Author Archives: paulie

New DVD on Paul Laurence Dunbar at Esowon Bookstore

Posted on by
Reply

Brand New DVD 118 minutes
$22.95

“Paul Laurence Dunbar: Beyond the Mask” is a documentary on the life and legacy of the first African American to achieve national fame as a writer.Born to former slaves in Dayton, Ohio, Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), is best remembered for his poem, We Wear the Mask” and for lines from “Sympathy” that became the title of Maya Angelou’s famous autobiography “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”  A clip of Angelou reciting Dunbar’s poem on the David Frost Show is featured.

Dunbar’s story is also the story of the African American experience around the turn of the century. The man Abolitionist Frederick Douglass called “The most promising young colored man in America” wrote widely published essays critical of Jim Crow Laws, lynching and what was commonly called “The Negro Problem.”
Yet, to earn a living, Dunbar worked as an elevator boy and wrote poems and stories utilizing “Plantation Dialect.” He also composed songs for Broadway that bordered on blackface minstrelsy.
More than 8 years in the making, “Beyond the Mask” received support from Ohio Humanities and major funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. It is a production of the Central Region Humanities Center based at Ohio University.

Hopefully the DVD will stimulate some of the young folks to grab a book and read his poetry and prose.

Thanks for doing business with us.  Now over 30 years its hard to express how much we appreciate your support.  Now more than ever We at EsoWon think the need for an alternative source of knowledge is needed.  Our books represent some of the finest minds in our Nation’s History and Your continued support of our store keeps good books like these in print.

Sincerely,

James, Tom & Sam
and the loyal friends of EsoWon who help us whenever called upon.

ABAA Bookfair Coming To Pasadena

Posted on by
Reply

FEBRUARY 9TH, 2018 – FEBRUARY 11TH, 2018

Pasadena Convention Center

The 51st California International Antiquarian Book Fair will be held on February 9-11, 2018.

Featuring the collections and rare treasures of over 200 booksellers from over 30 different countries the California International Antiquarian Book Fair is recognized as one of the world’s largest and most prestigious exhibitions of antiquarian books. The California International Antiquarian Book Fair gives visitors the opportunity to see, learn about, and purchase the finest in rare and valuable books, manuscripts, autographs, graphics, photographs, print ephemera, and much more.

The Bookseller’s Bell of Doom Rings For Barnes and Noble in Santa Monica, CA

Posted on by
Reply

Huge Rent Increase Forces Flagship Store to Close Its Doors

by Paul Hunt

 

Dateline: January 11, 2018

Today was the sad ending for the beautiful Barnes and Noble book store in Santa Monica.  At the end of a 20 year lease, they faced a large rent increase that made the profitability of the store impossible,  Everyone has heard of the expression “Greedy Landlords”.  In many areas, the wonder is that there is any room left for ever more rent increases before the commercial and retail locations just shut down.  The rent-increase euphoria that has seized the corporate real estate world is mind-boggling.  They must be led by younger folks, with no past memory.

Midnight Special

There are many factors driving this insanity.  Remember the old Midnight Special book store on the Prominade?  The store was a leftist carnival, a literary beacon for the Progressives.  The building was owned by an old guy who was, let’s say, beyond “progressive”.  He kept the rent down and let the store flourish.  I don’t remember any store quite like it, and if you dug politics you were in socialist paradise.  Then the old ownier died or went into a long-term care facility.  The owner’s “kids” (not so young as the owner was in his 90s as I remember), got an offer they couldn’t refuse.  A major clothing company offered to pay around $45,000 per month rent.  The Midnight Special was paying about $5,000 at the time, so  guess what happened?  The “kids” got a windfall.  The progressives got the capitalist boot.  The kicker is that the clothing company, Levis, did not look at it as a retail store.  They considered it as a “billboard”, a place to showcase their jeans.  Compared to a two-minute television commercial in the Los Angeles market, the retail space is cheap, even at the outrageious price they are paying. So how can any bookstore compete with that?

Here is a blast from the past, an old timer shouting out to the current real estate corporations.  I am probably not the only one who remembers the Third Street Prominade in the 1980s.  Most of the stores were empty or filled with third rate shops, none special or exciting.  The Prominade was dead.  It was packed with homeless people.  It was a little scary, with a lot of crime. Think it can’t happen again?

Bad Times in San Jose

The bad times are forgotten by the next generation, especially if they didn’t have to live through them as adults.  Back in the 1960’s there was a terrible recession in California.  I had a sales job that took me around the State.  L.A. was “economic bad,” but when I got into San Jose, I was floored.  Miles of businesses were gone, hundreds of them empty, closed down.  Supermarkets gone, huge shopping malls gone, car dealers gone.  Miles of recession devestation, an economic disaster. Driving down the main drag was like driving into the end of a Zombie movie.   So be advised, it can and might happen here.

The Barnes and Noble store in Santa Monica was a beautiful bookstore.  It had three levels, elevators, escalators, great lighting, and a stunning design.  The event room on the second level was the best I have seen in a book store, a mini-auditorium where many great authors came to discuss their works and sign books.  We filmed there on occassion.

In other articles on BookStoreMemories, we have covered some of the issues that have impacted B & N:  the online monopoly amazon.com being the main culprit, the destroyer of bookstores.  But  B & N has itself made many past mistakes that go into the mix. We are nevertheless sad to see Barnes and Noble close their Santa Monica store, it was a wonderful store and a great place to shop.   There is now a literary hole in the soul of Santa Monica.

Video Tour of Barnes & Noble Booksellers on the last day, Click Below:

 

Wall Street Site Questions Barnes & Noble

Posted on by
3

B & N Revenue Plunges From 6.75 Billion to 3.89 Billion Yet Still Paying An 8% Dividend – Big Shareholders Suckiing Out $$$$ ?

Seeking Alpha, a critical wall street and financial website, has questioned Barnes and Noble’s continuous dividend payout yielding 8%, asking if this is sustainable during recent huge drops in revenue.  Read the entire article, CLICK HERE.

Some comments on Barnes and Noble and Amazon for historiical background as follows (not part of the Seeking Alpha article):

B & N in past years made more bottom line money on the game business they purchased. The game sector, which was around 10% of revenue threw off about 90% of the profit. This has changed, but shows that their costs of selling books was always higher than the thousands of independent booksellers that they muscled out of business with the superstore fad. They failed to exploit their lead in the game business, which is now mainly online. They also failed years ago to play fair with the used book market when they had a chance to make a great deal with a company called abebooks. So guess who finally swooped in to buy abebooks? You guessed it, amazon, which now has a basic monopoly on online used book sales. B & N’s partnership with European giants in barnesandnoble.com also went south with huge losses until they were forced to buy out their Euro partners. 20 years of bad decisions has led to this moment. Is the high dividend just the mechanizim for big shareholders to suck the carcass dry?

Pickwick to B. Dalton to Barnes & Noble to Gone Forever.

Nobody wants to look under the hood of the B & N engine, where you would find that the 8 cylinder engine is down to 4. For instance, in Southern California, they have closed many of their best store locations. Gone is B & N from Pasadena in the Old Town District, gone is B & N from the Encino area of Ventura Blvd. And don’t forget the huge loss they got when they bought B. Dalton books, which operated 798 stores in malls across America. Their mis-management closed all of them, including the big Hollywood Boulevard Store that was called Pickwick Bookshop that B. Dalton had bought. How soon you all forget the decades of bad management, probably over 1,000 stores closed, the thousands of employees laid off, the financial losses to shareholders, the mess with the European media giants in BarnesandNoble.com. The question is really: Was B & N a stock fraud for the last 20 years, or just the worst management ever seen?

Barnes and Noble does a lot of things right. They have great selection. They have a nice clean website. They have a lot going for them with Nook, self-publishing, and many other strategies. They have nice Starbucks cafes, wi-fi, and good locations. So how can they improve and survive? Various articles point out the disaster from bad upper level management. Add to the list the recent dumb idea of in-store beer and wine restaurants.

They can turn some things around by having more in-store celebrity author events, use video marketing on social media, live stream the events from their stores with easy ordering from home couch potatoes, and everything to get folks into the stores where impulse buys will help the bottom line. For the stay at home crowd, they should compete with amazon by selling used, rare and out of print books. They did this at one time, with thousands of great vendors who dropped shipped. The program could be re-started to compete with amazon. It went away due only to bad management at the top level. Amazon has a lot of flaws and weakness in the way they treat their vendors. By being fair, B & N could lure many thousands of them away from amazon and add a huge income stream. Forget the beer, go with the books.

Amazon, which has a monopoly on used book sales in the U.S. and a stranglehold on new book sales, continues to erode sales at Barnes and Noble. Even President Trump has recently commented on amazon’s more than cozy deal with the U.S. Postal Service.  What he failed to mention was not only does amazon get special postage rate deals, but it also has the post office delivering mail on Sundays in selected cities.  This has got to be a loser for the Post Office, it totally obliterates the economy of scale needed for sustainability.  What is interesting is to go way back in the history timeline to the 1950s.  The Post Office delivered mail twice a day during the week in Los Angeles, and I assume, most other cities.  What happened to that?  We always think our civilisation as getting better every year, when the truth is far different.  Not only has the Post Office deteriorated, closed thousands of offices, etc., but now they seem to be tied into a losing deal with the amazon monopoly.

Let’s hope tha 2018 will bring some sanity back to the world. It’s just my opinion, but: Amazon is a monopoly and should be broken up.  Google should be seized by the U.S. Government and the search engine made a national public utility.  Barnes and Noble needs to get its act together, it has opportunities and possibilities, but the prognosis for them is somewhat grim.  Happy New Year everyone!

What do you think?  Bookseller and Book Lover comments welcome!

Update January 4th, 2018.   Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS) today reported that total holiday sales for the nine-week holiday period ending December 30, 2017 as declining 6.4%.  Comparable prior year store sales also declined 6.4% and online sales dropped 4.5%.  The stock price tanked to $6.50 per share.  A grim picture indeed.  The question now becomes can Barnes & Noble survive at all?  Is there even any time left for a new management turn-around plan?

 

 

Update on The Magic Door IV Bookshop

Posted on by
Reply

Good News – The Magic Door Bookshop Still Open

by Paul Hunt

I recently talked with JoAnn Kaiser to get an update on the story we ran back in July, 2017 called Conspiracy Dudes, Scary Scientology Greet Thetans, and Murder Above the Bookstore. The good news is that JoAnn is going to keep the book store open for the foreseeable future.  She is pulling a lot of great books from Dwain’s storage and so a lot of new arrivals are being put on the shelves.  She has been getting help from a few wonderful folks who volunteer to help her. So make a special trip to her shop and support her by buying some great books.

Regarding the young man who murdered Dwain, he was 17 1/2 at the time he committed the crime.  Now he is 18 and will be tried as an adult.  More good news as far as I am concerned.  I don’t wish to seem mean-spirited in any way, and I understand that the Kaiser’s knew the man since he was a toddler.  He may have a mental disorder, but my opinion is that booksellers are an endangered species, and woe be it to anyone who disturbs that delicate balance. My best wishes to JoAnn Kaiser and all that she has been through.

Dwain and JoAnn Kaiser

Magic Door IV 

155 W 2nd St
Pomona, California
Phone (909) 472-2991
Hours are 1pm to 8pm, Tuesday through Saturday and 2pm to 8pm on Sunday.

 

R.I.P. William Dailey

Posted on by
2

Long Time Los Angeles Bookseller

William Dailey has had a long and intense relationship with books. Before opening his first bookshop in 1975 with partner Victoria Dailey he worked for legendary Los Angeles bookman Jake Zeitlin where he developed his life-long interest in rare books. Following in Zeitlin’s footsteps he continues to deal in a broad list of subjects including literature, medicine, early printing, typography, bibliography, and alchemy. Bill split with his former wife and partner in 1990 and opened his shop on Melrose as Dailey Rare Books. Over seventy catalogues have been published but business is now conducted primarily by the internet and book fairs.  The Melrose retail shop was closed in 2007.

 

 From Nicole Panter via Facebook December 16, 2017
 I am sorry to tell everyone that my darling William Dailey passed away yesterday at around 10:40 am. He was hit by a car three blocks from our house and I am told he died on the scene. I am beside myself with grief. The last thing I said to him when he left the house was “please be careful crossing the street.”

From Deanne Dailey Hansen via Facebook:

My brother, William Dailey, was a prominent rare book dealer and a leading authority on the subject. He donated a large collection of rare books on vegetarianism circa 1547 to 1970 to the Lilly Library at Indiana University in Bloomington. Last year, he and his girlfriend, Nicole Panter, traveled (via Evansville) to Bloomington where Bill gave a talk on the collection at the Lilly Library. Nicole recorded the talk and it is available on YouTube for those of us who would like to see Bill again!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVOoY6J2UhE&t=68s
Billl’s website Is:http://www.daileyrarebooks.com/

Bill’s book store from 1990 through 2007 was:  Dailey Rare Books, 8216 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood, CA. 90046

Bill Dailey’s last book talk at the Lilly Library where he donated a large collection of books on vegitarianism.

Bucks on the Bookshelf Resumes Broadcast Saturday

Posted on by
Reply

WBFI Radio Show on Books and Bookselling Resumes Saturday

Saturdays Pacific Time is 10am to Noon. Steve Eisenstein is the host of this great show for all book people.

Steve says

MY GUEST TODAY IS NO ORDINARY “JOE” His name is Joe Corso. His awards are of olympic proportions. He has written 31 books which resulted in 32 awards. Which translates to a 4 time top 100 best selling author. Want to pick his brain I do, so join us for a great interview Saturday November 25th. For some early details Corsobooks.com

We also will be answering several questions we have received while we were off air the past two weeks. PRIZES WILL BE POSSIBLE TODAY. WE HOPE YOU WILL JOIN US FOR AN
AFTERNOON OF BOOK TALK. got a question or comment give us a call 1 727 498 0459. It is really nice to be back live Saturday’s were not the same without you.
In the second photo we prove our theory. THERE IS NEVER ENOUGH SPACE FOR BOOKS!!

No automatic alt text available.

 

Call in Number:   1 727 498 0459. 

Go To www.WDBFRadio.com

 

Nutty “Ling Ling” Autograph Law Replaced

Posted on by
Reply

Assembly Bill 228 New Law, Replaces Former Anti-Business Autograph Law

ABAA Waged a Successful Campaign for Booksellers in California

Thanks to the actions of the ABAA and other booksellers, the loathsome law that made it almost impossible to sell autographed books in California is now history, replaced in an “emergency” fashion by the State of California and signed into law.  This new law makes it clear that only sports and entertainment autographs were the target of the previous bill, and the new bill excludes signed books. The new law still requires dealers who are selling sports memorabilia or entertainment memorabilia, including signed photos, to follow strict guidelines by posting notices offering return privileges and other consumer protections.

Here is the link to the State of California’s new law regarding autograph materials, with an introduction and Legislative Counsel Digest.  The entire new law is at this link, so you can print out the new law and study it.  It is much better for booksellers than the former law, named after Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang that basically was so onerous that the sale of autographed books was halted by many California booksellers who were justifiably afraid of the severe consequences of being trapped by legal tricks and sued for 10 times the value of the book simply for not following strict guidelines.  The old law punished folks for making technical mistakes, not for selling bad autographs.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW AND PRINT NEW AUTOGRAPH LAW.

 

The amazon.com Puerto Rico Pancake Mix Affair

Posted on by
Reply

Hurricane Maria Causes Negative Review and Unreasonable Expectations

by Paul Hunt

 

Where’s My Pancake Mix?

The crazy systems at amazon.com are sometimes so baffling  that you have to wonder about the faceless technocrats who implement them.  Any dealer knows that at amazon, the customer is always right, even if the customer is a cheating, lying thief, or worse.  The competitive system for book dealers and pancake mix sellers is so strong, and so weighted to “the customer” that the entire universe of sellers live in constant fear of getting bad reviews.  The way amazon has done this is through their “star” system.  They have figured out that if one dealer has five stars, and another has three stars, the volume of orders will go to the company with the highest number of stars.  This is to force the dealers to do anything to get a high star rating, even if an incident occurs that is totally due to an unreasonable customer.

I’m not saying that booksellers or other dealers on amazon are perfect.  There are always two sides to a story.  Sometimes customers are really justified in their complaints.  Often it is for merchandise that is defective or not as described, or a late shipment.  We live in the Now.  We want something and we want it NOW.  If amazon customers don’t get it NOW, they flip out.  Patience is something from the last century, not applicable to 2017.  The irony of this behavior is that it only seems to apply to merchandise.  Where’s all the complaints about the sixteen year long war in Afghanistan?  The schizophrenic public is only upset when the NOW is about something they ordered on amazon.

This story is not about books, it’s about a missing box of pancake mix.  It is the extreme of the customer complaint syndrome on amazon, but all who sell on amazon will identify with it.  It begins on Sunday September 17th when an amazon dealer, The Shelburne Country Store, receives an order for pancake mix to be shipped to Puerto Rico. The next day, Monday, the order is sent Priority Mail.  It can’t get any faster than that.

Unfortunately for the person who ordered the Pancake Mix, Hurricane Maria hit the island on the 20th, which ended mail service along with anything else.  The Island was basically destroyed, as we have all seen on television.  The customer, though, was not happy.  The pancake mix had not arrived.  She fires off a complaint to amazon that reads: Item has not arrived yet. I guess is due to Hurricane MARIA.  Please Check. She also leaves a ONE STAR unhappiness review for the seller, Shelburne Country Store.  WTF?  Like the little shop in Vermont has any control of mail not being delivered in the worst Hurricane to hit Puerto Rico since 1928.

Hey, we shipped it already.

On October 2nd, the customer managed to sent another missive to amazon:

All incoming mail is available to Puerto Rico. Customers are receiving mail via pick up at Post Offices throughout the island or by limited delivery service by carriers. The following shows where customers can pick up mail or where delivery has resumed.

After checking some information on the internet, Shelburne Country Store replied:

I checked up on that last night. i am actually amazed at how quickly the Post office can recover. That said, the delivery so far is only for packages that were already on the island. Today is the first day that they will start to receive packages that were delayed in New Jersey.

I just have a tough time with a customer who feels this is a review of the seller. Time to be a duck, let it roll off, and move on….

The customer is still not happy. It is amazing that the Post Office is functioning at all, and in due time, the package of pancake mix will be delivered. Maybe other things are more important than pancake mix.  Like water and life saving medicine.  Meanwhile, the seller is stuck with the one star rating for this unreasonable expectation.

Another seller had a similar experience when Hurricane Irma blew into Florida on September 10.  The seller, Sarcastic Redhead, tells about her amazon experience:

We had an item that was due to be delivered to the keys. The buyer bought it just before the hurricane thinking it would not be as bad as it was. Her house was wiped out. It is still sitting in a warehouse in S Florida. I have contacted everyone from the post office there, the liaison’s office and consumer affairs. The said it is in S Florida in warehouses with all the rest of the mail and they are working through it. 

The buyer’s home was wiped out so we wanted it sent back to us so she could repurchase. She could not find our phone number so she left negative feedback (then found it and called us). I contacted Amazon EIGHT TIMES to get this removed as sellers were SUPPOSED TO BE protected for this (I referenced the notification and even sent a screenshot of it). I couldnt get more than a form response saying it wasnt covered under feedback removal guidelines. I marked it urgent, asked to escalate to a supervisor – nothing, nada, zilch. Now the buyer was kind enough to have removed it but customer service would not. 

Dont assume they will follow their own policies – they wont.

These strange tales about amazon’s baffling customer support system illustrates what can happen when a monopolistic corporation puts in place a system that is defective toward their own sellers, and leaves little room for any adjustments.

The NOW generation has gotten tremendous power through amazon’s star system.  And even if it is an unrealistic expectation due to a Hurricane, the seller is liable to get a bad Star Rating and lose thousands of dollars of orders because they have one star less than their competitors.  We can’t wait to see what happens when amazon replaces the faceless technocrats with faceless Artificial Intelligence robots in the customer service department.  Maybe amazon will send out a drone strike against the sellers who drop to three stars or less.  Hey, just kidding about that.   Not.

 

The Barnes and Noble Censorship Two-Step Dance To Oblivion Starring Milo Yiannopoulos

Posted on by
Reply

The Big Book Chain’s Self-Defeating Censorship Throws Huge Chunks of Cash to Their Dreaded Enemy amazon.com

by Paul Hunt

Sometimes you just have to shake your head in disbelief and wonder just how stupid some of the executives at big corporations can be?.  How did these morons ever rise to their positions?  Why do executive boards continue to pick guys to run a book company who have no experience in the book business?  More importantly, why hire a CEO who has no understanding of the field the company is in?

Barnes and Noble has had a series of mis-steps in the last couple of years.  The previous CEO decided that what was needed was for the bookseller to open up restaurants and bars inside their stores. They thought it would be nice to have folks sipping wine and browsing through the stacks.  A bad idea if there ever was one.  The stores are big on children’s books and young adult books, the last thing they need is a bunch of drunks or tipsy fobs populating the aisles.  They have opened several “test” locations but I think that idea will be a wash out.  The executives behind that bold move were canned and a new crowd brought in.  Things have gotten worse.

The flamboyant Milo Yiannopoulos has a new book out, called Dangerous.  Say what you want about this ever fascinating, outrageous self-promoting and offensive author, but he is a popular guy in some quarters. He was so controversial that a big gang of thugs did major damage to U.C. Berkeley do keep him from speaking.  The home of the Free Speech Movement.  Yeah, right.  No more “free speech” in that neighborhood. Enter the big bookseller Barnes and Noble.  Not to be outdone by the Berkeley street gangs, they have refused to stock Milo’s new book “Dangerous”.  This move of censorship opens a big area of discussion, and disgust with B & N.

How many times have we been down this road?  How many Henry Millers have caused crushing censorship?  How many displays in public libraries across the land to make controversial material available?  How many headline-grabbing legal battles?  How many years has the American Bookseller’s Association put on their famous “Banned Book Week” promo?  Booksellers know why.  It’s in our basic bookselling genes to have available the many different ideas of our culture and in fact all political and cultural ideas put out in books.  So B & N won’t stock the book “Dangerous”  They will “order” it for you, but not actually have it on their shelves. This is the big achievement of the new regime at B & N, censorship by refusing to stock a controversial book, in this case, a book called “Dangerous”.

The word in Wall Street circles is that B & N may be up for sale.  Maybe one of the reasons is that they don’t have anyone leading the company who knows a damned thing about selling books, or the ethics of bookselling, or why booksellers and libraries should have books that are not necessarily “popular”.  So who is reaping the benefits of this lunacy?  Amazon, of course.  “Dangerous” has sold over 100,000 copies online, and is a best seller in many parts of the book world.  The cash is flowing into amazon.com coffers.  Does B & N somehow think that people are going to flood into their stores because they are NOT stocking “Dangerous” ?

Meanwhile, that wild and crazy guy Milo, is putting on one of the best promo campaigns you will ever see.  TV appearances, street guerrilla theater in front of the other sad sack in this case, Simon And Schuster publishers, who pulled out of the book deal with Milo and is now being sued, has lost face, and has lost a small fortune.  Simon and Schuster, now owned by CBS, which also owns Pocket Books, Scribner’s Sons and Athenium, seems to have caught the censorship disease first, even before B & N. The drama goes on every day, with Milo on Facebook, Milo in the News, Milo taking shots at B & N for not stocking the book, Milo dancing in the streets of New York with his followers. Sales of his book get better and bigger.

All of a sudden, the financial analysts and bean counters are trying to figure out if B & N stock is worth more than eight bucks a share.  And oh, BTW, amazon.com is selling for over $1,000 per share. Looks like another brick and mortar headed for boot hill, in this case helped along by their own insane doings.