Back in high school and early college I worked at a small used bookstore. I applied for the job on the recommendation of Emily and Jenny, my two best friends who already worked there. And yes, it was exactly as awesome as it sounds. Since I have a penchant for old 1970’s era science fiction, paperback mysteries, and the kind of Erma Bombeck books and even YA fiction that most people read once and then get rid of – this was an ideal job for me. Yes, it was a little like an alcoholic working at a bar. I cannot tell you how exponentially that job affected my personal book collection – even accounting for the owner’s “customer first” policies regarding newly acquired books. For the most part, I had access to all sorts of terrific used books.
But occasionally there were specific titles we did not have. As an almost entirely used book store that relied on trade-ins for most of its new inventory, our selection was limited. It was a small store and the owner liked it that way. But it meant that chance determined whether or not we had a specific title on a particular day.
So my friends Jenny and Emily and I would all pack into a car and spend a Saturday afternoon trolling the other used book stores in a 50 mile radius. This was also just as awesome as it sounds. (As you can tell, we were some of the most popular kids at our high school.) But whether or not any of these stores had a specific book I wanted also depended on chance.
Around that time I began to hear radio advertisements for an online used and out of print book retailer: Alibris. In the mid-to-late 1990’s online booksellers had began to move in on the market. When I first heard the ads, the company was still new (It started in 1998. Yes I was finishing high school. Do your own math.) I remember going online and looking for titles that I hadn’t been able to find anywhere else.
I was very excited to locate a copy of a (very indulgent, very silly) gothic called Storm House. This was a book I remembered reading with my sister Laura. We had found it in one of the boxes of books that would make their way to our house from my grandmother’s house in Santa Paula. (Because if someone loves you, they share your books with you. My large Agatha Christie collection also exists due to this same wonderful grandmother.) But over the years, somehow we had lost Storm House. Finding it again after all these years was wonderful. More wonderful than the actual storyline. But hey, I wasn’t picky at ten years old.
My bookstore-working days are now over. Lucky me though, the city I live in seems to be a book heaven. I can reach seven used bookstores (including one exclusively for comics) in just a short bike ride from my home. And this is leaving out the four new bookstores and seven other used bookstores within a ten mile drive. And I won’t even mention that my library has six branches – all in a three mile radius of my home. Am I bragging? Oops!
However, I still occasionally rely on Alibris. I am currently trying to collect every Dorrie the Witch book written by Patricia Coombs. And with all of Alibris’s vendors, I still have access to the widest selection. I love that I can set my preferences by price, condition, seller rating or even date published. I can keep a running wish list of what I am waiting to buy. Yes, you may say all this is available on Amazon. And a lot of it is. But Alibris has the credibility of being independently owned. And although many of the sellers use both theses two vendors, somehow Alibris manages to still have a better variety of choices for most titles. And believe me – I have searched on both.
Which leads me to the original reason why I started this post. Last year I started a new job buying books for a small college library. (Say it with me now – it is as awesome as it sounds). Mostly I rely on large vendors to supply our library with the academic titles we need. However I am regularly asked to purchase a title that is, for one reason or another, hard to find. My first place to look is always Alibris. And I even get to use their super-cool “Alibris for Libraries” site to do so. Because I am now awesome and work in a library. I don’t have to shop at the same site as the rest of the lowly peons.
I like buying from Alibris because it is hands off enough to allow you to get your work done without pestering you to buy more stuff that you are not interested in. But it is also hands on enough that I can say I am on first name basis with their library customer service contact. I choose to pretend that this is not because of an ordering fiasco last December that may or may not have had anything to do with my accidentally ordering three different books twice. In any case, their customer service rep saved my para-professional tuckus. And she did so with graciousness and even good-humor.
However I do have to admit that I am not their exclusive favorite customer. As much as I feel that I am. The truth is: they lavish this kind of attention on all their customers. Every one of their library customers is on first name with the customer service rep.
When I started working in this position the library had used Alibris in the past. But not very often. In fact, since I started doing the purchasing, our library's orders with Alibris went up so dramatically that we got their attention.
Yes folks, today I met with a sales rep from Alibris. A sales rep who came specifically to visit me in order to discuss my purchasing needs and show me exciting options on their website. It may not be quite like being cool enough to meet the Beatles. But it is like being cool enough that their tour manager makes a personal visit in order to book a show at your location.
My book-cool cache just increased.
