Just a reminder, today is the last day to enter AbeBooks Win a Bookseller for a Day contest. The winner will have a professional bookseller sent to their house to evaluate their book collection and will be featured in Fine Books magazine.
It's finally leaked out. The news accounts about Margaret "Peggy" Seltzer's fake memoir about growing up in foster care in South Central Los Angeles frequently mentioned the promotional video her publisher produced of Seltzer touring her old 'hood. The video has found it's way to YouTube. Without further ado, we present (via Galley Cat), Girl in the 'Hood, or Lies and Consequences. Best line, "I hope to god I'm a role model now."
She even manages to dis used bookstores at the end of the clip (about minute 8) for not paying enough for used textbooks: "You only get pennies on the dollar" for used textbooks. She says she encourages students to donate their books to prisons and works with bookstores to mail them (most jails will allow shipments from bookstores but not individuals). After it broke that she didn't actually live in foster care or grow up in South Central, it was revealed that her "foundation" was fake, too.
Here's a video interview with Steven Schuyler, a bookseller who specializes in the building trades and German books. You can find him online at RareBookStore.net and at many home restoration shows. He is very familiar with that market and has many friends in the restoration trade. Over the years, he's built a large clientele on the show circuit. Steve's a good example of a bookseller who has found (or more accurately, created) a market for books outside of the traditional bookstore.
Larry McMurtry will receive the Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award this week. In an interview posted online, he talks mostly about being a bookseller. "I just don’t think about my work at all. I think about being a bookseller. I don’t think about being a writer," he said.
A recent email from one of our readers who collects historic newspapers, lead me to a small cache of YouTube videos about two leading newspaper dealers, Timothy Hughes and the Mitchell Archive. Hughes is definitely the leading dealer in his field and has a great many newspapers in inventory. His business turns out to be a family affair that has taken over what used to be his father's machine shop. This video shows it to be ephemera dealing on fork-lift and heavy-lift scale.
The Mitchell Archive video is a nice presentation about collecting newspapers. Mark Mitchell specializes more in highspots:
More videos are also available:
Timothy Hughes on Newspaper Collecting
Behind the Scenes at the Mitchell Archives
Guy Heilenman, President of Timothy Hughes Rare Newspapers
More Hughes Videos on Their YouTube Channel
This from "Bible Editions & Versions," the Journal of the International Society of Bible Collectors (April - June 2008):
"The Brick Testament. Constructed and photographed entirely by the Rev. Brendan Powell Smith. The largest, most comprehensive illustrated Bible in the world, with over 3,600 illustrations (the scenes are made from Lego blocks) that retell more than 300 stories from the Bible. First launched as a website in 2001, then as a published book series in 2003."
I love how deadpan the description is. The "Reverend" Smith is hardly reverent. He is, however, obsessive, and pretty good with Legos.
Image of Noah's Ark.
I keep meaning to post while I'm here in New York, but I've been so busy and out late and up early that I haven't had the time or the energy. Here's the best story:
On Wednesday, Christie's auctioned off the Self collection of Dickens. This was an extraordinary collection with more than a dozen presentation copies. Henry Wessels, who works for James Cummings, sat in the back row, talking on his cell phone and buying most of the signed copies.
In front of me in the room was Pom Harrington (of the British bookselling firm Peter Harrington). In front of him, sat Stephen Massey, the busiest man in the book trade. At the auction, he was bidding on behalf of two private clients. At the ABAA fair held at the Park Avenue Armory (Thurs-Sun), he worked for Pom Harrington, and on Saturday, he was the auctioneer at Bloomsbury.
But back to Wednesday: For some of the big books, Pom Harrington was an active bidder. Then when the room fell quiet, and he had the high bid, Massey started calling out bids. Each time, Harrington would raise his hands in mock exasperation, as Massey carried the day almost every time he entered the bidding (He was offering bids on behalf of a collector with deep pockets in the mid-West). That he could be a competitor of Harrington in the morning and then work for him at the fair shows how close-knit and collegial the book trade can be.
But the most amusing part of the sale was when Massey won a lot at $8,000. But he had bids for that item from two collectors. When the auctioneer brought down the gavel--Sold!--Massey said, "Make that $8,500." He bid against himself!
I asked him about it after the sale. He said that it was the only fair thing to do when he has two competing bidders.
Yesterday I posted Chuck Rozanski's seven questions to be asked before getting into the comics business. Here are a few of his choice observations, which apply equally to the used book business:
"I remember reading a Small Business Administration (SBA) pamphlet 30 years ago which laid out the hard facts that 70% of new businesses started in America fail within three years, and that 85% fail within five years....For the specialized area of comics retailing, those percentages were actually a bit optimistic. Very few of the stores that were opened from 1988-1999 are still in business, and I'll bet that 75% of those that are still open could be purchased for net asset value, with no consideration given for the enterprise as an ongoing business."
"What most comics retailers never figure out (until it's too late...) is that they are losing money every day that they are open for business. They accumulate lots of inventory, and come to believe that owning lots of stuff is the same thing as making a profit. Well, that's only true if you have a cost-effective mechanism for turning your stuff into cash. If you don't own such a mechanism, you're not generating a profit, you're simply adding to your storage cost burden. Eventually that burden, combined with a lack of cash flow, will kill your business."
"Comics retailers are notorious for seldom liquidating slow product, and as a result, what you see in a store is not what their customers are seeking, but rather what they got stuck with."
And finally, in a much later column, Mr. Rozanski asks a question that I think all book collectors should ask. It's one that I've been giving a lot of thought to of late as I have been working with one of our regular contributors, Richard Goodman, on a story about what the book world can learn from the art world. A lot of people are concerned about an apparent waning of interest in books. The same is true about comics. I am reminded of the last lines of that famous Dylan Thomas poem: "Do not go gentle into that good night. / Rage, rage against the dying of the light." What Mr. Rozanski asks here is worth asking of everyone who loves books.
"To get to the nub of my question for today, I would ask you to consider what you are personally doing to try to save the comics world. I realize that there is not a single one of us who can have any measure of a significant impact solving this kind of dilemma alone, but I do fervently believe that great numbers of people working toward a common goal can create an astonishing level of positive change. To be a bit more specific, I would ask what kind of outreach you have done of late to try to bring new readers into comics? All of us have favorite stories that particularly resonate with us as an individual. Have you tried passing that book and/or comic on to a friend? How about giving comics to kids?...How about speaking about comics before groups of young people? I've been to numerous elementary, middle, and high schools during my career, speaking to young people about the merits of graphic storytelling, and passing out free samples. These are just a few of the ways that all of us can help encourage new readers."
Chuck Rozanski of Mile High Comics is one of the most interesting retailers of collectables. I have basically zero interest in comics, but I subscribe to his email list and read every one. He basically breaks every rule in the book, and doing so has made him the leading comics dealer in the world (he started out living in his car along with his inventory). Instead of keeping his emails short and to the point, he tells stories about his latest buying trips, what's going on at home, his adventures collecting Native American pottery, and whatever else happens to be on his mind. He also runs crazy promotions, like giving $10 gift certificates to everyone on his email list. The gift certificate had no minimum. Order $10 in comics and they were completely free except for the shipping, charged at the actual cost (no markup). In December, Mile High customers redeemed $50,000 in gift certificates.
Mr. Rozanski wrote a column for a comics publication, and then posted them on his store's website. It's very good reading, and although it is about selling comics, a lot of what he writes applies to books as well. His columns are particularly honest about being in business, too. He describes the downside of rapid success and how the sudden growth of his business to $10,000 per week in 1980 nearly bankrupted him—the cost of hiring lots of new employees, renting warehouse space, investing in desks and equipment, and acquiring enough new inventory to keep the sales going ate up all the cash and then some.
One series of columns addressed the desire of collectors to enter the business of selling comics. Mr. Rozanski offers seven questions every potential dealer should ask. Change comics to books, and the list works for bookselling, too.
About the motivations for entering the business, he writes, "If your answer is that you want to sell comics for a living because you have have a passion for comics, I'm unimpressed. Alcoholics have a passion for liquor, but that's certainly not a good reason for them to be operating a liquor store. In fact, I've seen a large number of comics stores fail because the owners were so wrapped up in their love of comics, that they forgot that they were running a business."
Here are the seven key questions. They aren't the usual ones people ask when starting a business, which is why they are so illuminating:
1) Do I have the ability to self-motivate myself?
2) Am I willing to forego all other activities in my life to be a comics dealer?
3) Can I make it my foremost goal to serve other comics fans?
4) Do I have the ability to ignore my own personal tastes?
5) Do I have the desire and intellectual curiosity to endlessly educate myself about new areas of collecting?
6) Do I have the mental toughness that will enable me to persevere, even when the odds seem hopelessly stacked against me?
7) Do I communicate well with others?
Read the first part of Mr. Rozanski's advice here. Don't forget to hit the "Next" link at the bottom of the page for the continuation of his comments.
Pardon me while I flog this dead horse.
Motoko Rich at the New York Times has been all over the story of Margaret Seltzer and her fake memoir of growing up in the Los Angeles 'hood. She even ran through the recent list of frauds, which is growing steadily.
Ms. Rich contacted Riverhead Books, Ms. Seltzer's publisher, and obtained these commitments to the truth from the publisher, Geoffrey Kloske:
“In hindsight we can second-guess all day things we could have looked for or found,” Mr. Kloske said. “The fact is that the author went to extraordinary lengths: she provided people who acted as her foster siblings. There was a professor who vouched for her work, and a writer who had written about her that seemed to corroborate her story.” He added that Ms. Seltzer had signed a contract in which she had legally promised to tell the truth. “The one thing we wish,” Mr. Kloske said, “is that the author had told us the truth.”
Really Mr. Kloske? Is that all you wish? Perhaps I can refresh your memory.
The Times noted that "despite editing the book in the aftermath of the scandal surrounding James Frey, author of a best-selling memoir, 'A Million Little Pieces,' who admitted making up or exaggerating details in his account of drug addiction and recovery, [Seltzer's editor, Sarah] McGrath said she did not independently check parts of Ms. Seltzer’s story or perform any kind of background check. She said she relied on Ms. Seltzer to tell the truth."
What the Times and virtually every other media outlet has missed is that Riverhead is the publisher of James Frey's "My Friend Leonard," the follow up to "A Million Little Pieces." As I have pointed out before, "My Friend Leonard" has even more problems than the first book. Does Leonard even exist? I mean, he's supposed to be a mobster with a heart of gold who adopted Frey in rehab and conveniently disappeared when people started checking Frey's stories. Leonard also allegedly palled around with a judge in rehab. That's very believable. Key sections of "My Friend Leonard" take place in a jail where Frey never served time, and that we know for sure. We also know that his supposed girlfriend, Lilly, probably didn't commit suicide. And from that we can conclude that Leonard never loaned Frey money to bury her.
So let's say you're Margaret Seltzer and you write this gang novel told in the first person and you figure out it will be more attractive to publishers as a memoir. Your publisher, Riverhead, continues to sell "My Friend Leonard" as a memoir, even though Mr. Frey is an admitted liar (not just in his books - he told phony stories repeatedly to the press and to audiences at readings). So wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that Riverhead doesn't really care if your book is true, as long as it sells copies?
One wonders if James Frey's contract requires him to tell the truth?
I am sure the legal eagles at Riverhead added the cute tagline on the cover of the paperback of "My Friend Leonard" to protect themselves against just such accusations. It reads, "An imaginative story of a real life." Pardon my French, but WTF does that mean? That James Frey is a real person, but everything else is made up? Philip Roth writes imaginative stories about characters named Philip Roth, but he calls them novels.
It is staggering that Riverhead can proclaim its commitment to the truth when it comes to Margaret Seltzer while continuing to market "My Friend Leonard" as a memoir, which, by definition, is supposed to be a true story. The small print inside "My Friend Leonard," which reads, "Some sequences and details of events have been changed," gives no hint that entire scenes, characters, and events in the book are entirely made up. How much of a memoir has to be true for Riverhead to publish it? 20 percent? 50 percent? 75 percent?
In the next post, I'll compare Margaret Seltzer to James Frey, and she how she does on the truthiness scale.
If Riverhead's new standard is that memoirs have to be true, they should immediately do to "My Friend Leonard" what they did to Margaret Seltzer's "Love and Consequences" - pull the book from the shelves and issue an apology. Either that or they should call it a novel and shelve it with fiction, where it has always belonged.
In which Margaret "Peggy" Seltzer's lies are reinterpreted through the lens of James Frey. Frey, you'll remember, is the author of the mostly fictional memoir, "My Friend Leonard," which conveniently happens to be published by Riverhead, Seltzer's publisher. [Much of the truth about James Frey comes from the expose in The Smoking Gun.]
Seltzer: I'm half-white, half Native American.
Truth: She's lily white.
Frey: I'm wanted in three states.
Truth Deemed Close Enough By Riverhead: No one in law enforcement has any interest in Frey.
Verdict for Seltzer: No problem for Riverhead. After all, 50% = 0.50, which rounds to 1.0, so saying you're half-white is the same as saying you're all white.
Seltzer: I was a gang member, and once you're a gang member, you're always a gang member.
Truth: She attended a private Episcopalian high school.
Frey: I spent 90 days in jail sharing a cell with an inmate named Porterhouse.
Truth Deemed Close Enough By Riverhead: Frey spent 90 minutes or so on a couch in a police station.
Verdict: No problem for Seltzer. Attending parochial school can feel a lot like being a member of the Bloods, and you'll never stop being a religious school graduate, even if you stop going to church.
Seltzer: My foster brother, Terrell, was killed by the Crips.
Truth: She has a sister, who ratted her out after reading a profile of Seltzer in the New York Times. Seltzer only wishes the Crips took her out.
Frey: Girl friend Lilly committed suicide by hanging herself, no wait, I think she slit her wrists.
Truth Deemed Close Enough By Riverhead: Oh no she di'n't.
Verdict: No problem for Seltzer. Gandhi said, "Live as if you were to die tomorrow." So aren't living and dying really the same thing?
Seltzer: “One of the first things I did once I started making drug money was to buy a burial plot.”
Truth: What she meant to say is "One of the first things I WILL DO once I start making money from my book is buy a Cadillac Escalade."
Frey: I had to borrow money from Leonard to bury Lilly.
Truth Deemed Close Enough By Riverhead: Lilly's not dead so 1) Frey borrowed money for something else. 2) He didn't borrow money. Or 3) Lilly's not dead and Leonard doesn't exist. Me? I'm going with door number three.
Verdict: A bit of a problem for Seltzer. You should have waited until your book was on the bestseller list before agreeing to do that profile in the New York Times. When it comes to money, the details don't matter, as long as it's a lot of money.
Seltzer: I was raised by a black grandmother named Big Mom.
Truth: She was raised by a white mother and father, size (as yet) undetermined.
Frey: Said good friend was killed by a train when he was in 8th grade.
Truth Deemed Close Enough: Acquaintance killed by train when Frey was 17.
Verdict: Borrowing a character name like Big Mom from Sherman Alexie is a nice bit of homage to one of Seltzer's Myspace heroes. Implying that your (rich, white) mom might be fat is not acceptable. Recall Seltzer's book.
Every issue of Fine Books raises dozens of nitpicky grammar and language questions. Should it be "a half million" or "half a million." Or, for example, a writer recently submitted an essay with the following phrase, "a contemporary book and art collector." I knew that he didn't mean a collector of contemporary books and art. Rather, the reference was to a collector who is active now (contemporary) as opposed to another collector mentioned in the article, who is no longer buying. But the meaning was ambiguous, so I rewrote the sentence.
Many people have very firmly held ideas about language and get very worked up over grammar. A common point of dispute is till vs. until. Often people write 'til, which reflects the idea that till is a shortened, informal form of until. In fact, till is the original form of the word. Our ancestors added the un- prefix to gussy it up (To is another word that was made more impressive with the addition of a prefix. Think "Do unto others... We've largely dropped unto from the language, but until survives).
Another big point of contention is the use of he/she or the singular their to get around the sex bias in statements like "A writer is his own worst critic." Recently over at the Weekly Standard, a Yale professor ranted about how such concerns are destroying our noble language. "How can I teach my students to write decently," he asked, "when the English language has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Academic-Industrial Complex? Our language used to belong to all its speakers and readers and writers. But in the 1970s and '80s, arrogant ideologues began recasting English into heavy artillery to defend the borders of the New Feminist state."
The good-natured linguists over at the Language Log blog have taken his claims on here and here.
They point out that the claim that idea that "he" and "his" are sex-neutral pronouns is simply wrong, and they offer some examples as evidence. If "he" and "his" can accurately refer to women as well as men, then the following sentences should sound fine:
Is it your brother or your sister who can hold his breath for four minutes?
The average American needs the small routines of getting ready for work. As he shaves or blow-dries his hair or pulls on his panty hose, he is easing himself by small stages into the demands of the day.
Another blogger (A Billion Monkeys Can't Be Wrong) notices that our outraged Yale professor undermined his own point when he wrote: “Who can afford to allow a virtual feminist to elbow her way like a noisy drunk into that inner mental circle where all your faculties (such as they are) are laboring to produce decent prose?” Surely, A Billion Monkeys asks, that should be “elbow his way.” Not all feminists are women so the supposedly sex-neutral "he" should apply.
Then there's the Yalie's tirade against the singular their. He lauds Shakespeare and Jane Austen for their commitment to the English language, apparently unaware that they both used their as a singular pronoun. The Language Log has Shakespearean examples here and there's even a website devoted to Ms. Austen's (mis?)use of their.
Whenever possible, I try to avoid the s/he and singular their debates. In many cases, the writing is improved by making a specific point rather than a general one invoking a hypothetical he (e.g., "Judging from the extensive corrections to his manuscripts, Joyce was his own worst critic."). Besides, I have enough trouble deciding whether it should be Web site, web site, or website.
That's how Margaret B. Jones described the way that a lot of people react when they hear she grew up in South Central Los Angeles. She told that to a New York Times reporter who wrote a story following the recent publication of Jones' critically acclaimed memoir, Love and Consequences. As a consequence of that interview, the book is being recalled by its publisher. It seems Jones' sister read the story and called the publisher to say that Margaret--or Peggy as she is known by her family--is really named Margaret Seltzer. She in not - as claimed in her memoir - half white, half Native American. Nor was she raised by a black foster mother; she wasn't a gang member or a drug dealer either. She was a nice, middle-class Valley girl.
Her older sister saw her picture in the New York Times and narced on her.
Here's the Times' profile that proved her undoing. I love the line about how her child was the first white baby she'd ever seen. I suggest reading it before the article that unmasked her.
Here's a radio interview where she manages to put on a black accent and lie through her teeth, spinning story after story from thin air.
The real question is why don't publisher do even the most basic fact checking?
For the last two months, Joyce Godsey over at the Bibliophile Bullpen has been trying to buy me a store-warming present in honor of my recent purchase of Eureka Books. It hasn't gone well, and her travails are chronicled here. However, yesterday the book she'd been trying to send me arrived at my PO box. Perhaps the best part about the book is the fold-out sheet for tracking sales and cash in and out. We don't have a cash register at Eureka Books, so tracking all of this information on paper is what we do every night. I think I'll adapt the form to our close-out procedure. Thanks Joyce.
Come on, admit it. If you are reading this blog and are not already in the book biz, you harbor secret desires to be a bookseller. Who wouldn't want to spend their days surrounded by—no, immersed in—books. Of course, the realities of the job are can be literally back-breaking and mind-numbing (Must remember to look away from the computer screen at least once per hour), so AbeBooks is offering the next best thing, a full day of a bookseller's uninterrupted attention.
AbeBooks' Win a Bookseller contest, which Fine Books & Collections is co-sponsoring, will send a competent, experienced bookseller to your house to fulfill your bibliophillic desires (within reason). The ostensible purpose is to provide an appraisal of your collection, but the lucky bookseller (chosen based in part on proximity to the winner) will probably be just as happy to regale you with hours of tales of flea market finds, high-stakes auctions, or the realities of making a living from books. Sounds like fun to me. I am a bookseller and even I could use a bookseller for a day.
Here's the deal: You have to write a short essay about your book collection. As one of the judges, I can assure you that we're looking for passion and enthusiasm and not just a fat wallet. The judging criteria is based more on how well you've done with the resources you have than on the resources themselves. Visit AbeBooks' Win a Bookseller site and fill out an entry form (or check out pages 13 and 71 in the March/April issue of Fine Books). The contest ends May 1 and is open to residents of the US and Canada.
In addition to winning the services of a bookseller for a day, the winner will be featured in Fine Books & Collections' How I Got Started column. An example can be found at the foot of the Win a Bookseller page.
A few interesting bits from around the web:
Nigel Beale is collecting bookstore pictures on Flickr.
Brian Cassidy, who bought a bookstore in Monterey last year, reflects on his first year in retail.
Nicholas Basbanes is on Fred Andrle's "Open Line" radio program. Listen online (Scroll to Thursday, 2/21/08 show, 10:00 a.m slot).
Fine Books is a semi-virtual operation. We have an office in Durham, North Carolina, but most of the people who work on the magazine are self-employed freelancers who work from home. We communicate mostly by email. I decided to clean out my sent mail box, which hasn't been touched since October 2006. It contained 7,733 emails, sent over the last 16.5 months. This does not count emails sent from my laptop when I was traveling. That comes to 16 per day. How did people get anything done before email? Or maybe the better question is How do we have time for anything but email?
The melodiously named Tim Toone set out to acquire every edition and variant of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. His collection runs to 553 books, including translations into sixty-three languages, from Braille to Urdu. Apparently the quest got the better of him, as he stopped after Book 6 and is now selling his collection at Bloomsbury Auctions (lots 238-260 on February 28). He managed to acquire many proofs along the way. I printed out those pages of the auction catalog to keep as a semi-bibliography. The story in the Scotsman can be read here.
Book Geek - that's how one bookseller described Ken Karmiole, a long-time bookseller in Santa Monica who I visited when I was in Los Angeles for the ABAA fair. Ken specializes in books before 1800, although he has a number of later books. His whole stock fits in one nicely appointed room in his two-room office located in a modern building in an alley behind the Promenade in Santa Monica (see pic above). The larger of the two rooms is shown below, or at least as much of it as I could get into a photo. There were perhaps six more cases of books, plus a couple additional free-standing book cases. The room houses Ken's reference library, which is many times larger than his inventory. That's the kind of geek-dom I could aspire to.
Last year, book collector and attorney Rolland Comstock was murdered in his house. He died near the 50,000 books that were the pride and joy of his life. Quill and Brush and Second Story Books acquired the library, after Comstock's alma mater took what they wanted as a donation from his estate. Tens of thousands of less expensive titles ended up at Second Story, near Washington DC. Most are signed or inscribed. Quill and Brush just released a catalog of the better books—also mostly signed or inscribed. It's almost 50MB, so don't try to download it on a dial-up connection. The catalog has an introduction by Nicholas Basbanes and a short biography of Comstock by his long-time assistant. To my eye, the prices seem pretty reasonable on the whole.
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