Wonder Book

When I opened Wonder Book in 1980 I had no business or bookselling experience. I had taken a summer job in the book alcove outside Washington, DC. I had always been a book collector but when I got on the other side of the sales counter I had an epiphany. This was what I wanted to do. I made an investment of $1500 for the1st and last months' rent, 8-inch pine boards, a power saw, stain and a seed stock of books from a vast book hoard that was being liquidated (the Clifton book company). A fishing tackle box served as a cash register for several years. My liberal arts education was very helpful - I knew a little about a lot of things. But probably the biggest secret to getting off the ground was a total lack of prejudice. It became a mission to find new homes for as many books as possible. We tried to have something for everyone - from Harlequin romances to leather classics to the occasional collectible that managed to find its way to the store.

As my bookselling knowledge expanded (usually through trial and error) so did the stock. We were forced to expand or open new locations every few years otherwise (horrors) we would have to turn away books.

After all these years it's still fun and exciting. Its like Christmas everyday - you never know what's going to be in the next box or at the next house call.

It is also much more complex with the technological intricacies of the internet and the piles of mandatory paperwork. Fortunately Wonder Book has a magnificent staff some of whom have been part of the organization for almost 20 years.

Clark Kline, who started here as a young teenager began pressuring me to pursue internet sales about 7 years ago. I was reluctant. Mail order is very labor intensive and Wonder Book was doing just fine putting books out on the shelves where for 7 days a week 12 hours a day customers could come in and serve themselves. We put up 100 books as a test. The first book that sold was THE HISTORY OF HOLSTEIN CATTLE IN FREDERICK MARYLAND. Our main store is in Frederick. We had been unable to sell that book for several years locally.
The book sold to a collector of dairy cattle literature in England. I was convinced about internet book sales. We have since moved or expanded our warehouse 3 times. We are close to having 600,000 books on line.

The business continues to become more complex and in many ways more difficult. The vagaries of the web and the various selling sites challenge us constantly. It seems we are constantly "reinventing" some aspect of our organization.

But great sites like Abebooks help us find customers for the rarities, the bargains and the obscure. (Consider a work on mosquito antennae we acquired. It's unlikely a customer would walk into our large retail store looking for such an item but the PhD from panama who purchased it seemed thrilled to get it!)

There's lots of discussion on the future of the book. I'm bullish. The new book publishers seem to be doing extremely well. The new bookstores are busy selling books (and coffee). The paper medium is comfortable, portable and low tech. human curiosity is still stimulated by the serendipitous discovery on line or in a bookshop. Its much more "fun" to flip pages than scroll screens. The information in a book is permanent, immutable. Do an info search on line and you can find lots of different answers to the same question.

Maybe in the future books will only be artifacts; only a tiny percentage of them collectible for historical importance or rarity; but it's a long way off. There are too many of us who love buying, owning and simply being around paper and cloth packages of knowledge, entertainment, edification and inspiration.

The views of the author, expressed above, are not necessarily those of the Advanced Book Exchange.