There’s a lovely burnt orange dawn on the horizon. 19 degrees. The warmest morning this week, I think. The phone predicts next week will be the 40s and 50s. It is a notorious liar.
February 21st. Spring is just a month away. I’m ready for winter to end. The cold season began with being run over in Amsterdam, the ensuing arm surgery and… one thing after another.
Merry and Pip, the Jack Russells, had their 14th birthday last week. They’ve brought me such pleasure and love and companionship up here. It doesn’t seem right that such forces of nature can grow old.
The cramps began at 1:30 a.m. I took magnesium, and that didn’t help this time. I drank some Gatorade, and eventually the over-tightened muscles in my legs loosened.
Excruciating.
When I got home last night, I carried down a lot of dead wood from the forest above the house. There were boulders and stumps to dodge. A low rock wall need to be hopped off of to get to the driveway. All this with a log balanced on my shoulder. There were a few left that I hadn’t cut small enough. Those were too heavy. I used muscles I have not exercised in a while, and that was the cause of my overnight cramps.
Carrying wood, stone, garden soil and mulch… I enjoy that kind of work. It is real. I can stand back and see what I have accomplished.
There may be enough firewood outside the barn to get through April when the last freeze is and when the last fire will be lit. I’ve barely touched the 4 bins stacked with long dead and very dry wood. Each bin is about 7 feet high and 6 feet across. They are about 5 feet deep, so I can stack the wood 3 pieces deep. Those are still mostly full.
Why do I like that kind of work? Because I don’t have to think. I can just “do.”
It has been a brutally cold week. So cold the dogs have gone to work with me each day. It has been too cold to leave them out. The little ones can be penned inside but wacky Giles—I don’t trust him with the run of the house when I’m not there.
He has calmed down a lot. It has taken a lot of training.
The house is looking great. My librarian is finally satisfied with the bookcases and displays in the great room.
So much framed stuff has been hung that the place is getting a gallery feel to it.
The outdoor light above the garage was on just before 5. I rose to go see. Wind? Smoke from the chimney? No. A big fluffy raccoon stared back at me.
“Scat!”
It scrabbled up the tree next to the drive. For years, a birdhouse hung from a dead branch there. It dangled on a chain. Long ago cutting dead branches, I awoke a flying squirrel that nested there unbeknownst to me. Beautiful, big eyes. Startled to be awake in daylight, it scuttled back into the house with tufts of dry grass sticking out its sides.
The wind rose in the dark, and I heard dead branches breaking off the top of the huge, very tall, very dead poplar. They fell rattling amongst other dead limbs lower down before crashing to the ground and splintering on boulders. I noted them as good firewood and kindling, easy for the taking. It is good the topmost limbs are blowing off. I’d like the giant thing to get shorter. Should the whole thing topple in the wrong direction, its decaying crown might just reach the house and do some damage.
The dogs can’t be let out with the critter in the area. They’ll have to wait for some dawn light to send the night denizen back to its den.
From there to here to there—how do the books get around?
A percentage of our books are purchased from the public at our three Maryland bookstores.
The bookstores are extremely expensive to operate.
We make an offer on “everything” people bring—everything that is a book that is. Most people appreciate that. If someone brings in 10 boxes of unwanted books, we will accept them all—good, bad and indifferent. We won’t send you away with the bad stuff.
We have a little “fleet” of over 10 vans now. (Soon we will add another.) We keep three in Frederick, two in Gaithersburg and one in Hagerstown at all times. When we purchase people’s books, they are immediately carried into a van. When a van is full, the warehouse is called, and an empty van is sent down, and the full vehicle is driven back to the warehouse.
Operating and maintaining over 10 vans is very expensive but necessary to be sure we can keep up with the volume we get sometimes.
At the warehouse, the full van is backed to a loading dock. There, the boxes (and bags and tubs and…) are unloaded and stacked on pallets.
From there, the palletized boxes are dragged to sorting stations. Sorters, who are trained according the various formulas we’ve developed, unpack and inspect EVERY book. That’s where things get complicated.
Some books are sent to data entry to see if they are viable to offer online on WonderBook.com or the other sites we list on. Some are sent to sorters with more experience using want lists and permanent wants that the stores are asking for.
Problematic books are carted up to be evaluated by me and a couple other experienced evaluators.
Then things get even more complicated.
Some books get boxed up and sent to the stores. There, each one will need to be priced and shelved.
Others are sent to Books by the Foot—which is the last resort for “unsellable” books. They are unsellable usually because they are too common or obsolete or written by authors who are no longer read or collected.
Books that get put online are handled again by data entry staff, who then take the books out into the stacks and shelve them.
When those books sell, someone is sent out to pull the order and take it to shipping.
At the shipping station, every book is packed and addressed, weighed and postage recorded.
The package is handled one last time when it gets taken out to trucks that come to begin the delivery process to buyers around the country and overseas.
How many times has a book been handled so far?
And those are just the “easy” ones. If you’ve read many of these stories, you know many of the creative things we do with books to keep them viable.
Sadly, a lot of books are hopeless. If we can’t give the book away or sell it for at least a few cents’ profit, it might get sent to recycling. Certainly, defective books, many magazines, filled-in test books or puzzle books, etc., etc… there’s no option but recycling them to make new paper.
Tons and tons meet that fate. Believe me, if there was anything else we could do with them, we would.
A tiny percentage that are determined to be potentially collectible are handled a few more times by researchers and final evaluators before a determination is made that the book is only worth a few dollars or maybe, in rare cases, a few hundred. Then a determination is made if that book has a better chance being offered online or in the stores.
Not all books sent to the stores or offered online ever sell. At a certain point, room must be made on the shelves for fresh stock. What happens to those? Each one gets looked at again, and the best option is determined.
(We are constantly condensing books on the shelves in the warehouse to make room for more as well. Over 2 million of them. More handling.)
What is the most times a book might get handled? There’s no limit, really. Some books just keep reappearing year after year, and we try to market it a different way or at a different price.
These are some books going out via a rare dealer that were part of the Gach hoard.
Books like these may have been online and off and readied at reduced prices or with better descriptions for a dozen years.
If a book merits it, we will keep trying. And trying. And trying.
The buyer of the books above seemed pleased with his treasures. He wrote:
Thank you for the opportunity for allowing us to review the books before we settle accounts.
Chuck… you are a flat-out pleasure to do business with!!
It was a good low-four-figure sale—a “rarity” here where most books go out at a 50¢ profit. We still offer free shipping.)
So, when you bring us a few grocery bags of books you no longer want, you can see it is no simple matter of unpacking and pricing them.
A great many books are brought to our warehouse directly. That takes some of the extra handling out of the equation for us, and we can usually pay more for them.
And the house calls. That’s where the best books usually come from. Driving to someone’s house and packing, carrying and driving back to the warehouse has a very high cost.
But that’s another story. If your eyes aren’t glazed over by now—well, mine are.
Bottom line… most of the books are ones no other bookseller would take.
All books and no play makes Chuck a dull boy.
I feel incredibly dull. I try to make things interesting when writing these.
Yet another weekend working out with books all day on Saturday and Sunday.
Well, not all day Saturday. It was supposed to rain all day and all night. The temperature was to be in the high 30s. Around noon, Travis came up to me and said, “The snow is starting to stick.”
Snow?
There are no windows in the main part of the warehouse, so we work in a vacuum unless you make a trek to the front door or the loading docks in the back where you can view the outside world.
I looked at my phone. “Frederick 40 degrees. Rain.” Graphics on the phone showed raindrops falling rapidly. My eyes told a different story.
As the afternoon wore on, first one person, then another, then another left due to the weather.
My phone still swore it was 40 degrees and raining.
Travis was the last.
“I’m gonna leave at 3.”
I was pushing hard. Weekends are my best opportunity to get ahead. I could see some light—just a little—far ahead at the end of the tunnel. I didn’t want a fake storm to interfere with this opportunity.
About 4, I looked outside. It was pretty bad. I texted one of my neighbors and asked how things looked on the mountain. He sent back an image of his driveway covered in ice and snow.
I loaded the dogs into the old Jeep and headed home. It was yet another of this winter’s white-knuckle drives home.
The thermometer in the Jeep kept indicating the temperature was going down. I couldn’t check the lies on my phone since I was driving.
34 degrees.
33.
It dropped to 32 when I was a few miles from home. Fortunately, the four-wheel drive got up the mountain and onto my driveway. Going up is usually far less distressing than going down in ice or snow.
Sunday, I awoke, and the temperature was hovering around 32 or 33. The driveway was covered with slushy ice. Should I take the risk? Nope. I got the plow out and pushed the slush down, down, down.
Plowing event #9 this winter?
Sunday was a very productive day. I got a lot done. I was in a good mood and decided I could face one of those carts with the extremely ugly, old and often-crumbly Library of Congress culls.
“I can do this. Just force yourself to make decisions.”
Sure enough, on the top shelf I came across some of these.
Who knew there was such a collection over a hundred years ago?
A problem. A wonderful tortuous problem.
“I can’t deal with this now. I’m going home.”
How many more such things will there be? I’ll have to wade through volumes of things like obsolete bound French tech journals to find out.
The Ugly. The Bad. And, rarely, the Good.
Ernest and I are driving to Gaithersburg. It is a beautiful frigid morning. After the snow and rain and ice and slush and the virus last week, the sun feels good in the cab of the little box truck we call a “Cube.” We have two identical Cubes. There are over 8 additional vans as well. When we get this settlement behind us (please God, this week), I plan to buy another.
I finally pushed through the project to get numbers put on each vehicle and wooden paddles that serve as keychains that can’t be accidentally carried away. The paddles have numbers on them matching the number on the van. Prior to that, there could be confusion about what van and what key to use. Typical Wonder Book organization—all the keys were just dumped into a little plastic tub.
We’re going down to check on the demolition status at the store. There were some glitches last week that slowed things down. Now that things are set in motion, I’m anxious for things to move along.
The store has a very organic feel. As Carl expanded it room after room in the 1970s and 80s, he made odd nooks. (Its last incarnation was named Book Alcove. That was apt.)
On the way back now.
It is exciting. The scruffy old Book Alcove will get a beautiful makeover. There will be glass cases with collectible books. The exterior will be altered to “Make a Statement.”
Sigh… so much work ahead. That’ll snap me out of the funk I’ve been in since I got run over in Amsterdam and mortality gobsmacked me in many ways thereafter. I watched some of the Saturday Night Live 50th Anniversary special last night. One skit reminisced on how dangerous the city used to be with drugs and muggers. Now it is even more dangerous because of the motorized bikes, it was posited. The scene had silhouettes of bikes flying across the set in both directions.
The dam burst this week. Which is a bit counterintuitive since it is 13 degrees here on Wednesday morning.
Andrew is driving us to the Frederick store. Ernest is going to Gaithersburg. Yesterday, I went to Frederick alone, and Ernest went to Hagerstown.
The store subject orders have been slow for a few months. Why? Who knows? It is so unpredictable. Feast or famine.
This is a good time. The stores need purging of old or duplicate stock.
Today: Sci Fi, Mystery, Lit (hardcover and paperback), Medical, Kids, Science, Nature, Lifestyle (what’s that?), Chemistry, California, Tech History, Hiking, Wildlife…
The ability to accomplish this quickly reflects on the symbiosis of the 3 main branches of our 44.5-year-old book business.
The online sales, the brick-and-mortar stores and the Books by the Foot “book rescue” branch.
Between those three options, we can get good results for a lot more books than anyone could do alone.
This thank you was forwarded to me this morning:
Thank you! My four feet of classic literature arrived and I’m delighted with the choices. My home was destroyed in the Palisades fire and I lost 1,000 books. I will continue to buy more from your website as I put together a new home. I’ve been telling other fire victims about your website. It’s brilliant!!
Books touch people’s lives. We all know this since if you’re reading this, you’re almost certainly a booklover. Sometimes, what we do is more poignant than others. That’s certainly the case with the tragedy this person went through.
Now it is another Friday morning.
The kettle of water is hissing atop the woodstove. I can see the steam rising from it over the laptop, which is propped up on me in bed.
I so enjoyed the John Dickson Carr book I finished last week that I ordered a few more from WonderBook.com.
When the cramps awoke me 6 hours ago, I read some chapters of Below Suspicion to get back to sleep.
That was a mistake.
Carr puts in 6 or 7 plot twists in the first 4 chapters. I had to force myself to put it down.
In a perfect world, I could just stay in bed and read with dogs flopped up against me.
But my time is not my own. There are people and books counting on me.
The books are like the leaves that will soon begin emerging in the forest up here.
Another week, another month, another season…
Two doctor appointments I had this week went very well. Apparently, some of my fears were unfounded. Second opinions and not blindly following dogma can save… a lot of things.
Thinking outside the box can be challenging or uncomfortable.
Offering thousands of books for a buck?
That’s counterintuitive.
I wonder how many dollar books we’d have to sell for a dollar to break even?
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