An interview with Eyes of the Owl - UsedBQQKS.com

Biblio checks in with Eyes of the Owl - UsedBQQKS.com to learn more about their book business, collecting interests and more! To view and shop their inventory, click here.

When did you get started in bookselling?

My mother started a paperback book exchange in the late 1970's, with $50 and 200 books. Two months later she had $75 and 20,000 paperbacks. She went back to work and wanted me to run the store. I agreed, provided the decision making was mine... that the business would evolve to make money. Many of our credit-only "customers" were upset because my first change was that credit could only pay for 50% of any purchase, the remainder had to be paid with cash or a check. I tossed hundreds of ratty paperbacks in the trash. Then I bought some two dozen antiquarian books at our local library sale and priced them at 3 to 30 times our previous top price. Within a week of that purchase, store revenue had increased five-fold... and that was 1978.

What drew you to bookselling?

I was interested in reading from first grade onward. Like the rest of my school, we got our first library card in third grade, a blue bit of paperboard with a very low four-digit number... my first identification card! While there, I fell in love with books written by Stephen W. Meader and wanted to build a collection. It wasn't until I was 15 that I found the first... "Lumberjack" and it was on the shelves of my store! We ended up moving, packed everything up in cardboard boxes and stacked it in a barn. The following spring, everything was soggy; very upsetting. I had to start building a new inventory, and that is when I really started to be selective about what I purchased. I began selling out of booths and then online. My current shop evolved from a storage barn that I rented in 1994.

Did you have any mentors in becoming a bookseller?

In my early twenties, I apprenticed myself to book dealers in nearby towns, Michael Daum in Ossipee (later Chocorua), and George Wren in Freedom. My bookselling superpower was organizing books in a logical fashion so people could find interesting materials more efficiently. Their revenues increased and they paid me occasionally. I learned much about what sold, what was unusual, how to treat books kindly, how to gauge the success of a business, how to do a book fair. Those skills continue to serve me well today.

What are your specialties as a dealer?

Although my shop handles media of every description, I have always loved being outdoors, and books about venturesome people who have adventures. That interest really became more focused during my years at Camp Belknap in the early '70s. Summer camps, their activities and history continue to interest me, as does high adventure pastimes, mountaineering, rock climbing, together with canoeing, sailing, and the like. Local area histories, trail guides for the White Mountains and Lake Winnipesaukee, Lakes Region publications, these are my specialties.

What's the most amazing book you've ever sold?

Hmmm... is it the first edition of the Hobbit that I bought in a group shop and sold to a collector in England? Perhaps it is Campbell's Poems, published in the early 1800s and sold to a dealer in Scotland. Maybe it is the signed book of poetry I bought with my last pocket change in the bargain bin of a Buenos Aires bookstore that I sold to a university library in Spain. Oh, wait! Then there was the North African travel guide that I sold to the National Library of Australia! Better yet, I sold a first edition of the AMC White Mountain Guide to an avid local bibliophile. Then there was the first edition Boy Scouts of America Handbook written by Ernest Thompson Seton and published in a special red velvet edition in honor of a visit to New York City by Baden Powell... my one and only sale on E-bay. This list could go on!

What is your favorite part of being a bookseller?

For me, it isn't so much about the books, although I enjoy them greatly, as about the people who obtain them and why they are interested in various obscure subjects. Every part of this business can be a joy, or it can be a pain. Take tourists who can view a store with thirty sections and nearly 15,000 items in under two minutes... really? Really. Then there are customers who walk in with five dollars and leave with seven items, overjoyed to have found a unique place, a great value and made a personal connection with the owner. Connecting folks to long-lost memories, or to long-sought-after treasures has to be the greatest joy a bookseller can experience.

Do you have an open storefront or have you in the past?

Eyes of the Owl - Used Books and Media began with a heavy focus on fiction under my mother in the garage on our rural property. Non-fiction engaged me more and my shop reflects that today, with books of every description, vinyl records, CDs, DVDs, audio books, cards, ephemera, framed art and photographs. Customer purchases of $50 or more through Biblio help my business survive, but the vast majority of transactions are from visitors who find the shop cozy and charming, or cluttered and chaotic; depending on their personality. Assorted tools and treasures are tucked among 10,000 volumes arranged by topic or genres. Parents love my children's section because it gives them a chance to recharge and find something for themselves. Young adults love finding old hair-metal, folk, rap and jazz while getting a terrific value.

If so, do/did you have any bookstore pets?

My neighbor was a powerful, yet tiny, wisp of a woman named Betty. She became shop manager and would handle drop-in customers, or clean the place. Typically one of her five cats (Reddy, Moany, and Pip, to name three) would creep into the shop and dart into the loft in hopes of finding a mouse. She wouldn't notice until feeding time around dusk, and then pitiful meows from behind the garage door would answer her calls. Today, in her memory, I have a cat-lovers chair, complete with a pillow that says "Never trust anyone who doesn't like cats."

What is the funniest / strangest / scariest thing that ever happened in your store?

A boy and his mom wandered into my shop one fine summer day. She was shopping and he was enjoying his first visit to a used book store. During a break from helping mom, I noticed the boy doing a headstand on my wing-back chair and took a quick photo. After asking his mother for permission, I posted the photo on my website.

What is your favorite bookshop (other than your own)?

Traveling internationally and finding used book stores in the process is a passion of mine, but my favorite vendors have to be the street kids in Cairo who laid out half dozen items on the sidewalk. I bought a dusty, water-stained book on butterflies and sold it some years later to a member of the New Hampshire Audubon Society. Shakespeare and Company is situated across the river from Notre Dame in Paris. This is a terrific place to browse, but the upstairs feels more like a hippie hangout and museum than part of a true used book store. I purchased a Kipling piece off a high shelf in their coffee shop in 2017 and it is still available through my listings on Biblio.

What do you personally like to read? Collect?

In addition to owning UsedBQQKS.com, I also am a teacher-librarian, as well as a proofreader, editor and writer. I read fiction to experience the emotional lives of the characters that handle realistic events in realistic ways and cope with realistic emotional consequences. I despise characters who endlessly agonize over psychological issues that arise out of mental imbalance, or fate. Most of what I collect is nonfiction related to long-term interests and current writing projects. Yesterday I read a manga by Sakae Esuno titled "Future Diary" about a boy who writes inanely about his life tethered to a (now antique) flip-style cell phone, until his fantasy life overwhelms reality. My copy was purchased in Cancun, Mexico at "Needful Things." Now I am hunting for volume two, in Spanish of course... buena suerte.