Old books Fair 2010
At work, we spent the last week preparing, again, for the annual Old Books Fair in Sastamala. This year theme was lyrics, meaning both poetry and music.
Boss, Asko, added too many books again (he's never been in the Book Fair himself) and it was a pain even trying to fit them all on two tables and a small shelf provided. Coworker Veli had created a good category system for the rented 15 boxes that would have fit. Asko added 10 more boxes with categories of his own.
At the first day another coworker, Anniina, overslept and could not join us later (the van filled with books was the only potential transport and it had to be in Sastamala before 8:00 AM). Jari, the driver of the previous year (and the library's sysop) took the van and me and Veli arrived in the car of Veli's girlfriend Sanna. Two hours was almost enough to organize the tables.
As usual, the Book Fair was in the local school and in a large tent on its yard (and we were fortunate enough that we again got a place in the tent; the temperate was already around 25 degrees Celsius and kept rising). There were lectures and seminars and a 4-hour book auction (oldest Bible in Finland was sold for 400 € which sounds bit too cheap even for me).
And, as usual, the antiquarian bookstore Makedonia had managed to hog two places in the tent again. Maybe they had paid somebody off when their last year's ruse was discovered...
Inside the school building there were also stands for organizations like the Finnish Literature Society, Small Publishers Society (including Vaskikirjat, one-man publishing house of a friend) and appreciation societies of Mauri Sariola and Mika Waltari.
Stand for first-day stamps
Table of the Mauri Sariola appreciation society. Late Sariola wrote mainly what today would be called police procedurals
Part of the exhibit of bookplates
People could write the name of their favorite book to this wall
Books of Vaskikirjat
As for our stand:
Veli at the first day, pondering possibilities
Anniina at the second day. Note the size of the water bottle...
My decision to take along also new books, the kind of books we'd normally had taken to a flea market, turned out to be correct; they sold very well. Veli adjusted and readjusted the books almost in a nervous manner. He also repaired some of the books that were damaged en route. We rarely get older books in mint condition.
I had tried to make sure that somebody could not pay 10 € for something they could resell in eBay for hundreds of dollars and we had some collectibles with us. They included two card game guides from the 1930's (both worth about 25 €), art books (somebody had asked 150 $ in eBay for one of them), old engineering manuals (worth 30 €), old Kazach jewelry portfolio worth 300 $ and old edition of the Seven Brothers. However, buyers were more interested about books like the Finnish editions of Jung's Answer to Job and old Finnish "sleeper awakes"-story from the 1930's (worth 25 € but we sold it for 15 € because of cut pages). And somebody finally bought the 80 € book Mika Waltari had coauthored; we had taken it along two years ago when Waltari had been the theme of the Book Fair.
Of course the customers kept asking for books we didn't have (including the Finnish editions of T. S Eliot's Wasteland which, as far as I know, might be rather old). Among the weirder questions were old list of Finnish farms from 1960's, pedigree horses registry, old railway timetables and the official vehicle registry of the year 1967.
Owners of other bookstores also bought from us. However, I noticed that one of them also displayed a sign that his bookstore was for sale. Last year he had considered quitting already.
The fact that we could take only cash might have affected sales a bit. The fact that not all prices were divisible with 5 € caused some small change problems.
Crowd in the tent
The news that the poet Tommy Taberman had died reached us at Saturday; it affected our sales only in the way that we sold the other Tabermann book we had. I did not notice any increases in the prices - probably nobody would have had the gall.
I took food with me, two others used the (too expensive) cafeteria. I also met a couple of old friends, including old RPG buddy.
The hot weather probably contributed to the fact that Veli eventually lost his temper when we were reloading the van at the end of the fair. When he tried to direct the reloading of the books into boxes according to categories (good idea as such), a three-way argument ensued. Then the band preparing for their forthcoming gig in the tent begun a soundcheck and nobody heard what he was saying. I tried to mediate but apparently in vain. Eventually Veli decided to leave on his own when we had managed to reload the van.
So me, Jari and Anniina took the van back to the library. All of us were too tired to unload it again. So I just counted the money (over 1500 € which is very good) and went home to sleep.
Today, I had to unload the van on my own because no one else showed up. I managed to call up the regular driver of the van to help me return the rented boxes.
Boss, Asko, added too many books again (he's never been in the Book Fair himself) and it was a pain even trying to fit them all on two tables and a small shelf provided. Coworker Veli had created a good category system for the rented 15 boxes that would have fit. Asko added 10 more boxes with categories of his own.
At the first day another coworker, Anniina, overslept and could not join us later (the van filled with books was the only potential transport and it had to be in Sastamala before 8:00 AM). Jari, the driver of the previous year (and the library's sysop) took the van and me and Veli arrived in the car of Veli's girlfriend Sanna. Two hours was almost enough to organize the tables.
As usual, the Book Fair was in the local school and in a large tent on its yard (and we were fortunate enough that we again got a place in the tent; the temperate was already around 25 degrees Celsius and kept rising). There were lectures and seminars and a 4-hour book auction (oldest Bible in Finland was sold for 400 € which sounds bit too cheap even for me).
And, as usual, the antiquarian bookstore Makedonia had managed to hog two places in the tent again. Maybe they had paid somebody off when their last year's ruse was discovered...
Inside the school building there were also stands for organizations like the Finnish Literature Society, Small Publishers Society (including Vaskikirjat, one-man publishing house of a friend) and appreciation societies of Mauri Sariola and Mika Waltari.
Stand for first-day stamps
Table of the Mauri Sariola appreciation society. Late Sariola wrote mainly what today would be called police procedurals
Part of the exhibit of bookplates
People could write the name of their favorite book to this wall
Books of Vaskikirjat
As for our stand:
Veli at the first day, pondering possibilities
Anniina at the second day. Note the size of the water bottle...
My decision to take along also new books, the kind of books we'd normally had taken to a flea market, turned out to be correct; they sold very well. Veli adjusted and readjusted the books almost in a nervous manner. He also repaired some of the books that were damaged en route. We rarely get older books in mint condition.
I had tried to make sure that somebody could not pay 10 € for something they could resell in eBay for hundreds of dollars and we had some collectibles with us. They included two card game guides from the 1930's (both worth about 25 €), art books (somebody had asked 150 $ in eBay for one of them), old engineering manuals (worth 30 €), old Kazach jewelry portfolio worth 300 $ and old edition of the Seven Brothers. However, buyers were more interested about books like the Finnish editions of Jung's Answer to Job and old Finnish "sleeper awakes"-story from the 1930's (worth 25 € but we sold it for 15 € because of cut pages). And somebody finally bought the 80 € book Mika Waltari had coauthored; we had taken it along two years ago when Waltari had been the theme of the Book Fair.
Of course the customers kept asking for books we didn't have (including the Finnish editions of T. S Eliot's Wasteland which, as far as I know, might be rather old). Among the weirder questions were old list of Finnish farms from 1960's, pedigree horses registry, old railway timetables and the official vehicle registry of the year 1967.
Owners of other bookstores also bought from us. However, I noticed that one of them also displayed a sign that his bookstore was for sale. Last year he had considered quitting already.
The fact that we could take only cash might have affected sales a bit. The fact that not all prices were divisible with 5 € caused some small change problems.
Crowd in the tent
The news that the poet Tommy Taberman had died reached us at Saturday; it affected our sales only in the way that we sold the other Tabermann book we had. I did not notice any increases in the prices - probably nobody would have had the gall.
I took food with me, two others used the (too expensive) cafeteria. I also met a couple of old friends, including old RPG buddy.
The hot weather probably contributed to the fact that Veli eventually lost his temper when we were reloading the van at the end of the fair. When he tried to direct the reloading of the books into boxes according to categories (good idea as such), a three-way argument ensued. Then the band preparing for their forthcoming gig in the tent begun a soundcheck and nobody heard what he was saying. I tried to mediate but apparently in vain. Eventually Veli decided to leave on his own when we had managed to reload the van.
So me, Jari and Anniina took the van back to the library. All of us were too tired to unload it again. So I just counted the money (over 1500 € which is very good) and went home to sleep.
Today, I had to unload the van on my own because no one else showed up. I managed to call up the regular driver of the van to help me return the rented boxes.