Brent The Seven Stairs

1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-3-98744-911-6
Verlag: OTB eBook publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 156 Seiten

Reihe: Classics To Go

The Seven Stairs is Stuart Brent's exuberant memoir reveals the strategies and beliefs that made him one of the nation's most colorful and revered independent booksellers. (Amazon)

Autoren/Hrsg.

Brent, Stuart

Leseproben

3
How to Get Started
in the Book Business
I had decided to become a bookseller because I loved good books. I assumed there must be many others who shared a love for reading and that I could minister to their needs. I thought of this as a calling. It never occurred to me to investigate bookselling as a business. Had I done so, I should have learned that eighty percent of all the hardcover books purchased across the counter in America are sold by twenty booksellers. If I had been given the facts and sat down with pencil and paper, I could have discovered that to earn a living and continue to build the kind of inventory that would make it possible to go on selling, I would need to have an annual gross in the neighborhood of $100,000! Even if I had had the facts in hand, they would not have deterred me. If vows of poverty were necessary, I was ready to take them. And I refused to be distressed by the expressions on people’s faces when I confided that I was about to make a living selling books. Sell freight, yes. Sell bonds or stocks or insurance, certainly. Sell pots and pans. But books! And I was not only going to sell books—I was going to sell real books: those that dealt seriously and truly with the spirit of man. I had finished cleaning and decorating my little shop before it dawned on me that I did not know how to go about the next step: getting a stock of books and records to sell. A study of the classified telephone directory revealed the names of very few publishers that sounded at all familiar. Was it possible there were no publishers in Chicago? If that were the case, would I have to go to New York? There was a telephone listing for Little, Brown and Company, so I called them. The lady there said she would be glad to see me. She proved to be very kind and very disillusioning. “No,” she said, “the book business is not easy, and your location is bad. No, the big publishers will not sell to you direct because your account is too small. No, we at Little, Brown won’t either. If I were you, I’d forget the whole idea and go back to teaching.” Everything was No. But she did tell me where I could buy books of all publishers wholesale, and that was the information I wanted. I hastened to A. C. McClurg’s and presented myself to the credit manager. The fact that I had a shop, nicely decorated, did not seem to qualify me for instant credit. First I would have to fill out an application and await the results of an investigation. In the meantime if I wanted books, I could buy them for cash. “All right,” I said. “I want to buy three hundred dollars worth of books.” “That isn’t very much,” the man said. “How big is your store?” “Well,” I said, “it’s fifteen feet long and nine feet wide, and I’m going to carry records, too.” He shook his head and, with a sidewise glance, asked, “What did you say your name was?” Then, still apparently somewhat shattered, he directed me to a salesman. I launched into my buying terribly, terribly happy, yet filled with all sorts of misgivings. Was I selecting the right books? And who would I sell them to? But I had only to touch their brand new shiny jackets to restore my confidence. I remember buying Jules Romain’s Men of Good Will. In fifteen years, I never sold a copy. I’m still trying. I bought Knut Hamson, Thomas Mann, Sigrid Undset, Joseph Hergesheimer, Willa Cather, Henry James—as much good reading as I could obtain for $298.49. I was promised delivery as soon as the check cleared. When the books arrived on a Saturday morning, it was like a first love affair. I waited breathlessly as the truck drew up, full of books for my shop. It wasn’t full at all, of course—not for me, anyway. My books were contained in a few modest boxes. And I had built shelves all the way up to the ceiling! Again, a moment of panic. Enough, my heart said. Stay in the dream! What’s next? The next step was to get recordings. In this field, at least, I found that all the major companies had branch offices in Chicago. I called Columbia records and was told they’d send me a salesman. He arrived a few days later, blue eyed and blond haired, an interesting man with a sad message. “No, we can’t open you up,” he said. “It’s out of the question. Your store is in direct conflict with Lyon and Healy on the Avenue. So there’s no question about it, we can’t give you a franchise. We won’t. Decca won’t. And I’m sure RCA won’t.” I was overcome with rage. Didn’t he know I had fought to keep this country free? Wasn’t there such a thing as free enterprise? Didn’t I have a right to compete in a decent and honorable manner? If I couldn’t get records one way, I’d get them another, I assured him. Strangely enough, he seemed to like my reaction. Later he was able to help me. But for the present, I was reduced to borrowing more money from my brother-in-law with which to buy off-beat recordings from an independent distributor. I brought my own phonograph from home and my typewriter and settled down to the long wait for the first customer. How do you get going in a business of which you have no practical knowledge and which inherently is a doomed undertaking to begin with? The only answer is that you must be favored with guardian angels. The first one to bring a flutter of hope into my life came into it on a September afternoon at a luncheon affair, under I do not know what auspices, for Chicago authors. There I encountered a distinguished looking white-haired gentleman, tall but with the sloping back of a literary man, standing mildly in a corner. I introduced myself to Vincent Starrett, bibliophile and Sherlock Holmes scholar. He listened attentively to my account of myself and took my phone number. A few days later he called to ask for more information about my idea of combining the sale of books and records. I pointed out that it was easy, for example, to sell a copy of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt if the customer was familiar with Grieg’s incidental music for the play. Besides, reading and listening were closely allied activities. Anyone with literary tastes could or should have equivalent tastes in music. It was logical to sell a record at the same time you sold a book. Mr. Starrett thought this was a fine idea, and to my shocked surprise, wrote a paragraph about me in his column in the Book Section of the Chicago Sunday Tribune. The Monday after the write-up appeared, I could hardly wait to get to the shop. I expected it would be flooded with people. It wasn’t. The phone didn’t even ring. I was disappointed, but still felt that hidden forces were working in the direction of my success. Mr. Starrett’s kind words were a turning point for me—I no longer felt anonymous. Some people did see the write-up—intelligent, charming, good people, such as I had imagined gathering in my tiny premises. Among them were two young women who were commercial artists. One day they complained that there was nothing in the store to sit on, and after I had stumbled for excuses, they presented me with a bench decorated on either side with the inscriptions: “Words and Music by Stuart Brent,” and “Time Is Well Spent with Stuart Brent.” Now I felt sure things were looking up. My next good genie and an important influence in my life was a short, bald gentleman with horn-rimmed spectacles who stood uncertainly in the doorway and asked, “Where’s the shop?” He was Ben Kartman, then Associate Editor of Coronet Magazine, a man as kind and thoughtful as he is witty and urbane. He came in and looked around, studied the empty shelves, and shook his head. He shook his head often that afternoon. He wondered if I was seriously trying to be a bookseller—or was I just a dreamer with a hideout? Surely I wanted to survive, didn’t I? Surely I wanted to sell books. Well, in that case, he assured me, I was going about it all wrong. For one thing, I had no sign. For another, I had no books in the windows. And most important of all, I had no stock. How can you do business without inventory? You can’t sell apples out of an empty barrel. I took all his comments without a sound. Then Ben said, “Sunday come out to the house. I’ve got a lot of review copies as well as old but saleable books. Even if you don’t sell them, put them on the shelves. The store will look more prosperous.” He gave me several hundred books from his library, which we hauled to the store in his car. The Seven Stairs began to look like a real bookshop. Ben Kartman also decided that I needed publicity. Not long afterward, my name appeared in a daily gossip column in one of the Chicago newspapers. Ben said that these daily puffers could be important to me, and this proved to be the case. Meshing with my association with Kartman was another significant influence—a man who certainly altered my life and might have changed it still more had he lived. He was Ric Riccardo, owner of a famous restaurant a quarter of a mile down the street from my shop, and one of the most extraordinary and magnetic personalities I have ever encountered. He was an accomplished artist, but it was his fire, his avid love of life, his utterly unfettered speech and manner, his infatuation both with physical being and ideas that drew the famous and the somewhat famous and the plain hangers-on constantly to his presence. He is the only great romantic character I have known. He first came into my store one day before Christmas. He wore a Cossack fur hat and a coat with a huge mink collar and held a pair of Great Danes on a...