How to Make Money Selling Used Books

Let’s listen to the Peter Cullen who has been living through selling used books for so many years:

Is it still possible—in this age of computerized frustration and urban crisis—to live a meaningful, satisfying, ecologically sound, and fairly low-pressure lifestyle in the city? Yes. I’ve done it for years. – . as owner-operator of one of the world’s oldest kinds of recycling centers: a used-book store. The business worked out well for me (even though it did come close to making me the perfect Small Shopkeeper) and it might be the answer to your quest for “A Good Life and a Good Living”.

I expect that my experience can be applied to any metropolitan area of some size although I should note, before I begin, that all my own used-book store experience has been on the West Coast. The communities I’ve worked in, however, have varied considerably (three years intensive browsing and buying in the Bay Area, five years of shop ownership in the lower-middle-class family community of Inglewood. and five years split between a semislum in western LA. and a more solidly middle-class and academic section of Santa Monica). This article contains the distilled wisdom of that 13 years spent dealing in used books. It should, I believe, contain enough facts to put any determined and reasonably capable individual into the business in almost any urban area of the country.

OK. To open a used-book store, you must have:

[1] A steady supply of cash with which to buy books as you come across them.

[2] Enough free time to work out a route of thrift stores, junk shops, and booksellers from which you will begin to accumulate the stock necessary to start your store. Given that stock you must have:

[ 3] A location in which to do business. Its rent, book capacity, and area will help to make or break your enterprise. But in order to open your doors you will need:

[4] Licenses from the city and perhaps a permit from its police department.

[5] The go-ahead from the State Board of Equalization which (as inCalifornia) may demand a deposit of several hundred dollars before issuing you a license to resell merchandise. When you’ve obtained the city and state permits you will require:

(6] A rational and accessible arrangement of books on stable shelving. This is the essence of your merchandising. Given a well-organized store, you will need:

[7] A posted schedule of days and hours. An ad in the Yellow Pages is the most helpful form of ongoing advertising but word of mouth and plain chance will be your biggest source of customers.

[8] Motivation sufficient to keep you from walking off the job in the middle. This incentive can be a starving family, a love of money, an unholy passion for books, an intense hatred of real work, a desire for a minimum of independence. . . anything to keep you coming in five or six days a week.

In the process of expanding on the preceding points, this article should succeed in raising most of the questions you’ll need to think about before embarking on your career in used books.

Money—which is listed Number One—may well be your greatest stumbling block. As you know, they named the system after the fact that you need a certain chunk of capital just to take your first breath. If you have a big pile of bread to fall back on, great. You can go out scouting for stock five days a week and be in business within the year. In fact, a friend of mine hunted up his opening-day stock of 2,000-plus books in half that time.

The perfect area for a book dealer is many-faceted. Ideally, you might have a university and/or a counterculture contingent on one border of your neighborhood, a choice piece of real estate containing a healthy sampling of the well-to-do on another. – . with a large population of highly literate and highly mobile (moving is a prime reason people give for selling their used books) middle-income apartment dwellers surrounding you. The store itself might sit on a well-traveled side street that leads into a large and thriving business district or beside a main drag which sends thousands of cars and/or pedestrians past you daily.

Such an area would maximize your chances of selling your fabulous stock and should disgorge a varied surplus of books with which to replenish your supply. This is crucial. Your community’s reading habits and interests will be reflected quickly within your shop. If the intellectual horizons of the community are limited, your store will show it.

If You Rent A Shop . . .

When you rent, your landlord will want a lease. Ideal for you would be something like one year cheap, with a ten-year option at the same terms. What the landlord asks for, however, depends on the degree of his desperation, how much he wants to nail you down, and what sort of plans he has for raising the rent later on. I consider anything under $200 reasonable—all things considered—but established used-book stores have been known to survive rents of $800.

It’s the “used” nature of your business-to-be that causes certain areas to be zoned to exclude you. In these sections, used-book stores are classed with junk, thrift, and secondhand clothing stores. Though this is actually very pleasant company, you may want to represent yourself—for strategic reasons—as a dealer in scarce, rare, or out-of-print volumes. This would put you more on the level of an antique store and open the better zones to your shop. It’s more likely, however, that high rents would exclude you from the best districts long before zoning ordinances.

In some cities there is an added penalty for dealing in used merchandise in that you may be required to have a police permit before you can do business. Theoretically, the guardians of the law are afraid that you’ll use your operation to fence stolen goods. The police, of course, know better, but the permit may give them a lever to harass you if you’ve ever been arrested. In that case, you may have to hire a local attorney (for instance, the D.A.’s brother-in-law) who’s familiar with the political situation.

Local permits are usually dirt cheap—$12.00 to $50.00 a year—and hardly significant in terms of your overhead. The Chamber of Commerce will try to sign you up at another $50.00 to $100, but there’s no penalty for not joining.

Don’t burden yourself with useless machinery. A cash register takes up a lot of desk space and, along with an adding machine, is really a case of overkill. Since you set your own prices, you can make them all end in zeros and fives, while a simple Iockbox in your desk drawer will do fine to hold your bills and change. Business cards are a good investment, however, and one designed for use as a bookmark can carry your advertising far into the future.

Wood is expensive and carpenters even more so. If you have any inclination in that direction, you’ll save a lot of money by building your own bookcases. Since I’m no handyman, my only advice here is to consider carefully how tall the individual shelves are going to be.

I recommend an arrangement something like this: top and bottom shelves 13 inches high with five more—each 11 inches in height—in between. This puts your highest row of books within reach as well as allowing for different volume sizes. A section of 15-inch-high shelves should be set aside for art and other oversize works. Since the optimum way to display paperbacks (aside from a rack) is on their sides, spines showing, a shelf 7-1/2 inches high works and will allow you to set the paperbacks upright if you choose.

A large store—which means, to me, in the neighborhood of 2,000 feet—has its advantages. Remember, first of all, that in a couple of years, your opening stock of 2,000—3,000 volumes may increase fivefold and more. Also, ample space takes pressure off you and gives you room to experiment with what sells and what doesn’t in your particular area.

This reasoning, of course, can be taken to a ridiculous extreme. I’ve done it myself. In fact, my earliest ideal in store size was a warehouse of a place where the unwary customer could get lost in the labyrinths. (The truth is, I’m a junk dealer by first instinct and like to have enough space for everything I find.)

Over the years, interestingly enough, I’ve drastically moderated my earlier thoughts on space. While 1 still believe that the simpler customers are impressed enough by the sheer bulk of a Queen Mary-size operation to spread the word in awe, recent experience has taught me that a store of not much more than 1,000 square feet is perfectly adequate. Adequate, that is, if you use discrimination in your book-buying forays. Most of the rest of this article is designed to help you develop that discrimination.

To begin with, there are your own books . . . at least some of which you will undoubtedly donate to your cause, along with whatever reading matter of your friends’ and relatives’ you can get your hands on. It’s a start, but still far from the 2,000—3,000 volumes you’ll need to open your doors. The major part of that first stock, then, you’ll get from three sources: scouting, house calls, and buying across the counter.

For the beginner, it’s scouting which will bring in the bulk of the books. The search begins in thrift shops, Goodwills, Salvation Armies, junk stores, and so on where the price per book is around a quarter.

Scouting- in established bookstores is expensive but it can pay off in terms of education. If you’ve acquired a field or fields of special competence, you may hope to pick up a bargain here and there to salt the stock of your store-to-be. Beware of becoming a premature specialist, though, unless you really know what you’re doing. Later your location, as I’ve said, will dictate specialties to you.

If you plan to do much buying in established used-book stores (in spite of the higher prices you’ll pay there), it might be wise for you to get your Board of Equalization license (where needed) early in the game. For one thing, this permit will release you from the necessity of paying sales tax. Also, book dealers tend to respect such permits and—since it’s traditional in the used-book business for one dealer to offer a discount to another (normally 20%)—your license may give you sufficient standing to qualify for this trade courtesy.

You’ll want to work out some sort of rhythm in visiting your various book bargain centers. If you put together a regular route you’ll begin to discover helpful facts: for instance, which days new shipments of books are likely to arrive or be displayed. You’ll also get to know the clerks who work at your customary stops. They may be appreciative of a steady customer who buys in quantity and offer you a discount. . – or they may give you first crack at a new load of stock as yet unboxed in the storeroom.

At this point in our imaginings, you have no store but, if you’re geographically stable, you can use your current home phone to attract sellers with a small ad: Bargain Book Shop, Books Bought under “Books” in the business section of your local telephone directory. Prospective sellers who notice this listing (and, later, additional potential sellers who see the same kind of sign in the window of your shop) will—sooner or later—begin to contact you and ask you to come look at their books.

The results, at least in the beginning, may not pay for the cost of your ad. . . but, if you’re lucky, two or three good libraries could give your store depth in surprising places. Such richness can elicit word-of-mouth advertising. It may also prevent your first browsers from mentally crossing you off as a junk-store operator, and lead to their curious reappearance later. This is more important than you now realize.

Once you’re established, you’ll be choosy and refuse to travel to view any library that contains less than X number of titles. You’ll be looking, as well, to avoid certain types of libraries.. – such as ones made up of book-club offerings, general fiction, and school texts. At this point in your career, however, you’re probably wise to follow every lead that you’re offered.

After your business is really rolling, buying across the counter will supply you with more than enough books. People will voluntarily come into your store during operating hours with bags and boxes of possible stock. This is an advanced stage of the operation and I’ll deal with the specifics of that kind of buying later in the article.

You’ll have to handle a certain amount of garbage before you begin to recognize it. You may even have to live with rows of trash books, sitting on the shelves of your finally opened bookstore, for months or years before you begin to pick up their peculiar odor.

Of course, if your book-scouting days are to be productive you must be inoculated against accumulating too much garbage in your system or bankruptcy will result. Discrimination is quite a task, too, considering that 99% of the books you’ll be seeing in your thrift store rounds will be worthless. Luckily for simple instructors like myself, useless items fall into large and distinguishable categories.

To begin with, a book is worth nothing when no one wants to buy it. . . and a prime example is the bulk of book-club fiction. Why? For one thing, millions have already bought these various novels and the market is glutted. Then, too, those looking outside the book clubs for cheap leisure reading prefer paperbacks these days (and even that area is glutted). The book-club novel, moreover, is a mail-order item and it isn’t very attractive in the flesh.

You can help yourself recognize these unsalable works by buying a $6.95 novel at your local bookseller. Carry it around with you on your various rounds and compare weight against weight: The book-club edition is light, like white bread. Compare dust jackets: The mail-order jacket is thin and flimsy and, to make it easier on you, often has “book club” stamped on the front flap. Compare bindings: The cheap volume has a smooth, cardboard cover while your expensive hard-cover is bound in rougher buckram or cloth. Also, the book-club publication sometimes has a little circle stamped into the lower right-hand corner of the cover.

Even without book-club novels, a good deal of what you’ll see in the secondhand stores will be fiction.. . but my advice is to go easy on it since most of what you’ll find on your scouting travels will be old and outdated best sellers. (See my remarks on fiction under “WHAT PEOPLE BUY”.)

There’s no market, either, for books people were forced into buying in the first place. The textbook in particular was bought under constraint and so is detached from the “real” life of your customers. This means that you’ll see many more schoolbooks in your scouting tours than you’ll later find a market for. The salable exceptions are mentioned in “WHAT PEOPLE BUY”.

What makes it worth your time and money to handle a book? The first and most obvious rule of the game is for a title’s publisher to offer the volume at a fancy price.

Let’s say that the new price on a particular in-print title is S20M0. Any copies of the book you have, then, should be salable to a bargain buyer at some fraction of that amount . . . usually around half the listed value.

To be even more specific, my rule of thumb has been never to pay more than 20% of a title’s new price. If I think I can get $12.00 for a $20.00 art book that’s offered to me, I’ll happily pay $4.00. This rule—also known as “Triple Your Money”— goes into operation primarily after you’ve opened your bookstore doors. In thrift shops you’ll pay the price marked inside a volume’s cover (which should be a bargain), but when people begin bringing books into your establishment, they’ll want more than just a quarter for each one.

Now, to discover the in-print, new prices of the books you accumulate, you’ll need that most invaluable of all reference guides: Rooks in Print, in two volumes arranged by title and author and published by R.R Bowker Co., 1180 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10036 for $20.00. In your early days of scouting you can get away with a year-or-two-old copy—if a local used dealer has one for sale—but when your own doors are open, a current edition of Rooks in Print is a must. I’ve always made a habit of using the guide to check doubtful titles while I’m buying. It gives me a precise reference from which to work.

Condition is another crucial aspect of book pricing and each volume moves along a scale somewhat like the following:

Mint, Fine, Good, Fair, Poor, Ratty.

“Mint” is a term borrowed from the coin collector and refers to an item as fresh and crisp as the day it was issued. A mint copy in its original dust jacket has an irresistible appeal to the true collector.

“Ratty”, on the other hand—a label that will never turn up in dealers’ catalogs—means damaged, dog-eared, and under lined. You want to keep such volumes out of your store . . . they detract from and drag down everything around them. For the avenge in-print and out-of-print book, it’s enough that it falls between the extremes of Mint and Ratty. Your price should relate to any individual copy’s place on the spectrum of condition.

You must also take into consideration demand or shelf life of a given title. The longer it’s going to sit on your shelf, the less—proportionally—you want to pay. It takes some experience to sense the possible shelf life of a book (will it move fast, slow, or at all?), although the title’s category will soon give you a reliable hint.

To figure your markup on in-print books, return to my “Triple Your Money” formula. This rule of thumb was pounded into my head as dogma when I first entered the business and is definitely in line with the standards of the field. In fact, some dealers even like a margin that is multiplied by a factor of five or more. Your “Triple Your Money” guide, then, should at least keep you competitive.

The rationale behind the 3-for-I rule, of course, is 1/3 to the seller, 1/3 to overhead, and 1/3 to you, the dealer. However, in my ten years’ experience, I’ve found that my cut ends up as at least half the gross. Furthermore, as you build your stock of books, customers, and experience, the profit will keep going from plateau to plateau just as if it were being guided by Adam Smith’s invisible hand, and will stabilize at ever more comfortable levels.

Despite the fact that I could tell my customers to their faces what my markup was without having them go into convulsions, I have come to believe that you can carry “Triple Your Money” beyond the point that brings you a just price. If I were to return to the used-book business tomorrow, I’d settle for double my money as a base, though I don’t recommend this as a safe policy until you master the business. And, of course, no formula can substitute for the sliding scales which operate according to the condition and shelf life of a particular book. I’m merely suggesting that—as you, too, increase your skill in the business—you’ll no longer need the security of profit margins which were originally created to protect you from the unforeseen and from your own mistakes.

After you’ve mentally (and spiritually) settled on a price for each in-print book, I recommend penciling in the new book price, only to cross it out and put your used price below. No, this is not a bargain-basement merchandising trick. You’re giving your customer one of the important facts he needs to make up his mind by telling him just how much he’s getting off the original cost. This stops many price hassles before they start and gives you more time to read.

So much for pricing in-print books. What about out-of-print volumes? First, many that are of recent vintage can be treated with the same standards we applied to the in-print book, making necessary adjustments for inflation.

For instance, suppose that a book in question was printed in 1961 and its dust jacket says $4.00, but its equivalent price nowadays is $10.00. Condition and demand being equal, price it at S5.00 as you might if it were a current title.

Most books, you see, are no more impressive to customers because they’re out of print. The prospective buyer is usually looking for a title on a certain subject and it doesn’t concern him whether or not a particular edition is still available new. Because he’s probably not a book collector, he won’t pay a price that he considers out of the normal range for books of a particular topic. Instead, he’ll merely look elsewhere.

The book collector, on the other hand, has already looked elsewhere. He knows roughly the range of prices at which an individual title may be offered and how hard the book is to get. This buyer is either someone filling out spaces in a private collection or a public employee doing the same for a college or city library. He may also be a special case: a book scout looking for underpriced bargains.

As literacy in America increases, so do private and public libraries and it’s the plentiful numbers of book collectors—as much as the objective qualities of the book itself—which create the high prices that get attached to certain works. The whole process, indeed, may often resemble nothing so much as the lowly fad.

Nevertheless, there are—as I’ve said—objective qualities which have something to do with determining the price of books: irreplaceability or scarcity; the quality of the prose; the beauty of the binding, printing, or plates; the fame or notoriety of the author; the scholarly nature of the book (research quality, footnotes, bibliography), and similar indications of intrinsic value. After sufficient volumes pass through your hands, you will develop a keen sense for the unusual. Something about it will catch your attention, and there’s nothing wrong with setting such a book aside until you can figure out its possible worth.

In strictly practical terms, $20.00 has been the highest price I’ve thought I could put on a book with my unaided eye and mind. To write “$75.00” or “$300” in pencil on the front page of a volume definitely calls for the prop of an outside authority: a reference library of some sort.

The most “objective” of these references is the Auction Record, a list of books followed by the prices they sold for at public auctions held inLondonorNew York. The records are issued yearly, or in five-year accumulations, by the auction houses, and they’re expensive. The most recent Five Year Auction Record sells in the neighborhood of $100 a copy. Out-of-print older editions of these listings are hard to come by and can also be costly.

When I was in business, my own reference library included two five-year records covering the ‘40’s. Given my limited experience and interest in rare books, the auction records were particularly useful in helping to approximate prices for English and European books. I found that it gave a real authority to the figures listed in the auction records to know that someone in the flesh had stood up in public and paid the money. Of course, inflation and prices in English pounds can make translation into the present a chancy business, but the information at least serves to warn you that the 16th-century book by the King of Spain that you hoped would be worth $1,000 went for auction in 1944 at $530.

Another source of book prices are the many dealers’ catalogs on every topic. The prices in these bulletins are based first and foremost on the dealer’s experience: He knows of someone, perhaps, who paid $8.00 for Saunder’s Social System of Fowls last year, so he lists the work at $12.00 or $15.00. The dealer will also use auction records, other catalogs, and price guides to augment his own experience.

The price guides have the benefit of an overview, being the result of an editor’s comparisons among different catalogs and auction records within a particular field in the light of his own experience and judgment. This results in a reference work that’s a little more dependable than the single dealer’s catalog. Unfortunately, it’s easy to invest hundreds of dollars in such price guides and not fill a small shelf. I’ve found the following handbooks of value:

Roskie’s Bookman r Bible. Three very compact volumes, skillfully arranged and covering a hundred years of publishing.

Heard’s Guide toAmericana, fourth and fifth editions.

Valuable reference forWestern Americanaand American history.

Used Rook Price Guide. Three volumes. Aviation, American firsts, etc.

Boutell’s First Editions and How to Tell Them. Surveys both English and American publishers and will settle almost all doubts.

At this point, let me caution you against becoming the kind of premature antiquarian dealer who projects “rarity” into everything he touches. Bear in mind that damned few really valuable books will fall into your hands by chance. Rare editions are already owned, in most cases, by people who know their value because they paid a lot for them and only ignorant used-book dealers fill their stores with highly priced garbage.

You should also guard against becoming so paranoid about underpricing a book that you “cover” yourself by marking up almost everything. Five or ten dollars extra won’t guard you against the real mistakes and you’ll only depress your customers with your irrational figures. . . thus making it hard for them to spend money with you.

What I need to pass on to you now is a concrete idea of the variety of people’s tastes in reading matter. . – a diversity that I can best convey by running through the categories book dealers use to classify works for sale.

The classifications arose from the used-book seller’s need to organize his store efficiently so he could set his stock in order and keep better track of individual volumes. Putting books of one theme together in the same area serves the customer too, of course, and protects the busy browser from exhausting himself prematurely. However, the system’s special value to you—at this point—is to sharpen your buying eye. Indeed, just the bare names of the genres should give you some notion of what to expect and what to look for in your scouting travels.

I’ll start my survey of book categories with some sections that are often of interest to collectors, and end it with paperbacks, the favorites of the idle reader.

FINE EDITIONS are books that are especially well bound or illustrated. Some are in print and should be priced accordingly. Also, many are available through expensive book clubs and their prices can be monitored through the advertising pages of quality magazines.

LEATHER BINDINGS are collectable even when the book itself is insignificant. Clever plastics have replaced hide in current production and bookbinders charge a fortune for the real thing, so there are plenty of eager buyers of old leather. When you price a volume for its binding, consider the condition of the material, the amount used, and the quality of the workmanship.

ILLUSTRATED WORKS. Many older volumes contain lovely color plates, woodcuts, and other ornaments which can increase the editions’ value manyfold. This is especially true of children’s books and of publications from around the turn of the century which follow an art nouveau style. Keep your eyes open, also, for books with good paper, tooled bindings, and exceptional printing.

When you price in the above areas, as elsewhere, you’ll have to rely on your own judgment and on experimentation. Handy rule of thumb: Think to yourself when you’re handling a choice book, “When am I going to see another one like it?”

FIRST EDITIONS. For purposes of collection, these are mostly American novels but can include any literary item of merit. Since fads and fashions are important in this hobby, current catalogs can be a help to the dealer – - – but a friendly fellow bookseller or a couple of good customers will be your best sources of education.

WESTERN AMERICANA. The emphasis in this field is on the settlement of the local area (your local area) and on the Western movement in general.Western Americanais not to be confused with American history, which is primarily political in conception and offered in textbook form. (The Civil War is the exception that straddles academic history andAmericana.) Books on this theme are generally priced below $10.00.

ART BOOKS. Although big books with fancy prices and color plates are the cream of this section, overproduction, remainders, discounted prices, and collectors’ book clubs have created something of a glut. Avoid textbooks of the art appreciation variety and handle art books without color plates cautiously. Artists’ handbooks and technical aids are in some demand if clean and current.

A brief interjection on the subject of remainders: Several New York firms offer bargains which are the genuine result of publishers’ overstock. For example, if demand for a certain title has died in the middle of the third edition (or, unfortunately, the first), the publisher may then turn over the remainder of the unsold copies to wheeler-dealers at spectacularly reduced prices. Years later some of these books may become valuable. Be careful, however, of publishing companies which produce phony remainders, specially printed and “marked down” from front flap prices never meant to be charged.

Before leaving the area of oversized and fancy volumes, let me add to the list architecture, city planning, travel, and photography collections. . . customers seldom queue up be fore these sections.

POETRY. Avoid anthologies, but not the collected works of single writers. Poetry, high and low, is a living art and authors of every type seem to have their followers. . . so, as you scout, buy whichever poets your budget will allow. Although modern works sell fastest, the old classics should be kept in stock at reasonable rates (113 to 1/4 of the new price, for instance). Remember that the shelf life of other verse will be longer, and pay accordingly. By the way, I suggest that you eventually alphabetize your poets for convenience.

LITERARY CRITICISM. I found it handy to put studies of particular writers in among the author’s creative works. Otherwise—though individual critics can receive tiny amounts of popular attention—this is a pretty academic section. Don’t go out of your way, either, to stock criticism of the mass media.

THEATER AND CINEMA. Except maybe inNew York, theater books move slowly. (Most of what you’ll see in scouting is college drama-class stuff.) Even the play, which is a respectable literary form, collects dust. Movies, though, may have their fans everywhere, so be alert to the interests of your area.

MUSIC. Classical scores, sheet music, and instruction books move well, but school texts on appreciation and understanding are useless. There are feeble cults for opera, jazz, classical, and—coming up—rock. The best sellers are works intended for musicians. . handbooks on instrument making go immediately.

And what about records? The ones you’ll see on your thrift-store rounds—and even those offered later by your customers—are usually the quintessence of garbage. Since people worry most about the condition of discs, I’ve found it necessary to give an unconditional guarantee—money back if not satisfied—on any I sell.

If you handle recorded music, you should have reliable taste in the rock, jazz, and classical fields, and should keep up to date on local discount rates. Here are a couple of hints that may help you in this area: Remember that some record collectors are looking for choice 78’s. – and bear in mind that tapes (the coming thing in musical recording) may prove better suited to the used-book operation than plastic records currently are.

RELIGION. Beware of the garbage in this category: “inspirational books” bought as bland gifts from Aunt Mary to Cousin Sue and vice versa, but never bought used – -. or any doctrinal, official, catechismal, and historical books put out by the Western Standard Brands. Books on Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism are purchased strictly within the context of the churches themselves, never outside that setting in a place like a used-book store. Nevertheless, religion can be one of your finest sections if you’re careful about what you’re doing.

For instance, never pass up a Bible if—and you must excuse my crass manner of expression—the price is right. (The New Testament, however—taken by itself—is not so attractive as the Bible as a whole. – or even as the Old Testament alone.) Likewise always buy Bible commentaries and dictionaries,Holy Landarchaeology (including Dead Sea Scrolls material), and any other Bible study aids, especially concordances. Scriptural learning is very much alive and if you build up a good section it will be avidly patronized by students and ministers.

There’s another, intensely American, area of religion which is a center of attention in the used-book business: mind power, sometimes labeled “metaphysical”. The best sellers of mind power include books from Christian Science, Unity, Norman Vincent Peale, and Dale Carnegie. These works have sold in the books on animal observation, experiences with nature, ecology, and so on are more sought after. Guides written to help the reader identify birds, trees, plants, animals, rocks, stars; books on wild animals, on training animals, on animals as pets; books on the sea, the earth, fossils and evolutionary history, the mountains, deserts, lakes, forests, and the unique flora and fauna of your locality. . . all these have select audiences.

PHYSICAL SCIENCES. This category includes physics, electronics, astronomy, chemistry, engineering, more or less in that order of importance and with the subdivisions each may contain. Avoid computer and space science: The material you receive is almost always already out of date, even when only a few years old.

SOCIAL SCIENCES include anthropology, sociology, history, political science, and economics. The last-named topic is almost as grim a collection as education, and political science can be equally dismal. The trouble is that both are the subject of a lot of “popular” writing, the very currency of which ruins it for resale.

History is a more complex category. You should be looking for journals, source books, super-scholarly items with vast appendices, bibliographies, and footnotes. . . works that appeal to the collector. Remember that the idle reader will depend on the drugstore rack and the student wants only the book required for his course. Ancient history and archaeology are exceptions to this rule, however, because of the quality of many of the works.

As for anthropology and sociology, these fields—though primarily academic—have some popular appeal and may be worth experimenting with.

Occasionally, an elderly lady will ask you for your biography section. What she wants is your royal biography section. Good luck.

PSYCHOLOGY. There’s much interest in the various psychoanalytic schools built around the works of such figures as Freud, Jung, Adler, Reich, Fromm, Homey, etc., and in the writings of other therapists in this area. As you move away from therapy, self-help, and self-understanding and enter more academic realms, observe my standing caution against buying textbooks.

BUSINESS AND TECHNICAL These are two popular offshoots of the social and political sciences respectively.

Business works deal with practical ways of making money, most notably through speculation in stocks and real estate. The practical acquisition of specific skills is the subject of technical books: carpentry, shopwork, metalwork, home- building, care and repair. Auto maintenance is worth a shelf to itself. Craft books count as technical, too: Leatherwork, pottery, printing and printmaking, model shipbuilding, weaving, and the like are all good subjects to come upon when you scout.

AVIATION. This is a weird section and sometimes hard to price. Collectors—who seem to be everywhere—are on the lookout for all sorts of historical material with World War I aviation (aces, planes, balloons) in the lead. Moreover, technical manuals on old planes are hunted up just like old car manuals.

SPORTS. Directions on how to become proficient at a particular sport should be kept in stock. Also, people sometimes collect books on bullfighting, boxing, baseball, and football. . and guides to horse racing and other forms of gambling will be called for on occasion. Don’t ever be eager, though, to pay top dollar for any sports book.. . its shelf life will probably be long.

GAMES AND HOBBIES. Chess books are excellent sellers, and books on cards, checkers, or party games are useful to have in stock. Bridge guides, however, back up on you unless you know the state of the art. Because hobbyists have stores of their own, writings on such subjects as coin and stamp collecting rarely sell (though handbooks on magic are OK).

COOKBOOKS. A good cookbook section is a must, but you’ll have to be quick to pick up bargains while scouting because the housewives are bidding against you. As a result, the prices may be outrageously high. . . but plug along and buy what you can. Book-club entries abound, however, so pay close attention to the weight and quality of the volume (as such) before you squander your fortune. The size and importance of your eventual cookbook section will depend on the population of homemakers in your area. Forget diet books, home ec., etiquette, and such. . . no one is much interested in these subjects at the used-book level.

HEALTH AND MEDICINE. Look for medical dictionaries, but avoid the run-of-the-medical-mill textbook and ignore school hygiene manuals. Then will always be customers for books on chiropractic and body massage, as well as Hatha Yoga. Some health-book writers—like Adelle Davis and Gayelord 1-lauser—have produced best sellers and their works are common, but not worthless. Otherwise, look for authors of the 19th and early 20th centuries who wrote about fasting and nature cures, raw eating, and pure food. These old-fashioned purists now have an audience among those of us who are turned on to a lifestyle that flourished prior to the chemical revolution.

FARMING AND GARDENING. People almost everywhere are interested in gardening. – . books on flowers, lawn care, or the handling of frees, plants, and shrubs will be sought after even where the apartment house reigns supreme. And, as with health hooks, there is now the potential of an expanded readership for books on farming and country living.

LANGUAGES. Because people are always brushing up their foreign languages and often depend on old schoolbooks to help them out, this is one good-selling section that’s made up primarily of textbooks. The same is true of mathematics except that the teaching of this subject was revised in the early ‘60’s, a cutoff date you should keep in mind when you scout.

SEX BOOKS. You won’t see much useful material of this kind in the thrift shops. If you feel that the nature of your store’s area justifies an investment in these works, take a tour through one of the local “adults only” bookstores to see where the popular taste is at. Remember, you’ll have to keep up with fashion.

Encyclopedias are a business in themselves. You want to stay with the name brands—Britannica, World Book, Collier c, andAmericana—since other sets need either a hard sell or a combination of recent vintage and absurdly low price. Of these standard titles, World Book (a concise children’s set) sells best and almost any year and edition of Britannica will bring some price over $20.00. The remaining two are best when no more than five to ten years old.

Although there’s a slow, steady demand for English dictionaries, more recondite reference works may end up behind your desk.. . at least for a spell.

CHILDREN’S ROOKS. The book club has struck here as a convenient way for parents to get reading matter into the hands of their youngsters, but when the book-club “classics” get to the used stage no one is terribly interested.

Children themselves are after Mad paperbacks, comics, and cartoon books (like Peanuts and B. C.). There’s a continuing cult among boys for the Hardy Boys, and among girls for the Nancy Drew series. Adults are always looking for books for the very young. . . the kind that have five or ten words to each picture. Works of the Dr. Seuss variety are in great demand.

You generally have to sell children’s books cheaply to move them … I/S to 1/6 of the new price is the range I worked within.

COMICS. A lot of dealers don’t think this field is worth their while. After all, half price on a comic book doesn’t come to much. . . and the kids shuffle through the pile vigorously (and noisily) enough to disintegrate a percentage of the stock. On the other hand, there’s a cult of comic book fans and some of these publications are worth outrageous amounts. The children themselves will pay cover price and more on recent numbers they think worth collecting, but you have to get into it, too, to find out what’s going on. Story values and artwork pretty much determine what’s collected and what isn’t.

Whether or not to carry periodicals is up to you, but most dealers try to avoid them on the theory that the majority of people subscribe to the ones they want. If you do stock magazines you may end up depending on the collector with his odd tastes.

In fiction, paperbacks of pocket size will be your most dependable item, but the thrift stores you scout as a beginner won’t be your best source of supply because the selection there is poor and overpriced. Later, across your desk-to-be, you’ll be able to buy, most paperbacks in bulk for pennies (though you may offer a good price in a pinch until you sort out what you’re doing). Soft-cover novels can become a glut—just like book-club releases—unless you know how to distinguish what’s salable. Helpfully, fiction can be broken down into genres, a number of which are worth investing in.

SCIENCE FICTION. This moves so well you can pay thrift-store prices for works in good condition (unbroken spines, undamaged pages, and crisp bindings). In paperback you can get up to 60% of cover (my top rate for anything). In hard cover, beware of book-club offerings but pick up any original and first editions you see, since these alt collected along with fantasy, supernatural tales, ghost stories, and fiction in the manner of Lovecraft and Poe.

MYSTERIES. A broad category, but if you stick to the pure detective fiction in the hard American style and whodunits in the English manner, you’ll do all right. Authors are important here, so alphabetize them (and science fiction writers too). The hardcovers you’ll see will be mostly book-club. However, some writers (Hammett,Chandler, etc.) are collected as firsts . . . so keep open and expand your knowledge in this area.

GOTHICS. The Gothic novel, a slight genre which appeals almost exclusively to women, can be recognized by the melancholy cover on which a girl shrinks from the menace of a louring castle. Buy what you see when you’re scouting and pay up to 15% of cover. The Gothic and its related subspecies—nurse-doctor, suspense-romance, and honor thriller—are non existent in hardcover.

WESTERNS. Westerns as a literary form are slowly dying. . . along with the old men who read them. Co easy until you see how many of these prospective buyers are around your store-to-be. Hardcovers are not common and are in some demand, but your price should be low (which means, for me, the range between 75 and $1.50).

WAR NOVELS. During World War 11, a generation of males shared a trauma and a lot of them—maybe most of them— wrote novels about it. It’s also this generation that buys the works (and war non-fiction as well). Business, however, is very slow, and other wars don’t count. Except for the great creations by Mailer, Heller etc., let the hardcover war novel pass.

HISTORICAL NOVELS. Apart from the romance type— which is of interest to women—historical novels are a drag in both paperback and hardcover. Know your authors instead of buying these works as a category.

SEX NOVELS are another male genre. Not surprisingly, you won’t see any hot items of this type at the Salvation Army. Your store’s area (and maybe your upbringing) will determine how heavily you specialize.

THE CLASSIC NOVEL means the works of Dostoyevsky and his friends, alphabetized for convenience. In paperback, the category may be extended to contain any fiction that’s not included in one of the genres which a customer might ask for specifically. Again, the idle reader and the student depend almost exclusively on the soft-cover editions, which will easily outsell the hardcover in your store. In fact, you should use great discrimination when you select permanently bound classic fiction: The harsher your literary judgment the better. Remember that—in this age of paper—buying a clothbound novel is the act of the serious book collector.

THE BEST-SELLER NOVEL. In paperback, this is what ever is now selling on your neighborhood drugstore rack. The cover is all-important as the prime indicator to your customer that the novel in question is indeed current. Even though having a drugstore rack of your own will help immensely in moving the best seller, it’s obviously pointless to go after such books in any quantity while you’re in the scouting stage. In hardcover, by the way, this category exists mostly in book-club format. . – and you know what I think of that.

THE “POCKET-SIZE” NON-FICTION PAPERBACK. You’ll see a lot of these in your scouting travels, but most of them will be garbage. First of all, the titles selected for this format generally lack sufficient breadth or depth to make it worthwhile to shelve them independently (as can be done for genre and classic fiction paperbacks) – - – yet such books also go poorly in the hardcover section because of disparity in size and because—like the best-seller novel— their intellectual horizons have been limited by the drugstore rack. In most categories, indeed, these non-fiction paper backs go stale quickly and if carelessly accumulated will require a bargain table, a bait rack, or a trash can to relieve the pressure.

QUALITY PAPERBACKS. The quality paperback is a larger (sometimes only slightly) and more expensive soft-cover book. Since it’s often printed from the same plates as an earlier clothbound edition, it belongs among the hardcovers. As a cheaper reprint of a valuable work, it sells well to students, scholars, and in some cases even to collectors.

One last note on paperbacks: According to an article in a special issue of Daedalus magazine on book publishing, the difference in manufacturing cost between the hardcover and the paperback comes to something like 80 cents. Thus the retail price disparity between the two doesn’t reflect production expenses so much as costs of advertising promotion and distribution. It’s the hard sell, not the hard cover that makes the difference.

Scouting will get you accustomed to buying books for a lot less than they are eventually worth, and also entails very little dickering over price. Therefore, once you’re established in your store you may find it hard to get used to buying books as they come across the counter at you, hauled in cartons by their owners. Nevertheless, this is the final, make-or-break point in your venture into the used-book business.

Over-the-counter buying will be hardest at the beginning when you’re still not precisely sure what books are worth and so lack that air of authority so necessary to a smooth transaction. This isn’t to say that most people are hard to deal with . – - they may be even more embarrassed at the thought of

bargaining than you are. Some will be happy to accept any price you offer or, if they can’t, will wordlessly pick up their cartons and split.

You don’t want to see your visitor leaving, however, with any good books. Therefore I recommend that you make it a practice to separate all incoming potential stock into three piles: II the books you know you want and can sell, [ those you consider garbage, and 13] items that are in between. Go through the good volumes carefully, book by book, using Books in Print or a reference guide if you have to, to arrive at a price for each one in line with the rules of “Triple Your Money”, shelf life, and condition. Then go through the stack of “maybes” and figure out a minimum sort of shelf life and condition. Then go through the stack of “maybes” and figure out a minimum sort of price. Finally, look over the garbage to see if you missed a jewel.

Now you’re in a position to offer an overall price to those people who want to sell everything regardless. And, having separated the good from the bad, you’re also prepared to deal with objections that your price is too low, since you can point out that you’re willing to give, say, 80% of what you originally offered for 25% of the books.

Actually, you’ll have to dicker less than you may expect. Most people understand something of the mechanics of the used-book business, enough at least to know that they won’t get a lot of money from a dealer. And, basically, they’re selling their used books because they no longer have any use for them – . . so they’ll be sympathetic to any attempt on your part to maximize the value of some of their offerings. The normal reaction, then, will be to accept your overall figure. A few of the folks who offer you books may be enterprising enough to sell you the good items at the good price and wander off with the remainder to freak some unsuspecting dealer. And—in a few cases—the owner’s reaction will be to sweep up all his books and say, “I’d rather give them away than sell them at that price.”

The hardest people to deal with are those to whom a book is a foreign article that fell into their hands accidentally. If the titles are current, they may want 80 cents on the dollar – - or, if the books are 20 years old or more, they may be convinced that any price you offer them is peanuts compared to the real value of their treasures. With these people it’s wisest not to strain yourself. They won’t part with their volumes until they’ve been buffeted by X number of dealers like yourself. Sometimes fate will be kind and put you at the end of the series.

InAmerica, there are comparatively few people who will want to argue your price up. Remind these tough ones that you’re in business to make money, not to swap even. . let alone trade for a loss. (But stay loose, since it’s possible that the profit system itself is doomed.) Remind yourself in the interim that—during a buy in your store—you have to be the world’s greatest authority. Don’t be afraid to point out the flaws in the books, physical damage, lack of buyer demand, and the control your eventual markup exerts over the price you pay.

Sometimes a seller (perhaps in the hope of rattling you) will start rapping at you from the moment you touch his library, telling you how valuable his books are and so on. It’ important not to let him upset you at such a sacred moment in the buying process. In such a case, it’s good to plan ahead by fixing your price at less than normal to give yourself bargaining room. A lot of the time such a seller is a compulsive extrovert who just can’t bear to take you at your word and wants the pleasure of forcing your price up. By preparing yourself in advance, you avoid a rigid “I won’t bargain” stance which could kill the sale.

About 1% of the people who sell you books will do so because they need the money. Re need the money. You can recognize them instantly by the feeling of anxiety they will communicate to you. When you meet such n person, you might use the opportunity to put another jewel in your heavenly crown by paying him or her somewhat more for his or her stock than you really should.

Fortunately for your peace of mind, though, 99% of your contacts are selling their libraries because they are moving, or because they’re out of space in their apartments and/or can’t stand to look at all that junk anymore. You can pay these sellers a realistic price with no qualms, feel good about recycling the printed word . . . and, at the same time, enjoy a reasonably good and hassle-free living from your venture into the used-book business.

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