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From: wombat@ccvaxa.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Let's try to roll back the SF price
Message-ID: <1700011@ccvaxa>
Date: Thu, 26-Sep-85 20:42:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: ccvaxa.1700011
Posted: Thu Sep 26 20:42:00 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Sep-85 08:34:46 EDT
References: <1355@hound.UUCP>
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Nf-ID: #R:hound.UUCP:-135500:ccvaxa:1700011:000:2917
Nf-From: ccvaxa.UUCP!wombat    Sep 26 19:42:00 1985


And if you can't find an independent bookstore in your area, the nearest one
is as close as your mailbox. Some advertise in magazines like Science
Fiction Chronicle or Locus. Some will come to you -- if you go to a
convention, the attendance list might be sold to booksellers, who will send
you a catalog. Many send catalogs monthly or bi-monthly listing new books
received in stock, now and then going through older books, used and unused,
laying around the store. Unlike Publisher's Clearing House, though, if you
don't order something within five or six catalogs, they usually will stop
sending them unless you send a postcard indicating interest or send a couple
dollars for postage. If they don't have what you want, and it's still in
print, they'll order it for you. Some will maintain lists of books their
customers are looking for, keeping an eye open for them when buying used
books. Many will give little mini-reviews of books they or their friends
have read. (And if it's a real dog, Mark Zeising will tell you so.)

Note that some booksellers (David Aronovitz, for example) are mostly trying
to sell to collectors, and their prices will tend to run higher than
others'. If you just have to have a Gnome Press edition of something this
month, they're a good place to look, but if you just want any old version of
*Nine Hundred Grandmothers* you'd be better off ordering from one of the
more general-purpose guys. (But *nobody* has John Collier books.)

*Plug Time*
The places I've done business with have all been pretty good.

Mark Zeising in Willimantic, CN, runs a nice business and is our favorite.
He keeps a good stock of new books in and cycles through his backlist once
or twice a year. His catalogs are fun to read.

Robert and Phyllis Weinberg in Chicago (Oak Park?) have a good selection of
fantasy, horror, Sherlockiana, mystery, old pulps, and comics, as well as
SF. The backlist is a little weaker, but they put a trivia question in every
catalog (and award a prize to the first order with the correct answer).

David Aronovitz in Flint, MI, deals mostly in first and rare editions.
Useful to know if you decide to turn collector. You can also get things like
third edition hardback Cabell for reasonable prices.

Pandora's Books in Neche, ND, sent me a catalog yesterday for the first
time. They had semi-reasonable prices on hardbacks, but paperbacks were kind
of high.

Edward R. Hamilton (somewhere in CN) is like a one-man Publisher's Central
Bureau, with about the same prices and a little (but not much) more esoteric
stock.

I've also had a few catalogs from a place in England, but have forgotten the
name. Never ordered from them, though, because I was too lazy to get around
to getting an international money order.


"When you are about to die, a wombat is better than no company at all."
				Roger Zelazny, *Doorways in the Sand*

						Wombat
					ihnp4!uiucdcs!ccvaxa!wombat


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