I prefer to be happy

Before I forget, happy birthday to Bilbo and Frodo Baggins! Yep, born on the same day. I'll bet Hobbit parties are something to remember.

Before I begin today's entry, let me ask a favor: if you read and like my blog, please subscribe. It does not mean much except to me. Thanks!

I was thinking today about a friend of mine who is also a bookseller. Let's call him...Raoul. (Any other Hunter S. Thompson fans out there?) A few weeks ago I was at a book sale, not so much because I needed inventory, but more because it's one I attend every year. I had been there about forty-five minutes or so, pushing my shopping cart and perusing the books, when Raoul kind of shambled over holding four books.

Raoul is a great bookseller, from the old school. He knows his stuff inside and out, he can tell printing editions on books I have never heard of from across the room. The guy is good. But since I have known him, which is about 15 years, Raoul has been growing increasingly morose. If I didn't know him so well I would fear that he might harm himself. How come he's like this? Because Raoul wants to sell books like he did in 1990, and that world is gone forever. He does not like the new world of technology and he does not understand it. Nor does he want to.

For more than a decade I have been offering to school my friend on the latest techniques in selling via the internet, how to set up a web-site, which database to use, which sites produce the best results for what stock...in short, I was going to give him all of the tools and skills which I had to learn completely on my own when I started billthebookguy.com in 1998. But Raoul consistently has declined. I offered again at that sale a few weeks ago, and once again he declined. Yet Raoul is utterly miserable, because he isn't selling anything and he isn't making the money he needs to make.

Raoul has seven storage lockers filled with books he has bought that he has not yet priced or processed. According to him, he has not laid eyes on some of them for more than 15 years. In all of that time he has been paying storage for them, but they are nothing more than dead weight on his business. And when he told me what he thought they might be worth I almost fainted...I won't reveal that here, but suffice to say it is well into six and possibly even seven figures, he has no idea.

If I had inventory in the six figure range sitting around doing nothing, I would work until I dropped marketing it, making a profit and re-investing the money so that I could retire early and be happy doing things I want to do now. Like travel! (Nice how I worked that in, wasn't it?) For most booksellers, the hard part is finding grade-A inventory. We wait outside houses early on Friday and Saturday mornings for estate sales to open, we get to book sales early so we can have first pick, we pay extra to get in early, we do all sorts of things to find good inventory. Raoul does not have that problem, he already has the inventory. Raoul just doesn't want to market it.

His one and only source of selling on the internet is Amazon.com. There is no reason to go into the various venues available to booksellers, there are many, but of all of them Amazon is the worst for the seller. They take the most commission and keep the most shipping allowance. They are, in short, the least profitable. But they ARE the easiest. They are the easy way out.

Raoul could have been rich by now. He could still earn a very good living, even at this late date. He has done the hardest work by learning his craft and amassing his inventory. But years and years of beating his head against the wall with poor business practices has left him drained and defeated. He would rather work for someone else for a pittance, that someone else being Amazon, than invest a minuscule bit of time and capital to do something different.

As for me, I would rather try something new, even if I fail. Because maybe I won't fail. Maybe I will succeed. Or maybe, I just prefer to be happy.