Where do the books that surface into the used book market come from? Some rise from the lowest realms, picked from dumpsters or eviction piles, packed into garbage bags by denizens of alleys and transported in grocery carts to be resold on corners. Others descend from the highest, auctioned off in marble halls after the death of a collector, the stuff of newspaper articles and memoirs. But most commonly an unwanted book will travel from bookshelf to yard sale, and then to the donation box at a church, library or thrift store. There it will be piled with hundreds of other discarded books in a basement shop, or prepared for the annual sale. Here enters the book scout.
Most scouts that I have known are men, many of indeterminate age. There are a few women as well, and I must count myself among them as I scout for my own store. They range from the pathetically small scale, such as Peggy, who lives on the Chicago El and finds a few paperbacks a week to resell for a pittance, to sophisticated operators utilizing ISBN scanners that give them real time prices and sales rankings for tens of books at a time. They mob library sales to the point where many libraries have created elaborate rules and in some cases banned their devices in an effort to keep the peace. They are known to arrive at estate sales in the pre-dawn hours to obtain a precious numbered scrap of paper for early entrance.
Are these cut-throat scrambles really worth it? In most cases, yes. Because the books at these sales are indiscriminately priced at a dollar or less, finding a handful of gems in the piles can bring a very nice return. But there are a finite number of sellable books in every pile, so the scout must learn how to spot them quickly and grab them first. Having a deep knowledge and remarkable memory of valuable books and authors is helpful, as is having a rotund gut and an unpleasant odor. But the electronic device has become absolutely essential for any serious scout, for the fluctuating prices of hundreds of thousands of titles are impossible to remember or predict.
Most of the scouts one encounters these days sell for themselves on the internet. A few, however, still sell to other book dealers, continuing a centuries old tradition. Some are notorious in their regions. In Chicago, there is Pete.
Booksellers groan as they spot Pete's form outside their windows, frantically conveying overstuffed bags of books from the curb to their doors, haggling with the cab driver (most certainly not leaving a tip), grunting and wiping the sweat and snow from his bald crown into his remaining limp shoulder length hair. He will prop the door open with one of his bags, despite the freezing cold, despite the number of times he has been told not to do this, and barge through lines of customers with his dense shoulders. Many dealers have banned him from their shops, but a few have not, either out of pity or because the process of banning him is actually more difficult than simply buying a few of his books and sending him on. Like an impish toddler Pete has a remarkable ability to get away with whatever he likes by raising such a fuss that it isn't worth the effort to deny him.
He will have bags and bags of books of all levels of mediocrity, and he will insist that the buyer examine every one. (Often a book of worth will surface in one of his bags, but he will snatch it back and hide it away.) Rumors about his life abound, but few things are certain. He lived with his parents until well into his forties. I still remember the shrill nasal voice of his mother, who would call the bookstores looking for him. "Is Peter there? This is his mother!" And if he was there he would emit a low groan and roll his eyes like a teenager before dutifully trudging to the phone. A story goes that one day the ceiling in his mother's kitchen started to crack under the weight of the books in his room. She was unable to force him to leave, so she sold the house without telling him and moved out. Pete wasn't seen for a while after this, and was living in a storage space while morosely looking for an apartment when he resurfaced.
He constantly complained about the soreness in his back, the result of nights spent on the floor of his room. Why did he not sleep in his bed? Because it was covered in books of course! Sometimes piles of them would fall on him as he slept. He would relate these events as one would describe a storm in the night. To Pete the arrangement of books in his room was as much an act of god as the weather. Any suggestion to the contrary would be met with baffled anger and a sigh of frustration. He disliked sleep, and would often mention the large doses of ephedrine he would take to avoid it.
An old story circulates that Pete actually had a bookstore once. The problem was that he didn't want to sell any of his books, would stare down customers as they browsed, then refuse to let them purchase what they had found. Eventually he stopped opening the store and hung up a "By Appointment Only" sign. However he wouldn't answer the door or the phone, fearing it was his landlord attempting to collect the rent.
Did he ever read his books? "I look at parts of every one! I open them up and read a few paragraphs!" was his offended response when asked. The only interests he ever mentioned were figure skating and LSD. He seemed to have some occult inclinations, and wore a holographic medallion around his neck that he refused to speak about. One bookstore clerk in a fit of exasperation asked Pete if his medallion would make him disappear, and if so, would he please rub it?
I hear that he comes around less often now, and many of the dealers who once bought from him have retired. Some day his hoarded pile will also be frantically picked through by scouts, then dispersed around the globe...
Posted by: Adrienne Eaton