The following is the third of several excerpts Shelf Awareness is running from An Alphabetical Life: Living It Up in the Business of Books by
Wendy Werris (Carroll & Graf, $15.95, 078671817X), which will be
published November 5. A former bookseller and longtime sales rep,
Werris also works as a freelance author escort and photographer in the
Los Angeles area. For more about the book and author, check out her Web site.
When
she became manager of the children's section at Pickwick, Werris
occasionally had contretemps with the legendary Lou Epstein, the head
of the store.
At twenty years old my sense of whimsy was just beginning to emerge,
fed heartily by the ecstatic creativity in those children's books. Each
day I sorted through the cartons that arrived, filled with fairy tales,
fantasies and books about nightmares hiding in closets. I'd
become lost in the beautiful images before me while shelving both the
new and backlist titles. Happy that I was finally allowed to do the
reorder buying for my department, the only interruption would occur
during one of my ongoing battles with Lou Epstein over the Classics
section.
Mr. 'E,' as we fondly called him, had been president of the Pickwick
Bookshop chain (which grew to sixteen locations in Southern California)
since opening the Hollywood store in 1938. He was deservedly known as
the granddaddy of Los Angeles bookselling. From a hole in the wall
joint on Sixth Street in downtown L.A., where he sold used books, he
built an empire of fine independent bookstores. When I met him he was a
seventy-year-old walking, breathing human library, with a great shock
of white hair, bushy eyebrows and a Cuban cigar always stuck in his
mouth.
Mr. 'E' expected more of me, perhaps, than he did from the other young
sales clerks at Pickwick because he sensed that my interest in books
was serious. In a brusquely paternal way he paid close attention to my
job performance, and with a mixture of pride and fear I then set upon a
course that made him my mentor. When he wasn't harassing me about my
inability to speak Hebrew ("What kind of a Jew are you, Wendy?"), he
was stalking me up on the mezzanine to find something that could be
improved in the children's book department.
He eventually discovered that I was alphabetizing the children's
classics by title, which I was more familiar with at that time, rather
than author. This was deeply offensive to Mr. 'E'. About once a month
he would approach me, all 6' 2" of him, and chastise me for my lack of
literary continuity. "It's the parents who buy these books," he barked,
waving his cigar in my face, "not the kids! Parents are looking for
authors!" He then began the tedious process of pulling each book off
the shelves to alphabetize them by author. Watching this elderly
millionaire in action, performing a minimum-wage task that he probably
hadn't done for thirty years was a remarkable sight. But because I both
loved and feared him, I let him have his way.
When enough time had passed for him to forget about our running feud
I'd re-shelve the books in order by title, from Anne of Green Gables to
The Wind in the Willows. Then, having had a memory lapse a month or so
later, he would reappear to harangue me about the errors of my ways,
and the process would begin all over. It was our lovely running joke,
although finally I acknowledged he was right and alphabetized the
section by author.
Mr. E would also engage me in discussions about sales in the children's
department, advise me on how best to merchandise new releases, and
chasten me when I over-bought on a title. "Far gelt bakumt men alts,
nor nit kain saichel!!" he'd say in Yiddish, shaking his finger at me
affectionately. "Money buys everything except brains!"
Mr. E was a self-made man who grew up in a poor immigrant family. He
was a brilliant businessman, though, and for those at Pickwick who
showed more than just a passing interest in the industry he gave of his
wisdom freely. One of the many pearls he shared with me was that
although bestsellers are exciting, they come and go. It's basically a
business of one's and two's when it comes to the backlist books that
consistently make money for a bookstore over the long haul. More than
three decades later, I believe this philosophy still holds true for
independent bookstores.
There were no such things as discount book chains thirty years ago; in
fact, this idea was simply unthinkable to Mr. 'E'. "Never give anyone a
discount!" he would tell us. "I don't even give my rabbi a discount!"
But times were different back then, and when Crown Books burst on the
scene ten years later with cut-rate prices, it was a hard reality to
accept.
