One time honored approach to liquidating inventory is to sell it to one of the firms that makes a business in such acquisitions. Powell's of Oregon aggressively buys entire inventories, will send its own packers and arrange the shipping. It's a clean solution but they accept a reality that many sellers have trouble with. Some books will never sell while others will sell only after several markdowns. Many books will never make it onto the selling floor. They're too common to warrant any effort and will go directly from the incoming trailers to the disposal boxes. Today about a quarter of all purchased material goes directly to pulp.

The writer Larry McMurtry has for many years acquired bookstore inventories. Today he has 325,000 volumes in his company Booked Up in four buildings in Archer City, Texas. Peter Howard of Serendipity Books in Berkeley, California has 425,000 books and a cautious but continuing appetite for stock, a celebrated history of acquisitions and several approaches to it. Allan Stypeck of Second Story Books with locations in Maryland and Washington D.C. is also buying as is Bob Fleck of Oak Knoll. Alibris has been an inventory buyer and may be so again. They recently had a change in ownership and it's unclear if they have also had a change of heart. There are of course always others none of whom are knowingly omitted. I simply don't know their names and would list them if I did.

Bob Emerson has shown us one way to resolve these sundown issues. Nelda and Susan will follow a different path. If approached by someone to buy their businesses lock stock and barrel they will no doubt seriously negotiate. They have more to offer than just books and can expect their businesses to be worth more than the sum of the parts. But they approach retirement as bookselling is changing, values are in flux, traditional shops are closing, and inventory is flowing onto the net. In time the process will settle down, the uncertainty will pass, and we will all again remember that books are an essential part of our lives. In the meantime they will sell or dispose because the clock waits for no one.

However these ladies in Ohio deal with it we know this. They will deal with it or their heirs will. They are emotionally connected to their ways of life and to the books that arrayed around them have been a source of comfort, consolation, camaraderie, independence and income. Left unresolved these books are also trouble.

On the next page I provide links and telephone numbers to all members of the book community mentioned in this article. Included with Susan Heller's link is a letter from her detailing her material.