beating down her characters so their mind becomes altered by the ordeal. But this isn't about Aunt Jane. This is about Mary Shelley.

Shelley was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. Her husband, Precy Bysshe, was anxious, she writes us in her introduction to the 1931 edition of Frankenstein, that she should prove herself worthy of her parentage. But, she tells us, life, reality and ultimately a family got in the way. But she eventually did get round to it. And here's the proof: Frankenstein is a phenomenon. There's no other way around the summing up of it. The first striking aspect of reading Frankenstein is that, as a novel, it is nothing similar to the various forms that it is popular assumed to be. First of all there is no Igor. There is no Igor! Where does Igor come from? Frankenstein operates entirely alone which casts a far more sinister shadow over the proceedings then does the ultimate creation of the monster. We all know the monster exists, the whys and wherefores are entirely at odds with what a modern reader new to the text would expect. We are not prepared for the savagery with which the creation forces itself on the creator. There is no way of being prepared for the blinding egotism of Frankenstein who, again contrary to popular belief is not actually in the novel a titular doctor. The orgasmic freedom that he creates the monster comes solely from within him. His madness isn't portrayed as insanity but rather beyond the boundaries of socially acceptable self-indulgence of the intellect. The appeal in creation is obvious; who is there who would not secretly admit to the wish of seeing a physical end-product solely derived from imaginative intelligence? His creation of the monster is in defiance of the rules of the university and the society of academics that he travelled to the Bavarian university of Ingolstadt to join. All of his subsequent actions are trapped by the consideration of the effects that he might have on his immediate world around him and the wider effects on the community he considers himself part of. I'm sure that Burroughs loved this novel as it illustrates, no, illuminates, systems of control like no other gothic novel. Gothic novels tend to demystify. Frankenstein tends towards inversion, inwards towards the question of mystery. The mystery is that of Frankenstein. he commends himself to the higher power of god. The creation Frankenstein commends himself to his known creator. I could be glib and invoke Dawkins to tackle that as I consider it as proof positive that God must have existed at some point for someone. But then again I hate Dawkins and would do anything to turf him out on his pious arse.

I had originally read the 1818 text which should still be available from Oxford's Classics when I was a precocious reader of 12 and the importance of these things were completely unknown to me. I then gae up on reading for about 2 1/2- 3 years. I reread the book last week that put me back onto the path of righteousness and belive it or not it was John Grisham's Pelican Brief. I love thrillers and John Grisham is one damn fine legal thriller writer. Don't bother with any of the later stuff as he runs out of tangible ideas but the Pelican Brief, The Rainmaker, The Client, The Partner- all those and several more are just damn good reads. You can feel the author reveling in being anti-capitalist and left-wing. The characters are quickly sketched and fleshed out by their actions. I'm always being told by way of excuse for buying these books that they're easy to read. Not so. They may be easy to scan but anybody can read any book. His pace is unerring and he's certainly no Dan Brown. Grisham has an eye for detail and research. Each character's routine is loved and tread with a light step endearing the reader to them or not,.Coal, a presidential exectuive in Pelican bears remarkable resemblance to Mr. Slope from Trollope's Barchester Towers. It just can't startle me in the slightest if there is some connection there. Just read the damn thing and be done with it. It'll only take a couple of hours and I guarantee you'll have a rollicking good time.

So many surprises out there it's only possible to know where to begin. Where you'll end up is hardly anyone elses concern but your own.

As a final note amazon has recently bought or is/was about to buy abebooks.com. Is this the nail in the coffin for independent booksellers? Tune in next week to find out.



Posted by littlesnapper at 19:02:24 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Monday, June 23, 2008

bunch of bloody amateurs

It's not rocket science but tell me I'm wrong. How few small bookshops are there present, both on the streets or with a presence on the web? How hard has it become these days to find a decent bookshop where you can walk in & talk about books or, alternatively find a decent selection without being talked to when you don't want to be harassed? How hard is it to find a decent all-round bookseller full stop?

Large chain bookstores, mass market publishers & wannabe booksellers (Tesco) are the worst bunch of amateurs I've ever seen. They are completely incapable of understanding that you can't replace a poor-selling title with larger numbers of a better selling title. Try selling someone who comes in to buy a copy of say Tarjei Vesaas' Ice Palace a copy of Butcher's Blood River. Or the new autobio of Cherie Blair. Won't work. In fact I read a great quote in one of the free London papers when Mrs. Blair's autobio was coming out. "Let's face it," the reviewer wrote, "We'd all rather read Jordan's latest book than Cherie's book." Which says plenty for choice of reading material as well as English politics. I'm not slagging off the state of English politics, as I'm terrifically glad to be part of the harmony in this dynamic society. Amazon are even worse. We've all seen the ephitet "People who bought this book also bought..." It all smacks  of desperation. Amazon know how untenable their situation is at the pole of international bookselling. Why else would there be ten million little buttons and extra little bits on any given page you visit on the Amazon site? In order for the structure of Amazon to work the consumer needs to be overawed by the vast domain incorporated into the site. If the consumer were not in awe of the massive co-ordination required of such a behemoth & damned certain of Amazon as being the easiest as well as the cheapest the whole premise of the virtual shop would all fall apart. In fact, I'm pretty certain that were such a realisation to take place, ten minutes of searching around on the web would find  an alternative that was either quicker, cheaper, local, more ethical or simply more convenient.

With such a heavy emphasis on supporting local businesses it is possible that small independent bookshops will gradually find it possible to entice local customers back through their physical & virtual doors. It is also entirely possible that Amazon will remain the Microsoft of virtual commerce & that small bookshops will become somewhat ephemeral installations before they close down. Bookshops will always be around somewhere in the background the question really is how long will they be around for & how reliable will the service be? Can owners of already large & established stores who let's face facts only need to manage profit  margins be persuaded that bookselling as a profession is a viable alternative to shifting numbers?

Or, and here's something that I would personally find fitting, let's have phd candidates in tweed jackets & bespectacled arty students behind the desks at Tesco's pushing Dickens and Hunter S. Thompson. Let's have Amazon sending free sample chapters of Ibsen along with the latest tome on the Bush dynasty. If you're going to do something might as well do it all the way.
Posted by littlesnapper at 23:22:06 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Friday, June 20, 2008

they rise up, knees up, knees up..

So I'm back from the festival in Paris which was quite frankly astounding. I sold some books, bought some books, left some books behind and got a whole new reading list.

For those of us who don't really feel like handing in to the large consumer empire I discovered a shining example of commonsense in André Schiffrin. Son of Jacques Schiffrin who started both 'La Serie Pleiade' and the Pantheon Press, André advocates the decentralisation of the book publishing industry which by extension can be made for the bookselling industry too. Centralisation encourages the homogenisation of an industry which, for the most part, has played its most important roles in the communication of revolutionary ideas and then counter-revolutionary ideas. It is also, by any account, an industry which thrives economically on that which is personal and quirky. You can't sell a million books the same way you can sell a million ipods. Here's how it works.
Bookshops mostly have their ordering done for them by central hubs. I won't go into any details but you know who the culprits are. Thus the ordering is done by popularity, what sells the most and is in The Bookseller as a best-seller is ordered in and kept in order to satisfy popular demand. Fine. What is not fine is the refusal of booksellers to stock a book on the grounds that it won't be profitable enough. Well, y'know guess what? Books don't make money if you only have the same ones in stock! Whereas six people might each buy a copy of one book and six other customers buy a copy of any other book, if you don't have the variety in stock you'll only sell seven of the original best-seller to those twelve customers.

And it makes sense. The same principles that apply to the book publishing world apply themselves to book-selling too. And it ain't easy.I have a small selection of about four books right now that I can sell to individuals. Some books that I sold out of within a week of being in the bookshop (hand-to-hand def my forte) were never replaced on the grounds that they would never sell again and I remember another instance of where I sold five or six copies of a book in a week and it was 'replenished' with twelve copies as opposed to the original five. (which makes no sense because I'm not going to be able to find more people to buy more of the same book based on the same time frame) And no matter how many people come in to the bookshop and tell me it's a nice place I have to be honest. I look around at the austerity and the impersonality of the shop and I know that it's all a little forced. The Bookshop, when I arrived had really excellent staff, tremendously knowledgeable booksellers who loved what they did. And now of the original set up only two or three besides the management staff are left. It's been at least 4 months since I stopped telling certain people I work there because I find it just a tad uncomfortable.

If you have managerial status and are looking into how to make more money in your business without turning into a mere vending machine, book-selling by the best-selling numbers read André Schiffrin's book The Business of Books. I need to go to work right now otherwise i'll have one less reason to be able to call myself a bookseller. More on this issue later on.
Posted by littlesnapper at 11:01:36 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Listening to the people

Alright. So I've listened to the comments, deleted some of them. If I delete your comment it's only cos I want to be stringent about it. Also it's amazing how much readers are saying the same thing. What we need is an open forum and it will come soon on the website. I'm impressed anyone can decipher my unwriterly scrawl.

Yesterday another old Irish guy comes into my shop. He's from Bournemouth and apparently the name of his shop fell down and he's never bothered replacing it. During the day he sits in the Brazilian café next door while the sign in the window of his shop lets you know where to reach him. "I made my money long ago," says he to me, "If I didn't own the damn building I would have been out long ago." Pulling out another book from the shelf he literally shouts at me. "This was remaindered thirty years ago, WH Smith had a bin full of them for threepence each." He shoves the film tie-in Raymond Chandler back on the shelf. "Bought loads of them an still have them." We started talking about the state of bookselling &c &c. It's a conversation that always follows the same lines and doen't do much to deviate but it's always a fresh topic that all booksellers like to harp on. "It's sad when you can see in The Bookseller that you can buy a shop with all its stock," and this is the shocking bit, "for cost."

It's true. If you wanted to buy a bookshop and had enough cash to do it, there's no stopping you. In fact now is the time, my friends, to take advantage in a business-like manner of other people's misery. Buy the goddamned bookshop you've always wanted with your friends. Learn from the business model of such shops as Shakespeare&Co and the folksdown at the lovely, though for me still unseen, Atlantis Books and start trading. Trade online and trade hand to hand. Door to door if you need to. Convince people to read Ezra Pound just because you love the idea that life slips by like a field mouse/ not shaking the grass, and because you need to meet the rent this month. You will learn so much from yourself it'll be surprising. Give it a while and you'll have been elevated by your craft, humbled by the fact that you will never 'make money' from the trade and will have read such diffferent genres, books of all kinds, learned to tell a book by its cover, the year by the paper. All automatically becoming intrinsic. That's the great thing about bookselling. All you'll ever need to know about what you're doing is right there in the copy you're holding in your hands. Hardback, paperback, dustjacket and without, broadsheet, poster, artwork. Then you'll get around to the cynicism that lets face it, you have to deal with in any trade though none schools you quite as thoroughly as the book trade. You'll believe that the only bookshop is one without anyone in it (for various reasons). That the majority of the book-reading public are idiots led by the fresh-slaughter scent of mass-production-fed marketing. Can you believe that The Reluctant Fundamentalist been promoted on poster with the words"the Man Booker nominee that everyone is talking about." or that "no one can go without reading. And it's working!!! since the ad came out people are buying that book over others! Lambs, if you'll excuse my french. The only thing that stands between the vat of disinformation is you. The bookseller. 'Nuff said.

Hell, if you want help setting up an independent book venture just give me a shout and I can put you in touch with like-minded people.

In my last post I said the book trade was in recession. The Boss is in financial difficulties. He fired and rehired me in the same phone conversation yesterday. Today I hit the streets looking for another job. No one will be immune to my charm. Bookshop owners will fall at my feet and beg me to come work for them. My extensive list of contacts will cohesively gel into a beautiful greased up mechanism that will enable to choose my pick of whom-so-ever I please. Pray for me.

And finally the plug. I hope y'all get some good reading tips from the text of this blog but in case they've all been too subtle and/or you don't have time to be chasing these things up here's a quick tip:

Last in the Emitron series and produced by the outrageously talented boys at Borbonesa, indie publishers, indie booksellers, bibliofanatics. It's enough to make you sick with envy and jealousy. Did I mention they were beautiful too? Yep, all Swedish blondes who'll welcome you with open breasts should you ever make the pilgrimage down to Brighton to see them. Just mention you bought Emitron 4 and you'll be in like Flynn. It's 3.5 UK pounds so that means it's within grasp of everyone. It's a beautifully intricate little designed booklet that contains all the sum of knowledge in the universe which veers somewhere close to the direction of art. As much a collector's piece and artwork as much as a book buy two, one to read,& one to keep in the original packaging. You would be an idiot to have them sell all of the numbered first editions without you having one for yourself. I got mine in the post yesterday so I'm good. You heard it here first.

Posted by littlesnapper at 11:10:20 | Permanent Link | Comments (2) |

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Tales from the desk

My exams are all over. All that remains to be seen is what result my 'hard work' brings. I'm sure it'll be fine, sure, I'm always being told I land on my own two feet. Personally I always like to think that I'm never up in the air without enough coffee & nicotine to gently waft my way down.

However, the sleep deprivation and stress has brought about some fairly uncomfortable situations. You've only had a few hours sleep in the last four or five days so hand and eye co-ordination is a little off. Your perception of reality has been tweaked by stimulants and the three year old in the pram seems to be looking straight at you with sinister intent. And her head seems to have pivoted an awfully long way from her chest.

I was selling some kids books to a yummy mummy and her insane little undead demon of her womb. The Gruffalo, The Hungry Caterpillar, Sasek's This is London, some of the Mr.Men Series, some other of the gorgeous books that my most excellent Portugese colleague orders. The kid was yelling and dancing around the shop as all spoilt little brats do and I was smiling and forbearing it while I pulled out more books that my yummy mummy cooed over and stacked in the pram complimenting me on my taste as I did so. She knew I was a little under her spell & she encouraged me to talk about myself, asked me if I had kids -I had just shaved so looked about twelve- she leaned a little closer into me when I told her of the other bookshop I where sold rare & modern 1st editions. When I finally got her to the till and she had paid I was feeling uncomfortably flustered. It was almost over and I was already mourning her loss. I handed the two bags of her books over the till and gave the child another little bag with the travel sweets she had thrown a tantrum for. When I started bending back up again I realised that I had been level with the yummy mummy's indecently exposed breasts the entire time. She flounced them back into my face once again before she left, shaking my hand and thanking me profusely. She promised to come back the next time she was in town. What does that mean? I'm not going to be winning any great matches with my conscience or the devilchild if she does come back.

As I mentioned I also work for another excellent bookshop that specialises in modern first editions, beat art & literature, drug books and just generally, um, counterculture. In the heart of Soho headed by The Boss, one of the most charismatic booksellers I have ever met, my boss knows everything happening in the town and has a personal invite to it. His personal friends and customers include Patti Smith and Jude Law. His knowledge of books is encyclopedic and his taste unimpeachable. The bookshop mirrors his taste, an eclectic and excellent stock of literature outside of the mainstream, a person of quality.

Again, I had been up all night in the library doodling on bookcovers and pulling out books that had nothing really to do with my exams. Next day I was working. It was an awful day. Later I found that I sent the wrong books to the wrong people. I had been late due to falling asleep at my kitchen table. The weather had not yet turned into this heatwave that forces yummy mummies to bare all while parading their spawn of satan. It rained all day. The Boss didn't bat an eyelid when I was late. There was only a calm and gravelly message on my phone. The book mix-up didn't fluster him either. There was a big pile of books he had bought/been gifted from the Strand in New York. When he left me to my chores I tried hard to sell a couple of books. There was barely anyone in the court and foot-traffic was at an ultimate standstill. Anyone who came into the shop seemed to already be in the trade and not interested in what I had to offer. A young-ish stockbroker tried to convince me his first edition of Harry Potter was worth 9000 pounds and worth buying when it's worth less than the ugly boring socks he was wearing. A student wanted to buy the very first edition of Austen's Pride and Prejudice when I couldn't have sold him the steam off my piss for what he wanted to spend. The recession has hit small-holders harder than you can imagine but blindingly stupid and wilful ignorance hits even harder these days.  An aging Irishman come into my shop to ask some questions about a Pietro Psaier painting of James Joyce we have and we start talking about Irish art and literature. He has some interesting things to say and I listen. He tells me about his youth and as is usual in a conversation with someone your elder he invariably comes up with a modification of the 'when you're young you can do this kindof thing' line. I tell him my age and he says to me in sincere understanding: "Sure I carried my age well till I hit 42. It was all downhill from there"  The Boss phones me to ask if I had sold anything else yet. As the Irishman from Mayo leaves and I'm smoking outside the shop, The Boss walks towards me and I can point out the erstwhile customer. I hadn't sold the 1500 pound painting, I didn't sell anything else and after work, instead of even attempting to go study, I just went home and fell asleep on the couch in my room to dream of punchlines and great sales pitches that net the moon an' everything else.
Posted by littlesnapper at 16:21:13 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

coming soon.. but maybe not for long

At some point each book mentioned in this blog will link to a website where the book will be available as a gorgeous first edition or a gammy  5 dollar crack paperback. In the meanwhile I'll just have to content myself with links to the best bookshops I know of in the sidebar.

Oxfam have recently become a prominent player in the rare & modern 1st edition trade. As a charity they acquire their books for free, they don't pay their staff and pay less taxes. Their rent is lower too. The rest of us in the trade rely on selling to other dealers for a substantial part of our business and so include, across the board, a trade discount. Usually at around 10% the discount can vary and helps us in the trade keep our chin above water especially at a time like now when fears of a recession are hitting small bookshops really quite hard. Oxfam don't give the discount, which is admittedly a courtesy discount, and their books are priced exorbitantly by people who are not experts but capable of looking up the top prices on abebooks.com regardless of condition and sometimes edition. I've come across one or two book club editions that were posing as 1sts. Now here's the question.

Should a charity, which is being run as a business, be allowed to keep the perks that go with charity status, if it is to the detriment of the others in the in the same trade? In a trade that has been in recession for the last five years; amazon is the number one attributed reason why independent shops close down, WH Smith, once an esteemed bookseller with a history that goes back to 1790, is now nothing more than a glorified newsagent & there are plenty of documented cases where a Borders or Waterstones moved into some small town and literally forced the closure of the local little independent bookshop.

Small bookshops are always going to exist. There will always be someone with the dream of sitting in a shop discussing their favourite literature be it comic books, counter-cultural books from the near contemporary, chapbooks. There will be bookshops in galleries in Brighton and Hackney (link coming soon). There will be boys and girls that roam the countryside on the lookout to dip into an unknown bookshop and find the next perfect book who dream of opening their own bookshop. Hell, my last long-term relationship was entirely based around that very premise - a love of books that aspired to being a sustainable obsession. What is in danger now is the viability of these bookshops. That smaller bookshops won't be able to stay open for longer than one maybe two years. Come to think of it my last short-term relationship was negotiated around the sale of a beautiful signed Sometimes I think, sometimes I am 1st by Sara Fanelli.

A friend of mine also in the trade remarked to me earlier this month that Oxfam were not allowed to join one of the secondhand book unions for, among other reasons, the lack of a courtesy 10% trade discount. This seems wrong since everyone in the book trade, charity or not, should be geared towards the advancement of the independent book cause. Oxfam would do well to have fairer pricing by experienced traders and the courtesy discount for other traders. They should also be in the union. On the flipside independent booksellers in high-rent blackspots should be given rent subsidies and there really should be a separate sliding tax rate  based on profitability for the small business. It's not that these independent booksellers are not turning a profit, the problem is that the profit doesn't last long...

All this however didn't stop me from spotting (in an Oxfam bookshop) a 1st edition of Raymond Briggs' Ethel and Ernest published 1998, the absolutely gorgeous story of his parents from the beginning, their marriage, before the Second World War to, well the end. I was also quite pleased to see it was signed by the great man himself. If you haven't read the book do. I'm keeping my copy to stick in a prime position for my bookshop when it opens in 2***. 
Posted by littlesnapper at 23:42:57 | Permanent Link | Comments (2) |