|
Literary Review
Second-hand prose
PRADEEP SEBASTIAN
G. RAGHAV
Sourcing books is a real problem with second-hand bookshops in India.
FOR the longest time now I have been wondering what is wrong with our second-hand bookshops. Wait. Before you jump at me and say — "they are all wonderful, quaint, charming, how could you possibly think there's anything wrong with them? — let me quickly add that I know the feeling. But — surely all of us who frequent used bookstores know what it is to, week after week, walk into one of them only to find the same stock? The same books we saw the last time we dropped in? We are more often disappointed than not. And then one day — just when you've given up on finding anything — you make a find. Suddenly the bookshop is full of books you haven't seen before. Where did they come from? If you ask the owner, he'll probably list three sources: "old customers who sell books they don't want to keep, circulating libraries that shut down and — very rarely — publishers' overstock of new books that I managed to get at a discount." For new stock, used bookstores are completely at the mercy of such arbitrary sales. (Some book lovers are shy/ inhibited/ uncertain about selling their books to second-hand bookshops, but for all our sakes — don't be. That's the only way our used bookstores can keep some good stuff coming in).
Have you never wondered where all these old books come from? How they are acquired? The fundamental dilemma of maintaining and running a decent second-hand bookshop in India is this: how do you keep it well stocked all the time? How and where do you source for books? That's the struggle, the challenge. Because how the devil does the owner of a second-hand bookshop in India acquire a regular supply of used books? The new or first-hand bookshops, for instance, have a constant supply of books through the year because they have several distributors (like IBD, IBH, Westland) who import and source books for them. It is this large distribution network that keeps our first-hand bookshops in fresh stock. Our used bookstores, on the other hand, sadly lack such a constant source. And I'm afraid this is a problem unique to our second-hand bookshops. Even used bookstores in Bangkok, Singapore, Manila and Colombo have a regular source for old books and are well stocked all through the year. (One of the best and largest used bookstores I know is in Manila — the National Bookstore). Used bookstores in the West, of course, have a direct pipeline to publishers and distributors who turn over their huge stock (lock and barrel) for little or no cost at all. Which is why they can afford to sell them at those throwaway prices. And why there are so many of them — sometimes several on just one street! (Free School Street in Calcutta with its row of used bookstores is the exception here. But then again, a book I browsed, bargained for and didn't finally buy, was still there two years later in the exact same spot I had put it away the last time. I still don't know whether to be sad or glad about this).
For years I toyed with the idea of running a second-hand bookshop and gave it up when I realised how difficult — even impossible — it would be to source books. The start up is easy — I could have begun with my own book collection — but then what? I feared that months would go by before I fell upon new stock. (It's also entirely possible that the same problem that confronted my bibliophile friend, Loy Saldana, would have overcome me as well: he started a used bookstore and closed it after three months because he couldn't bear to sell the books). The answer, then, to keeping our second-hand bookshops in new stock is for our book distributors and publishers to let second-hand book dealers have access to their overstock. Instead of sending their old stock back to wherever they came from or pulping them, Indian distributors must find a way to let old bookstores have them for a bargain. Also, second-hand dealers should not wait for the books to come to them but go to where the books are. For instance, the late K.B.K. Rao and his son, K.K.S. Murthy of Select Bookshop, Bangalore, would source for books by travelling to different cities.
For sourcing rare and antiquarian books, American bookstores use book scouts. A book scout will hunt high and low throughout the country for a rare book. These book scouts are freelancers with a nose for smelling out a true find. We could use book scouts here, couldn't we? I'm sure it's a job many book lovers here wouldn't mind having. But what would constitute a rare book in India? I'm curious about the antiquarian book trade in India. Little or nothing is known about it, while it is so well documented in the West: there are catalogues that list rare books and their prices with the provenance. What, for instance, are the existing rare or antiquarian Indian books? Who sells them and who buys them? Do we have rare book collectors here? If so, who are they and what kind of fabled prices do they pay for these antiquarian books? How rare would be a first edition of R.K. Narayan's Swami and Friends? Or a signed first ed of Upamanyu Chatterjee's English, August? Would Gandhi's My Experiments With Truth qualify as antiquarian? Are there palimpsests by Richard Burton buried under a heap of raddi somewhere, waiting to be discovered and auctioned? And if I happen to accidentally stumble on a rare manuscript, where would I get it evaluated and how much could I get for it?
Stepping into an Indian city I haven't visited before, the first thing I want to know is where the good second-hand bookshops are. I might be here on work or holiday but my true purpose is to check out these secret bookshops. If I'm lucky, I'll run into a local book lover who will tip me off on where the best ones are. Most probably I won't. Instead, I'll run into a well-meaning philistine who will point me to some shiny new bookshop that stocks engineering, computer and management textbooks. Well, he won't be all that wrong. A real fear of mine is whether we will be able to recognise second-hand bookshops as second-hand anymore. Those fabled pavement booksellers, for instance, — Flora Fountain in Mumbai, Daryaganj in Delhi, what used to be Moore Market in Chennai, Upparpet in Bangalore, Abids in Hyderabad, College Street in Calcutta — are stocking up more textbooks than literature. Almost every used bookstore owner I meet these days confesses to stocking more new books than old. It's the only way, they tell me, to lure more customers. This way at least they can keep a constant supply of books coming in. This then are the odds against which our used bookstores function. It's a marvel that those who have not changed too much over the years are still surviving; that they are still there for us.
pradeepsebastian@hotmail.com
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Literary Review
|
