How to Pack Books with a Fresh Direct Box, Part 1

I promised a few posts back to talk about Fresh Direct boxes and how useful they can be for the bookseller. Fresh Direct is an internet grocery store that delivers food to your home. They have a nice selection of fresh / organic food, it’s cheaper than B+M grocery stores, and it’s easy to reorder the same items.

Anyway they deserve the plug cause it’s a great service, but what I really want to talk about are the boxes the food comes in:

I find these all over my neighborhood on recycling day (and a few neighbors save them for me). They’re always clean and bundled together, they’re easy to spot with the distinctive green lettering, and they come in two standard sizes that are perfect for oversize books. The shorter box is good for filling and stacking (strong, not too heavy when full), and, by cutting the boxes down with a utility knife, you can make them into corner protectors / stiffeners for shipping.

First (with the box flattened) cut off the four long flaps:

You can fold and tape this around a standard / trade-size book and it will protect the corners in transit.

[Note that the book is first wrapped in plastic. This waterproofs the book and stops the tape from harming it.]

Look for the thrilling conclusion “How to Pack Books with a Fresh Direct Box, Part 2“!

Nightmare Alley Photoplay

Just picked up a beautiful photoplay of William Lindsay Gresham’s Nightmare Alley from Triangle books, 1948.

“Photoplay” is a collector’s term for a movie edition of a book. They usually include one or more photos from the film (or stage play) or posed shots of the actors. The cover is usually based on a scene from the film with painted or photographed images of the actors (I suppose there’s a point when movie editions cease being considered “photoplays” but go ahead and call that paperback of Hostel: Part II a photoplay. You’ll really class it up).

Anyway Nightmare Alley is a fantastic noir that goes from the Carny Geek world, to a Fifth Avenue Penthouse, and back again. It’s a cult work in all of its forms–novel, film, comic–and this Triangle edition is about the best version of the book I’ve seen. It’s got a wraparound, photo-montage cover, with images from a carnival and a fake mentalist show. The spine has a woman in a corset and stocking sitting in an electric chair and each chapter head starts with a tarot card. You don’t get much cooler than that.

Also pictured is a Triangle James M. Cain omnibus. Triangle titles are usually pretty crappy, budget affairs but these two are definite winners.

Antiques on the Cheap

I just picked up of a copy of James W. McKenzie’s Antiques on the Cheap for $1.99 at the Salvation Army (The author would definitely approve). It was written pre-eBay (1998) but it’s still filled with valuable tips and very wryly and humorously written.

My favorite section in the book is on auction strategies (real go to a farm-stand in a field auctions, not sniping from your desktop). I don’t drive and I live in the city so regular auction attendance is out of my reach, but he paints a very vivid picture. He describes how dealers size each other up, how to suss out someone’s high bid, how (and when) to use aggressive bidding to scare off a newcomer and more.

He suggests an experiment for the auction preview: find a nice item in an otherwise undesirable box lot, then sit back and watch it migrate from box to box as dealers try to conceal, or move it in with something else they want.

He also reveals the two types of people you should never bid against: excited young couples and the family of the estate holder. Neither type will allow reason to get in the way of acquiring something they want.

The rest of the book is devoted to tips on selecting sure-fire stock for an antique store (tea tables, wing back chairs, art pottery), and simple repairs that can make overlooked items very desirable (rewiring a lamp, restoring a trunk, cleaning a bottle with lead shot). Great techniques. I just skimmed a few chapters because I won’t be doing any refinishing in my one-bedroom apartment, but I will definitely revisit in the future.

BEST ENDPAPERS EVER!

I just came across these Alex Schomburg illustrated endpapers on two science fiction titles from the John C. Winston Company (c 1950). Both books were by Milton Lesser but I assume these were endpapers for the entire Winston juvenile sf series.

and bigger here.

Are those great or what? You got your giant robot, a rocket, flying saucers, deep-sea diving, blown-up cities, Fu Man Ming the Merciless, a jet-pack equipped astronaut…

Yeah, I feel the same way.

There’s a reason that a wise man once said “The golden age of science fiction is twelve”.

Detective Book Club

Just found this blow-in card for the Detective Book Club used as a bookmark in a paperback mystery:

While book club edition are generally the bane of the rare book dealer, If I could send in this card and receive cool, well-designed books like the ones pictured, I would do it in a second.

The Hardcase Crime subscription plan scratches the itch to some extent.

Bookselling Tools: The Phone Cam

When I’m out stoopsaling, I carry a well-stocked utility belt: a palm pilot (with my buying lists), pocket handbooks of 1st edition points, a five-borough atlas, canvas and plastic bags, a fold-up cart, a cliff bar + apple, coffee…but the one thing I can never remember is a pen or pencil. I have no idea why. It’s kind of pathetic.

I do, however, alway keep my bee and sperm confusing cell phone at the ready. When I see a stoop sale sign, I shoot a picture:

Then I can toggle through the gallery and plan my route. You could use a full-size digital camera (with more legible results) but the phone cam is handier. Also if you have an Alfred back at the BatCave, you can send “What the hell is this?” pic messages when you find mysterious items.

Love on the Dole

Four Square Landsborough London 1958 (orig pub 1933). “Mortelmans” Cover.

I was going to restore this one but if ever a book should look shabby and beaten down….

Wistful Ohio Girl

Just found this photo in a 1923 South Webster, Ohio High School Yearbook:

Nice bob, elaborately-laced patent leather shoes, and I like the way the tree silhouette frames her. Looks like she’s sitting on the roof of the school. I’m going to return this one to the yearbook. I normally keep old photos for my ephemera wall (especially of wistful looking, long deceased women…yeah…I don’t know) but I don’t want to disturb the history.

Park Slope United Methodist Book Sale 2007

Today was the annual Park Slope United Methodist Book Sale. I’ve attended for several years but this was the first year in its new space, and (I think) the first year it appeared in book sale finder.

I try NOT to get there 45 minutes early because it’s just ugly, lines around the block, booksellers staring each other down, the mad dash…. Instead I strolled up at 9:13, locked my industrial dolly to the cast iron fence, said my bookseller’s paternoster and went in.

Stretched along the entire left hand wall (about 20 yards long) was an army of scanners burrowing through hoarded boxes that I would never see, and I immediately started sweating buckets from the body heat. I asked myself “why don’t I just go home and shop on eBay in my air-conditioned living room?” But no cut-and-run for me.

The scanners and scoutpals are more numerous at these things every time and I am definitely behind the technological curve. I use SP but only to confirm books I hand-pick, and I still key in ISBNs while I douse for a signal with my phone antenna. The bleeding-edge booksale tech seems to be bar code readers, checking books against a database in a palm pilot/pocket PC (no phone signal needed) with an ear bud that plays a tone for every book that meets user presets. I’ll probably upgrade to this eventually, but it looks about as fun as taking inventory at Barnes and Noble.

Every bookseller has a plan of attack at these things. I start with general non-fiction, then science, history, art, reference, biography and finish up with children’s books and general fiction. My theory is that most of the books being weeded from fiction are the popular, penny titles that I don’t want to look through anyway.

I’m glad I stuck it out. The scanner Special Forces disappeared after about an hour and a half (even though the volunteers were bringing out new stock), the air conditioning finally kicked in and I got to at least glance through all of the approx 8-11K of books. It’s definitely a better space for the sale: more aisle space, the ceilings are higher, and there were fewer trampling deaths.

I ended up with 3 filled Fresh Direct boxes (FD boxes are the urban booksellers best friend, more on these later) totaling: 80 books for resale plus a small pile for friends and a few volumes on antiques, web tech, and bookselling for my reference library (Also a bio of Jean Seberg, the very day after I found my self asking “What happened to Jean Seberg anyway?”). I buy about half and half ISBN and pre-ISBN titles. The scanners generally leave the older stuff and the titles I select are good for ebay lots if they don’t command much alone.

Here’s the Boot-A:

Some neuroscience titles, first American printing of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban plus Lemony Snickett #5, a book on occult jewelry, Large Print DaVinci Code, a few 80s horror movie novelizations (Swamp Thing, Sword and the Sorcerer, Krull), first paperback of Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth and more. Best find of the sale was Five Classics of Fairy Chess by T.R. Dawson; one of those handful of sneaky Dover titles that are actually quite rare (I might do a list of these in the future). Just read the wikipedia entry on Fairy Chess but I still don’t have a clue.

Thanks to all the polite, cheerful volunteers whole kept the tables neat and managed everything smoothly. Now I have to go catch a drink with the two friends I snubbed at the sale.

Mii and Mine

If you own a Nintendo Wii it’s a rite of passage to create Mii avatars of everyone you know (especially since there are precious few decent games to play).

Here’s me mii:

The beard is kind of aspirational…and I have no idea where he got those red pants.