Table of Contents Email the editor

This has been a difficult issue to get out—troubling times in the world, friends and various article writers ill and a few (to me, anyway) overwhelming projects in my own life—but we made it, and I think we've got an interesting and varied cornucopia of articles for you.

By the way, we're always looking for new writers so feel free to contact me at editor@ioba.org or aaabooks@azalea.net about ideas you'd like to develop into articles. We're always happy to get opinion items on any side of whatever issues affect our book world. My only criterion is that the items be well-written and well thought out... and not libelous.

Hope you enjoy this issue, perhaps learn something new or just get a giggle or two. And I have my fingers crossed for a prosperous and healthy summer for all of the book world inhabitants (and their critters)!

Shirley Bryant

Call for replacement

When the fall, 2003 issue goes live some time in November, I'll have been editor for 2-1/2 years and will have put out 10 issues of The IOBA Standard.

It has been great fun, and I've enjoyed very much helping it grow and watching it take on a life of its own. I hope it has been something good for the book world, and that it has helped educate and entertain.

But…that fall, 2003 issue will be my last as editor. To keep The IOBA Standard fresh, improving and growing in new directions, a new brain with unimagined-by-me ideas will be needed.

IOBA is, of course, an excellent “parent” for the newsletter and a wonderful and needed organization for the book world. I will remain an IOBA member—I fully believe in and support the organization. Deanna Ramsay is without peer—she is a computer guru deluxe, and there could be no one better for The Standard's editor to work with. Routines have been set up, and more are on the way to make the editor's life easier.

I'm hoping that among you readers there is an editor lurking, just waiting to take over The Standard and build it in exciting new ways. I'd love to slowly phase myself out over the next two 2003 issues with your help so that there would be a smooth transition in 2004 (first 2004 issue due in February).

Please contact me at aaabooks@azalea.net or editor@ioba.org, or contact Julie Fauble, IOBA's president, at books@centurybooks.com, or Deanna Ramsay, IOBA's webmaster, at deanna@ramsaybooks.com, if you're interested in the job so we can talk about it.

I can assure you that you'd enjoy it. Maybe I'm prejudiced, but I think you'd be doing something good for your fellow book people.

Shirley Bryant, Editor

By: Erwin H. Bush

erwin@erwinbush.com

Over the last few years the ISBN has become a lot more important to many, if not most, online booksellers. Many of the larger sites are using ISBN lookups to match a bookseller's listing to information about that title pulled from an ISBN database. When it works, it's a quick and efficient way to provide additional information about a book to supplement the bookseller's listing or free the bookseller from having to enter that information themselves. However, often it results in matches to information about a different edition of the book or, in some cases, matches with a completely different title than the one being listed.

Many booksellers are understandably frustrated by this, and many are questioning the need and/or feasibility of an ISBN lookup function. But there is a method to the madness, even though in it's current state it often does more harm than good. This article will examine how and when an ISBN lookup can be useful along with the pitfalls of using it today.

Buying Books Online

The market for used books had never been a homogeneous one. There have always been several different kinds of used books being sold for different reasons, from rare books sold to collectors to common mass market paperbacks sold to readers on a budget. There have also been different kinds of booksellers, from Antiquarian sellers who issued catalogues and whose store was open "by appointment only" to your local paperback exchange. No one would have expected these disparate sellers to use the same methods to sell their very different wares.

That seemed to change with the onset of online bookselling. In the beginning online bookselling was used in a way similar to the paper catalogue, with a limited but highly targeted audience. It operated in many ways like a giant catalogue of books from multiple booksellers that could be searched. But then the more general used books sites began to appear: Bibliofind and the Advanced Book Exchange appeared; Interloc morphed into Alibris; Half.com and Ebay arose and eventually merged. And there was Amazon.com…

Amazon.com changed the nature of used bookselling. As one of the first online merchandisers (and arguably the most successful, at least in terms of volume) they tapped a large new audience for used books. Originally all they did was take "want" requests and then tried to find copies by using one of the dedicated used book sites. But they quickly realized that this was a large and relatively untapped market and they decided to aggressively go after this business themselves. They, along with Ebay/Half.com, have turned used bookselling into a commodity business.

Or at least a part of used bookselling.

Used Books as Commodities

Before the Internet it was difficult for a customer to find most out of print books. It wasn't because there weren't a lot of them out there, it was because these books were "hidden" on the shelves of thousands of used bookstores. If it wasn't available in the handful of stores close to you then it might as well not exist. There were a lot of books, but limited accessibility.

Online bookselling changed that. With places like Bibliofind and Abebooks a customer could "search the shelves" of bookstores all across the country (and the world.) Availability opened up. But the customer base was still relatively small and primarily focused on the collector who was used to searching for books. When Amazon.com started to promote used book sales along with their new books they brought a lot of new customers to the used book market. Now you had a lot of common used books, ready accessibility online, and a large customer base who wants them. Used bookselling became a commodity market. The problem is that this only applied to a part of the used book market; the one traditionally served by the paperback book exchanges and booksellers of that kind. Readers on a budget looking for non-collectible copies of common titles. These customers are much more interested in the content and price of a book than they are of some other criteria commonly looked for by collectors, such as edition and condition.

So we have a large market and a lot of books to sell them. Now the challenge is how to get these books listed online in the easiest (and cheapest) way. It takes time (and therefore money) to create a listing for a book. Although there are a lot of these common titles out there, they aren't coming from one or two sources; there are hundreds of booksellers each listing one or two copies. Commodity selling requires low overhead costs; the profit on any one copy of a commodity book is small. The profit is in selling lots of them. But since any one dealer has, at best, a handful of copies, the overhead for each bookseller to create their own online listing is high. How can this be reduced?

The Good

Okay, you saw this coming; the answer that has been proposed is ISBN lookup. Most of these common titles are relatively recent releases and have ISBN numbers assigned to them. Bowker (and their International equivalents) have databases of these numbers with information about these books that was provided by the publisher when the numbers were issued. The ISBN number for a book can be used to pull up a lot of details about it; this information can be used to populate an online database. The overhead for the bookseller decreases dramatically.

The Bad

Unfortunately this approach is not without its drawbacks. There are some additional criteria for used books that aren't found in the ISBN database:

• Condition - used books can be anything from "as new/unread" to "well worn." Even for common, non-collectable books some gross indication of condition is necessary.

• First Printing - there is a large collector market for First Edition, First Printing copies of modern books. Although the ISBN can be used to indicate the edition (all new editions require a different ISBN number) it does not differentiate between printings.

• Multiple Editions - in addition to being reprinted, common titles often have multiple editions (and therefore multiple ISBNs.) Sometimes these are indicative of different formats (hardcover, trade paperback, mass market paperback) but sometimes there can be multiple editions in the same format. When a particular title has multiple editions (and therefore multiple ISBNs) they can often be easily confused for each other.

Some of these issues can be easily addressed. When dealing with common books a simple statement of condition (Fine, Very Good, Good) is probably sufficient. First Editions can be similarly identified (understanding that with a collectable book you also need to go into much more detail as to the condition.) Multiple editions can be more challenging, although the format (hardcover, mass market paperback, etc.) will often be a differentiator between different ISBNs for the same title. The good news about these kinds of problems is that they can be addressed by the listing services or by the booksellers themselves. Proper use of the ISBN is something the bookselling marketplace can control.

The Ugly

But there are some real nasty problems; those created by the listing services and/or booksellers in assigning ISBNs to a listing and those that exist within the ISBN system itself.

Problems with assigning ISBNs are mostly a result of trying to link an existing entry for a book with an ISBN number. As previously noted many common titles have more than one ISBN associated with them. Booksellers have spent a lot of time creating their book entries and are generally not willing to throw all that work away and start fresh using ISBNs lookups. Since the ISBN is often not noted in older listings, attempts have been made to use the title, author and/or format to assign a number to them. Unfortunately, these attempts often fail, with the result of incorrect ISBNs being assigned to a listing. This in turn angers customers when the book that they receive doesn't match the online description.

This problem is aggravated when the information in the ISBN database is itself faulty. Back in the early days of ISBNs there were a lot of opportunities for error. I can use my own experience here as an example.

Back in the late 1970's while still in college I started a small press, The Burning Bush Press, to publish some fiction by a friend of mine, Mark E. Rogers. Although the editions were small and the publisher was a poor undergraduate student, I made an attempt to do it "right." That meant registering the copyright with the Library of Congress and getting an ISBN from Bowker. (I'll admit that the only reason I bothered with the ISBN was that I wanted to get our books listed in Books in Print; I didn't get around to doing this until my third and final title.) I filled out the appropriate paperwork and was assigned a publisher's identifier and given forms to fill out in order to submit my titles.

Assignment of the title identifier was left entirely up to me. And adding this title to the growing list of assigned ISBNs was a manual process; I filled out and mailed the form to Bowker, and someone on their end had to enter the data into their "system." The first (and only) book I submitted was a short play-parody, Waiting for Gomot by Officer Joe Beckett (as transcribed from the original crayon by Mark E. Rogers,) ISBN: 0-937528-01-3. Essentially it was the Three Stooges doing Waiting for Godot. A silly piece that had only been performed once, on May 16^th, 1976 at the University of Delaware with an accompanying electronic music score by John J. Adams.

You can probably guess what happened. Bowker managed to screw up the listing, showing it as Waiting for Godot. For several years I received orders from teachers wanting copies for a class (at $2 ours were cheap.) Add to this another little problem; if you looked up "Burning Bush" in the Publisher index I was the only one listing. However, there was a Burning Bush imprint used by The United Synagogue Book Services. As a result I would get an occasional order for books about Jewish Dietary Laws.

These are the kinds of things that happened when you had a manual system of entering data. Add to this the potential problems created when the assignment of the title identifier was left solely to the publisher (if I hadn't submitted the paperwork Bowker wouldn't know that a title identifier had been used). These allowed for both errors on the transcription side by Bowker and errors on the assignment side by the publisher. Also, as the number of titles grew the larger publishers began to run out of numbers. This meant they had to get a new publisher identifier; unfortunately some chose to reuse numbers instead. This problem was magnified by all of the mergers and takeovers that occurred in the publishing industry over the last 25 years; often the publishers themselves lost track of what ISBNs they had already used.

Today these problems aren't quite so severe. Computerized databases and submissions have helped, and Bowker now issues title numbers to publishers in groups of five. This makes it easier for them (and the publisher) to track which numbers have been used, helping to prevent the issuance of duplicate numbers. This also helps to minimize transcription errors, although good copyediting on the part of the publisher is still required when submitting information. But the damage has already been done.

The Situation Today

There is a need for a simple and straightforward way of entering information about common, commodity books for online listing. One more focused on the content of a book than with details about a specific copy. The ISBN is a likely source for such information; however as had been noted above, this approach has a lot of pitfalls today. Changes are needed before the ISBN can be used successfully to list and sell commodity books.

And these are coming. New standards are emerging in the new book world that will help. In a future article I'll talk about these new standards, what they'll mean to online book community, and some proposals as to how they can be successfully implemented by the online book community.

Different Times,
Different Climes,
Different Crimes!

This review includes a trio of books that differ greatly, even in the broad genre of mystery novels. Settings and periods range from Vienna at the in 1910 and Melbourne, Australia in the 1980s to Washington D.C. in 2000. The protagonists differ drastically too, almost as much as the authors of the books. One thing the writers do have in common: this is the first novel for each of them

Another is that none of the three have made it big since they appeared a couple of years ago, though each is worth reading for different reasons: The Fig Eater, for its appeal to those who like historical and period mysteries; The Brush-Off, because of its engaging, offbeat principal, Murray Whelan; and Run, because of the frightening picture it paints of a dark side of our society, the illegal gun trade.

The Fig Eater by Jody Shields features Erszébet, wife of the Inspector, obsessed with solving a crime her husband is investigating. Author Ms. Shields is a Renaissance woman. She was design editor of the New York Times Magazine and an editor at Vogue and Home and Garden, wrote two non-fiction books and several screen plays, has a master's degree in art. Her prints are in several collections, including the Museum of Modern Art.

In the The Brush-Off, Shane Maloney introduces us to Murray Whelan, political aide to Australia's newly-appointed culture minister. Maloney has been a newspaper columnist, lifeguard and director of the Melbourne Comedy Festival.

Run comes from the keyboard of Douglas E. Winter, a Washington, D.C. attorney, a member of the National Book Critics Circle and editor of Prime Evil, a best-selling anthology of horror and suspense fiction.

The Fig Eater, by Jody Shields; Little Brown & Co.; $23.95 - This is a mystery with historical novel overtones, stressing the cerebral more than physical action. It opens with the Inspector (as he is referred to throughout the book), his assistant and crew of technicians studying the crime scene in a park where the corpse of a young woman has been discovered.

The body lies in a secluded area of the Volksgarten, not far from Vienna's notorious Spittleberg District. We learn that the victim's name is Dora and that she is the daughter of a respectable bourgeois family. The inspector, a pioneer in rationalist criminology, embarks on his investigation with his assistant Franz. They follow the latest scientific methods, including careful assembly of forensic evidence.

Jody Shields

Meanwhile his wife Erszébet, not Viennese but Hungarian and steeped in Gypsy lore and superstition, becomes interested and launches her own secret, parallel investigation. She enlists the aid of Wally, a young English nanny for a wealthy Vienna family. They find an ally in Egon, a freelance photographer often used by the police to take crime scene photos.

The Inspector pays little attention to portions of fresh figs found in Dora's stomach during the autopsy. Apparently she ate them shortly before she died because large pieces were undigested. To Erszébet, however, the figs are a vital clue, and they help her solve the crime.

The Brush-Off, by Shane Maloney; Arcade Publishing, $23.95 - This one fits somewhere between the cerebral quality of The Fig Eater and slam-bang violence of Run. Murray Whelan, advisor to the newly-appointed Minister of Art and Culture for the state of Victoria in Australia, runs into problems not normally expected in the art world.

These problems include two murders, art forgeries on a grand scale and financial shenanigans that threaten the political survival of Murray and his boss.

It all starts during a reception at the Center for Modern Art in Melbourne, where Murray meets the lovely, playful Salina, an art magazine editor, and has high hopes that a romantic interlude will follow. Instead, a young artist turns up dead in an ornamental pool, and turns out to be Salina's fiance. So much for romance!

Shane Maloney

And was the death suicide or murder? Whelan has to become a “reluctant detective” to fend off fall-out from threatening his job. He proves to be remarkably effective at it, despite having to entertain his young son at the same time. (He is divorced and his wife moved away, so 10-year-old Redmond's visits are rare.)

Maloney writes with humor as he deftly weaves a plot line that moves his hero from misadventure to misadventure. There is a hint of Robert Crais' Elvis Cole in Whelan, though without the bravura and underlying hard edge—and there are times when Murray could use a partner like Joe Pike, Cole's formidable, enigmatic sidekick.

I enjoyed this book a lot, and am anxious to read Maloney's second and third Murray Whelan books: Nice Try and Stiff, which is a prequel to The Brush-Off.

Run, Alfred A. Knopf, $23.00 - With the Million Mom anti-gun march hot news as this is written, it seems appropriate to review Run, a book that gives us a look at the seamier side of the gun industry. Though fiction, it rips the lid off the culture of guns, violence and the greed that sustains it in very convincing fashion.

Run is bloody and violent in the extreme ... but, if widely read, might do more for the anti-gun movement than a half-dozen marches.

The protagonist, Burdon Lane, is no hero. “I'm not one of the good guys,” he tells us up front. His business card lists him as Executive VP of UniArms, Alexandria, Virginia He is in fact a gun-runner, a “good soldier,” his boss calls him. On the job, he carries two Glock 19 pistols and a duffel bag loaded with a Mossberg shotgun and assorted ammunition. An excellent marksman and arms expert, Lane makes illegal gun runs, often up the “Iron Highway,” “from the Dirty City” (D.C.) to Manhattan. Gun-runners call it that because so many guns (“iron”) follow the route north.

Douglas E. Winter

Lane has misgivings about his latest run from the start. It involves delivering a large shipment of guns to a powerful New York gang of African Americans (the “N” word appears frequently) with the help of the U Street Crew (USC), which rules a black D.C. ghetto. “Don't worry,” he is told, “it will be a milk run.” It proves anything but! Nothing is as it seems and many of the characters are not what they first appear to be. The delivery ends in the assassination of a popular black civil rights leader and a blood bath in which members from both gangs are slaughtered.

Lane lands in the middle of a wheels-within-wheels conspiracy of major proportions. It involves shadowy figures from both government and the arms industry. His partner, Renny Two-Hands, is killed and Lane himself escapes death narrowly. He partners with Jinx, a USC gangsta, and they set out for revenge. Climax is a mild term for what follows: a firefight in a cathedral, during a wedding! The body count soars but Lane, though wounded, survives.

Run is one of the most powerful, disturbing novels I've read in years. Although destined to be lumped in the “Mystery” genre, it is more than that: a mirror reflecting some of the sordid facts of life that plague our society today.

The Independent Online Booksellers Association promotes high standards of professionalism in the fast-changing world of online bookselling, and provides educational and business benefits to its dynamic and growing membership.

Annual dues are just $60. But new members are invited to join IOBA now, and receive full membership through June of 2004. Please visit the website at http://www.ioba.org for more information and a membership application.

Tom, is BookWriter Web being used successfully by dealers as you hoped?

Yes, sales are good and the program is doing its job well. I think the nicest compliment I received was from a dealer who was also an Interloc subscriber years ago. She called me up and thanked me for creating BwWeb. She said: "It's just like the old days. I get a message from someone wanting to buy a book. I write back and sometimes they call back and we have a nice chat. I sell a book and get a new customer -- and I don't have to pay anything to anyone!"

That's encouraging! What kind of results are dealers experiencing overall?

Overall it's been very good, but some unexpected things have happened too. For example, one dealer used BwWeb to compose his entire stock of some 45,000 books and prints into web pages, 5 per page, and we then did a Google site submission for him after he uploaded the pages.

A couple of weeks later, he called and demanded to know how he could get his listings REMOVED from Google, because he was overwhelmed with orders! I told him he could remove his own pages easily, but as far as Google went, I had no idea how to pull listings from their cache, and I didn't even know if it was possible. Boy, was he angry! He accused me of creating a monster, told me that I didn't know what I was doing, complained he had to go out and spend money and hire people, he was going to miss his vacation, and basically said I had ruined his life.

I take it he wasn't prepared to handle the order volume.

That's an understatement -- not by a long shot. He had been selling 3-5 books a day on-line through listing services like ABE, a comfortable and manageable number for a Mom & Pop shop. But when that number hit over 100 orders a day, his blood pressure shot up correspondingly. If he's reading this, Sir, I'm sorry, but that's how it goes sometimes. There are many things over which I have no control.

Do all dealers who use your program experience these kind of results?

No, certainly not -- this was an anomaly. The average results are pretty much what you'd expect: Some dealers get a few orders, some do reasonably well with sustained order volume, some do very well all at once, and a few, like this gentleman, do unbelievably well. This dealer happened to have really distinctive books that were priced well, beautifully described, and as it turned out, were in demand.

What kind of books is he selling?

All kinds, I think. For example, he said he sold a 1st/1st Madonna's Sex for $425 to a gentleman in the UK who bought it for his wife's Madonna memorabilia collection. Out of curiosity, I checked around a bit and found that price is about in the middle of the range for that particular book. But, it also appears that most of them are languishing in the listing service databases. None of the ones I looked at are appearing in Google search results, though there may be some way further down in the results list. I believe most of the people who actually want to buy this book have no idea the copies in the ABE database are there.

Personally I think it's odd that ABE has decided to tout the fact that they consider themselves "the best kept secret on the Internet" or words to that effect. "List your books with us because no one knows we exist???" What's that all about?

What do you think is the reason for the variation in results among dealers using BwWeb?

I think it mainly due to how distinctive the books are, how fairly they're priced, and how well they're described -- you know, the things that have always mattered. Most dealers see a slow, steady increase in orders coming from out of the blue as they get more records listed on their sites. The dealer I just mentioned was an exception. In retrospect, given the number of books he posted in his site, I probably should have warned him, but then again I don't have a crystal ball either.

But we're talking mainstream retail here, and no one can predict what will happen. Remember, it's a World-Wide Web, after all. Only a handful of people have ever heard of sites like ABE. When you sell a book to an ABE customer, you're selling that book to a person belonging to a small minority of the total buying public, the ones who know enough to "go" there in the first place. Most don't know, and don't care to know.

This seems to fly in the face of common knowledge among booksellers. Are you saying most people don't know how to use their computers to find web sites?

That's exactly what I'm saying. The steps required to enter a URL in a browser's address box are mysterious to most people. In some computers, the address box doesn't even appear in the browser by default. And, most people who want to buy something could care less about web sites as such.

The vast majority of people who want to buy something over the Internet type what they want to buy into a search engine, like Google. There's even a Google search box appearing now in the standard version of Internet Explorer. THAT's what people use to find things. Where they end up is mostly a matter of chance.

But, if your books don't appear in the search results, there's very little chance the customer will find them -- how could they?

Is this due to a lack of skill on the part of the average computer user?

Despite all the hoopla and hype, we're still in the pioneering stages of the computer and information revolution. If the dot-com boom and bust taught us anything, it's the same old saw: "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

The level of sophistication among the average home computer user is still very low. Not many people "go" anywhere as such, because they simply don't know how. I know, it's hard to believe, but it's true. Some customers are savvy enough to type a URL into the browser's address line, but they'll usually go to Amazon, because that's the company they've heard of. For the most part, the rest don't exist as far as they're concerned. Ask most people what Internet companies they've heard of, and they'll probably name two: Amazon and eBay. Beyond these, the rest are just a blur.

But -- and this is the really important point -- for the average bookseller, big or small, promoting a business as such does little to sell books. The only people who care about a business are in-house, and their view of reality is distorted. Real people want what they want, and they want it now! If a dealer's books aren't showing up in search results, they're just spinning their wheels trying to promote themselves.

Why do some pages show up in search results and other don't?

Believe it or not, the majority of web pages I've looked at, particularly those done in Microsoft Front Page and DreamWeaver, are not coded correctly. Microsoft is the main offender when it comes to violating the HTML specification. Many pages aren't indexed in search engines because they violate some basic rules of the HTML spec, or they've offended the page ranking system in some way through spamming or omissions. I know what spiders look for and I've coded BwWeb to produce web pages that search engine spiders just LOVE to index. They slurp them up like a bear eating honey.

But even more fundamentally, most dealers have their on-line records in Microsoft ODBC databases, which effectively hides their records from search engines. Very few databases are indexed by search engines! And, even if they were, the computer cannot differentiate the information properly to create a meaningful abstract. Remember, computers still can't read and interpret information in context. Relevance is extremely important to page ranking systems.

So, for a dealer who has a web site now, but has their books in an on-line database, you're saying their books aren't showing up in Google search results?

Generally, that's true. Any dealer can find out very easily. All they have to do is type the title of one of their distinctive books into a Google search and look at the results. Chances are good their book won't be listed at all. That's why BwWeb is so important -- it not only gets their books listed, it places them in the top results by satisfying all of the criteria of the search engine's page ranking system.

Can you give an example of books that show up and books that don't?

Sure, I'll use the example I have in the BwWeb site: Let's pretend you want to buy a copy of Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay. Go to the ABE.com site and type the title in their search box. You'll find about 20 or so.

Now go to Google and type the same thing. You'll find my mother's book listed as #1 out of nearly 5,000 hits. Not only that, you'll only find a couple of others listed. None of the ABE copies show up. You can do the same thing for any book.

What about Froogle? Isn't that supposed to fix the database indexing problem?

No. Froogle is another vast electronic mall, and like any other web site, you have to know enough to "go" there to find what you want. And, there are other problems with Froogle. For example, every record you send them must have a URL associated with it, which means your record must already "be" somewhere else. Froogle will not close a sale for you.

If you do the same test with Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay by performing a Froogle exact match search, and then do the same thing on Google, you'll immediately notice one of the books listed in Froogle by a dealer linked to the TomFolio database is suddenly missing from the Google search results. That's because the record was uploaded to Froogle, not spidered from a TomFolio static web page. To get the same results in the main Google index and achieve top rankings, you have to have web pages that meet their page ranking requirements. That's what BwWeb produces.

So, BwWeb composes web pages that insure a presence in the main Google search engine?

Correct. A significant presence. And it composes the pages automatically. To compose ten thousand pages, you select a layout, match up your book record fields, and click on the Start button. That's it. When you upload the pages to your web site and submit the site to Google, you're done.

One of the reasons TIAS.com does so well is that they were savvy enough to create a "live feed" into the Google system. I have great respect for Phil Davies (CEO of Tias.com) and the people he works with. They are a top-shelf, class act and I recommend them without hesitation, especially for dealers who sell antiques and collectibles as well as books.

But, TIAS also charges for transactions and services. As a general rule, book dealers need to look closely at all of their hidden costs before committing to any sales venue that imposes commissions and monthly fees. "Everybody's doing it" is not a meaningful rationalization.

Does this work for other things besides books and collectibles?

Oh boy, it sure does! I can give you a good example here: Back in January, I set up a very simple web site for a well-known forensic specialist who wanted to gain some exposure. I did some test searches beforehand and got about 15,000 hits for "Forensic Consulting Specialists." I then used BwWeb to compose his final pages, and submitted the site to Google.

About 7-10 days later, I did another test search for "Forensic Consulting Specialists" and lo and behold: His site was ranked #1 out of nearly 15,000 hits! It still is. That experience told me the premises upon which my software was based were sound, and could be applied across the board to any product or service.

What's the main advantage of putting our book records into web pages?

Many, many advantages, but aside from the utter simplicity of it all and the world-wide exposure your books will receive, the real practical advantage is the savings of all the "hidden" costs of doing business. Remember: there are no middlemen in this scenario. The customer finds your books and buys them from you directly. It's what I call a "Direct Find/Buy Relationship." I personally think it's the best way to do business. There are no commissions, no fees, no markups -- none of that.

It's also a way to regain true independence from middlemen. That's why I was so keen to get this out the door and start presenting it to dealers. It seemed like the right product at the right time.

What does it actually cost to do this?

Aside from the one-time cost of BwWeb, the only on-going cost is the web site itself, and that all depends on how much storage space you buy. Remember, a web site is nothing more than a directory on someone's disk drive connected to the Internet through a server.

These days, the average hosting site charges less than $10.00 a month for 250 MB of storage space, or more. Competition is fierce among hosting companies and this has really driven prices down. Some BwWeb users have set up sites on some of the free servers out there, but I'm not yet convinced doing this is a good idea.

Can non-technical dealers do their own site setup?

Yes, most can, it's pretty easy. But for those who don't know how or who don't want to be bothered or spend the time learning how, I've worked out a good arrangement with a company called Site Flite (http://www.siteflite.com/ ). They will do all the busy work for a dealer: They'll set up the web site, register a domain name, perform the site submission, etc. Their rates are reasonable and it's a one-time cost. They'll even design a layout and compose and upload your pages for you on an on-going basis, if that's what you want. They're the only company who has satisfied all of my criteria. I've been really pleased with their performance so far.

What about the dealer's home page? How do BwWeb's pages integrate into it?

They don't. BwWeb's pages exist as independent, static entities. If the dealer already has a home page, then all that needs to happen is that a link to the home page gets automatically placed on every page BwWeb composes, and a corresponding link to the BwWeb pages gets placed on the home page. BwWeb has link generators that will do this automatically.

But -- if a dealer doesn't have a home page, guess what? None is needed! This may seem to defy common sense, but I must stress again: It's not about the dealer or their business. No one cares. The only thing a customer wants is the book he/she wants to buy. The pages BwWeb composes containing the dealer's book records take care of that very nicely. Not surprisingly, people will go to the pages that contain the book records in which they're interested, not to a home page that talks about someone's business.

What about images? Does BwWeb handle these as well?

Indeed it does. It will read images and integrate them perfectly within each composed page. You can control the layout, the number of images, their size, alignment and other variables.

What about shopping cart and payment systems? Can BwWeb handle these as well?

Yes, it can. Using such systems amounts to adding a small piece of HTML to BwWeb, which the payment company provides. You simply paste this into the BwWeb setup and the rest is automatic. You can use PayPal or a credit card processing system through a merchant account with VeriSign or whoever you choose to use.

You can even add multiple choices, as I did with BwWeb's own web site -- it allows you to pay by credit card, by PayPal, or send e-mail to us directly or just mail a check. I've helped a lot of dealers set up this "mysterious" aspect of their web pages and, like anything else, once you've done it, you don't even think about it anymore.

What database programs will BwWeb work with?

It reads any standard Microsoft Access database, which means it works with HomeBase and most other programs like it using standard, off-the-shelf database engines. It also reads BookMaster, Record Manager, and BookMate databases directly. It will also work with a simple tab-delimited or UIEE file, so there's very little it won't work with. There is no import/export process required.

Can you create more than one layout?

You can create an infinite number of them. The program automatically remembers everything that was done last, so you never lose your settings. I also designed the program so that users can exchange setup files with one another. I know of two dealers who are doing this as they decided to work collaboratively on a common site containing both of their books.

Why aren't more dealers using your software?

It's an interesting conundrum. When a dealer puts their first batch of composed web pages up on their site and their books get indexed by Google and they start making sales, their first reaction is NOT to go tell the dealer across the street all about it. When you get sales and you don't have to pay any listing fees or commissions to get them, that's a real competitive advantage. There have been a number of passing references to BwWeb here and there, but by and large, dealers are just quietly selling books and not trumpeting the fact to their peers. And, in retrospect I suppose that's not a surprise either.

I should also mention: I'm not recommending that dealers should do this INSTEAD of using listing services -- I'm suggesting that they should do it IN ADDITION TO using listing services. Dealers should use every resource they have to sell books, and abandoning a source of revenue is never a good idea, unless it's just not cost or time effective.

BwWeb creates a viable alternative. It creates a direct means of selling books to the general, world-wide public, not just the few collectors or OP aficionados who know sites like ABE even exist. This is what commercialization of the Internet was ultimately intended to accomplish -- the ability for a consumer to directly find and buy what they want.

What do you see for the near future with respect to BwWeb?

Booksellers have been good to me, and I love working with them. I've been fortunate enough to be involved with a group of honest, intelligent and hard-working people, for whom I have a lot of warm feelings. But business conditions in the trade are grim right now. I'm concerned about some dealers' ability to survive at all.

It's fine to be a bookseller because you love books, or you like the community, or you enjoy providing reading treasures to people. But when a business is in trouble and finds itself in survival mode, it's suddenly all about sales -- nothing else matters.

I created BookWriter Web because it really can get books in front of buyers. It can help dealers achieve independence from listing services. It can get around the penny-seller problem. It can help dealers re-create the customer bases they had years ago. In short, I think it has the potential to do a lot of good for a group I think deserves a significant boost.

I've had numerous conversations with dealers in the past few weeks and most tell me the same, sad story: business is lousy, and a lot of it is due to screw-ups on the part of the listing services, including Amazon. So, I've extended the sale deadline for BwWeb to May 31st, just because so many dealers have told me they're short of cash after paying their taxes on April 15th. And, as before, the entire purchase cost will be applied to the complete BookWriter suite when it rolls out.

Tom, thanks very much for this interview. Where can dealers go to find more information?

You're most welcome, and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you again! Interested dealers can visit http://www.bookwritersoftware.com. I've added the ability for interested dealers to download the software and try it before they buy it. There are also some sample pages up there so people can get an idea of the range of possibilities the program offers.

From a bookseller's viewpoint, “military books” are usually lumped together as a subset of the history section. But this popular genre has many sub-categories. Among military buffs are those who read biographies of the great leaders; others whose interest is the minutiae of a particular war or even a specific battle; some with an abiding interest in the theory and principles of warfare; a significant number for whom the weapons and equipment of warfare (or of a particular war) holds a fascination; espionage buffs; and a few whose reading tends toward the underlying political and diplomatic issues.

Perhaps the tiniest segment of military readers and collectors are interested in what we'll loosely call anti-war books. But even this tiny specialty can be sub-categorized into fiction, first-person accounts, politico-theological doctrine, and polemics. Anti-war fiction--the antithesis of hero-worship--includes a number of interesting twists. Early works include such short stories as Mark Twain's The War Prayer, and Ambrose Bierce's An Incident at Owl Creek Bridge (arguably two of the finest bits of American short fiction.)

Some may disagree, but I'd put Catch-22, Gardens of Stone, and most of Tim O'Brien's novels into the anti-war category. Going After Cacciato, O'Brien's first novel, demonstrates the mental dissolution felt by many Vietnam combatants, just as Catch-22 chronicles the breakdown of its principal character, Yossarian. But Cacciato lacks Joseph Heller's black humor. O'Brien's characters—in this and his other novels—are mad as hatters, but dead serious.

I find Nicholas Proffitt's Gardens of Stone (1983) intriguing for several reasons. First, because it treats a subject of which I have first-hand knowledge—the activities of a stateside burial squad during the Vietnam War. Second, because it contains one of the most wonderfully foul expressions of male sexual desire outside the works of Henry Miller and his cohorts. In a brief passage one, career soldier describes his fascination with a particular woman thus: “I'd drag my balls over ten miles of broken glass to listen to her pee into a tin cup.” Soldiers, particularly the career types, can be appallingly crude, and as shocking as this passage may sound, it pales in comparison to the level and constancy of verbal crudity that the average soldier experiences.

In Erich Kuby's 1962 novel, The Sitzkrieg of Private Stefan, the title character is a bookseller, drafted into the German army in the second World War. Stefan's obstinate refusal to be assimilated into what Kuby calls the “gray, corporate world of military existence” provides amusement, but ends in tragedy.

Stanislaw Lem, best known for his science-fiction writing, produced The Hospital of the Transfiguration, in which a young Polish physician finds himself escaping the war by serving in a rural mental institution. Like so many such places (at least in fiction), events lead the reader to wonder whether the inmates are crazier than those running the place.

The First World War seems to have been the most fertile ground for anti-war fiction. (This should be no surprise, as the post-war years were the golden age of American writing.)

In The Paths of Glory (1935), Humphrey Cobb writes of three soldiers executed for charges trumped up to save face for a superior officer. The novel does not preach against war so much as it depicts the corruption inherent in such strict hierarchies as the military (in this case, the French army).

Kenneth Reed, writing in 1974, produced Mennonite Soldier, an intriguing tale of two brothers who part politically in the most dramatic possible way during the First World War. One goes to prison as a conscientious objector, even as his brother enlists as an infantryman. Though he inadvertently becomes a war hero, the second brother finds himself shunned by his family as a result. As the dustjacket blurb indicates, this war was a watershed event in the lives of most American Anabaptists.

But the quintessential anti-war novelist is Dalton Trumbo, best known as the author of Johnny Got His Gun. This first-person narrative, set in World War I, consists of the unspoken thoughts of a grievously wounded soldier, who for all practical purposes is unrecognizable, and whose only fully-functional body part is his mind. The narrative is as chilling as a Harlan Ellison tale:

      He had no arms and no legs.
      He threw back his head and started to yell from fright. But he only started because he had no mouth to yell with. He was so surprised at not yelling when he tried that he began to work his jaws like a man who has found something interesting and wants to test it. He was so sure the idea of no mouth was a dream that he could investigate it calmly. He tried to work his jaws and he had no jaws. He tried to run his tongue around the inside of his teeth and over the roof of his mouth as if he were chasing a raspberry seed. But he didn't have any tongue and he hadn't any teeth. There was no roof to his mouth and there was no mouth. He tried to swallow but he couldn't because he had no palate and there weren't any muscles left to swallow with.
      He began to smother and pant. It was as if someone had pushed a mattress over his face and was holding it there. He was breathing hard and fast now but he wasn't really breathing because there wasn't any air passing through his nose. He didn't have a nose. He could feel his chest rise and fall and quiver but not a breath of air was passing through the place where his nose used to be.
      He got a wild panicky eagerness to die to kill himself. He tried to calm his breathing to stop breathing entirely so he would suffocate. He could feel the muscles at the bottom of his throat close tight against the air but the breathing in his chest kept right on. There wasn't any air in his throat to be stopped. His lungs were sucking it in somewhere below his throat.
      He knew now that he was surely dying but he was curious. He didn't want to die until he had found out everything. If a man has no nose and no mouth and no palate and no tongue why it stands to reason he might be shy a few other parts as well. But that was nonsense because a man in that shape would be dead. You couldn't lose that much of yourself and still keep on living. Yet if you knew you had lost them and were thinking about it why then you must be alive because dead men don't think. Dead men aren't curious and he was sick with curiosity so he must not be dead yet
      He began to reach out with the nerves of his face. He began to strain to feel the nothingness that was there. Where his mouth and nose had been there must now be nothing but a hole covered with bandages. He was trying to find out how far up that hole went. He was trying to feel the edges of the hole. He was grasping with the nerves and pores of his face to follow the borders of that hole and see how far up they extended.
      It was like staring into complete darkness with your eyes popping out of your head. It was a process of feeling with his skin of exploring with something that couldn't move where his mind told it to. The nerves and muscles of his face were crawling like snakes toward his forehead.
      The hole began at the base of his throat just below where his jaw should be and went upward in a widening circle. He could feel his skin creeping around the rim of the circle. The hole was getting bigger and bigger. It widened out almost to the base of his ears if he had any and then narrowed again. It ended somewhere above the top of what used to be his nose.
      The hole went too high to have any eyes in it.
      He was blind.
      It was funny how calm he was.

Trumbo, along with other members of the so-called Hollywood Ten, was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in October 1947 as an "unfriendly" witness during its investigation of Communist influence in Hollywood. The others--producers, writers, and directors--included Ring Lardner, Jr. All refused to say whether or not they were Communists, all served prison sentences for contempt, and were blacklisted in the film industry.

Johnny was published in 1939, shortly after the start of World War II in Europe, and was clearly intended as a pacifist polemic. The book was re-released in 1970 as an anti-Vietnam war polemic, with a new introduction, in which Trumbo wrote:

Numbers have dehumanized us. Over breakfast coffee we read of 40,000 American dead in Vietnam. Instead of vomiting, we reach for the toast. Our morning rush through crowded streets is not to cry murder but to hit that trough before somebody else gobbles our share.*** Let us use this same arithmetic for World War I; 9,000,000 dead young men equal 1,350,000,000 pounds of bone and flesh, 27,900,000 pounds of brain matter, 11,250,000 gallons of blood, 414,000,000 years of life that will never be lived, and 22,500,000 children who will never be born. The dry if imposing figure "9,000,000 dead" seems a little less statistical when we view it from this perspective.

In 1971, a movie based upon the novel was released, with Trumbo as the screenwriter. The following year, he wrote the screenplay for F.T.A. [“fuck the army,” for the uninitiated]. This execrable quasi-documentary starred Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, and Peter Boyle (among others) as themselves, in a series of street-theatre sketches performed outside military bases in the Pacific Rim. A reviewer in the Internet Movie Database sums up the film tersely: “I would rather watch Congress perform 'Oh, Calcutta' WITH the nude scenes than sit through this mess again.”

Trumbo was primarily a screenwriter. His credits include Kitty Foyle, a controversial Christopher Morley novel of the late 1930s, which included an out-of-wedlock pregnancy and abortion. Others are A Bill of Divorcement; Spartacus; Exodus; the movie adaptation of Bernard Malamud's The Fixer; Roman Holiday; and finally, a television adaptation of Theodora Kroeber's documentary Ishi in Two Worlds.

Roman Holiday earned Trumbo a posthumous Oscar, forty years after its release, and in 1975 he had received an Oscar for The Brave One, another work from the era when he was officially blacklisted in Hollywood, and forced to work under a variety of pseudonyms. (Rather than make up names out of whole cloth, Trumbo managed to convince a few of his non-blacklisted colleagues to lend their own names to his screenplays. Thus the original Oscar for Roman Holiday was awarded to Ian McLellan Hunter.) So, while many anti-war novelists have been one-book wonders, or have written mere variations on the same story, Trumbo wrote copiously, and from any number of political viewpoints. Whether or not you would consider his costume epics to be pro-military films, his anti-war politics did not appear to have colored Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell.

Alas, there is no comprehensive biography of Dalton Trumbo, so we're left to our own conclusions about his personal politics. At least unofficially, he admitted to membership in the Communist Party of the U.S.A., years after his grilling in the HUAC hearings.

Curiously, little if any anti-war fiction has dealt with post-Vietnam warfare, despite the fact that U.S. citizens have been bitterly divided on the justification for the Persian Gulf wars, the war in the Falklands, the ongoing Arab-Israeli and Irish-British conflicts, to name only the most obvious examples. I cannot but wonder whether this stems from lack of artistic inspiration, or fear of reprisals.

Or perhaps there is simply nothing remaining to be said. Trumbo's Johnny concludes with what must be the most poignant possible statement against warfare:

We are men of peace we are men who work and we want no quarrel. But if you destroy our peace if you take away our work if you try to range us one against the other we will know what to do. If you tell us to make the world safe for democracy we will take you seriously and by god and by Christ we will make it so. We will use the guns you force upon us we will use them to defend our very lives and the menace to our lives does not lie on the other side of a nomansland that was set apart without our consent it lies within our own boundaries here and now we have seen it and we know it.

Put the guns into our hands and we will use them. Give us the slogans and we will turn them into realities. Sing the battle hymns and we will take them up where you left off. Not one not ten not ten thousand not a million not ten millions not a hundred millions but a billion two billions of us all the people of the world we will have the slogans and we will have the hymns and we will have the guns and we will use them and we will live. Make no mistake of it we will live. We will be alive and we will walk and talk and eat and sing and laugh and feel and love and bear our children in tranquility in security in decency in peace. You plan the wars you masters of men plan the wars and point the way and we will point the gun.

By: Joyce Godsey

People have been pestering me for years to write a book. I have yet to accomplish this. That is not to say that I haven't written reams of things that could probably fill many books. However, collecting enough singular thoughts or trains of thoughts into a book-sized collection of pages seems beyond me.

No one in their right mind wants to write a book, but EVERYONE I have ever met wants to have written a book; these two things are completely dissimilar. Writing a book is a painful laborious process of putting one word in front of the other and rewriting until your brain bleeds, but having written a book is like a runner's high (or so I am told). Unfortunately you have to work very hard to get high. I am lazy. I don't run; I poke along enjoying the view.

Why do people feel the need to have their name on a book jacket? It can't be just the name on the jacket, hell, gimme PhotoShop 7 and an Epson printer and I can have your mug smirking out from a back flap before you can say "Jackie Collins." But that doesn't seem to be enough. And you can't get by with writing anything else. You can write bits and pieces for magazines and newsletters and even assemble entire issues of magazines, but unless your name is on a real genuine book, it doesn't earn the same appreciation.

There is an entire economy out there revolving around and benefiting from this urge to expose ourselves in public: schools, guides, manuals, magazines, seminars, software. (I have this theory, about reading about how to write being a form of mental masturbation that allows you to think you are actually being productive, when in reality you should be writing--but it's just a theory.)

Whenever you get a published writer in a room full of wannabes you inevitably get questions about the actual process of writing, regardless of the fact that each person has their own unique methods that probably won't work for anyone else. This always amuses me. If you are asking how to write, you aren't one. (I know this because dwelling in the in-between world I get to lurk ambivalently on the sidelines.) Writers write.

I never asked how to be a writer, before I was one, I didn't want or expect to be one, and most days still don't. First you write something here and then you write something there and then someone pays you to do it and sure enough you become addicted to the act of trading words for money. It also doesn't hurt that you never have to make yourself presentable anymore.

Perhaps it is the illusion of immortality? The masses believe their words will live forever once it's bound inside several thousand copies. But booksellers know this is another untruth. How many nothing books by no-name authors do we discard when burrowing through a box looking for just one that might have still retained some value. Too many. More books are written and forgotten within the year than anyone ever remembers.

But still people try and after having plugged away and produced 189 precious pages it starts logging air miles being mailed it to some very busy people in New York. And after it's been rejected by publishing houses that are already busy churning out unreadables that they actually paid money for, the authors can invest their own money into the dreaded 'self-publish' previously known as the 'vanity press.' One of the unspeakables no one ever utters to someone who is full of pride at their investment is the invariable fact that self-published books suck. Even self-published items by authors who became well known are never as good as their later professional works. Doubt me? Go do some research, come back and we'll talk.

Another myth is that writing a book will solve all your financial woes. Trust me, another pipe dream. The average writer in this country, Steven King included, makes 8 G's a year. That's it, 8 G's. If Steven King and Anne Rice are making megabucks, some of us are well, writing for free. This part is true. (I have seen it said only 5 thou but I wanted to be hopeful.) There's a local writer in these parts, by local I mean he lives here, not that he only writes about local matters, who has had 2 books published by Crown in the last 3 years. He and his son still live in his brother's side of a duplex. So much for retiring early.

Regardless, I still walk through Barnes & Noble on a Sunday night, running my fingers across the covers of the new books, and it just reinforces my belief that 90% of them are crap. The covers are great, I mean really great, worlds away from what they were 20 years ago, even 10 years ago. But still they are just delicately molded Easter chocolate; all foil wrapper on the outside and big fat hairy nothing inside. Why do I still feel like a slacker cause my name isn't on one of them?

Joyce Godsey
Sic Magazine
http://home.attbi.com/~gods/sicmagazine/index.html
"J Godsey" gods@attbi.com

In August 2001 the FBI appeared in Arundel Books' Los Angeles store with a US Justice Department subpoena demanding 6-1/2 years of customer records from our entire company. We fought John Ashcroft, Robert Mueller, and the US Government. We won. Two weeks ago I paid off the last of the legal fees, and celebrated by publishing a poetry
magazine (more about that below).

You can read more about this case on-line by searching sites like that of the New York Times, Washington Post, Seattle Times, Los Angeles Times, etc. (CNN did a special on this, but access is a problem, and Roll Call, the Congressional journal, has a site index I have not mastered).

But if you run a bookstore I will try to give you the stuff you need to know. Disclaimer: I'm a bookstore guy, not a lawyer. But this is what worked for me.

First things first. If you own a bookstore you need a privacy agreement. Here is ours:

Privacy Policy: Arundel Books will NEVER sell, trade, or otherwise disclose ANY information regarding our customers to any person, organization, or government entity, unless fraud is involved.

A privacy policy like this gives you an advantage when dealing with privacy fights. Make sure your staff understands and honors it, and you will find it also protects your confidential business info as well.

Second, do not keep info about your customers, their interests or preferences (yes, the subpoena will ask for this), if it would embarrass your customers. If your customers think that their reading habits will not be private they will not read controversial books (this is called the "chilling effect").

Second: Join or send some money to ABFFE (American Bookseller's Foundation for Free Expression). Trust me, you'll be happy you did, because these are the folks who'll help when you need it. Visit http://www.abffe.com for more info.

If the FBI or officers of any government agency including local police, come to your door:

1. Be respectful and polite. Odds are the people you meet are not the ones who thought this one up. Tell them that you will comply with "any lawful subpoena" (which you will be fighting) but that it will take some time. Be aware: the Feds have served fake 'supoenas' before (in the Tattered Cover case). Make sure your staff knows who (you) is the only person who can handle this stuff.

2. Call your lawyer.

3. Judges do not review subpoenas before they are issued. Federal and local prosecutors frequently over-write them (making them so broad that they are unlawful) figuring that you will negotiate. DON'T NEGOTIATE. The more absurd they are, the easier they are to fight.

4. Call ABFFE, your local ACLU chapter, and Judith Krug at the American Library Association.

5. Draft a press release and send it out. Local, state, and national. Stress universal themes (not your own issues), and how this situation threatens not just Constitutional rights but the liberties and freedoms that are our inheritance from the Founding Fathers by way of the blood, sacrifice and patriotism of our forefathers.

6. Make it politely clear to all the Government types that this is going the distance and that this will NOT be the case that gets them promoted.

7. Be smart, keep your nerve, get the help you need, and WIN.

8. Pay the bills.

And then, when the bills are paid, do something to celebrate. My celebration was to be the guest editor of a Special Issue of "Spread" magazine: the "Democracy" issue.

There's nothing like a little oppression to focus your patriotic commitment to democracy and free speech. I was able to get some Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners to join in: Philip Levine, W. D. Snodgrass, Charles Bukowski (unpublished work courtesy of the estate), Robinson Jeffers (courtesy of the estate), and a long list of others. The cover art is by DeLoss McGraw, whose Alice in Wonderland (Harpercollins), won the 2001 Gold Medal from the New York Society of Illustrators.

$5 mailed gets you one from orders@arundelbooks.com.

You'll notice that I have not mentioned the "USA Patriot Act." The portions that pertain to bookstores have not been reviewed or upheld by a court and, as I personally believe they will be held to be unconstitutional, Arundel Books would act accordingly. Hint.

I believe that this period of difficulty offers all Americans an opportunity to rediscover the history of our great nation, and of the true meaning of the rights and liberties handed down through generations from the Founding Fathers themselves.

And please remember: your First Amendment needs YOU.

Press Release (reprinted)

Spread: The special Democracy issue

Spread: The Monthly Journal of Poetry has just released its Democracy issue, guest edited by Phillip Bevis, and underwritten by Arundel Books of Seattle and Los Angeles.

This special issue of Spread is dedicated to Democracy and to the rich traditions of Liberty and Freedom of Speech which are the birthrights of all Americans. This issue includes celebrated names who have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, or who have been on the cover of Time Magazine, as well as emerging voices who we hope will reach equal fame one day. Authors include: Philip Levine, W.D. Snodgrass, Charles Bukowski, Robinson Jeffers, Jose Montoya, Holly Prado, et.al. Cover art (Alice in Wonderland and the Bombing of Innocence) is by DeLoss McGraw. Local Seattle writers represented include Michael P. Smith, Ira Parnes, Eli Richardson, Lawrence Coffin, Nicole Sarocco, and Harvey Goldner.

The poems in this issue speak passionately of the freedom and rights of the individual, of the blessings and responsibilities of Democracy, and of the pride and heartbreak of being American. Collectively these works offer a tribute to the heritage and traditions of a great nation.

This issue was underwritten by Arundel Books. Arundel Books is one of the few booksellers in America to oppose successfully John Ashcroft's Justice Department during one of its many crude attempts to trample constitutionally-protected rights.

To reach the Guest Editor for comment or information, contact
Phillip Bevis, c/o Arundel Books at (206)624.4442 or mrarundel@arundelbooks.com .

Spread: The Monthly Journal of Poetry was founded in 2000 and is edited and published in Seattle, Washington by Chris Dusterhoff. Contact info:

Spankstra Press P.O. Box 224 Seattle, WA 98111. E-mail to: spankstra@hotmail.com .

Please note: While Spread is free, there is a $3 (or $5 by mail) suggested donation for this issue.

By: Rhett Moran
http://www.bookavenue.com
http://www.gutenbergholdings.com

Where to start?

THE OLD STORE:

Our store was located in the Apollo Plaza, Monticello, Sullivan County's only indoor Mall. It had Sears, Bass Outlet, Fieldcrest-Cannon, Dress Barn, and a number of nationally known stores when we moved in, but was nearly half-empty. We got a great deal with the promise that they would be renovating and gathering new nationally known tenants within a short time. We took a 6000 sq ft space right next to the Bass Outlet. A very busy place. They pulled out the day we opened!!!!

After 2 years of horrible mismanagement, transfers or non-transfer's of ownership we were store 8 left in the Mall. With Sears still there, we were still getting customers. Then the Mall was thrown into litigation for non-payment of a 3.6 million dollar mortgage. So we decided to leave, it was getting crazy, and the maintenance suffered even more than when we opened. We found a store in Middletown, in a secondary Mall, but still a much nicer place, and in an area with 110,000 folks within 10 miles, instead of 70,000 folks in 1000 sq miles. It's 14,000 sq ft on two levels with a downstairs entrance and a mall entrance on the second level, and a big passenger and freight elevator.

Even though we had signed a lease for the new space in December we didn't have the key, awaiting the signing of the lease by the Mall owners. So we were still open in the Apollo. We kept the store open, all of the store owners knowing the Mall was going to be closed but expecting a 15 day advance notice so we could all run a closing down sale.

Not to be. On Jan 13th the Village code enforcement officer (poor fellow died of a heart attack a month later; he was too young, tough job, but he was nice), came into the Mall and told us all that the Mall was being closed to the public at 1 pm on Jan 15th. Not even 2 days notice. While we contemplated going to court over it, we had the key to the new location by then, and decided to just close down on the morning of the 15th and start moving. We did do that, and ordered a couple thousand boxes to be delivered. Our supplier could only deliver 1000, so we had to bring stored boxes of books to the new store, then unload the boxes, and go back with the empties. Had I to do it over again, I might have driven to the Bronx for some boxes from another supplier. Trying to save some bucks, and it worked because the amount of money we paid out for taking the books out of boxes, and breaking them down, was less than buying new boxes would have been. Still I should have paid extra.......

What the code enforcement fellow didn't tell us was all utilities, the water, sewer connection, remaining heat, and everything else was going to be turned off, removed, or stopped on the 15th. So from the 15th on we didn't have electric, bathrooms, etc. 8 stores were still fully stocked, being dismantled, and since we were open for customers just 2 days earlier, we hadn't progressed all that much with boxing our 60,000 books. We had another 50,000 or so boxes in the back storage room in boxes.

It also opened new opportunities for us, as all the shops were rushing to leave, and so we were known as folks who bought fixtures from closing shops, we were inundated with offers. One was a beautiful set of shelves from a shoe store (10,000 sq ft store lots of shelving), who will go nameless, because of something strange that happened later on that I will get to. So we purchased, and we figured out how many trucks it would take to move 6000 boxes 40 miles to our new location.

So first thing we hired the fired Mall maintainance man and his son to dismantle the shelving from the store and reassemble the shelving with new shelving at the new store. We also hired 4 day-laborers to start boxing up the books, with 2 workers from our warehouse. Now the temperature was running between 5 degrees and 25 degrees during these days. All of the mall doors were open to accommodate the use of the generators to provide some sort of lighting and to run the screw guns etc. Ice formed on the inside of the glass, in the store. While Helen and I are a bit older than our workers, we got into it, and while I was making boxes Helen was filling boxes and generally maintaining a highly efficient pace. I was the first one to crack, and I went to the van, ran the engine and put on the heat, and hid out until Helen noticed I was gone. I admit to the fact I cannot work in 5-15 degree temp for any length of time, no matter what I'm wearing or how bundled up I am.

Now comes the fun part. There was no light, no sewer, no water, no working bathrooms. So we were off to the Burger King at regular intervals for bathroom breaks. Some others, working for other stores, sought refuge in empty stores or empty parts of the hall. Which could lead to interesting and not at all pleasant encounters. The amount of work needed to empty shelves in a heated store, with lights, is not as much work as trying to do it with minimal lights and well below freezing.

Since it was so cold, the water had been shut off, but whoever did it forgot that they had a whole lot of pipes in the Mall, and they failed to look at the plans for a 12-inch water main that was clear down at the other end of the Mall. It burst sending a whole lot of water through 6 stores, destroying the complete contents of the Hallmark store, and a couple of closed stores, and the shoes which were ready to be taken into trucks from the shoe store. It did not affect the shelving, as the shoes worked as a dam to the water and the store was several away from the main break. Since they didn't drain the sprinkler system many sprinkler heads burst sending ugly dirty water down on everything. We lost lots of books to black water.

While some stores were out quickly it wasn't so easy for our store. Even so we were the 4th store to leave completely, out of the original 8. To do this--we had 6000+ boxes and tons of shelving--we needed trucks. We started by renting a 24 ft Ryder truck. Helen drives them and has been doing so for years. So we rented one and we had our day laborers fill the first one up, and they didn't entirely follow directions, so they filled it from front to back from top to bottom. WAY over the weight limit. Also, way too much for the nearly flattened tires. So when I noticed the problem, Helen went out in search of another rental truck and rented a 15- footer, which was the only vehicle available in the county. We backed to backed it, and unloaded as much as we could to try to get the tires on both trucks somewhat even. One of the carpenters drove that one, and when we all landed at the new store, he had stories about the wobbling of the truck, and the inability to fully control the vehicle.

After a few more trips, we decided that it would take ages to do it that way, and so rented a 48 ft trailer and agreed to pay for each trip. So the cost was $35 per day rental for the trailer, $250 to drive the fully loaded trailer to the new store, $50 to bring it back empty. We agreed to limit the weight to about 40,000 lbs, which we questimated to be 2000 boxes. It took 4 day-laborers 6 hours to load 2000 boxes, but we had a 40 ft roller conveyer thing as you might see at a supermarket, that we had purchased for $25 from one of the shops that closed the year before, and we have big dollies, and push carts to help us move large quantities of books around, as we normally do when we buy large quantities of books. It took the same guys 7 hours to empty as we were sending up boxes in the elevator to the second floor. Our new store was a furniture store, so it has the largest elevator in the mall rated at 5000 lbs.

So, we'd have the empty trailer at the Apollo when we got there at 9 am, and the workers would load up, and then the trucker would pick it up at night and drive and deliver the loaded trailer to the new store so we could empty it the next day. We did this 5 times.

While all of this was going on, there was not an owner of the mall. It was said to be owned by the Ukechaug Indian Nation, who said they never owned it, and the mortgage was owned by a realty company who said they didn't own it, and a management company who claimed the Indian Nation owned it, said they didn't own it. So it was anarchy in the pure sense. There was a fellow who claimed he worked for one of the groups, mooching around making money by charging the stores to plow to the various entrances to the mall, but not officially hired by anyone at the mall.

Now the carpenters are working on removing the shelving from the shoe store, and everyone knows we purchased the shelving from the shoe company in December, and it was by this time nearly February. So we loaded the last 48 footer with the disassembled shelving, and at that point the guy who was hanging around plowing decided that he wanted the shelving and brought a fellow around to look it over and sell it to them, but it was in the trailer. So he comes up to me and says "Do you have a bill of sale for that, because I represent the owners and it's mine." "No we cut a check for the corp, they will send it to us in the mail, and since you say you work for xxx realty and they publicly acknowledge in the newspaper that they don't own the Mall, you have no say, and take a hike." He then goes to Helen and says the same thing, getting Helen upset, and I was sitting in the van and called out "Call the cops, call the cops, call the cops, let's get this fellow in jail today."

She on the other hand happened to have the phone number of the district manager of the shoe company and she told this nasty fellow to call this guy. He comes back an hour later and says, "I talked with the President of the shoe company, and he said this fellow didn't have the authority to sell it and it's mine, so you either pay for it, or take it off the truck." So I start yelling "Did you ever hear of extortion. It's a couple years in prison, and if you start threatening it's 10 years. Helen call the cops, this fellow is going to jail." So he takes off, never to be heard from again. Our check was cashed by the shoe company, and the bill of sale is in our records. Now I'm far from being a lawyer and I might just have been wrong about the legal stuff, but it got rid of him.

THE NEW STORE:

Front entrance of the new store

The new store is in a secondary mall, which means there are two others that have been built and the big stores are not around here. It's kind of a strip mall, except in our building we have three floors, and we have stores on the second level and an entrance from the enclosed hallway. One part looks like a mall, the other looks like a strip mall. It's about 15 years old. It's anchored by a Warehouse Food Store, and contains the following: Blockbuster, Family Dollar, Ground Round, Carvel, Dunkin Donuts, a Discount Movie Theatre (don't know how many screens), Curves, Italian deli, Indian food place, Pizza parlor, Chinese food, 2 banks, gym, insurance, rent a center, hair salon, Department of Motor Vehicles, Indoor Golf place (9000 sq ft-- it's huge), billiard parlor, stamp and coin shop, health food store, discount clothing place, liquor store, and we have the 2nd largest store there at 14,000 sq ft on 2 levels. The third level is mainly offices, such as the Federal Parole Office and other government offices.

Our plan was to demolish the downstairs and make it one level. Because it was a furniture store the downstairs was split into rooms--well 3/4 rooms or 1/2 rooms, on various levels. We were also told by management that we didn't need a c/o for the store which sounded suspicious to us, because whenever you change usage in NY you need a new c/o, except maybe in the City of New York where I think they don't have enough inspectors to go around. So we called the town, and this is again strange, we're located in the Town of Wallkill, but our mailboxes are in Middletown. The line goes down the parking lot in a meandering fashion. It's a real green line, because the local fire departments and police would argue on who had jurisdiction so they painted a line. Well we called the Town and they said we'd need an inspection to list all of the changes we had to make.

First level of the new store

That took a week, which halted almost everything, and the carpenters started new jobs, so we had the shelving in stacks everywhere. Finally the inspector comes and says that we'll have to build handicapped access ramps to cover every step in the place, or at least so that every level is accessible. It must be this pitch, this width, this length, etc, etc. We found we had to build 9 ramps. We had no problem with that, but our carpenters were only able to work 3 days a week, because they had taken on other jobs. Since the son had experience building the ramps for a new building for his church, we stayed with them, and they did a great job. Day before yesterday a wheelchair-bound author came to look at the store, went up and down all the ramps, and approved of them greatly, so we are happy on many levels. He says he has trouble with all of the Mall bookstores, running into sale bins, etc. Our store is fully accessible to those who are physically challenged.

Oh! We decided that breaking down the rooms on the bottom floor and making it one level, would run us about $50,000 and we thought that's a whole hunk of change, so we'll leave the rooms, and not worry about theft.

THE SIGN:

Front of the new store

Normally in a Mall when a store leaves they remove the store sign. Not this place. So we had a furniture store sign on two levels, 78 ft across on two levels, and all black vinyl. The owners of this Mall own 41 other Malls from MA to FL to MO and a number of other states. So they're not some fly-by-night. We have in the lease that we need to get the approval of the Mall owners about the signage. So the Manager doesn't tell us that it has to be a special type of sign, so we planned on using the vinyl across the 78 ft on 2 levels, because it's dramatic. We really try to pay as little as possible for signs and stuff, so we made many sign companies angry with us in negotiations. Well, we submit the sign, and it's not approved. We're told the Mall owners want only raised lettering. I point out that every other store has every sort of sign, and he says that he wants this sort of sign, and while he can't do anything about the others, he can about ours. I read the lease, and while it said we had to submit a design, and we had to get approval, it didn't say we had to have a sign.

Second level of the new store from the elevator

So I point out that we don't need to change the sign, we'll just tell folks it's behind the furniture sign. The mall made an agreement with us to cover 1/2 the cost of the sign. We've been open a month behind the furniture sign, but our new sign went up yesterday. Estimates on the sign came in from $1400-$5400 from companies in this county. We called another sign company 100 miles away and got the same sign for $700 installed.

We've been a-z'ing for the last month, breaking into subjects, etc. At the end, when we were closing the Apollo store, we were completely in the dark, and it wasn't until we moved everything to the new store that we noticed that some folks didn't mark the box by subject and alphabet. So it's been interesting.

Second level of the new store

Helen and I never want to move again. If we ever need to move, we'll leave the books. I'd seriously consider retiring. This move was life threatening. I've just gotten warm over the last month in our new store. I point out to customers that we have heat and three bathrooms, and if they seem to wonder why I've mentioned the number of bathrooms, I really have to explain the Apollo to them and the last days.

While Helen has fond memories of the Apollo, I have nothing but nightmares from the end days.

Editor's Note: I am so bloody jealous I can't stand it. Looking at all those bookshelves and all that space (not to mention all the books) has me in a tizzy. :>)

By: Michael Katzenberg

As I sit here at my desk this third week of April the War in Iraq, or at least the first phase of it, is just about over. Whether Saddam is dead or alive, “regime change” of some sort is happening, whether eventually to the United States' liking or not remains to be seen. Probably like most of us over the last few weeks, I have been consumed by the news of the war and the whole issue of the Patriot Act has faded to the background. War always seems to supersede everything else. But in fact the Patriot Act is very much alive and in the consciousness of many people. In early March, Vermont's own independent congressman and several others introduced The Freedom to Read Protection Act , a resolution that would change several aspects of the current act especially in regards to the right of reading. A number of cites, including Montpelier, have passed resolutions calling for changes and now our State Legislature is considering a resolution as well.

There has been a lot written on the Patriot Act so I am not going to add much here as to the specifics of the Act. However, it should be known that it was passed hastily right after September 11 when the country was reeling from the devastating attacks so that very little debate or thought went into its passage by Congress. The part of it that is truly threatening to bookstores and libraries and their patrons (that is, just about everybody) is Section 215.

Section 215 has a number of pernicious aspects. Unlike a normal subpoena, a bookstore or library cannot object in court. There have been several cases where bookstores were served with a subpoena regarding criminal investigations. When the stores refused to turn over their records of books bought the courts decided in their favor. Kramer Books in Washington, D.C. and The Tattered Cover in Colorado are two famous cases. But under the new Act, the courts are no longer of any help, and a bookstore can be required to turn over records immediately without publicly (or privately) telling anyone. The person whose records are being sought may not be notified and that person does not even have to be suspected of committing a crime. You better watch what you read, in other words.

We were concerned about this at the bookstore. We had the information that the Government would want if it were to approach us and we did not feel comfortable about this. To defy would put us in jeopardy and to comply in turning over records if asked would seem likes a real breach of confidence to our loyal customers. So, on January 23 we purged all our records of customer purchases we had on file through our Readers Club. Our Readers' Club consists of over 3000 members. Our computer system enabled us to not only keep track of the dollar amount of sales but the titles purchased as well. These titles went back a number of years. When we took them out of our system we lost a lot of data. Why would we do that? This was data that could be used potentially for marketing the right books to the right customers. A prevalent buzz phrase in business these days is, “know your customers.” Certainly, destroying these records would not help us know our customers or at least their particular reading habits.

But one thing we do know about our customers is their rightful demand for privacy. The more we learned about the Patriot Act, and particularly Section 215 of it, the more it seemed that this privacy could be put in jeopardy. It has always been a principle of this bookstore and most other bookstores as well to protect this right of confidentiality and to fight against censorship, whether of the outside kind or self-censorship arising out of fear. We did nothing wrong in destroying records ahead of time as there is no law demanding records be kept. However, under the new law we would have no choice but to turn over records and to do it secretly with no recourse to a court of law such as would be the case in a normal subpoena such as I mentioned earlier.

We understand that the threat of terrorism is real but this focus on bookstores and libraries is an ill-conceived notion and not helpful. Think what the acronym means for the USAPATRIOT Act. It stands for “UNITING AND STRENGTHENING AMERICA BY PROVIDING APPROPRIATE TOOLS REQUIRED TO INTERCEPT AND OBSTRUCT TERRORISM.' By calling this law the “Patriot Act” is was sure to resonate in every good American's heart. By being against this, are we being unpatriotic? Does the Patriot Act unite and strengthen America by eroding our very basic civil liberties to read? By making us afraid to read certain things because the Government might just happen to want to check up on us? An educated public does not mean an indoctrinated public. Libraries and bookstores are places where people can attain the means to become better educated and are important pillars of our democracy. Imagine a nation with no free bookstores or libraries.

What are some of these appropriate tools required to intercept and obstruct terrorism? Unlike before, the FBI can now investigate a citizen even though it does not have to say that the person was connected to a foreign power or involved in a criminal activity. Could a case be built against an individual because he or she was reading material the government might deem offensive or subversive? It seems possible. Under Section 215 librarians and booksellers are prevented from even telling their customers that they are under investigation. In fact, they are compelled to keep quiet about the whole process.

Back to censorship, education, and democracy. If patrons begin to self-censor their library use and bookstore purchases because of fear of government surveillance, then their freedom to access information is limited and we have a less well informed democracy. The right of privacy so implicit in the 1^st and 4^th Amendments of the Constitution is being threatened here. The 4^th Amendment protects from unwarranted searches and seizures and the right of free assembly is guaranteed in the First Amendment. There is no right to privacy unless you have the right to assemble. Protecting the Constitution is generally thought of as keeping the country strong, something the Patriot Act does not do despite its claim to “unite and strengthen.”

Independent bookstores across the country are looking at this issue in many ways. For some, they don't keep records anyway so it is not a problem. For others, their purchase data is important for their customer service and marketing and they cannot afford to do what we have done. I totally respect this decision. Bookstores should not have to purge records. The law should be changed.

Last summer, Senator Leahy questioned the Justice Department about its expanded search of bookstores and libraries under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Leahy wrote, “Do you think that library and bookstore patrons have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the titles of books they have purchased from a bookstore or borrowed from a library?” Assistant Attorney General Daniel J. Bryant wrote back “Any right of privacy possessed by library and bookstore patrons in such information is necessarily and inherently limited since, by the nature of these transactions, the patron is reposing that information in the library or bookstore and assumes the risk that the entity may disclose it to another.” Well, Mr. Bryant has it all wrong. No one assumes that risk. What our patrons assume, in fact, is the exact opposite--confidentiality and their right to read whatever they want without the fear of intrusion by anyone.

The unintended media attention we got from our little action in Montpelier was incredible, as were the many responses from across the country. The AP story ran in hundreds of papers and likewise the television recording apparently played across the country as well. Consequently we received so many positive emails that it became a job just to read them all. People were so grateful to us that it was embarrassing. In one case we received a check for $100 with the simple inscription, “good work.” We turned that over to the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. We also received many new book orders from people who no longer wanted to take the risk of ordering from Amazon or the other giants. (One negative email accused us of creating a huge publicity ruse. If only I were so smart.) . What this all showed was that generally people see the Patriot Act for what it is--a threat to the basic civil liberties which Americans across the political spectrum hold so dearly.

BEAR POND BOOKS
77 MAIN STREET
MONTPELIER, VERMONT 05602
http://www.bearpondbooks.com

By: Joe Spoor

It really is an exciting time to be a bookseller. Some may say the golden years are gone, sentimental feelings now setting in for the slow-paced past of primarily brick and mortar (B&M) businesses. But like other points in history, bookselling is simply undergoing its latest transformation. Let us not look at it as a bad thing.

For starters, the advent of online bookselling opened opportunities for sellers to actually interact with customers in parts of the world most have only read about. I can't say I ever expected to spend much time conversing with a citizen of Brazil or Yugoslavia. I never even considered either location as a vacation destination. Instead, the common interest of books has brought me into contact with citizens of approximately 20 different nations on our ever-shrinking planet.

Dealing through the digital world has also allowed us to find books we may never have been able to, and obviously to sell to customers we most likely never would have. More obvious benefits are quicker response through email, often-quicker payments, better communication, and less expensive communication. Plus, we pay less postage and have less paper waste in mailing post card quotes to other sellers!

But what one benefit did I not mention? Interaction with our peers. Not only are we able to have more chance to correspond with colleagues and to discover new colleagues, but we are able to interact on a more frequent basis. As well, "support groups" like email lists allow for the cultivation of budding sellers who may otherwise never have been inspired or able to learn as quickly on their own.

It is necessary for most hard copy publications to adapt to the above changes to stay relevant. Book wants, for sale, news, book-related questions (only to have answers published next issue) are no longer viable for print--kept only for mostly sentimental reasons or to satisfy the last remaining bit of non-technically savvy sellers. The idea of publishing "news" and "books wanted" on a monthly, bimonthly or quarterly basis in the face of instant digital chatter seems mostly pointless. The only real alternative is either to report the news in greater detail (similarly how newspapers have responded to cable news) or to offer a more fundamentally different service altogether.

My tenure overseeing Bookseller Monthly began after many of these industry changes already took place. As a result, I don't look at the publication as a cutting edge source for news. It is provided for sellers and collectors alike to enjoy interest stories at their leisure, when their eyes become strained from the phosphorescent glow of their computer monitors. A format of collective, basic news that might only be found through multiple or obscure online sources. A chance to allow individuals to participate by sending along local news, respond with letters, or enjoy on their schedule, eliminating the artificial rush created by online life. So, no, I don't think of hard copy as a thing of the past. Just as books will be around forever, so will publications about our passion for books.

Discouragingly though, I noticed that advertising has become the primary function over content for many of our so-called primary book-related publications. It seems rather than adapt, many are conceding to the 'net advantage. Not wanting to mention particular names, they seem more like a "yellow pages" than anything of reading interest. Ironically, it seems many non book-related publications continue to have some type of book review or book-related section, sometimes with more content on books than our own industry publications. As well, more and more book-related newsletters are popping up online. A "hats off" to Joyce Godsey for creating Sic. And we see that most, if not all, hard copy publications have web content now.

I am always trying to improve features and to keep Bookseller Monthly from becoming outdated, or at the very least a redundancy to what we can learn instantly online, or from being another "yellow pages." Granted, advertising pays the bills. But I try to keep a good balance of content versus advertising. One thing that I realize though is that the transformation to the new technology is not yet complete. I have never researched the ratio of booksellers that interact online, but from those I have dealt with over the past two years I would have to guess that approximately 60-70% do not deal with online bookselling beyond listing on a paid-for service. A good majority, if asked, would not know what the Bookfinder Insider list is, or the IOBA, or the Bibliophile group. They may list on the Advanced Book Exchange, but often that is where it ends. Therefore, they often do not receive the information regarding current online issues so many 'net savvy sellers do.

But is that a bad thing? Does the new wave of bookselling have to include complete online interaction? Or can the above benefits primarily be achieved simply by listing online and then going back to dusting shelves of paperbacks? Additionally, will we ever see a complete transformation to the 'net for booksellers so that most do get their news online?

It is wonderful to see how things are unfolding. So many times with the growth of technology we hear the doom and gloom of losing tradition and appreciation. I think we are seeing that the worthwhile and good things about this trade continue, and will continue, to advance, prosper and be handed down to future sellers.

I still print "book wants" in Bookseller Monthly, a long time tradition still keeping some post card suppliers in business. To some this is an insane effort considering the efficiency of the Internet as I alluded to above. And I freely advertise monthly book shows to remind everyone that browsing for titles and personal interaction are still enjoyable experiences, even though there are numerous places online to find the same data. But I do feel I publish good enough feature articles worthy of a read in the tub! Now THAT can't be attempted with a computer.

Change keeps us on our toes, having to continually improve what we do. Unless one's desire for sentimentalism helps keep an inefficient system alive out of a sense for history, it will either disappear or stay alive because it serves a useful purpose. I always have to try to think of better ways to keep reader interest, to find unique services to offer. I believe most would never honestly expect to lose hard copy entirely. I, for one, hope to continue to adapt and provide something worthwhile in Bookseller Monthly, if only to serve a small group (even if it is just for those who read in the tub).

A dear friend—one I've never met face to face but have grown to love and trust—will be leaving us soon, as she is in the final stages of an incurable disease. I do not want to wait and do an obituary for Alyce—I want to tell her how I feel about her now, while she is still able to read my words.

I first met Alyce when we were both involved in starting IOBA. But I really started to get to know her when we both were new board members at Book CoOp. Our friendship has grown through emails and the occasional phone call over all the years since to the point where she is one of the few completely trusted and most loved best-friends that I have.

Alyce is my hero. She has fought overwhelming odds health-wise to remain a good and active bookseller, and she has given unselfishly and very generously of her time— to her family where she has served as historian and put out a newsletter , to IOBA where she is on her second term as a hard-working board member, to Book CoOp in its formative period, to the IOBA newsletter where she has contributed many articles and much good advice to its editor, and to the bookseller community at large, where she's never too busy to answer newbies or book buyer questions on email lists, and where she also brings us back down to earth occasionally with her droll wit and clear thinking. She also always makes time to listen to and help with personal problems.

Alyce has truly given her all for books; she has been on oxygen for several years thanks to a water leak near her book storage area and the mold that got into her lungs from it. It never stopped her, though. She has found ways to continue selling and cataloging books, promoting ethics and education for booksellers, and leading an active and full life as a mother to twin sons, a friend to many, and a caretaker for various dogs in her life.

All I can finally say is that our world will be much poorer when Alyce is not with us.

I will miss you, Alyce.

Shirley Bryant

P.S. Alyce died on May 8^th, in the company of her son, Jeff. The above note to her and that from Julie Fauble were sent to her son to read to her, earlier. We have a great hole in our midst.

GERMANTOWN, N.Y.—Alyce M. Cresap, 70, County Route 8, died May 8, 2003, at her home.

Born April 27, 1933, in Evergreen Park, Ill., to Robert S. and Lavinia Henry Cresap, she attended high school in Hinsdale, Ill., where she was also active in summer stock theater. She graduated with a degree in theater from Northwestern University in 1955. She was a co-founder of Argonaut, Inc., a Chicago publishing company specializing in Greek antiquities, and later owned her own typesetting business in New York City.

After her retirement in 1988 she moved to Germantown, where she was a bookseller, treasurer of the Germantown Library Board, president of the Germantown Garden Club, and a master gardener for 10 years with the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Columbia County. She was also secretary-treasurer of the Cresap Society, a national genealogical organization.

Survivors include twin sons, Douglas (Tammy) and Jeffrey (Terri) Rankin, both of Monmouth, Ill.; a sister, Roberta (Neil) Jones, of St. Louis, Mo.; step-grandchildren, Tony Cox and Amanda Cox; three nieces—Robin Taber, Kristin Tegethoff, and Carrie Arnold—nine grandnieces and nephews; and two special friends, Kenneth Klammer of Panorama City, Calif., and Jack Bates of Tavares, Fla.

Memorial contributions may be given to the Germantown Library or the Columbia-Greene Humane Society in Hudson, NY. Private burial will be in Chicago and a memorial service to celebrate Alyce's life will be held in Germantown at a later date.

(Written by Jeffrey Rankin.)

I've procrastinated writing this. Alyce won't be surprised by this confession.

Alyce knows well this particular foible of mine. In fact, she's on a first-name basis with several of my foibles, and the great thing about Alyce is that she has never made me feel bad about them. She just patiently and persistently - VERY persistently - pushed me to keep going, finish what I needed to finish, and address what needed to be addressed.

I'm supposed to be writing about all the things Alyce has done for IOBA, but it's not working. Not that there isn't plenty of material there. Alyce has been involved since the earliest days, contributing her ideas and energy and time. She's served on the board and as chair of the Internet Operations committee, and I don't know how anything could have gotten accomplished without her.

No, the problem is that when I think of Alyce, I don't first think of IOBA. I think of the dozens and dozens of times when she's made me fall out of my chair laughing. Alyce has a wonderful, wicked sense of humo(u)r. I've been searching through hundreds of e-mails, trying to find an example that would serve, but everything either requires too much context to understand or is a shade too blue. All the best ones are short and subtle, wry observations or the written equivalent of a raised eyebrow.

Another thing about Alyce, she can use that sense of humor to cut through crap better than anybody I've ever seen. Specious arguments, weasel words, and lame excuses don't carry any weight with her. And believe me, I've tried my share of lame excuses.

And here's the main thing about Alyce. Despite all the lame excuses and whining e-mails and complaints, she's always been gentle with me, whether I deserved it or not. If she ever lost her temper or got irritated with me, she never showed it. She never passed judgment. She just kept gently pushing me to do whatever I needed to do.

For that, I will always be grateful, and for that, I will always call Alyce friend.

H.O. Ethel, you're the greatest.

Julie Fauble

Thinking of Alyce

It's taken me a few days to finally decide to send this post. Like many of you, I have been thinking of Alyce and catching myself getting ready to send an email or give a phone call.

My first meeting in the flesh occurred several years back when she and I were volunteering toward getting the "first printing" of Tomfolio tee shirts distributed. As David, I, too, met a tall thin woman in coveralls, with a long braid. She was already tethered to supplementary oxygen at the time. I met her Dalmatians and was given their approval. Over ensuing years, we discovered mutual interests in chocolate and cheese, in gardening (she was a master gardener) and in sharing observations of the antics of our indoor and outdoor animal friends. I did not realize, until recent weeks, how much I had grown to look forward to her emails and rely on her ever-presence.

As I live about 1.5 hours to the southeast of Germantown, I was lucky to be able to visit Alyce several times in the past few months. Although she was getting very weak, and growing frustrated with the increasing limitations of her body, she was taking it in stride, still retaining her "Alyce-ness". I admired her strength and bravery. On one visit, she brought me to her kitchen door to look out over her garden and watch the newcomers at the bird feeder. She grumbled about not being able to reach something in the kitchen any more. "I'm short now." Looking up at her (I am 5'1"), I said "If you are short, than what am I?" She snorted.

A few days before her 70th birthday, at the end of April, we had a nice long telephone chat. At this point, sitting at the computer was too difficult for her. She gave me some input on a beaded lampshade I was completing. We discussed her sons and she reminisced about their birth (they were surprise twins). I updated her on the progress of my tomato seedlings. It was the last real conversation we were to have, and I think we both sensed it.

I saw her again briefly a few days before she died. "I'm dying," she said. "I know," I said, as I rubbed her arms a little. She still had that darn twinkle in her eyes. And her long braid.

I like to think that she is still keeping an eye on my garden.

Susan Pav
Ravenrooost Books
ravenbks@optonline.net

Alyce Cresap – Comments Invited

I’d like to invite each of you who loved Alyce to add comments to this issue of the newsletter. Even though the newsletter will have already gone live, it will be a continuing project that will honor her and allow us to express our feelings for her and our sense of loss.

Just send whatever you’d like to say to me at editor@ioba.org or aaabooks@azalea.net, and Deanna and I will get it into the newsletter.

Shirley Bryant

I didn't know Alyce as well as some of you did, but that did not matter as far as she was concerned.

I can't remember how many times she e-mailed me directly when I had a small problem or felt put-upon for some reason or other.

She was always there to help.  When I needed volunteers for Education Committee, and no one came forward, Alyce did.  I did not know then how sick she was, but I will always remember her kindness to me, and her willingness to help.

Jean S. McKenna
Jean S. McKenna - Books

This is the second of two articles on notable events, books, and ephemera of the 19th century suffrage movement. The first article is in the IOBA Standard, Volume III, Number 4. Both articles are just overviews. I've tried to emphasize the most often repeated stories and the major books and, very cursorily, the ephemera of the movement. Although much new material continues to be written, The History of Woman Suffrage is still the main source of information.

The period from the late 1870's through the early twentieth century was a comparatively quiet time in the history of the suffrage movement. As passage of a federal amendment seemed increasingly distant, many suffrage workers turned to the approach favored by conservatives, campaigns for passage of state amendments. These campaigns were time-consuming and, often, frustrating; by the end of the nineteenth century, only four western states, led by Wyoming, had actually enfranchised women. The first of fifty-six state votes on women's suffrage was in Kansas in 1867, and legislatures refused to allow referenda almost five hundred times. These efforts were organizing and unifying events for suffrage supporters, but they were draining and expensive as well. ¹

Two dramatic events particularly captured public interest during the 1870's and are important in the history of the suffrage movement: Susan B. Anthony's arrest for voting in the presidential election of 1872 and the suffrage demonstrations at the 1776 Centennial Celebration in Philadelphia.

Anthony's 1872 vote in the Presidential election is often represented as an almost accidental and spontaneous event. That wasn't the case. It was a considered action, part of larger effort to effect change at the federal level. Since no federal amendment seemed likely to pass, suffrage supporters turned to a natural rights constitutional argument. Previous similar attempts had occurred. In April of 1871 a group of sixty-four women, accompanied by Frederick Douglass, had been turned away in Washington, D. C., when they attempted to register to vote.

Other groups of women attempted to register in the same election as the one in which Anthony so famously succeeded. The only successful group was the Rochester, New York group of fifteen women led by Anthony, but others who attempted to vote included Sojourner Truth, probably the best known of the African American suffrage workers, Isabella Beecher Hooker, and approximately thirty-five more women in Rochester as well as scattered groups and individuals elsewhere.

Although the legal case was somewhat tortuous, the basis of the suffrage argument was simply that voting was a right. Women had not been specifically excluded in the constitution and the amendments giving African-American men the right to vote first introduced the word male as a requirement for voting. In a speech first delivered on January 16, 1873, (between Anthony's 1872 arrest and her trial in the spring of 1873) at a NWSA meeting in Washington, Anthony presented her case, that voting was both a natural and a constitutional right. The text of the speech was reported and a revised version appears in Anthony's published account of the trial. ²

Anthony, the women who voted with her, and the election inspectors who allowed them to vote were arrested on November 18. At a subsequent examination before United States Commissioner, William C. Storrs, prosecution and defense agreed that the decision arrived at in Anthony's case would apply to all the women. The election inspectors were tried separately --- and convicted. They were the only defendants jailed as a result of the illegal votes.

At Anthony's trial, held in the spring of 1873 in Canandaigua, NY, about forty miles from Rochester, Anthony was found guilty in a directed verdict (it was a juried trial but the jury was not allowed to deliberate). The penalty was ten days in jail or a $100 fine. Anthony refused to pay the fine but was never jailed, perhaps because that would have enabled her to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. News coverage of the trial strongly criticized the Judge's refusal to allow the jury to deliberate.

In 1874 the Supreme Court ruled, in a landmark case, Minor vs. Happersett, that "the Constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone."

A complete record of Anthony's trial was published and paid for by her under the rather daunting title, An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the Charge of Illegal Voting, at the Presidential Election in November, 1872. Three thousand copies of the paper-covered booklet were printed by the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle in 1874. As usual, Anthony carefully noted the cost, $700. At least one copy, inscribed by Anthony to one of the women with whom she voted, has turned up in recent years, but original printings are rare. Reprints of the trial proceedings are available. According to Anthony, there were also 5,000 copies made of Judge Selden's argument on the Habeas Corpus "which she scattered broadcast." I have not seen a copy of that. ³

By 1776, suffrage leaders were ready for another battle ---- this over the Fourth of July Centennial Celebration in Philadelphia. The Centennial was a national event of great importance and, to the suffrage leaders who were excluded from the proceedings, it was an opportunity to advance the cause. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage worked long and hard to produce a Declaration of the Rights of Women to be presented at the Philadelphia celebration and asked repeatedly to be on the program. Turned down, they decided on other action. Stanton and Lucretia Mott (then in her eighties) decided to hold a competing meeting for women's rights in a Philadelphia Unitarian Church. Anthony, a "spinster," was able to rent the space which Mott, a married woman, could not. They also pursued a more militant plan.

After repeatedly requesting to be on the Fourth of July program, Anthony, Matilda Joslin Gage and three other women obtained four seats on the platform (using at least one press pass from Anthony's brother, Daniel) but were denied permission to be on the program. After the reading of the Declaration of Independence, they rose from their seats, handed a copy of their Declaration to the acting vice president of the United States, and walked out scattering copies of their Declaration as they went. Anthony read the Declaration from a musicians' platform outside and additional copies were distributed to the crowd. Few copies of that Declaration have survived although the text is in the History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III.

Joslyn Gage and Anthony's militance in this instance is sometimes seen as foreshadowing the media-oriented militance of 20th century suffragists. Lucy Stone, who was part of the convention organized by Cady Stanton and Mott, apparently disapproved, but said the action would "no doubt go down in the history books" and twentieth century biographer of the movement, Rheta Childe Dorr, pointed to it as proof that Anthony, not Emmeline Pankhurst, "invented militant feminism." ⁴

Two interesting paper items came out of the suffrage demonstration in Philadelphia, but an item promised in the advance publicity by NWSA is especially interesting because it never appeared. In order to pay for the headquarters, Gage, Stanton, and Anthony offered, as a premium, a history of the women's rights movement to anyone donating $5. The three had long discussed writing the history and anticipated producing a several hundred-page pamphlet. The pamphlet was never written and the short history eventually turned into the six-volume History of the Woman Suffrage Movement. Anthony, always scrupulous about keeping promises, eventually sent each of the donors a $15 set of the history. ⁵

Work didn't actually begin on the history until 1880 although Anthony sent trunks and boxes of materials to Stanton's home in Tenafly, NJ in 1876. When the work did begin, in Tenafly, it turned out to be an enormously more demanding task than the authors had anticipated. According to Anthony "the task loomed up in an appalling manner." ⁵ Stanton did most of the writing with Anthony providing history and factual information and Gage contributing some sections. Anthony was also publisher (a pattern established when they produced their short-lived suffrage newspaper, The Revolution) and was critic and provider of factual information. They requested information and records from others active in the movement and, though most people responded, Lucy Stone refused to contribute because she objected to their "attempt to write the history" of the AWSA. ⁶

Anthony spent much time looking for a publisher. According to one biographer, Anthony took trips to NY as early as 1877 to look for a p