Some Highs and Lows of 2024 Bookselling

Published Page: A big bricks and mortar store in a small Texas town

Jim Hart and his wife Connye are the owners of the Published Page in Cleburne, Texas. This is a large general interest shop stocking an estimated 90,000 used books is located not too far from the Dallas - Ft. Worth. The Harts were already in their 70s when they purchased a big dilapidated antique building seven years ago.

Though there have been many challenges that came with owning the property, Jim said he has “no regrets.” Despite his optimism, there have been many ups and downs, not the least of which was the demolition of the neighboring building this year, which was deemed unsafe by the city fathers. That action left big holes in their own back wall, and for a time it seemed like town officials might shut their business down too.

Formerly both a real and online business, Published Page has dropped internet sales entirely and now focuses on in-store sales. They are now open both Saturday and Sunday. The shop has gradually become a destination for those driving in from DFW and Waco to the small historic town with a population of 40,000. Hart estimated that 75% of his traffic is on the weekend. Many of those who pass through the doors are book lovers from other areas willing to make the drive.”It seems we’ve finally become a destination,” he said.

Hart likes face-to-face interaction a lot better than the internet, and enjoys meeting and getting to know his customers. And of course “walk-ins only” means no more shipping hassles. “Running a big general bookstore means the days go by real fast.”

For the Published Page recent high spots are the big Thanksgiving week sales. The first one, last year, was hosted in cooperation with the local arts and cultural center. It featured 8,000 second hand general interest titles that sold very well. This year, the second annual sale, he said, was even bigger. “It expanded to 12,000 books, and sales are strong.” He observed, “Those boxes get pretty heavy when you're 80.”

The holiday sales and out-of-town traffic have helped the store make many new friends and contacts. He is even getting more interest from his own community. This year sales have increased 18-20%. He thinks next year will be tricky to predict, and a least partially dependent on the refinancing of the commercial loan for the building.

bookfever.com - lots of signed first editions online

“The story of my life is catching up with the backlog,” said Chris Volk in Ione, CA, near Sacramento. Volk and her partner Shep Iams run bookfever.com, an online bookseller in business since 1993. The company features an inventory of about 36,000 titles with more added all the time. It specializes in signed first editions, also sci-fi, as well as women and African-American studies.

“This year is slightly better than last, but it still has not reached the level we experienced during Covid. When the Covid restrictions hit, we thought business would be dismal, but with everything else closed the books flew off the shelf. I was worried, but Covid turned out to be a windfall for us. This year, for the first time we did no book shows either virtual or real”. She also noted that it looks like their local Sacramento book fair is a thing of the past.

Volk said the high spot of 2023 was completing the purchase of an African-American collection begun last year. “It had a surprising amount of good stuff and the timing was right." Asked what’s in stock that’s really special? she responded, “I’m just about to list all five volumes of Dickens’ Christmas stories, all of them are first editions in a nice leather case. Even though the one of “A Christmas Carol” is a bit rough, I think they are exceptional,” she said, adding, “the asking price is $10,000.”

“But,” Volk continued, “even though we have a wide range of merchandise, the bulk of our bread and butter books are priced between $30 and $100. Signed first editions are an important component of sales and represent about a third of our inventory. We have 5,000 first editions, many of them signed, and all of them would make good gifts. I try to pick books worth reading.”

As for next year, “I don’t know, I just don’t know.”

Honey and Wax - Bridging the Generations, Building Community

“Certainly, the highlights of this past year, for me, have been getting to know a new generation of collectors through the Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize, and a new generation of booksellers through CABS-Minnesota, the ABAA Mentorship Program, and the ILAB Congress,” said Heather O’Donnell of Brooklyn based Honey & Wax.

After 20 years in the trade O’Donnell said, “I see a number of rising booksellers whose focus on community-building has brought them back to brick-and-mortar, although they are all also online to some degree. She named three newly opened shops/community spaces:

Laura Ryan’s Aviary Books in New Bedford MA, a mix of general stock and collectable photobooks – Ryan founded Aviary because New Bedford had lost all its bookstores. Aviary's opening was so crowded people had to wait in line to get into the shop.

Moctezuma Seth Gonzalez’s Livra Books in Austin TX, an eclectic community space full of general antiquarian stock, ephemera, and rare books in both English and Spanish.

Serenity Kimball’s CuriosiTea Bookshop in Mount Pleasant, UT, created in part “in response to an uptick in book bans in schools in Utah,” which features a growing selection of used and antiquarian books alongside the new.

John Windle continues to be a class act in San Francisco.

San Francisco’s John Windle is this writer’s idea of the bookman's bookman. He began his business in 1974 and now, 50 years later, has an excellent reputation, beautiful stock, a gallery that features important work by William Blake and others prominently associated with the book arts. He issues multiple real and online catalogs and exhibits at many of the better book fairs.

For Windle the high point of the year was the addition of an important new customer who began with an interest in his Blake holdings and went on to make important major acquisitions in 17th century poetry and 18th century illustration.

In his view the low point is the trend of fewer and fewer dealers doing higher and higher value transactions which in turn squeeze their competitors. Windle sees the current consolidation at the top of the market as not in the long term best interest of the trade.

As for next year, he didn't care to venture a guess about high-end dealing in 2025, only to say that “where many wealthy collectors congregate you’ll find more support for the new administration than you might expect.”

He mentioned what he thinks is a pretty general rule of thumb: “Even though many dealers may have a mailing list of 2,000 to 3,000 customers, in reality they have six important customers. It all comes down to which six.”

He also pointed to changes in taste causing some fields to rise in value and others to decline. He gave as an example the Voyages of Captain Cook, long a traditional and costly staple of Voyages and Travels specialists. Now, said Windle, these explorers are more often than not viewed as “dead white men” who exploited the countries they visited and their works are not in the same demand as in earlier years, because to a certain extent they are viewed as “not politically correct.” Windle said that some of his Cook holdings had failed to find buyers or brought prices that were definitely lower than in prior years.

His advice going forward is: “Buy the books you love, not the ones you think are good investments.”

Small, Old and Far Away

On a much smaller scale, my own experiences out here in Maui were in line with the comment made by John Windle: a few good customers accounted for the majority of my sales. As the man said, six is the magic number.

The year’s high spot was a visit to the ABAA February fair in San Francisco. The low point came when my insurance company said they would only cover my home/office/business for one more year. This came in the wake of last year’s disastrous Lahaina fire. Although Lahaina is more than 30 miles away, all of Maui is now considered high risk after billions of dollars of losses. It took literally months to find a new policy. A couple of bouts with skin cancer weren’t much fun either.

What was fun was handling a variety of small collections on consignment, most notably books and ephemera related to Americans of Japanese Ancestry including material related to the 442nd Regimental Infantry. Almost all of it went out the door to new homes and fast.

My favorite item of consignment (and still unsold) is an autograph album containing the photos and signatures of most of those who served in the 1959 Hawaii's State Legislature, the first year of Hawaii statehood.

On Maui we were saddened to learn of the death earlier this year of Alan Walker, who with his wife Charlene, headed Lahaina Printsellers. All of the Printsellers inventory of original maps and reproductions, as well as their equipment and vast inventory of digital images were lost in the fire. The Lahaina Printsellers name continues under new ownership and new, mostly contemporary, merchandise.

Rare Book Monthly

Some Highs and Lows of 2024 Bookselling

Rare Book Monthly

Archived Articles

Some Highs and Lows of 2024 Bookselling

Rare Book Monthly

Article Search

Archived Articles