First Impressions - 2014 Nov. - June

First Impressisons - November 2014

Events:

Upcomming Book Fairs



38^th Annual Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair

Sponsored by the ABAA – Booth #210

Hynes Convention Center, 900 Boylston Street.

Contact us for a free pass for admission!

First Impressiosn - October 2014

Events:

Upcomming Book Fairs

Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair


Seattle Center Exhibition Hall

Find us in Booth 503!

Home Office - Forbes, October 8, 2014

Sales Suffering? A Survival Guide for Lean Months

As entrepreneurs, we have the opportunity for unlimited income. But when sales go soft, the comfort of a steady paycheck can seem awfully attractive. And what happens when a red month turns into a red quarter? The future success of your business can all of a sudden seem in peril. When this happens, hopefully there is something within your control that you can do to turn things around. But sometimes slowing sales can be completely unrelated to you. Either way, there are some ways to survive these dry spells, so that you’ll be well on your way to recovery when sales pick back up.

Reduce Expenses – You have fixed expenses, but there are always expenses that could be curbed if you really needed to do it. Well, this is the time to do it. Trim expenses that are the least necessary: these will be different for everyone, depending on your type of business, so going through your expense categories might help you to identify areas that have been unnecessarily leaking money.

Tighten Up Your Advertising – This is a good time to evaluate your current forms of advertising or outreach, and see what has historically worked the best. For example, review your internet CPC advertising campaign to see where your budget is being used and if it’s being used effectively. This is not the time to cut back on advertising, since that might be the best way to increase sales, but you shouldn’t be spending money on methods that haven’t worked for you. Identify what has the most reliable return, and only start experimenting with something new if absolutely nothing is currently working.

Reduce Prices – If you really need cash flow, running a sale or promotion, or otherwise reducing prices, could drum up some new sales. This is sometimes daunting, since you mostly likely have heavily invested in your products or services. In times like these, however, your investments will only benefit you if they become liquid.

Reach Out To Your Customers – This could be a more proactive way to generate sales, but it’s also important to do to find out why there has been a sales slump in the first place. By contacting your customers directly, they might be able to give you perspective on what else they’re buying and why, or information on another market that has slumped, and that’s what’s now affecting you.

Dedicate More Time To Sales – As an entrepreneur or small business owner, it’s easy to get caught up in too many projects with too many details. Are you spending too much time on other tasks when you could be dedicating more hours of your day to sales? Delegate this other work to others if you are able, or set up a timeline so that you can tackle these other projects later. A little time management could go a long way, and right now you need to focus the precious time that you have.

It has been said that neither genius nor education can take the place of persistence. This is the time to be persistent, and analyze your current work habits until sales are on the up again. This post is short for a reason—get to it!

                                                                             

First Impressions - September 2014

Events:

Upcomming Book Fairs

York National Book Fair

Join us for Britain's largest antiquarian book fair!

We will be at Booth #114, so come and say hello! 

Home Office - Forbes, September 4, 2014

The 4 Biggest Mistakes I've Made as an Entrepreneur

Risk-taking can be synonymous with entrepreneurship. I’ve certainly learned from the risks that have paid off, but just like bad beats in poker, the easiest ones to remember are all the mistakes, flops, and failures. Read our epic fails below, and be glad this wasn’t you.

Spending Too Much on Inventory

I remember this like it was yesterday. My husband came home with exciting news: “We won The Trumpet Major at the auction today!” My response: “What???” We own a rare book company, and this was a book I was barely familiar with – aside from being by Thomas Hardy, and that the first edition was issued in 3 volumes by a London publisher, I really didn’t know that much about it. How much was this fantastic find? “$9,000!” I freaked out. This was a time when spending $9,000 on a single book was a huge deal, and especially since I wasn’t that familiar with it or knew the market for it. My husband assured me it was a steal at $9,000, and that we’d sell it for around $45,000, it being very rare, a high spot for this author, and in unusually fine condition. We couldn’t return it, so the best we could do was try to sell it…and wait…and wait…and reduce the price…and wait…and reduce the price some more…and I’ll cut to the chase—we still have the book. Buying this pricey book did set us back quite a bit, but luckily, that was not the only book we bought at that auction. Selling the other material really saved us from having to take more desperate measures to unload this one book. Buying a high-ticket item is always a risk until it’s sold, but since then, we do a lot more research on valuable material, especially before auctions, where it’s easy to get caught up in the moment and spend too much. We also continue to spread our investments among different types of material. For now, The Trumpet Major is still in our inventory until we meet the holy grail of Thomas Hardy collectors. And until then, I get to tease my husband about it endlessly.

 Doing an Expensive Trade Show

Running an online business from our apartment, our running costs were very minimal. We had our rent, our website, merchant services fees, and that was really about it. But in the book trade, most of the buying and selling happens at book fairs and other trade shows, so we decided to take a chance and pay, what was a lot of money for us at the time, the booth rent for a weekend book fair. We were still a start-up at this point, with little capital and a small inventory, so it was a financial stretch for us and we were depending on making at least our booth rent and hopefully a little profit. Our total sales at that book fair? A whopping $8. It was so scary to us and such a waste of our valuable capital that we didn’t do another fair until three years later. We used that time to build our customer base, increase our inventory, and learn more about the purpose of fairs– to network and buy and sell from colleagues, and meet collectors to discuss their collecting interests, regardless of whether they end up buying from you or not (but they usually do.) When we finally made our return to the trade show circuit, we chose fairs based on their reputation among dealers, and they have been much more successful for us. We now do about twelve shows per year.

Saving Money by Going without Health Insurance

Does skipping out on insurance payments of any kind save money? Sure it does, but only until you have a major accident. For me, it was being without health insurance when my appendix ruptured. Having to pay for this mandatory surgery was, of course, necessary because it saved my life, but it did indeed almost bankrupt us. Going without insurance of any kind is never really advisable, so play it safe and make those monthly payments.

 Buying a Stolen Collection

About five years ago, we made a house call for an impressive and substantial collection of modern first editions—inscribed F. Scott Fitzgeralds, William Faulkner dust jackets in fine condition, rare early Hemingway. You name it, this collection had it. Nothing about this scenario seemed even the slightest bit fishy- the owner was extremely knowledgeable about his books, many still had receipts of purchase inside, and some of the books were his wife’s, which had been passed down through her European family. The man was a wealthy business owner living on the Upper East Side, the president of his co-op board, and his home was full of other antiques as well as books, fine furniture and antique cameras. The book collection fit right in. He also wasn’t in a rush to sell—we took about 100 books on consignment, and paid him as each book sold. Naturally, debuting a new and fantastic collection such as this, it attracted a lot of attention and we sold about 40 books almost immediately. About a month later, another bookseller, who also had purchased some of this collection, called to inform us that this man had been arrested for stealing these books from a Vanderbilt heir. What?!? We were stunned, absolutely mystified and in disbelief. Shortly after, the police arrived at our apartment and informed us that they had to seize all the books, and we were to meet with the DA who was prosecuting the case. After talking to the detectives for just a few minutes, they knew that we had no idea the books had been stolen, but we still had to retrieve all the books we had sold so they could go back to their original owner. For us, having to pay back our customers without getting our money back from the thief almost bankrupted us. Lucky for us, he was a rich thief who paid restitution to us in order to decrease his jail time. Since then, we make all sellers sign ownership affirmations, but when dealing in rare and antique collectibles, buying stolen merchandise is something that can’t always be prevented. And as a seasoned colleague of mine advised, “If you’re not failing, you’re not trying.” The fact that we, a young company with limited experience and resources, were able to get in on this collection at all was pretty impressive in and of itself. If we had said no for whatever reason, and the collection turned out to be legitimately owned, that would easily have been the #1 biggest mistake we have ever made.

If there was no risk involved in owning your own business, there would be no mistakes to make. But there would also be no learning and no rewards. If you’re able to learn quickly from your missteps and analyze what went wrong and why, your business should be able to move forward.

First Impressions - August 2014

What's New:

 
27 Wagons Full of Books!

                

Events:

Upcomming Book Fairs

 Baltimore Summer Antiques Show

First Impressions - July 2014

What's New:

Special Catalogue! 10 Books by Virginia Woolf from the Library of Vanessa Bell

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was extremely close with her only sister, Vanessa Bell, throughout her life. Denied the formal education enjoyed by their brothers, the two sisters stayed at home, Vanessa painting and Virginia reading aloud. Vanessa was Virginia’s confidante, artistic collaborator and dust jacket designer, and caretaker.

After Virginia took her own life in 1941, the Hogarth Press continued to publish her work. Edited by her husband Leonard and designed by Vanessa, Virginia’s posthumously published writings are an extremely important and special part of her body of work. As Virginia was not alive to present them (with the exception of The Waves), and with Leonard’s copies mostly held by institutions, these books represent the closest possible association for this material.

PROVENANCE

 Vanessa Bell (1879-1961), then by descent to her daughter Angelica Garnett (1918-2012), thence to her two surviving daughters, Henrietta Couper and Frances Partridge.

After specializing in Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group for over 10 years, we are very excited and proud to present this catalogue.

For PDF, click here.

To request a copy in the mail, please email or call: info@bbrarebooks.com, (646) 652-6766.

Book Collecting News:

The Bold Dust Jacket Art of Paul Bacon

Paul Bacon (1923- ) is a prolific American graphic artist who the American Institute for Graphic Art (AIGA) hailed as having “invented the bestseller book jacket, as we know it.”  Bacon began his design career by creating covers for jazz albums in the 1940s, but he is best known for his “Big Book Look” of the 1950s-1960s, which employed large prominent hand-lettered text accompanied by a small, conceptual design. This created a polished look that made a book stand out on the shelves. Bacon’s strikingly simple designs for Meyer Levin’s Compulsion (1957) and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961) are prime examples of this aesthetic. These iconic designs are described by AIGA as “bold, resolutely commercial, and genre-defining.” Other notable dust jackets include Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962), Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint (1967), and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). In total, Bacon has designed jackets for over 5,000 books and covers for over 200 record LPs.

                                                                             

Home Office - Forbes, June 18, 2014

Customer Service Under Fire: Maintaining a High Standard When the Going Gets Tough

The customer is always right—right? If this adage of customer service seems overly simplistic, it’s because it is. What about when the customer is irate, has unrealistic expectations, or has violated a policy? It can be difficult to maintain a high standard of service when a customer starts pushing limits. Here’s how to keep your cool in any situation:

Maintaining a professional attitude is challenging when a customer is upset or threatening to take their business elsewhere. Worse yet, it’s human nature for emotions to intensify when we are being attacked. Your job, however, is to solve the problem by directing the conversation and getting the customer to go along with you. If you let them take you on their ride, the situation will undoubtedly escalate and you will no longer be in control. Most importantly, stay calm to prevent the situation from getting worse.

Next, listen carefully to the problem—when someone is upset, it can be very easy to shut down, and feel like they are talking at you rather than to you. Underneath this affront, however, is the root of the problem— if you can identify the core feeling behind their attack, you’ll have a much easier time of identifying with them, understanding the problem, and connecting with the customer.

Introduce yourself and your position so the customer knows who is attending to the problem. Having a point person who can see the entire situation through can also be immensely helpful. No customer likes to be passed around from person to person; even if you must bring in other members of your team, identify the parties involved and keep your customer updated of any new developments.

 Consider this example: “I’m not authorized to do that. I’m transferring you to concierge.”

Consider instead: “My name is Customer Service Pro from the front desk. Let me take down your information. My manager, Mrs. Manager, is working on this right now and will call you in 10 minutes.”

It’s not only what you say, but how you say it. Notice what happens when you’re in a difficult situation: most likely, your body will tense up, you might look uncomfortable or upset, and your voice may sound strained. Keep the mood light, practice smiling, and try to relax your body and facial expression. If you must reiterate policy, take a breath and do so slowly and clearly. Pretend you’re talking to someone you admire and trust, such as a family member or close friend. That way, you’ll be talking as you would to someone you highly regard yet are comfortable with, and you are more likely to be comfortable and less on-edge.

Consider this example: “I’m sorry, sir. We don’t allow flash photography here.”

Consider instead: “We’re so glad that you want to take photos, and we encourage you to take as many as you would like, just without the flash.”

Customer service challenges can arise if your customers have unrealistic expectations. Or perhaps the customer has made a wrong move, and you need to address it. The tricky part here is to do this while allowing the customer to still feel respected.

No matter what policy you are telling your customer about, chances are that any correction you make will make them feel embarrassed. At worst, they might become annoyed or even angry. As long as they’re still your customer, you should treat them with kindness and respect, regardless of what they did.

Consider this example: “This hotel has a strict no-pet policy. Your dog needs to leave the premises or we will have to check you out of your room.” (Yes, this really happened to me once. I felt less like a paying customer and more like a college student who just got busted for underage drinking in my room.)

Consider instead: “We love pets, but unfortunately we don’t allow them in our hotel. We have a list of boarding options nearby, and we’re happy to provide a referral if you need one, or help you make other arrangements.”

This is also the time to embrace flexibility. Yes, your policies are in place for a reason, and this is no way an endorsement to ignore them, but customer service is ultimately about flexibility and creativity. If you’re not working with your customer, you’ll be working against them, and they will definitely feel that pressure (and most likely not appreciate it.) Unless they do something so egregious that they are no longer welcome as your customer, they’re still a customer, and will only recommend you to others if they have a good experience with you.

Most importantly, after any customer service issue, review the situation with your supervisor or employees, so everyone at your company can learn from your experience. When it happens again, you’ll be able to anticipate what the customer is looking for, and solve the problem with less time and effort.

 
~ Sunday & Josh
B & B Rare Books, Ltd.
(646) 652-6766

info@bbrarebooks.com
www.bbrarebooks.com
Members: ABAA, ILAB & PBFA (UK)


Questions? Comments? Please email info@bbrarebooks.com