Interview
with Harriett Logan
Interview by
RoseEtta Stone
Harriett
Logan founded Loganberry Books in 1994. Loganberry is a thriving
independent used and rare, as well as general bookshop specializing in fields
such as children's and illustrated books, women's history and literature, and
the fine and performing arts.
Loganberry,
a derivative of Harriett's first and surname, was her old college nickname.
It seemed an appropriate name for her business too because, as she explains,
"Loganberry is also a fruit... which makes great jam and wine. Well,
jam and wine goes well with books, right? What doesn't?"
If you're searching for that favorite old book that you fondly remember from
childhood, or if you're thinking about becoming a book dealer yourself,
Loganberry is one of the most welcoming sites to visit on the Web.
What
strikes first-time visitors to your web site is your obvious and unmistakable
love of children's books. What inspired that love?
Favorite children's books occupy a sacred place in the memories of most adults.
I started collecting books when I was in high school (my first collectible
purchase was a first edition of A Writer's Diary by Virginia Wolf), and
within a few years some treasured classics from my childhood found their way
into the collection.
My mother announced that she was collecting children's books around this time,
so I asked her if she had one of my favorites, Ben and Me by Robert
Lawson. When she replied that she didn't, I told her that she didn't have
a children's book collection yet. So Mother discovered the great Robert
Lawson, and worked on collecting all of his books. Our interests fed off
each other, and we shared what we learned, and just started reading AB Bookman
and dealer catalogs to get a feel for the market. While learning the best
sources for buying books, we also tended to buy good deals when we saw them, and
so had already begun amassing decent inventory before plans for opening
Loganberry developed.
Rarely,
Harriett, have I come across a web site that has so much to offer, yet is so
tastefully designed. Does such an attention-grabbing site translate into
success, business-wise? And is updating and maintaining the appearance of
a site as extensive as yours a full-time job in and of itself?
The website IS a bit of a monster. I designed it myself, and am forever
revamping it, changing, adding, and projecting for future growth. I hope
that it is easy and informative, as well as fun to use. I do have repeat
customers, so that's one mark of success. Of course the website will never
be finished, because by design there are always more things to add. And
yes, it is indeed time consuming.
One of
the interesting things there are the hundreds of queries that you call
"Stumpers," from people not recalling titles, authors, and/or story
details, of books they remember from childhood.
It was all a fluke, really. It started back in 1996 when someone sent me a
book request seeking one of those long-lost but most precious childhood
memories. She knew the outline of the story, the color of the book, and
that the main character's name was Melinda. I recognized the book as Sally
Goes Shopping Alone, and so quoted her a copy for sale. She was
ecstatic at my reply (no wonder it had taken her so long to find the book!), and
was most surprised to realize that she remembered the name of the character
wrong, because her name was also Sally.
Wow. I held onto the e-mail message because it amazed and amused me.
I noticed that I received many requests like hers with no title or author
information, and was astonished by how many I could answer. So I started
posting the conversations, and found that even those I couldn't answer might be
answered by people out in cyberspace. So that's how the Stump the
Bookseller page got started.
In
your opinion, are men as interested in recapturing childhood memories through
old books as women are? In other words, do you receive as many inquiries
from men as you do from women?
As for stumper submissions, I think I get about 60% from women and 40% from men
(not that I have a formal accounting of these ratios), so it's fairly even.
I could make generalizations about women being more nostalgic than men, or girls
reading more than boys, but I don't know if those generalizations are actually
true, so I'll refrain.
When you or the usual stumper solvers can't identify the book(s), are there
other sources that can be accessed for answers?
There's an MSN message board called ExLibris where users can post memories and
stories of children's book nostalgia that serves a similar function to
Loganberry's Stump the Bookseller service. Librarians are good resources
too, of course.
If it
takes you quite a while to locate the books people query you about, has it been
your experience that, in the interim, they search and find the books elsewhere,
on their own?
Of course. Despite the success rate of Stump the Bookseller, I often fail
to make a sale from the service. There are also many people who don't want
to buy the book in the first place, they just wanted the mystery solved.
This is one of the reasons why there is now a nominal $2 posting fee for
queries. Time is money. The stumper fee is deductible from the book
price, though, if purchased from Loganberry.
Do you
think your unique personalized, interactive relationship with, I assume,
customers and visitors to your site, is another feature that makes the site, and
by extension, your business, so popular and successful?
Yes, of course. I think that's true with any business, and small
businesses need to work harder and be friendlier and more responsive to retain
customer loyalty.
But the
fact that you're so knowledgeable about old and out-of-print children's books,
remains. Other than those you remember from your own childhood, how and
where do or did you learn what the hundreds (thousands?) of children's books
published in bygone eras are about? How and where did you find
biographical data about all of their authors? And finally, unless
unearthing this material is an ongoing project of yours, approximately how
much research, over how long a period of time was required?
Research is always an on-going project. I don't pretend to know everything
about children's books. That's how the Stump the Bookseller concept
started: I was often stumped! But there are many great resources to
begin your research, the best being Barbara Bader's American Picturebooks:
From Noah's Ark to the Beast Within. For biographical information,
there are references like Bertha Mahony's Illustrators of Children's Books
1744-1945 and Anita Silvey's Children's Books and their Creators.
The Internet is an invaluable reference source, too.
Do you
also read vintage children's books that you're unfamiliar with or have long
forgotten, on an ongoing basis?
I
try to, but of course I never have enough time to read all that I'd like.
But I've made some fun discoveries by reading things that I receive many
requests for that I hadn't read as a child.
Could
you share a few of those discoveries with us?
No
Flying in the House by Betty Brock was one of the first Book Stumpers
solved. It was still out of print then (it has since been reissued in
paperback), so when I first got my hands on a copy, I sat down to read it.
It's a charming story of a young girl named Annabel who discovers that her
ability to kiss her own elbows means she's a fairy. Her companion Gloria
is a small white dog, and Belinda the cat is the sinister messenger who teaches
Annabel that she is a fairy and must choose between the real world and the fairy
world. Since first solving this stumper, I've had scads of additional
requests for it, each stumper told a little differently and with varying
details. But I can usually recognize and identify them now.
Miss
Suzy is another Most Requested title that I hadn't read as a child.
Who can resist a squirrel who keeps a clean house and sings "Oh, I love to
cook, I love to bake, / I guess I'll make an acorn cake." Besides, my
goddaughter is named Suzie. Miss Suzy's Easter Surprise, a later
sequel, isn't requested as often, but is every bit as good, if not better, than
the original Miss Suzy. Both out-of-print, of course, and well
worth the search.
Then
there's Loganberry's book club, which lends itself to a number of questions:
How unique are book clubs in your business - do many children's book
dealers/sellers have one? And what has the response to yours been - is it
successful enough to, for example, pay your web site fees each month? To
rephrase that: Is the club financially worth all the time, energy, and
effort you invest in it?
I don't know of other used book dealers who have a book club like mine, but of
course a book-of-the-month-club idea is an old American marketing tool. I
probably spend more time on mine than seems savvy, but that's because I hand-pick
the titles for each recipient according to their individual tastes, and that
simply takes time. Gift-wrapping and packaging takes time, too, but
members are repeat customers by definition. So I think it's worth it.
The web
site, the book club, all the research and writing about authors and books,
posting and answering queries from people searching for remembered old books,
acquiring new books to sell, etc., etc., - do you do it all yourself, or do you
have a staff?
It's basically just me. Mother helps buy, and Audry used to help catalog,
quote and shelve, but she's moved away now and I'm hesitant to replace her with
someone less knowledgeable. Good help is hard to find! Besides, I'm
cheap.
I did,
though, get two perhaps contradictory impressions from your site, Harriett:
A) That you eat, sleep, breathe, live, and dream children's books.
And B) That you really, really enjoy and love doing what you do. So
my questions are: Do you work at your business, seemingly 24/7, because
you love the business that much? Or is it that the business of children's
books is so demanding that you work at it 24/7 because that's what it takes to
succeed, and stay ahead of the competition?
Yes, I love my job. And yes, being independently employed usually means
that your business directly reflects how much time and effort you put into it.
It usually requires a lot, and it's usually quite rewarding. So I wouldn't
say those observations are contradictory, but rather related: you need to
work hard to succeed with a small business, and there's no reason to work that
hard unless you love it.
If
someone reading this is thinking about becoming a children's book dealer, what's
the easiest and quickest way to learn the ropes? Are online courses or
information available? Or books; catalogs; journals, etc., they should
subscribe to? Or associations/organizations they should join - like, for
example, the American Booksellers Association (ABA)?
Or would you advise them to just plunge right in, design a web site, and
begin selling (or trying to sell) children's books online? And learn
though experience - by making mistakes, most likely, as they blunder along?
There's no coursework that I know of, but the ABAA does offer a week-long
seminar for used booksellers (used to be in Denver every August). We all
make mistakes as beginners, and it's important to learn from your mistakes.
Any book dealer should learn how to identify first editions (there are tools for
this: Ahearn and McBride both have guidebooks), and experience helps us
learn. Read other dealer catalogs, research your pricing (the web makes
this really easy), and learn to write bibliographic information and condition
grading correctly. An encyclopedic memory doesn't hurt either.
Would
you also tell us exactly where and how you find and buy the old, used, out of
print, hard-to-locate, children's books you sell? Do you do that all on
your own, or are you part of a whole network of dealers that do searches and buy
books from each other?
There are many sources for books: university or charity book sales, estate
sales, house, garage and moving sales, auctions, customers and locals selling
books (the yellow pages pay off here), other dealers and catalogs, book fairs,
library sales, Salvation Army and local thrift stores, eBay and a host of
internet book sites. Publications like AB Bookman and Bookseller used to
be the standard reference for buying and selling between dealers, but with the
explosion of the Internet, both of these publications are defunct. But
searching for a particular title is faster and easier with consortium sites like
abebooks.com.
You
also have a physical bookstore. How much of a disadvantage, in terms of
loss of income, is not having one in addition to an online site?
Bricks and mortar stores have a high overhead to maintain. But it's also
the only way to have a browsing public find something to buy that they didn't
know they wanted. Besides, you have to keep the books somewhere.
Mail order catalogs are great, but hard work and time consuming to produce.
I've always wanted to have the time to make one... I guess I have a website
instead. But the website still only accounts for about 20% of my sales.
A recent
New York Times Magazine article about book dealers claimed that they can
actually get rich very quickly from online book selling. Can that really
happen very quickly? If not, how long can it approximately take, if ever,
until a new book seller actually starts making money?
I've never heard of a used book dealer getting rich. There are some great
finds, to be sure, and eBay has created many starry eyes. But these things
ebb and flow, and the bottom line is always a reflection of how much time and
effort you have invested in the project.
With
increasingly more and more favorite old children's book titles being reissued
today, are most customers still paying large sums of money for the original
editions; buying the newly published back in print books; or buying them used,
at greatly reduced rates?
Collectors
will always pay a premium for a first edition in fine condition. Not all
titles are considered collectible, of course, but if there's demand enough for a
reprint, there's probably a collectible audience out there somewhere. If
you want a copy to read to your two year-old, buy the affordable,
non-collectible copy.
When
someone requests a book that is now back in print you, if I'm correct, refer
them to Amazon, or to the publisher who reissued it, or offer to get the book
for them yourself. Which option do people commonly choose?
I never, ever refer anyone to Amazon. Support your local booksellers!
Like me!! This isn't a question just of small market economies and keeping
independent booksellers alive (although that would be reason enough), but of
publishing in general. If Amazon or Barnes and Noble don't promise a
publisher adequate advertising/space/promotion for a book, then the quantity of
the printing may be reduced, or indeed cancelled. In short, by supporting
the monstrosities, you further their power to the point where 2 or 3 retail
giants will actually control WHAT gets published in this country. That's
bad news for everyone. Although I am primarily a used book dealer, I'm
happy to order new books for people. I use Baker and Taylor as my
distributor.
You sell
children's books - old and new, at competitive prices, don't you? You
don't offer the lowest, or greatly discounted prices? That being the case,
couldn't people buy the same books cheaper on their own from at least a dozen
different sites on the web, for example, Abe's Books, eBay, or, forgive me, even
Amazon?
I
consider my prices to be competitive, and to be priced fairly at market value
for their editions and conditions. There may be better deals if you're
willing to do the grunt work, and certainly lesser copies will sell for less.
Abebooks is comprised of book dealers like myself: they are a consortium
of many independents, and not an entity of themselves. eBay's sellers are
mostly novices (but not entirely), so you have to be wary of descriptions, and
sometimes you can get lucky. Amazon, let me repeat, is not a used
bookseller. Used booksellers (not unlike me) and novices (i.e., anyone)
post their goods there for sale either on MarketPlace or zShops, and of course
Amazon will profit from these sales. As with anything else, there is a
range of prices and services available, and bargains require more work on your
part. You generally get what you pay for.
As
with most fields, there's so much competition in yours - so many other old,
used, antiquarian, out-of-print children's book sellers and web sites.
They all can't possibly be doing well, can they? What's your secret of
standing out from the crowd and being so successful?
There is indeed a lot of competition. I think my niche lies in the
originality of the website, with the Stump the Bookseller service and unique
used book club, with the quirkiness and individual voice that is inherent in any
sole proprietorship, and with focus. I hope these will be successful tools
for my business.
Finally,
Harriett, are there a few tips or any general sort of advice you can give
beginning book sellers about the vintage book businesses?
Learn the field. Describe book conditions harshly, so the only surprise is
a pleasant surprise. Focus. Buy well and sell better.
Communicate with your customers. Find your niche, develop a strength in
knowledge and inventory, and stick with it. Books are fun, and great
friends. Don't be greedy about price, but don't throw away your sales
either. Do your homework, and keep learning.
*Visit Harriett's wonderful online bookshop at: http://www.loganberrybooks.com.
RoseEtta Stone is the Editor/Publisher of (the) X - RATED
CHILDREN'S BOOKS NEWSLETTER: Book Reviews and Interviews with Banned,
Censored, Challenged Authors of Banned, Censored, Challenged and Burned
Childrens' Books. Visit by clicking here: X-RatedChildrensBooks.
