Some treats I'm taking to the Sacramento Rare Book Fair (part 1 of several)

It's the Wednesday before the Wednesday before the Sacramento Rare Book fair.  Usually by the Wednesday right before the fair *most* of the packing is done, the books are sorted - for better or worse - and it's time for me to start yanking apart my book mobile and loading boxes, which means I don't have a great deal of time at that point to sit down and write, or take jpgs, etc.

SO.....  with that in mind, I'm starting a week early and doing something I don't generally do -- toot my own (well, the BOOKS) horn -- and showing off some of the cool items I'll be bringing with me to the book fair.

Here's one of them:

More Goops and How Not to Be them by Gelett Burgess (illustrated by Gelett Burgess)

Burgess, Gelett: MORE GOOPS AND HOW NOT TO BE THEM : A Manual of Manners for Impolite Infants Depicting the Characteristics of Many Naughty and Thoughtless Children with Instructive Illustrations. c1916. Frederick A. Stokes Company. New York. Hardcover.  11th Printing. VG+ / VG-.  B&W Illustrations by Gelett Burgess. Goops.  Early copies such as this are difficult to find with the dust jacket intact.   "Children, although you might expect my manners to be quite correct (for since I fancy I can teach, I ought to practice what I preach), 'T is true that I have often braved my mother's wrath, and misbehaved! And almost every single rule I broke, before I went to school! For that is how I learned the way to teach you etiquette to-day. So when you chance to take a look at all the maxims in the book, you'll see that most of them are true, I found them out, and so will you, for if you are as GOOP derided, you may perhaps reform, as I did!" 

This book is a decently early copy (c1916) of the book, but what makes this copy stand out is the dust jacket.  With children's books of this age / era,   (and frankly, with many books that included dust jackets at this time)  it was par for the course to either take the dust jacket off the book and store it, or most likely, for the owner to chuck it in the circular file without a second thought.  Add to that that the book was meant for children (shudder) who if they are anything like my two, are not the most careful with their personal belongings. (an aside here -- if the books belong to me and my business, they KNOW not to mess with them or treat them badly -- but their own library is, unfortunately, an entirely different case).

So dust jackets on children's books from the turn of the century through 1920's, while not unheard of, are generally unusual.



And this:

Frances Hodgson Burnett: A Little Princess (illustrated by Ethel Franklin Betts)

Burnett, Frances Hodgson : A LITTLE PRINCESS : Being the Whole Story of Sara Crewe Now Told for the First Time. 1905. Charles Scribner's Sons. New york. Hardcover. 1st Edition Thus/ 1st Printing. VG+ / NONE. Color Illustrations by Ethel Franklin Betts. DESCRIPTION: This is a First Edition Thus (the book was originally published in 1888 as Sara Crewe or What Happened at Miss Minchin's.   Illustrated throughout with 12 full color plates by Ethel Franklin Betts. T.E.G (Top Edge Gilt).   Burnett explains the rewriting of the novel thusly: "When I wrote the story of Sara Crewe I guessed that a great deal more had happened at Miss Minchin's than I had had time to find out just then. I knew, of course, that there must have been chapters full of things going on all the time; and when I began to make a play out of the books and called it A Little Princess, I discovered three acts full of things...After the play of A Little Princess was produced in New York, and so many children went to see it and liked Becky and Lottie and Melchisedec, my publishers asked me if I could not write Sara's story over again and put into it all the things and people who had been left out before."  Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett started her writing career before the age of 18 and, due to times of perceived need, continued to write stories and novels throughout her entire life.  When flush, she tended towards the jet-setting life (of her day), traveling between her birth country of England and the US, where she spent much of her married life. She had a fondness for expensive clothing and socializing. When strapped for cash, she would hunker down to her writing and produce another children's story or romantic novel to keep her family going. The results was somewhat mixed, and though most of her work was very popular during her lifetime, it is the children's stories that have captured the imaginations of young girls and boys worldwide and become classics.  


I'll admit that I was one of those girls who fell in love with this book (oh so many ages ago) and imagined what it would be like to live in an attic with no heat, work from dawn to dusk at a back-breaking job and not ever be allowed to touch, much less think about wearing pretty clothes. Of course, when I imagined it, it was dreamily romantic and not starkly realistic with any attendant hunger, cold or child labor issues.  Add in that Shirley Temple's movie made it into a song and dance fest and I was SO there!


These two examples happen to be from the consignment collection I've been mentioning in the last several weeks, but I'll also be including some of the books that I've collected myself in the past several months that will be going to the fair with me.


I'll highlight some more in the next blog entry.

Home from the Book Fair...

I got home from the Sacramento book fair on Sunday and I was BEAT.   The reclining on the sofa with my swelled feet propped up sort of beat.  And, I'm a bit bummed too.

The fair was fairly well attended as far as I could see. Lots of people walking through. Lots of people eyeballing things, picking up books, leafing through books, reading books -- but not a huge number of people BUYING books (at least for me. The dealer next to me was doing quite well, thank you, due to a customer who had requested a series of books to be brought to the fair for approval).

I did sell some books. I made back my expenses, with a tiny bit extra (very tiny).

BUT -- here's the thing ...  If I DON'T make a decent amount at a book fair, it's hard for me to keep operating a business. AND, if I back out of book fairs, I'm likely not the only one to do so. Others will too as their overhead costs soar.  This means that chances are, in just a few short years, book fairs will be a thing of the past.  The dealers won't be able to keep selling at them and will back out. The outfits that put on bookfairs rely on dealers' bodies in booths to make their money and will have to cancel fairs.

This leaves book lovers who want to SEE and FEEL and TALK to informed dealers without access to each other.

This is NOT a gripe, by the way, this is a look at a possible scenario for the future of antiquarian books.   Book fairs give both dealers and customers a way to communicate, and to learn new things from each other. It's a symbiotic relationship. But it can't continue (at least for those of us in the middling area -- neither small fry selling everything for cheap, cheap, nor for the heavy-hitters who have stock that ranges in the mid four figures on up) and that's really a sad thing to see.

I personally will continue to exhibit at book fairs until it is completely non-viable to do so, but I fear that time is coming soon for me.  I haven't the resources to continue to lose money or barely eek out a profit from book fair sales.

I don't think its a case of having unsaleable stock either.  Nor is it a case of having the WRONG stock with me for the fair.  I don't really know, in fact, WHAT the reason is for the book fairs lackluster sales, but as I said before. It bums me out.

I do have an option to exhibit at another fair in October in San Francisco -- I have to make a choice between it and the Family Camp out for Boy Scouts as they are on the same weekend  -- so it's going to take some long hard thinking about what is more important to me and my family.  (I'd love to hear some comments from blog readers on their take on book fairs).

If I do end up attending the book fair in San Francisco, I'll be sure to update the details on it here on the blog.  In the meantime, It's back to normal online book selling, cleaning up the PILES, and PILES of things that didn't get done for the last several weeks, repacking things, updating things, finding seasonal items that should have been listed by now and generally getting on with regular work.

I'm still bummed though.

Oh, here are some pictures I took of my booth -- I was trying for some close up shots of books on the shelves, but the lighting was wacky.  (PS: If you click on the photo, you do get a bigger picture. I just tried it.)

This is one of the Science Fiction Shelves

This shelf had a group of Astronautics, Atomic Energy / Atomic warfare  and some misc. fun books.

Here's some of the picture books. Sorry -- you can't really see each book clearly.

This group of books was brought specifically for Sacramento -- it's Western Americana, Cowboys, Californiana and Native Americans.

More Book Fair Stuff ... and the back

I went for the X-ray of my back. Doctor got the pic's and said, other than some scoliosis (which I THOUGHT I was luckily free of since I was checked almost every year since I was little -- does it suddenly appear?) which didn't mean much, I didn't have anything showing on the X-rays that would be bothering me.

Which means it's all soft tissue problems. So physical therapy is in order.

Not a bad answer, if you ask me. I'd rather have something that's fixable with work than something that is permanently disabling.

SO, since I was feeling marginally better yesterday, decided to go ahead and DO MY EXERCISES this morning.

Sure.

Remind me one of these days how DUMB that was.

Now It's going to take longer to get back to where I was because whatever I did (and by the way, the exercises this morning were mainly help for lower back problems) made me feel ever so much NOT better.

Great. Someone duct tape me to my chair so I don't do stupid things.

On other fronts -- I'm still working on getting my boxes of books ready for the two book fairs coming up.

Santa Monica is now just over two weeks away. Normally I'd have boxes already starting to form a wall in my front room (which makes the rest of the family and the cats rather growly at me as the boxes take up room to run...)

BUT - pain has slowed me down a bit.

AND I finally got my rear in gear and ordered dust jacket covers which didn't arrive until yesterday. So, knowing that they were coming, I PUT OFF boxing up books so I could cover them first.

Now I have to put in overtime getting the covers on and figuring out exactly which books might be of interest. AND which books to leave out for Sacramento (three weeks away) and not take to Santa Monica.

And remember I'm not supposed to be lifting boxes of books or even big stacks of them.

Right now, the pain is worst when I try to bend over and stay bent over to do something - like pick up books off the floor (where they NEVER are -- yeah right) or pet the cat, or pick up kid stuff...

And of course, baseball season hasn't exactly finished yet, but soccer season HAS started. Our weekly schedule now has something in the evening every day except Friday (and maybe will have something there too), with weekends being REALLY busy.

Plenty of time to get books covered and boxed up.

Yup.

As long as I don't really start to think about what's going on, I'm FINE.

FINE I SAY.

enjoy.

Book Fair Schedule...

I finally got my rear in gear and decided (well, the economy helped too) to go ahead and exibit at two book fairs in September.

The first is the Santa Monica Book Fair (the link seems to be in the middle of an update today, so I'll get it for you when I can) on Sept. 12-13 in Santa Monica, CA (obviously...) It's a two day fair and is well attended by both dealers of all types and browsers / buyers (hopefully!)

The second is The Sacramento Antiquarian Book Fair on Sept 19th at the Scottish Rite Temple in ... Sacramento, CA.

I'm hoping that both fairs will be AWESOME and that (crassly) people will be willing to buy things from me.

If you'd like a free pass to either, please email me and I'll send out something of have a pass waiting for you at the door.

I'm hoping that I can cram as much data entry into the next several weeks as I can -- if not, I'll even try to be less A/R then usual and actually take some stuff that isn't completely detailed in my computer before I go (GASP!)

If there's anything in particular you'd like to see there, let me know.

Oh, and there might be another book fair coming up in October for me. I'll let you know as I learn more.

Enjoy!