Where Do You Get Your Books?

New arrivals and thoughts on how booksellers source their inventory

Where Do Rare Books Come From?

When strangers ask me what I do, I usually say, “I’m a rare-book dealer.” [You can see my current inventory at Downtown Brown Books.]

In correct English, the hyphen is required to clarify that it is the books that are rare and not the book dealer, although both might be true at once. Rare-book dealer looks fussy on the page and sounds a bit crass. Every time I say it, I’m thinking drug dealer, and not in a good way.

Rare-book dealer is also somewhat inaccurate. While I dabble in truly rare items when I can find them, rare books are by definition hard to come by. Like many of my colleagues, I mostly work in the gulf between used books and rare books, a zone for which we do not have a word in English.

Fortunately, it’s a large, pleasant gulf, with many collectors looking for first editions and collectible books that are more common and less expensive than a truly rare book like, say, a signed first edition of Gulliver’s Travels.

I’ve considered calling myself a first-edition dealer, but too many strangers wouldn’t understand that I buy and sell books for a living. I like antiquarian bookseller, which sounds genteel and scholarly (the way I like to think of myself), but almost no one knows what that means. The general population hears antiquarian bookseller as something like ant aquarium bookseller, which takes miniature books to a whole new level.

So rare-book dealer it is, which does have the virtue of being immediately clear to whomever I am talking to. The next question is usually one of the following:

What’s your oldest book?

This is a very reasonable effort to keep the conservation going, but unfortunately it’s a question that most book dealers or collectors don’t have a satisfactory answer to. Most of us have never had a early editions of the Faerie Queen, Don Quixote, or now that there’s a streaming series, The Decameron, or any of the early books that an educated person might recognize. I’m always stuck with things like my current oldest book which is a Hebrew guidebook to an architectural exhibit that I bought because it has a few pages in very neat manuscript facsimile. By the time I’ve half explained what a manuscript facsimile is, I start to sound pretty boring.

Or

What’s your most expensive book?

This is probably the sort of question only an American would be bold enough to ask. I tend to hear the question as, If I were to break into your shop tonight, which book should I steal? For that reason, I usually try to change the subject.¹

Or

Where do you get your books?

For years, I have been workshopping a joking response involving a secret department for booksellers at Costco. Despite my many attempts, I’ve never once gotten a laugh.

The true answer to where do I get my books is from is a lot of places. Wherever I can find them. As I was putting the finishing touches on this new arrivals list (no. 114), someone new asked me the “Where do you get your books?” question.

That started me thinking, and I ran through the list to see where in fact they had come from. For kicks, I went in and added a note to each book description to answer the question. Perhaps you’ll find the answers interesting. For example:

SOURCE: This came from one of the first collections I bought after opening Downtown Brown Books in 2019. It was part of a photobook collection on Bainbridge Island, across from Seattle, which made for a seven-hour drive, round trip. I don’t know why I didn’t catalog this book at the time. Perhaps because it’s small, I misplaced it. I found it in a box in storage recently and since I am in the habit of putting a pencil code in my books to help keep track of where they came from, I know when and where I bought it. I bought 101 books from that collection and, including this one, I only have six books left. I paid $3,850 for the lot, and when this book sells, my total sales for the collection will be a hair over $10,000. If you subtract online selling commissions, I basically doubled my money in four years, a result that will keep the doors open but won’t make me rich.

To learn a bit about where a book came from, look for the “SOURCE” section in my descriptions for the items in list 114. Everything I wrote about where the books came from is true, but I haven’t named names for privacy sake, and I left out a few details to preserve whatever small competitive advantages I have in the book trade.

I was surprised that nothing on the list came from eBay. According to my book database, in the last five years, I have purchased 204 books on eBay, and I have 86 still on my shelves. I probably don’t buy enough on eBay because good things do turn up there. I should spend more time book hunting on the site; I just don’t enjoy it very much.²

The most common feature of my sources is long-term relationships. A big chunk of the list came from people I have known for decades.

The friendships and connections I have made through books are some of the best aspects of being an antiquarian bookseller (I can use that term here because you, dear readers, will understand). I’ve always known that I wouldn’t have very good sales without long-term customer relationships. I don’t think I quite realized until now that I wouldn’t have much to sell without them either.

Thank you for making all this possible. Picture me in my office waving at my bookcases, which is where you can find me most of the time.

Follow Up on Doing Research

In my previous Dispatch I encouraged book buyers to look into the seller as part of their research process. One reader wrote me privately (which is great, but also feel free to use the comments):

I just got a book that was described as “new.” It was literally filthy. If you wondered why buyers ask for all these photos and don’t trust the sellers anyway, that’s why.

I think this example makes my point.

On further inquiry with the collector, I learned that the supposedly “new” book in question was manufactured in 1973. This seller—who goes by something like Tom’s Tomes—is not registered as a business; their address is in either Florida or Illinois (where, exactly, are the books?). They have been selling for fewer than two years, and they have 27,000 books listed (by comparison in the five years since I started over as Downtown Brown Books, my online inventory has gone from 0 to 1976 books as of this morning).

My response is are you really surprised that someone who has managed to catalog 27,000 books in two years (not counting sold items) makes mistakes when it comes to condition? How likely is a book from 1973 to be “new” if it is in the hands of a general used online bookstore? And isn’t the fact that 25,000 of “Tom”’s 27,000 books are described as “new” a bit of a red flag?

I don’t want to sound like I am blaming the victim here. The book was misdescribed. I’m just pointing out that there were many warning signs that aren’t present with all sellers.

Further Viewing

I’ve just heard that YouTube is a thing now. Is that right? Anyway, if you are into watching videos online, the British bookseller Tom Ayling, late of Jonkers Rare Books, is, if you believe Google, an “internet personality” and a “tik-tok star.” For an Internet-famous bookseller, he is personable, enthusiastic, and actually seems to know books.

His video, “I Spent £6,000 on Books and Made…” is a pretty good look at a week in the life of an antiquarian bookseller, including the not-so-fun bits like driving around for hours and the tedious collating of books.

Another video, “How Many Rare Books I Sell in a Week”, offers a nice look into his actual sales for a week. As best I can tell Ayling does not sell on the standard book marketplaces. Most of his sales are by quote, his own website (a modern-day storefront), or from his outreach to customers on social media. While the tools are new, his is a really traditional, old-school antiquarian business.

1. Last year, Portland Monthly magazine did a story about the most expensive books available in Portland, Oregon. All of the ABAA dealers in town declined to participate for security reasons. The writer could not understand why we wouldn’t want the publicity.

2. The small portion of my inventory acquired on eBay is quite contrary to the impression many of my colleagues have of me as “the eBay guy.” I have earned this reputation because I have been an advocate of legitimate booksellers selling on eBay because people (other than me, apparently) buy a lot of books there.