This week we’re talking about one of the shop’s longest book buys—a deal that took over thirty years to seal. In the late ‘70s Ken was called out to a local library, where he made a bid on some really good books. They said that the board of trustees would have to think about it. Decades passed, babies grew up, pant silhouettes changed, and the library called to check in every five or ten years. Ken would find the collection—Gutenberg Bible pages, illuminated manuscripts, Audubon folios, etc.—stored in a slightly worse location almost every time he visited. Ultimately, in the 2010s, when the library was really, really ready to sell, we cut a check for almost a million dollars and rescued the books from a janitor’s closet, next to the cleaning supplies. Ken shares his tips for summoning patience in frustrating situations on this long-overdue new #brattlecast.
Brattlecast #98 - Buy the Book
It’s something that many of us have a bit more time for these days: buying books online (and, ideally, reading them). In this episode we’ll look into some of the quirks and peculiarities that shoppers might encounter on the internet, like books that are priced way too high, or the same book being sold in a really wild range of prices (do I want the $6 copy, or the $2000 copy?). It turns out that usually the culprit behind these discrepancies is a confused computer algorithm, rather than an ambitious human bookseller. We’ll also reveal some book buying tips and tricks, plus the Brattle’s famous haggling secret (“ask nicely”).