When You Realize You Want an Awesome Library and Not Another Bookstore
Coming to grips with a changing dream
As many of you know (especially if you read my bio), I’ve spent a fair amount of time as a bookseller. Most of that time has been of a guerrilla bookselling nature; I’ve scouted for books everywhere from estate sales to thrift stores to used bookstores where the dust was so thick on some of the volumes it took a sandblaster to remove it and then sold what I acquired, usually after much handwringing over which ones I could reasonably afford to keep.
On numerous occasions I’ve also succumbed, as bibliophiles are known to do, to the urge to keep everything I found. The collector vs. bookseller internal battle always rages below the surface, with the seller side usually winning out in times of financial distress; at least three times over the past 25 years I have amassed a personal library of over 3,000 books that was reduced to one bookcase in a matter of days (there are some books I will never, ever sell).
Then there was the brief, shining moment where I finally owned a real brick-and-mortar bookstore for a glorious 15 months before poor location, a lack of readers in my city, and a terminal case of book snobbery (if they were selling it at Wal-Mart, I refused to carry it) closed my doors and sent me into…
