THE LAST BOOKSELLER

A memoir from one of the last “hunter-gatherers in the book business.”

Goodman has all the requisite irascibility for a bookseller. Having stumbled into buying a bookstore in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1982—the original owner started at $25,000 and then haggled himself down to $2,000, without Goodman’s intervention—the author writes of his sentimental education in the business. One lesson is often repeated, as when, toward the end of his career, Goodman received a few hundred books that were ruined when a roof leaked: “I had to rent several dumpsters and throw them away, again proving my thesis that there’s no such thing as a free book.” The foes of second booksellers are many, including bad books: Get enough junk on your shelves, he writes, and you’ll get a reputation; stock enough good books, and you’ll get a clientele. Still, he allows, the rules have changed with the advent of the internet, which proved a Trojan horse. Ironically, it was a used bookstore owner who concocted the inventory software that allowed anyone to hunt up the prices and availability of a book, something only booksellers used to know. “Only stubbornness, and a genuine love of books, kept me going,” writes Goodman. “A sensible person would have told you that a secondhand bookstore on that block in East St. Paul couldn’t survive, but then again a sensible person probably wouldn’t have gotten into the used book business in the first place.” That last bit is probably true, but it shouldn’t deter others just mad enough to give it a try. There’s a touch too much grumbling about Amazon and how hard it is to make a living, but there are lots of fun anecdotes about book thieves, bibliomaniacs, and other familiars of the book business. For a livelier account of the trials and tribulations of bookselling, check out Shaun Bythell’s Confessions of a Bookseller (2020).

A middling but pleasant enough entry in the library of books on books.