Rare Book Monthly
Articles - September - 2008 Issue
Bookseller Heaven; or The Thirtieth Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar
Lois Ganner and Cynthia Williams demonstrate that book people come in all sizes.
That evening, those of us not eating in the rarified air of the faculty dinner, were offered a bookstore tour of all the other bookstores in town. We hit the Everest Tibetan restaurant again first, and then off we went to ogle more books. I, of course, bought too many at Adventures in Books, which is a new store owned by Bill Porter, a very knowledgeable bookseller, who gave me a discount I couldn't turn down. All in all, I bought from several dealers and got some great books. I had to media mail them home since my suitcase was already way too heavy. I can hardly wait until they arrive.
The last day, boo hoo! By this time, I was so enthralled that I could easily have stayed another week, though I think the faculty would have dropped in their tracks. We talked a lot about scouting for books with Michael Ginsberg. Tom Congalton gave us a great run-down about book fairs. Kevin Johnson worked with us on consignment selling, which was of great interest to me as I have just recently begun consigning books. After lunch, Chris Volk had the arduous task of trying to keep our attention (i.e. keep us awake) with regards to the very important and often neglected phase of bookselling - accounting. As a former accountant, she did a great job of making it almost comprehensible to most of us. And last, that afternoon we filled out an evaluation of the course and then got to the final fun stuff, a round table discussion with the whole faculty.
"Every thing hath ende," as Chaucer said, and our lovely week was no exception. The farewell dinner and award of certificates that evening was really quite emotional as most of us knew what an incredible event we had just been privileged to participate in and how lucky we were to have been there.
To all of you serious book folk; collectors, sellers, librarians, etc. who think you might like to attend one of these seminars, contact Kathy Lindeman, the very amenable, efficient, and organized local coordinator at klindeman@coloradocollege.edu or Sue Gallagher, sue@gcbooks.com. You won't regret a minute of it and you will come away a humbler, smarter, craftier bookseller.
