No. 46, May 2005

Best buy for books is Book Bay at Main

Manager Rand Salwasser: “I called it ‘backward book-selling.’”

The Friends of the Library’s used bookstore, Book Bay at the Main, set just inside the Grove Street entrance of the Main Branch, celebrated its fourth anniversary in April. Last year, it sold 50,000 books, generating $125,000 in profits that it turned back to the library to run underfunded programs.

Rarely displaying more than 3,000 books at a time, the 200-square-foot spot has one of the highest size-to-sales ratios of any used bookstore in the city. Out on Clement, Green Apple has 5,500 square feet and sells 187,000 books annually, or 34 books per square foot. By comparison, Book Bay at the Main is a powerhouse, selling 250 books per foot and leaving Green Apple in the dust.

“Part of the appeal is simply the small space,” explains Coleman Conroy, Friends of the Library’s director of communications. “People can be in and out in 10 minutes. For the sales it generates, you’d usually have a space three or four times as large, and it would take you a lot longer to go through it.”

Then there’s foot traffic. Library staffer Marcia Schneider estimates that 1,600 to 3,500 people pass through the Grove Street entrance daily, every one of them a confirmed book reader.

 “I call it ‘backward book-selling,’ ” says Rand Salwasser, Book Bay store manager. “People come to the library looking to check out a book, and if what they want isn’t available, they decide to check us out.”

What they find are used popular titles in remarkably good condition at very low prices — in other words, a book-buyer’s dream.

“I recognize what I’m saying sounds self-serving,” Salwasser confides, “but believe me, it’s true.”

He reaches up and, seemingly at random, picks out a copy of Patrick O’Brien’s Masters and Commanders. It looks brand new. Turning the book over and reading the printed cover price, he says, “This book would cost you $13.95 at Barnes & Noble.” He opens the flyleaf and shows me the Book Bay price: $4. “Most of our books average $5, and unless you are looking for something specialized, you’ll likely find something to take home with you.”

I do some checking out of my own. In the mystery section, Patricia Cromwell’s Blowfly, out in paper for about two years, costs $3. John Le Carre’s The Tailor of Panama can be had for $2. Neither book’s spine is cracked; new, each would cost $7.99. Popular mystery writers Dick Francis, Janet Evanovich and Tony Hillerman all are represented with multiple titles.

In the literature section, a seemingly brand new paperback of Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum has a cover price of $14. For three months I’ve been searching for this book in the library stacks. It’s marked at $4. I snatch it up.

All of the bookstore’s merchandise is donated. Each year, 5,000 to 6,000 people give Friends of the Library about 500,000 books, which are sold at Book Bay and at a second, larger store at Fort Mason’s Bldg. A. The two stores  sell only donated books, not library castoffs. Library books that have exceeded their “discard by” date are sent off to community groups or overseas to developing countries.

Not every book donated to the library winds up on the shelves of the Main Branch store or the one in Fort Mason, which normally displays around 10,000 books at a time.

Books with more specialized subject matter or in less pristine condition are put aside for the library’s annual big sale at the Fort Mason Pavilion. This year’s is slated for Sept. 7 – 11.

Friends of the Library sold more than 200,000 books at last year’s sale and brought in $240,000. This added to the two stores’ sales, plus other special Friends’ sales, totaled close to a million dollars, Conroy estimates, and netted $750,000 to support library programs.

The stores are staffed by some of the Friends’ 3,000 volunteers. In existence under different names for more than 40 years, the nonprofit Friends has an operating budget of $3.3 million and a staff of 24 to supplement the work of the volunteers, who do much of the heavy lifting associated with such a big operation. The Friends and their stores are a model for other libraries in California and throughout the country.

Photo credit: Lenny Limjoco

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