Hugh Hollowell

Year after year, we hear that the number one reason businesses fail is they are under capitalized. That is much like saying all people die of heart failure. It is a technical, if very misleading, truth.

Yes, the reason they close is because they ran out of money, but they had other causes that led to that failure; lack of sales probably being the chief one. A much more valid problem is one of too much money.

I no longer remember who it was that said you can never be too rich or too thin, but I do know a start up can have too much money. I once was involved (in a minor way) with a landscaping business start up, and the initial budget was $10,000. Of that, $7,000 went to office space, a new truck lease and office furniture. Now, in all fairness, it was a nice office, but not that nice. And besides, it was only nice for the next three months before they had to (not surprisingly) close.

Had they only had, say, $3,000 the tune would have been different indeed. Instead of buying a beautiful desk no one would ever see they would have used a card table in their garage and spent money on fliers, door hangers and uniforms. Instead of a new truck lease, they would have gotten by with the 5 year old truck they had, maybe splurging for the $300 “super saver” paint job from Bob’s Body Shop. In other words, they would have bootstrapped their way forward.

You see, money turns off portions of your brain. When we are presented with a choice, it is human nature to go with the easiest solution. When you are flush, you do not negotiate a better deal, look for a cheaper vendor, or look for alternative solutions. Instead, you try to buy your way out of problems like a spoiled brat, throwing money at problems, hoping they will go away. (Here is a hint: If you can solve a problem with money, either you did not have a problem, or that is not the real problem.)

While I do not recommend that if you have some money you give it all away to impoverish yourself (but should you want to, please write for my address), please do recognize that there are often solutions that require much less money or even (heaven forbid) no money at all.

I was once told by an early mentor that “The First Order of Business is to Stay in Business”. That is sound advice. Conserve your cash, slash costs and look for the cheaper way. We make it a rule, when looking at a substantial outlay, to ask ourselves “How would we accomplish this if we were broke”? Very often we are amazed at what we come up with.

I am not sure if the world needs saving, but even if it does not, you need not be a rocket scientist to realize that less emissions is better than more. In my effort to do my part (and to help lose some of this weight that suddenly appeared when I hit my mid thirties), I bought a new bike, so I can bike the 4 miles to work each day.

Now, since the beginning of the year when I decided to go carless I have been at the whims of the public transportation system. In some cities, that might not be so bad, but in Memphis Tennessee, you are pretty much screwed.

I remember being 12 years old with my BMX single speed, jumping homemade ramps, riding the hills near the house, riding up the two miles to my best friends house… I never remember being out of breath, let alone being tired.

Saturday I bought the bike (now, in disclosure, it was used, but hey, recycling is good too, right?) and rode it home (I had ridden the bus to work). I almost died. If you were driving down Madison Avenue and saw a chunky pale white guy thrashing about on his bike, that would have been me.

The bike has 21 speeds, and I am getting my ass kicked trying to figure them all out. My legs are sore, my back is sore, my head hurts from the sunburn on my bald spot… I just hope this planet appreciates what I am trying to do here.

In 1992, I had the opportunity to marry a girl and did not. It was not that I did not love her, because I did (not sure I fully realized that at the time). It was not that I did not think we would have been a good match, because we probably would have. No, the reason we did not get married is because I was scared.

Like Brave Sir Robin, I ran away (ran away, ran away). I was all of 20 years old, I was a United States Marine, I was in love with a beautiful strawberry blond nymphet who just wanted to be with me and I blew it because I was scared. In infantry school they had taught us how to bayonet a man, how to drop 3 stories to the street below, how to locate, close with and destroy the enemy, but I had nothing in my experience that taught me how to handle a 110 lb redhead who thought I was the Bee’s Knees.

It is a sorry tale; how I quit calling her (I did not even have the guts to let her know I was scared), how she was hurt by that, how she ended up with another guy who would take her away from it all, how she almost immediately got pregnant, how she married him, had 2 more kids, the whole damned sordid mess.

I wonder sometimes if she is happy with the way it all turned out, with the way things went. I wonder if I had it to do all over again, but knew then what I know now what I would do differently. What would our kids have looked like, would we still be together, is there such a thing as happily ever after?

Over on Matt’s Blog, he wrote an incredible response to a question about people removing attribution links. It is one of the most powerful explanations of the power of open source I have ever seen.

Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

It matters what you call things, especially at the higher levels. Your customers expect you to know the difference between a hinge and a joint, between unopened and uncut.

If you do not know, or you are not sure, now would be a good time to brush up on your terminology. Two good links are:

http://www.ioba.org/terms.html

http://www.abaa.org/cgi-bin/abaa/abaapages/glossary

The best all around book on the subject is Carter’s ABC for Book Collectors. Currently in it’s 8th edition, it is still the best in the business.

Tis not in mortals to command success; but we’ll do more, Sempronius, we’ll deserve it.
(Joseph Addison; Act I, Scene 2, Cato)

[This is a repost from my previous blog. I have had several people ask me to preserve it on the new site]

Have you ever thought about what the perfect venue for selling books would be like? I often have, and my dream list looks something like this:

1. Very low fees
2. High sell through rate
3. Heavily shopped by other dealers
4. No communication barriers between you and the buyer
5. You could post your want lists, and people would actually read them.
6. Would allow you to have total control over the format in which your offerings are displayed.
7. You would have complete control over the payment methods you accept or your other terms of sale.
8. Virtually no penny listings
9. No “posting ID’s”, in other words, you know exactly who you are dealing with when you buy or sell.
10. You could also use this venue to advertise your business generally, to announce catalogues, to hire employees and to drive traffic to your auctions.

Yes, Virginia, there is such a place where books are bought and sold on a daily basis. That place is called the Bibliophile Mailing List.

From their website:

The Bibliophile Mailing List is maintained for the benefit of sellers and/or collectors of rare, out-of-print, scarce books in all subject areas. Our subscribers include librarians, students, scholars, and book lovers of all kinds. Participants will find books offered from a few dollars to many thousands of dollars.

Let me give you a recent example of the power of the list. I recently had a late 1800’s book on Guatemala come in over the transom; it was beautiful- decorated cloth, fold out maps, the works. This could sit on the shelf here in the shop forever before a buyer would walk in and none of my regular customers are candidates for such a thing. In the old days, this would have been a candidate for the wonderful world of eBay, and still might be, but now I had some other things to try first.

There is one dealer on the list who often posts wants for books on Latin America. On Friday I email said dealer directly and offer him the book, complete with dealer discount. On Friday night I get an email back, saying he appreciates the offer, but he has now restricted his buying a bit, so the book would not be a fit for him, but would I please keep him in mind for ____, ____, and any ____ books. No harm, no foul, and now I have 3 more wants to add to my file.

I then offer the book to the list as a whole, again with just a simple email, no pictures. This was Saturday. Sunday afternoon I got an email asking if I still had the book and asking if I ship to Oceania. I did and I do, so by Tuesday, I had money in my account and the book was on the way.

Gross sales, almost $100. Fees to the site, Zero.

You can do this all day long. I would estimate I sell about half of everything I offer to the list; some sell much more, others much less. For me, there are months it surpasses abebooks.com and Biblio together for gross sales. Like all other sites, quality, price and dealer reputation go a long way. This is not a place to sell your paperbacks for $00.01 with $5 shipping. However, there are people who have listed and sold a lot of 15 paperbacks for $20 and gotten takers.

I have used the list to get an employee who was moving to North Carolina an interview in a bookshop out there, I have used it to drive traffic to my eBay auctions, I have announced wants and had offers within 4 hours that were spot on. I have used the list to determine which edition of Leaves of Grass I had, and to learn the points for the French First Edition of Planet of the Apes. In short, it makes my life easier and helps me sell more books.

If you have subscribed to other mailing lists and left disappointed because everyone was ranting because of what George Bush said or because someone called someone else a poopypants, then have no fear, because this is not that sort of list. It is moderated by the Grand Poohbah of Bibliotenango, Lynn Deweese Parkinson, who both owns and operates the list. Lynn is quick to jump in if a fracus starts up and has been known to suspend violators with swiftness and extreme prejudice.

All good things cost, and this is no exception. There is a two-week free trial to the list, at the end of which, should you decide to stay you will owe $30 for a one year subscription. For less than $3 a month you can sell as many books as you want. As my Grandfather was known to say, “You cannot beat that with a stick“.

For more information on the list, see the official rules, posted here. To join, go here.

A friend and I were talking about this last night. We are both aging gen Xers and were reminiscing over such things as we remember from childhood and, as it always does, cartoons came up.

Let me get this straight: Popeye was a Sailor Man, right? And there is this kid running around who he is taking care of and raising, but who is not his? And he claims the kid came in the mail?* Am I the only one that thinks maybe Popeye is covering up?

Ahhh, it was a much simpler time then.

*I actually found out he allegedly came in the mail from wikipedia, so it must be true, right?

The first person I ever knew with a blog was a travel writer named Jen Leo. She had just edited an award winning collection of short stories about women’s travel misadventures called Sand In My Bra (it is a very funny book) and she was on a tour of the country doing book signings. By some alignment of the stars, she ended up doing a book signing at the store I owned at the time.

Have you ever felt an instant connection with someone?

That is the way Jen and I hit it off. We had heart felt conversations, stayed up late, won a middling amount at the craps tables, ate bar-b-que bologna (much, much better than it sounds) and sold a decent number of her books. As one aging genXer to another, we both identified with each other instantly, which is a bit weird when you think about it, as I grew up in rural Mississippi and she is Chinese-American from the West Coast.

Anyway, over the years we have kept up our friendship in the 21st century way… we read each other’s blogs, we skype each other fairly regularly, when she is in town we get together for bar-b-que and stay up late at bad diners.

Jen was my inspiration in blogging; it was always exciting to see her blog stories about where she had been published, where she was doing a book signing, what was going on in her life. It was because of her excitement and passion that I thought I might like this blogging thing and when I talked to her about wanting to do it, she was nothing but encouragement.

Perhaps you read in the paper about all the weddings happening on 7-7-07? Well, one of them was Jenn and her new husband John, who went from being the best-boyfriend-ever to being the best husband ever (or he better, anyway!). What makes the date even more appropriate is that John is a Poker playing pro and Jen writes for Poker websites and magazines. Oh, and they got married in Vegas. (Get it? Gambling, 7-7-7, Vegas…).

Over on her blog she has posted some pictures from the wedding, she is wondering how to handle the name change… all of the joys of matrimonial bliss. It could not have happened to a better person.

Jen, I wish for you and John every good thing. Congratulations, and the next time you come to town, the bar-b-que bologna is on me!

I was 16 the first time I ever read anything by Walt Whitman. I was on a search, as I suppose all children that age are, for who I was, what I wanted to be. I, like the neighbor in Frost’s poem, could not forsake my Father’s teachings, for better or worse. In the Transcendentalists I found a uniquely American way of thought (or so I thought at the time), and an identity I could embrace and aspire to.

Over the next few years I read pretty much the entire corpus: Channing, Alcott, Emerson, and of course Thoreau, but the preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass has always left me breathless.

Here is my favorite excerpt:

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body… .

The entire preface can be found here; for reasons known only to him he did not include the preface in later editions.