An Ace in the Hole, Part II
Barters & Bootstraps
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Gary Crooker started a business
with just a few dollars and a love of literature. Here's
how
WHY USED BOOKS?
"You can stock the titles you and your
customers love
without being a slave to the best-seller
list."
Do you find yourself lingering just that few extra minutes
in book shops or libraries, with a faraway look in your
eyes, long after everyone else is ready to go? Do the
people you are with seem to have to drag you away after you
have promised to stay in your favorite book haunt just
"five minutes more?" Do you always seem to gravitate toward
the table of books at yard sales and flea markets?
If the answer to any or all of these questions is yes, then
maybe the business for you is the one I explored and fell
in love with two years ago: owning and operating your own
used bookstore.
Why a used bookstore? Because you can get into the
business relatively easily and stock the type of literature
that you and many of your customers love without being a
slave to current best-seller lists. And in the used-book
business you can get started without the large outlays of
cash that are usually associated with the beginning phases
of a retail operation. I did it on a startup loan of just
$3,000.
Now instead of feeling guilty about hanging around book
sales and stores, I can do it to my heart's content, secure
in the knowledge that I am not languishing but working. I'm
not sure that all of my friends and relatives are convinced
of it yet, but as my business shows its (albeit modest)
profits, they are beginning to see the wisdom of it all.
If you have a love of books and know the difference between
Thomas Wolfe, Tom Wolfe, and Virginia Woolf, then take a
minute and I'll tell you how simple it is to build a
business that you'll leap out of bed to come to.
Planning and Stocking
First of all you will have to accumulate a stock of books.
But before you go off buying every used book in sight, give
some thought to what it is you want to sell. If you make
your offering too broad or too narrow you will end up
satisfying no one.
Your particular passion may be for signed copies by 19th
century African-American authors who lived in Atlanta. That
may be an admirable interest, but you might have trouble
finding enough other people who share it to make for a
paying proposition.
If, on the other hand, you set out to find, and offer for
sale, every book on every subject conceivable, you will end
up with a warehouse instead of a store. And you will still
fall far short of your goal. There are just too many books
out there. What I opted to do was run a general shop
focusing on areas of interest that other dealers claim to
be the most popular. Alphabetized fiction, the Civil War,
crafts, Native Americans, cookbooks, and children's books
are all among my most popular sections. Rare titles in
these categories are, by definition, hard to come by, but
desirable, much sought after, and still out there by the
thousands if you know where the hidi ng places are.
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