A skit from the upcoming Charleston Acquisitions Conference written by John Riley of Busca, Inc.
This week it was reported that a 3000 year old bookseller has been found in the city of Charleston, South Carolina. He was celebrating his birthday with some other antiquarian booksellers at the Charleston Conference and the local paper picked up on it. The story has now gone viral so we sent our crack bookshop reporters to cover this breaking story. We now go Live to the Conference.
Reporter: You certainly give “antiquarian bookseller” new significance. You must have lots of valuable advice to share after all of these years.
Steve: Is that supposed to be funny? I don’t get it.
Reporter: You’re old and books that are old are called antiquarian. I was just joking.
Steve: I’m no antique. I’m as fit as a fiddle just like back in Byblos where I opened my first shop. Back then papyrus was coming on strong. All the other dealers were closing because clay tablets were going out of style in the publishing world. I saw the opportunity and I started selling papyrus books. I called my books papyrusbacks. People loved’em. Pretty soon I had shops all over: Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem.
Reporter: What was the name of your shop?
Steve: It was called Steve’s Papyrusbookshop. It was kind of hard to say in Aramaic, but in Greek it just rolled off your lips. In Egypt I simply hung out a picture of a plant and a scroll. They could understand that. In fact The Library at Alexandria was my best customer: they wanted everything and I mean everything. The only problem I had with them is that when I used to go there every year for the Mediterranean Library Convention that guy Ptolemy Soter wanted to copy all my books and then give them back to me. Whaaaa?… he’s never heard of copyright? He just mumbled something about being the Sun God and he could do whatever he wanted. Well I told him I knew Pharaoh and he was no Pharaoh. Pharaoh used to pay for his books, especially his kid, Tut. He wanted to be immortal and what better way than with books! I warned the librarian there, Callimachus, that there was a fire danger storing all those scrolls on wooden shelves. I offered to get my cousin, he’s in window treatments, to fire proof the place, but the librarian couldn’t get funding. Some things never change.
Reporter: Who did you know back then?
Steve: Well, I did know Aristotle…personally….very good customer. Wanted a little bit of everything. Very omnivorous. Not like Plato. Plato just wanted a lot of the stuff I was bringing in from India. Socrates I tried to sell some self help books to one time. He shouted at me that books were destroying culture. He said nobody knew how to think for themselves or memorize or speak in public. He hated books. Sheesh ….he sounded like Homer, always with the memorizing.
Reporter: What were some of the bestsellers back then?
Steve: Some of our bestsellers at that point in time were Buddha and Confucius. Meditation was popular in the desert, since there wasn’t much else to do. Yoga was just starting to catch on too. Kama Sutra was good under the counter stuff. The I-Ching was selling well to some of the Hippies, we called them Essenes. They reminded me of San Francisco in the 60’s…I mean 1960’s…not 60’s.
Reporter: What were some of the biggest changes you have seen in the book world in your 3000 years?
Steve: Amazon and e-books, without a doubt.
Reporter: 3000 years ago they had those?
Steve: Yes. Very troubling to the book business both of them. Some Amazons in Lydia started a mail order business. You could send pigeon orders to them and they’d get you back a book in a couple of days no postage. Their pigeons ate very very little. It was hard for me to compete against that and their turnaround time on special orders sure beat the fast barge from Antioch. Then there was Pontius Pilate… always with the upping sales tax on inventory. The Amazons got off with free freight and no tax. No unions either.
Reporter: What about e-books?
Steve: Very troubling as well. For years we went along quite happily with no vowels. Then some wisenheimer came up with sticking e’s in between consonants. It wrecked my whole inventory. I had to sell everything off in my remainder tent that sat out behind my main tent. But only old guys still wanted the stuff. The kids had moved on to what they called e-books.
Reporter: Well, thank you Steve for this interview. It was good to get a firsthand account of the last 3000 years. We all wish you another 3000 years in the book business.
Steve: Book business? If but I can last another 3 months I’ll plotz.
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