Destination Unknown – Episode 8 – Thorn Books (Tuscon, Arizona)

Destination Unknown – Episode 8 – Thorn Books (Tuscon, Arizona)
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Want to dig deeper into the world of books? Travel with Max in meeting other book store owners, featuring Thorn Books from Tuscon, Arizona!
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#papergoldpodcast #deepdive #bookselling #amazon #fba #ebay #amazonfba #books #bookseller #reseller #PaperGold #papergold #destinationunknown

[Music] all right everybody welcome back I am here with Jim and Lynn from Thorn books in Tucson Arizona compliments of Jen and Brad from um Johnson rear books in kovina California my journey continues on Zoom all across America and probably the world when it’s all said and done uh we are talking again like I said with Thorn books in Tucson Arizona we are dealing with book sellers who once owned a brick and mortar store and now work out of their homes so what I’m gonna ask you Jim and Lyn first uh just introduce yourselves tell us a a little bit about uh where you are and the type of bookstore you have and then I’ll just start asking you some questions and we’ll get into a wonderful conversation Jo I start okay our history was we started a many years ago before your time when AB bookman’s weekly was working it was a Weekly Magazine that was pages and pages of small print of PE of books people wanted to sell and wanted to buy I remember them well I started in the 90s and I remember those magazines well and we had we both had full-time jobs but we were starting to acquire inventory and we got we bought some prepaid postcards and had a rubber stamp made to fit the postcards okay with author title all the information and the price and you know and every afternoon when I got home when the ab when the bookman’s weekly got there the first thing I did was get something to drink and take the dogs out and go through and do quotes and mail them out miraculously we actually sold books I mean look looking you know I started in the 90s doing that and looking back at that time it would take me more than a day to literally go from the page one to the end the end of the magazine of bookman’s weekly this wasn’t this wasn’t a quick way to sell books no it was not and some times it was two weeks later you heard from someone who said oh yeah I want that book you right yeah you send out a card and you wait for you wait for a reply yeah then in 1988 I was between jobs and this cute little building became available and we stood in front of it and said we can do it and we signed the lease and moved some bookcases in and put our sign up and prayed I had to sell I think it was $67 32 cents worth of books every day that I was open in order to cover I love the number game you have I already love it okay in order to cover expenses and we did we did for well almost seven years we had an open shop I think yeah was mid 90s it it was we were in a small town the small town was trying to bring its Main Street up to be a tourist destination okay we had some really nice upscale antique stores and ice cream shops and things like that never quite made it and a a couple of things happened I had this lady who came in all the time with her child and I was more than happy to show Child books but then one day she showed up with a box of books that were just horrible and I just spent 20 minutes doing all the nice things about why I didn’t want to buy them save them for your daughter keep them as family heirlooms maybe you should donate them to somebody nice and just as he walked in the door I had been pushed to my wits end and I said lady you know you got to face it your books are junk that’s all I heard that’s all I heard I thought this is no way to treat a customer and I had someone who was horrified that a first edition in a dust jacket sign was $25 and one day I called him and said sweetheart I just printed up a sign and put it in front of in our front window it says open by chance or appointment only and I locked the door and we stayed in the shop for a while it was an easy convenient location then we moved to office warehouse space had more room for storage it was actually a more secure building nice little office space and our real customers still came so it didn’t matter and amazingly we still have a couple of customers from that little shop in 1988 still buying now from you yes so wonderful so PRI prior to 1988 how did you both get into the book business well I started collecting when I was in high school okay my parents took me to the Big Book Fairs in Los Angeles and it was wonderful and I spent all my safe pennies and books were they book collectors as well they were readers they weren’t really collectors but there were always books in the house my mom was the kind of person that please forgive us she belonged to the book of the month club but every month when her book came whatever she was doing she just stopped and sat down and read it yeah so I grew up like that and well you know there’s Val there’s value on those books nowadays well yeah some of them the problem the problem is and you both know this everybody took the dust jackets off back then exactly exactly and then I introduced him to books when we got married in 1978 and she saw my library she was horrified it was filled with wonderful titles paperbacks uh I was a Content person I was not a book as a beautiful object person what were what were you reading Jim what were you reading oh you name everything anything and everything but always but always a paperback well because that’s all I could afford okay yeah yeah it’s interesting how far we come along yes yeah and so was there any was there any hesitancy Jim on your part when she wanted to go into the book selling world no I pushed her he pushed so did did you have that feeling inside like this is a great move or you just had yeah I did I thought she would love it I thought I could help when we had the open shop she worked there uh Monday through Friday and then I took over on Saturday and then we were closed on Sundays uh but you know the problem with two people running an open shop is uh and somebody calls and says we want you to come and look at our books when can you do that right uh so it was difficult but we enjoyed it and I do sort of missed the open shop it was it it had some really high really good positives it was kind of fun we met some great people right and and now you both you work from home yep the shop is is just online now can people still make an appointment though to come to the house absolutely absolutely part of our shop is in the picture behind us it’s right yeah I was looking at Florida ceiling bookid ceing bookshelves where I don’t do is there a ladder there I don’t see the ladder uh the lad the ladder is there yes we tried to get a rolling ladder but the guy said they’re so expensive because the insurance is terrible because people pinch their fingers like Mafia the ladder the ladder is utilitarian and how often are you know average how often are people making appointments to come visit the house and and view the books to purchase every week every week or so yeah we vet them first okay sure what it’s it’s easy what you collect what are you interested in uh and it’s kind of depends on my reaction to them if they just say oh I love to browse old bookstores and I you know I say there’s a really nice bookstore downtown you should go visit if they say I collect something or I want to start collecting or I really love this particular subject and it’s something we have some knowledge or some stock in come on up sometimes we spend a couple hours just doing education but it’s a good investment but yeah so you’re you’re you’re really placing a premium on time and making sure they’re coming as a buyer and not a browser or a potential buyer we keep running out of time yeah isn’t it amazing how no matter how good we are we can’t get 25 hours out of the day no and it’s it’s surprising it pays off spending a little time I’m going to take just a second one of our now favorite people in our lives called in 2010 and said I’m not really a book collector and I probably don’t really buy the kind of books that you have but I really love King Arthur and I would love to come visit okay I said come ahead yeah so she walked in and went I I should I should interject that one of our main Specialties is King do you want to talk about your Specialties real quick sure go ahead James you do king arur uh well it’s King Arthur uh children’s books fine brandings fine printings and general antiquarian and fine press we love fine press and what about Western history since you are in Arizona to some extent yes yeah yeah the better ones there are there’s Western history and Western history uh we we are not going to compete with $10 books on the internet but if we can find high spots in that area yes we’ll go for that yeah yeah go ahead go ahead ly this nice lady walks in her door she bought a sign Mist Of Avalon for $100 and was horrified horrified at spending that much money on a book fast forward to 2024 she now has one of the most comprehensive King Arthur collections in the country if not the world did she writing a bibliography no we’re trying to get her to catalog her books and she just say I don’t have time that’s no fun just it’s better to buy them that’s where the fun is I know but it’s like she has a asash and Dean mallerie and the extra set of plates and one of the wood blocks from printing it she also goes back to the 1634 edition of mallerie which is basically the earliest you can obtain any earlier additions are either gone perished or they’re in library well she also got that 1519 llau a few years ago that’s true do you do you actively still look for she’s a she’s a specific type of buyer so do you look for books for her absolutely abut that’s part of your business we we found a couple of books at the New York book fair last month and uh they they they know they got here and then she came and they were gone again wow so I’m I keep going back to 1988 this is the this is the start of the bookstore for you it is before but not far away from the way the books are sold now so you were at the birth of the intersection of eBay and Amazon changing the I mean I remembered very well changing the complete landscape of book buying in the world before them there was interlock yes yes we were early on with interlock thanks it wasn’t like it is nowadays where it’s it’s two clicks and a book comes at your comes to your door in in a day uh no we had a we had a a monochrome Monitor and a telephone line yeah that was that dial up so um do you guys do any eBay or Amazon at all or did you and and because I know you have I know you have the uh website now on the internet and that’s what that’s how you uh Garner business but any eBay or Amazon go for it James we’ve experimented with both of them but find that they are not particularly good fits for us in Amazon’s case uh their focus is not really on rare books and we had a lot of problems because uh most of the books that we have do not have ISBN numbers they predate that this presents a bit of a problem for Amazon they like to assign their own number they tended to equate a sign first edition with a later paperback reprint and then try to reduce our price to be the same as the paperback and and and a stock photo which doesn’t represent the copy that you have in your hands we we would put up photos and sometimes they wouldn’t use them right and sometimes they would actually take the book down uh or they wouldn’t list it because it didn’t fit in some way or they thought it was in some way offensive uh so uh just just yesterday someone was complaining that they were they were uh loading a book about Dugout canoes and apparently the word Dugout now has some kind of a drug paraphernalia meaning wow and and uh it was taken down so this was not a good fit for us uh as far as eBay is concerned we we tried for a little while we were able through our webmas to have a fairly easy way to load our books to eBay we sold a lot of the lower-end books right um including some that dated back to the 1980s but in the end uh it was it was a question of every book was being negotiated it it it was not a question of okay well buy it you have a cheap price on no I want a cheaper price and it was more time than we thought we wanted to give to it as yeah you had a fix fixed price in mind and people are sending you messages which X number instead and now you’re bartering on the internet and not selling books and and and frequently those uh offers were about 50% of what our price was yeah yeah and and then all of this time Madam is keep telling me you know it it’s just as easy to sell an expensive book as it is a cheap book so why are you wasting your time on cheap books yeah great point so so you you guys have a fixed number that you w you want to stay in front of for for sourcing and selling we try we have the number we we don’t doesn’t always work it doesn’t work depends depends on whose house you visit to go buy books right right yes yes so are are you still actively sourcing now too for the store oh yeah oh yes what is your process of sourcing now do people call you or are you are you a flea marketer like I am not the flea market market here is not so great okay every so often he finds a killer something in an estate sale because he’s very good you may talk about your estate sale process well yeah but mostly it there’s nice stuff there but nothing for us uh we do like to shop Book Fairs okay and and of course we have people who call us and the question is do you buy old books yes if they were in our area uh and it so happened we just bought a large uh we about two or three boxes of books just last week from somebody whose mother had died and she was a pretty good collector of Western Americana and we referred uh to another dealer in town who was more attuned to the kind of books so he’s very happy with us oh you made a yes you made a friend bunch of books and then someone called me out of the blue he doesn’t do books but somebody gave him a book about Iowa because he was from Iowa and it turned out to be an important book about the Spirit Lake Massacre written by a Survivor a nice young so uh we actually I actually bought that in a parking lot last week so okay so this is a great story because one of the things I have a a patreon group and I and I talk about books selling to people worldwide and um one of the things that I always repeat to them are the books are everywhere it doesn’t matter if you live in a small town or a big city or you’re you’re you’re uh near the sticks but the you can find books everywhere and you guys are a perfect case for that um I mean you’re you’re going to buy books in a parking lot because you know it’s an important book and uh you know it came from a phone call uh on the other hand I would like to point out that Tucson is not particularly a book City in the sense that New York or San Francisco but Tucson is filled with people who come here late in life and tend to bring things with them from wherever they were and frequently those are books well and you know where I live I live in South Florida which is same thing same same story and although it is not a book town where I live the books are so plentiful because everybody comes here to reach retire they bring their collections from wherever they lived beforehand and there are you know our estate Sal start on Wednesday now it used to be a Friday Saturday thing now now it’s Wednesday uh that some of them start and uh the garage sales are year round and the you know the the books are everywhere but of course you have to have the knowledge to know what to source and what to pick and do your homework and your research but I I just happen to find that that good books good sellable books whether it is a $10 book or a $2,000 book you you can find the you can find these and uh the internet has made it uh a very lucrative business for those who do want to do the work and enjoy the passion of what you and I what we enjoy yeah we are we are amazed at some of the things that crawl out of the woodwork in Southern Arizona the nice young lady who says my grandfather left me some books there are a couple I’d like to show you and she walks and pulls two beautiful Kel Scott Publications out of her backpack or oh did did she have an idea what those were no clue she thought a little bit they do their research but a little bit they don’t know what they’re looking for but her father probably said these are valuable books and so in her head they’re valuable so let me call a bookstore and they were just beautiful and what we got a 70 not 192 cotton ma in the middle of nowhere a few months ago yeah where did that come from what’s the story on that uh the man who had owned it was a book collector he was uh President Kennedy’s ambassador to uh England and uh the books he had were not in sailable condition they’d been in storage for probably quarter of a century in a storage unit in Southern Arizona so he was paying storage fees for 25 years no no no they there was a shed on on a bed well had been their home but now it’s a bed and breakfast run by the Descendants okay uh and finally the lady said she wanted to clean the shed out well uh only couple of three books in there were even worth anything especially in that condition the cotton ma had to be rebound there was I mean The Binding was totally gone basically uh but it did contain the earliest 18th century map of New England in it double page and so we were fortunate to get that and we’re in the process of making it available for sale in the near future as soon as the binding is finished right so so it was a double pce of the map folded out and it was completely intact because yes yeah and the map was usually missing yeah so often they tear or there’s parts of it missing and and that’s one of the problems here you probably have it too if things have been in storage units or not in climate controlled areas horrible things happen we’re talking heat and mice and black mold foxing foxing is the major issue that I contend with down here yeah but I but but I also find if if if it’s if it’s a hard to find book doesn’t have to be rare but if it’s a hard to find book it’s still sellable you know it’s absolutely we did I do monitor aate sales especially one uh that comes up every Monday they they no longer always go into to someone’s home and sell out the way most of the estate people do they have their own warehouse and so they accumulate Estates there and then they haveit an auction oh beautiful one day I was looking at it and they had a signed Mark shagal and I it was a book that he had Illustrated for his wife’s book Bella who died the year before it was published it was the first edition in Yiddish and he had not only signed it but inscribed it to Max and unbelievable and we were able to you have very good luck at finding the most obscure obscured titles well and not only that but we brought it to the New York book fair and this nice couple came and they they asked me what what did the inscription say well I don’t I don’t read yudish but I had managed to make this I knew what this one said and I knew it word by word so I pointed to it and it said for Max Learner in M of my late wife Bella Mark shagal and they said oh that’s wonderful our daughter loves this book and she doesn’t have it so we’ll take it I mean but you found you found this at an auction at an auction house and and we found the one person who would buy it but but not but not a books auction house just a a regular run-of-the-mill Auction House how did Max learner’s book signed by shagal find its way there that’s always the a beautiful Journey for me to try to figure out well probably somebody from most likely New York retired we do know that the other items in the auction the people had lived in New York for a long time before they ended up in Tucson yeah that that that that is an amazing find that I I almost like that more than the cotton ma book with the map I almost I just yeah yeah more rare yeah we were we were at an estate sale one time going through a room and I stopped and stared and the painting was signed Ban’s it was an original I took it and that was sold to a a Maryland dealer who donated it to the Ban’s restaurant in Manhattan Ban’s Bar in Manhattan yeah I I happened the pon a collection of the uh Ban’s New Yorker magazine covers oh my um yeah they they sell they I I sell one about every two or three weeks um there’s a great Market out there for those New Yorker covers and I had a collection of about 40 or 50 and I have about half left now um just just last week we bought 194 copies of the Standard Oil bulletin starting from 1913 and going to 1932 many of the covers were by world famous artists including mayor Dixon so we’ve just put that up for sale was that a WPA no that was pre WPA it was the Standard Oil of California Bulletin basically it’s the history of the oil industry in in in the world it went out to employees and stockholders yes I I just if my memory serves me correct I think mayard did do some work with the WPA he did absolutely yeah yeah and actually the house where we found it was his home here in Tucson before the lady bought it many years ago and I don’t know what I don’t she was from sandard oil so I probably it’s just a coincidence that sure with his paintings on them were in the house I just wonder what was up in that attic we don’t have attics here we don’t have attic or basements or basements right where do people hide the good stuff in their sheds or in storage units yeah yeah oh that’s a shame that’s a shame that that’s why we have condition issues then yes well we did we did get a call A couple of years ago from a lady who had a bunch of sets and well you know STS they they they they really can’t pay their rent anymore people don’t collect sets the way they use they cost aune to sh and and when you go into a regular used bookstore you look on the top shelves and you’ll see the sets all there and they’re all got they’ve got dust on them and cobs you can take it off with your finger like like it’s yeah but this lady well we went and looked anyway and she had some interesting books and one of the things she said she had was a set of Arthur conand Dole well that’s fine but I pulled one of the books of it I was looking for something else because we weren’t going to buy a k and Doyle set but I I pulled a book out of I thought it was a different box and it turned up to be the box with a Conan Doyle set well it wasn’t a set at all it was a box full of first editions so we bought them from her well that was after we bought the boxes full of sign limited Arthur rackam yeah she had also sign limited AR sign limited Arthur rackams right yeah I I think I’m gonna move over with you guys and start shadowing wherever you guys go to find this doesn’t happen that often we may tell you about it as though what happened day after day after day but weeks go by when nothing happens how large was the rackam collection dozen books are those all gone are those all gone already no a couple of them the the Lesser ones are still here the Vicor of Wakefield uh the British ballads but the good ones of course the midsummer stream and Christmas Carol they went right away and the Conan Doyle was amazing I think we only have a couple Conan Doyle yeah the C only one Sherlock Holmes and there was some first edition Jules Vern in that if Cor I remember correctly correctly yeah yeah the the her her ancestors from the at the turn of the 20th century were book collectors in England so the books had been in the family nobody know nobody wants them anymore yeah I mean I find that all the time I I you know I just recently did a uh free pickup of 360 boxes of books of a collection of books and the family just wanted it gone did you have any King Arthur in it no King Arthur I’m still going through it it’s 360 boxes um but you know I find it it happens a lot down here that there’s just you you can you can advertise that you’ll do pick up and cleanouts and people will call you and they don’t understand the value of books and you know you can’t always just give them the value of it you don’t have time to look at everything on a on on a bookshelf um but you do find some things you know you you always find something that’s sellable on on free pickups and um so so so what what do you do with the books you can’t use oh this is a great question this is such a great question so I have a reason for asking it yeah we may we may be talking the same language we just don’t know it yet so um if I do a if I do a pickup or or clean out of some sort and then and I cherry pick the the the better books for eBay um and maybe there’ll be some for Amazon with barcodes or things of that nature but um if they’re good still if if the rest of it is still sellable books I am starting to use the platform whatnot are you familiar with whatnot I looked at it just briefly I haven’t gotten him to look at it yet yeah it is it is an online live auction um it’s not just books but if you’re in the book category yeah it is everything but um and you don’t have to appear on camera the way you and I are appearing on camera you can just use your hands with the camera and show the books and and I I’m doing four or five shows a week and Sunday is my dollar show and I list a hundred books one picture a 100 books and God is my witness everything sells everything sells sometimes they sell for $1 sometimes three sometimes 15 so everything sells on a Sunday my Monday show is my 20 my 20 lot antiquarian show high-end books you guys are going to your jaws are going to drop I am putting books up there that sell for 10000 $400 and starting them at $5 bids we’ll have to watch that yeah it’s exciting anday and I do a couple other shows during the week as well so I’m I’m able now to maximize a a house clean out but if there are books that are not good and sellable they just go in my my city still recycles they go in my recycle bin okay yeah we tend not to do that uh we we we give we have one remaining independent bookstore here in Tucson brick and mortar and we tend to give boxes of the ones we can’t use just as a donation to them they’re very happy they they Mark in five two five $10 then they’re they’re just happy yeah we also have a couple of of of friends of the libraries in different parts of the world where we ship books to and they are very appreciative yeah but uh but and then we have another dealer in town that he sort of intermediate uh not quite up to our standards but maybe not quite a book and he will come and buy some of those from us so so so it what it sounds like to me though you guys are still sourcing a lot of books at a time and you’re still processing them and and taking oh yeah absolutely so where where does that happen in the house is that in the garage they they come into the house and they come in sometimes he’ll do a quick rough sort but then the boxes get parked next to my desk and I go through them and either price them or say no uh we have a we built a fairly large home here in Tucson it’s just under 5,000 square feet that is large yeah it’s two stories okay six bedrooms and four baths and basically upstairs is four bedrooms and two baths that’s where we live okay downstairs I am sitting in what is supposed to be the dining room and the living room is behind me this is the official Bookshop in addition another room full of books behind me down the hall there is it had it was supposed to have been a bedroom but it is actually our office we have our desks and our computers our reference material everything is in that room another room which was the uh was supposed to have been a single garage but it is actually off the that is now a combination book binder and a shipping room so things come in here and they they go one place or another in the home right yeah like like myself you’ve turned your home into a factory and every corner is a different function of the factory that’s right yes my kitchen table has not had food on it for years but that’s where we ship books from well we actually have a special shipping table in the boundary so well and we were lucky when when he retired from corporate life and we decided to move here we came over to look at houses and this was 2000 I think and we looked at little houses and big houses and late in the day we were getting frustrated and we came over to what is the wrong side of town and drove up the street and then drove into this tract where there were these beautiful model homes it was evening was January it was dark walked in talked to the young man he said we can customize the houses picked up their paperwork went and had dinner went back to our hotel I came out of the shower and he’s sitting there going I found our house if we already customized if we built this house with the peblo style flat roofs we we have a center room with 12T ceilings and we can put bookshelves on the walls and no windows and virtually no windows we can build a little apartment for your mom on the other side we can make this three-car garage at two-car garage and have a binder and there’s a bedroom downstairs for an office we better go back tomorrow and that’s what happened and that’s what happened and now look yeah and it was it was a good move in many ways it was a good investment for certain and we were very lucky we found a boor wood Craftsman here in Tucson who thrilled not to do of kitchen cabinet and and ended up loving to build bookshelves for us so all these bookshelves are custom made of pean hand made florid to ceiling beautiful yeah yeah and they come out in case somebody ever buys the house uh they sit on the floor and they’re just screwed into the wall couple of nail holes and that’s it uh if they don’t want the shelves and they’d be crazy n keep them but people are like that you your your passion for this business is clearly evident it’s it’s it’s shining here what advice would you give to a book seller who wants to sell books from home like yourselves um they they have a they have a knowledge of books maybe they’re selling on eBay or Amazon now but they want they want to get into more of the antiquarian world is there any advice you could give to them go to the School condition and condition and reference reference know your stock know your stock know the points you know I won’t name them but there were some there was a famous family of of book sellers in Los Angeles who who really became the top book sellers for a long time and they started off in a used uh furniture place in in Compton California and we surprised one day when the box of books they had out front to be hauled away people picked up and came in and wanted to buy them so they got serious about books and they got one of the references we called it the Van Allen Bradley in those days the the long book of a book about collected books and they not only memorized it but they would they would test each other they would one of them would say to the other Steinbeck the Moon is down and the other one would say oh yeah page 112 there’s a DOT on the true I mean they would do that they knew what they were doing you’re talking about now or point yes that’s your advice yeah that’s your adice knew they knew the points and they knew one time I was looking at a Dr JN Mr Hyde and one of the guys walked by me and he said oh well that’s not a first I said of course it is he said no it isn’t he said somebody has erased the second edition impression they do it all the time and I looked on the title page and sure enough there was an eraser right there and how he spotted they were amazing they were amazing they were amazing but but and condition condition condition condition and scarcity desirability and scarcity yeah and then and this it’s not everybody’s path in the book world but the day we took the lease on the shop before I signed it I said here’s the deal because I’d been in the fine Book World collecting for a little bit MH I said if at the end of four years when we’re eligible to join the antiquarian books Association of America we are not able or accepted or ready to join we quit because if we’re gonna play this game I’m gonna play with the big boys and we did we were admitted in 1991 and and from 91 till now uh you traveled a lot to Book Fairs oh of course yeah absolutely that that was a prominent part of of you getting your name out there of thorn books and and Book Fairs are fun and we catalog cataloges for years and now we’re back to issuing cataloges so I do I do it’s interesting you say that I do see that coming back now I see that I see the independent bookstore cataloges coming back now because for for over a decade it flattened out it was almost non-existent well catalogs are expensive to produce right right uh but I did an experiment a few years ago with a a book fair it was uh in Pasadena I think uh and to my great amazement when the fair opened we had people coming straight to our booth with catalog in hand and they would saying oh that I want this one I want that one yeah so and the catalogs were available in the forier so obviously they were looking at the cataloges while they were waiting in line and it paid for itself and we only issue about four cataloges a year now always in conjunction with a book fair where we will exhibit oh okay and we also uh make sure that the the core of the catalog or the books that are going to be in our booth right uh and they work we have been experimenting lately with just online cataloges uh once a month and I’ll probably do it again next month but so far that doesn’t seem to be generating the sales right but I know I know on your website you all I think you have a link that’s newest editions or new arrivals new arrivals yes yeah so so you’re you’re also utilizing the website here are some of the newer things we have and sometimes we get people buy something right away as soon as we put it up and we know that they had it on their want list or they just saw it do you get a lot of trafficking questions on the website some fair amount I say not not not an overpowering amount but some yeah our better sales tend to come from our website though yes that’s true yeah we we’re on we have our website and then we also do ab and biblio and the abaa so I think the better sales are from our website and is there is there a division of labor in this house some someone’s the shipper someone’s the Lister someone’s the researcher yes yes we we share everything but mostly she does better shipping than I do so she’s the shipper well you keep saying that though she keep she she prices everything okay uh she prevents me from buying everything I want because she said it won’t meet our standards or the condition is off or the condition or or we won’t be making profit uh we share research and between the two of us we have several languages so we can generally figure out just about anything beautiful and as far as the repair is concerned I am a book binder so I do that I I seldom have time to do a full binding most of my time is spent doing minor repairs like like fixing an inner hinge that’s cracked or something like that uh but every book gets gets looked at and in some way generally polished or cleaned up before we can put it up for sale and he’s my secret weapon I can buy something that a lot of book sellers couldn’t buy and she has that needs a binding or needs repair and he can do it I I want the Spanish thing James he gives it he gives it to TLC it needs to get it in sellable condition that’s one of his bindings oh beautiful little bit higher Jim a little bit higher little bit higher there you go can you show the spine please there you go oh yes gorgeous conquest of Mexico first edition in English but the binding is totally trashed and and he can if if I Prevail upon Him seriously ly he can do he does some designer bindings but they take a lot of time right oh of course it’s a it’s a it’s a lost art we both know we all know that it’s a lost art and um I like that a lot James uh this is this is a book on of All Things book binding Manual of the art of book binding by Nicholson I took a long time to try to figure out how to deal with this but in the end I realized that it was talking about leather and it has samples of leather marbl paper and Victorian book cloth in it so the front board has marbled paper but the rear board has uh a uh T grain Victorian book cloth in set just anyway so it’s create you it’s a creative art as well for you it’s a creative art this is a Yates book Total rebind in green of course but the interesting thing about it is that I was able to find some uh Griffin handmade paper from Ireland which has sham accent yeah oh look at that yeah yeah so and that most of my time anymore besides is either repairing the book or or sprucing it up but a lot of times a book really needs protection uh this is uh the north of book on being a slave 12 Years a Slave 12 years but so I make these clamshell cases for it there we go so you’re that person that for the clam but he’s mine he only works for me he’s not Moonlighting when you’re not around on on clamshell cases I don’t think so no they take a day they take a l and they have to be they’re very picky if they’re off by two millimeters they’re not going to fit either have you ever made a video of making a clamshell case no and I’m not going to uh oh uh oh that was very definite I think people I think I think you have would have an audience for that yes and you know what I’m not I I have so many this is another clamshell case that I made but this is the you probably know this this is the this is the rackam King Arthur rant of King Arthur in aw yeah there you go oh look at that yep so gorgeous absolutely gorgeous yeah we got a lot of precious and semi-precious jewels in it uh in a full Morocco binding and in a in a special clamshell case so this was one I had time to do one for some reason so I did it let let me ask you this now um fre 1988 2024 now what has surprised you the most in the book selling World fluctuation the SC that please the scarce books have gotten scarcer and harder to find in decent condition and a lot of modern fiction that was incredibly collectible 20 years ago sure just isn’t anymore because it’s yeah because it’s saturated now it’s amazing how common some books are that we thought were not right do you remember in the 90s how rare some of the modern first were and and then and then Amazon and eBay just said no they’re not that rare everyone’s got them across the country here they are one of the things that one of our example that comes home for us is that she wanted a copy of the Seven Pillars of wisdom by by Lawrence a reading copy just a nice copy we could not find one for love nor money in the 1970s and eventually we did find a copy I called him one day and said there’s a bookstore not too far from from where I work meet me for lunch we’re going to get L it yeah and so we it was not in the best of condition but it was the only copy that was out there right then another copy appeared and another and another and we started to wonder if maybe there isn’t a cycle people bought this thing back in 1920s when it came out and now they’ve died and and it’s coming they’re coming back on the market and I think sometimes that does happen because the more I watched the more I saw an unbelievable copy number of copies and this is even before the internet right right and I think Winston Churchill is another example of of that kind of a thing his books tend to go in Cycles right well we saw it just recently we went and looked at a some books and there was a first edition faler beautiful condition gorgeous dust jacket I thought wow went and looked it up online and there was a there were a couple of book dealers with old clearly old prices starting at $14,000 you could buy a really nice copy for a couple hundred dollars yeah yeah yeah what I what I what I sort of cling on to the most is is the rare wasn’t so rare anymore once the internet exploded in right right now of course there are still very rare books but what you what the three of us thought was rare in the modern category just buckled under the pressure of what the internet showed so let me ask you what what do you see as the greatest as the as a jaw-dropping thing pre1 1988 to now 2024 in the book World lack of collectors so so you you find that there are less and less people collecting books yes yes surprisingly every so often a young person will come in and be a book collector but people don’t have libraries the way they used to I can’t tell you the number of estate sales where I go in and there’s not a single book in the house yeah now I I spoke with um our friend Kate Midas several weeks ago and um she was very amazed at the youth who were starting to collect infer though because they’ve been raised in the digital world and so in any sort of infer to them is what a dinosaur fossil would be to us um so she was very amazed and very excited about the youth collecting infer so you don’t see that in the book world on your end we’re not really into ephemera that much well but not so much the thing we have seen in the past the past couple Southern California Book Fairs though have been young families with kids at the book fair okay each kid gets to buy a book there’s hope so do do you have hope for the future of of what we do oh yes I think so definitely absolutely absolutely it’s going to be tighter work and harder work and you’re going to have to be better at it but it’s it’s going to be there because they’re it’s a cultural thing you know or it’s uh well it’s like our King Arthur collector I read a book about King Arthur and now I just love it and I want everything well another thing I think some uh of uh minorities or we call the minorities they’re not really uh are becoming more affluent more settled and I’m thinking uh in China the Chinese are starting to collect books uh and I know that they are collecting stamps uh from the early uh China period because now they have the money to do that and I have a feeling that the Hispanics in America are about to start collecting books on their Heritage I I do but right we’re just at the cusp of that well and we we’ve exper that there are black collectors for some really obnoxious racial material yes they don’t want it buried well no yeah they yeah I think they they think I think they want to own it so they can not forget history yeah that that’s vitally important to all cultures all all all Races and all beings it’s very important to not forget what history has done yeah and and as these groups get the money and the interest it it’s going to be a growing collecting area okay well I’m glad you guys are I’m I’m very positive about the book industry too I’m I I just see what I do on eBay just it continues to grow for me and um I’m selling more books now than I was three years ago and five years ago and I’m shipping all over the world so I as you guys say you know culturally people are buying books um how how are you shipping to Germany and and uh for example international USPS International um with eBay if I can ship with eBay if I can ship global Shipping to whatever countries they allow I use the global Shipping program via eBay okay well what about the the requirement for the license for the recyclables haven’t been asked that yet and I’ve been selling for numerous years and I haven’t I know it’s out there but I haven’t been asked that yet okay yeah and um you know last week last week I can say this to you I I sold a book um it went to Tel Aviv I sold a book to uh Columbia and I sent a book out to Australia so so the the world is exposed with eBay because it’s a global market yeah oh we do we do sell internationally but uh we have restrictions on on the European Union and England because uh we have to be at least 150 pounds or 150 Euros otherwise there is a tax ISS issue I can’t remember exactly how that works right now right yeah yeah yeah that I I think it’s all it’s all going to uh finalize and be a little bit easier in the years to come um I I hope um I know there’s some difficulties with international shipping some countries eBay doesn’t ship to but um what you know sometimes um someone who cannot get a book because of where they’re located I’ll just say to them do you have a friend in America who’s visiting you we send it to them and they bring it to you on the plane when when they come visit you so I love selling books and so I’ll always find a way to get the book in the hands of the next owner you have some nice books behind you by the way thank you thank you I appreciate that yeah I like you I work from home and I was a high school teacher for 18 years and I retired after 18 years and I love working from home and doing what doing what we do I you say you taught English literature English and reading I taught sure yeah in public high school yeah and I was a girls basketball coach as well yeah so I had a I had a whole different life before the life you we’re all talking about now well I think most a lot of people did yeah for a lot of us it’s it’s a second life for him for sure oh it walked out of corporate America into the book world and he I can tell he never looked back I can already tell yeah she she wouldn’t let me I me I I I retired but I got put to work immediately and I I I haven’t worked this hard in all my life you’re working harder now than when you were in Corporate America AB more hours longer hours too well thank you very much for for sharing this hour with me it it’s going to be on YouTube for the world to see and to comment on uh so this brings me to my last question which you already know is coming um you you are episode eight so where will I be going for episode 9ine we haven’t got a clue you’re going of Maine oh Maine okay what part of Maine Thomaston a nice lady book seller named Sandra hawra h o e k St a she does wonderful children’s books some little a little bit of gardening a little bit of General she’s a very knowledgeable very pleasant she’s good people I I start I started in Pennsylvania I made it all the way out west and now you bring me all the way back back East I thought that was yeah well I’m from Massachusetts originally so that’s going to be a a wonderful conversation she was our booth partner in New York and we were very impressed by her like her she’s nice does she know that you’re giving out her name yes she knows that I’m giving out her name Jim you’re always protective I love it well I have to be yeah and any any last any last bit of advice for for the book for the um smaller book sellers out there who are who are starting to grind and hustle and learn and learn learn the market condition condition condition just like you said earlier condition one thing a customer told us there are two kinds of book sellers there are the book sellers who treat books like a commodity they may as well be selling oranges or grapefruits as well as books and there are book sellers who love their books yeah and I would say love your books right I and I think that is great advice and I think going back to what you said earlier uh you know about C customers I think the Difference Maker is being a great seller to Great buyers and forming that relationship and and I think that’s a Difference Maker in today’s saturated Market yeah take the time to explain and talk yeah that happened just this week uh somebody called with a book and uh they wanted to know if I knew it well I didn’t but I wasn’t going to say that because while he was talking about it uh I was looking it up in in our reference material and uh by the time he finished describing it I had located it I had a pretty good idea what it was I knew what it was worth I was typing madly on my computer to see how many copies were for sale out there and and I just sat there and shared all that information he was so thankful and he ended up sending selling it to me so that’s fine because it’s one we could use and so often it’s not one we can use but we do that anyway right and if it’s not one that we use we always say if you find something else don’t hesitate to call us it doesn’t take a minute we happy to help I have found that great customer service brings repeat customers on my on my platform that I use I will tell you about a lady who called and talk to her about all these horrible books that she had that we didn’t want to touch with a 10- foot pole and when she got to telling the lady everything to know about them and what they were worth and everything the lady said you don’t even know what you’re talking about these things are worth a lot more than that and she hung up and five minutes later she called back and she said I have all these video cassette recordings do you know anybody that can help me with them we didn’t know what we were talking about why would she call us back it it takes all kinds we we we all know that it takes all kinds good alrighty thank you for spending your late morning and my early afternoon uh talking to me and and and the community for Destination Unown you will you will be on next week and people will be asking you questions on the YouTube channel so okay inter interact and have fun and once again thank you for the time and the opportunity you’re welcome and I will send you Sanders information thank you very much have a great day bye okay bye bye