Re: Borders up for sale?

Mark Stephen <mstephen@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>New book stores are usually run pretty professionally, i.e., to maximize 
>profit. Used book shops are a whole different thing. These are basically 
>the owner's library overflow. He (and they are usually run by a single 
>white male eccentric in his fifties+) is less anxious to sell books than 
>to have an excuse for more shelf space and for sitting around, 
>preferably undisturbed by customers, and reading. If you try to buy a 
>book that he doesn't like, you often get a comment like "I didn't know I 
>had a copy of that. Must have been in that estate sale batch..." He will 
>typically have one very part-time employee so he can be free to attend 
>occasional book sales.

Stereotypes FTW!

And an insult to professional dealers in used and rare books.

>A wonderful institution, soon to be done in by abebooks.com.

That process is all but over - the amateurs have all but driven the
professionals from the field.  ABE (and Alibris, and Amazon, and
numerous others) were merely the facilitators of this process.

All of the [knowledgeable] dealers I used to deal with have been
driven out of business because their bread-and-butter sales were taken
by the amatuers, and there isn't enough money in the midlist
specialties to stay in business.  For niche non fiction collectors
like myself, it's been a disaster - I can't call Mary, or Bob, or
Henry and ask them what's the latest they have in on Southern cookery
or related ephemera.

D.
-- 
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL