As promised, here is this week’s guest blog by Mark Funke on the 2024 Seattle Book Fair.
The Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair is my favorite event of the year and 2024 did not disappoint. I have exhibited as Mark Funke, bookseller in the Emerald City four times. The 2024 fair was my highest grossing Seattle fair to date, even exceeding pre-Covid numbers. Although, truth be told, 2024 sales were not higher on an inflation-adjusted basis than 2019.
We booksellers are known as a grumbling bunch. Just prior to the Seattle fair I participated in an event where expectations (and costs) were not met. And so, I was lamenting to one of my favorite Northwest booksellers on the Sisyphean paradox of book fairs. We are constantly constructing and deconstructing entire mini bookstores for two-day events. She responded with a collegial chiding, and we concluded that I needed an “attitude adjustment”. The true value of a book fair has little to do with renumeration or shuffling books back and forth, rather “we should look at book fairs as a big multi-day party with all our friends.”
An “attitude adjustment” is a phrase that is seared in my mind. Over a decade ago my father heard the Hank Williams Jr. song of the same name and decided to buy the CD. I took him to a shop named “The Last Record Store”. After dad confirmed that this was the last store in the area selling physical CDs, I remember him telling the proprietor: “To be the last business in any business is a good business”. At times we antiquarian booksellers feel like the last ones standing in our respective geographic regions. If so, I hope that my father’s quip turns out to be true.
Book fairs take us out of our lonely “last person standing” bubbles and let us connect with other book people. If we can have good conversations and good dinners with people we like and respect, then regardless of sales the book fair is a success.
SABF’24 Statistics
Inventory: 16 boxes to Seattle and 10 boxes retour.
Books purchased: 2
Most expensive single book we are aware of selling at the fair: $22,000 (not ours)
Gummy bear index: 4 ½ pounds consumed.
We hand out gummy bears at our booth. Seattle consistently has the “hungriest” fairgoers with a higher rate of consumption than ABAA fairs.
Out of state tax compliance: 5-stars.
Compliance for Washington State takes 15 minutes. The California Franchise Tax Board should take note!
Dealer lounge: 5-stars.
Eli from Pelican Bay Books kept high-quality coffee brewing all day. The pastries from Macrina Bakery are to die for; there was a variety of fresh fruit, sparkling water and lovely bouquets of fresh flowers.
Traveling buyers: We encountered private customers who traveled from Utah, Idaho, and Arizona for the fair. Both Bauman Rare Books and Maggs Bros. Ltd. did not exhibit but had a bookseller scout the floor.
Institutional customers: Three (at my booth).
That is more than last year due to fair owner Bill Wolfe’s concerted effort to invite them.
Miles driven: 1,683
Book stores visited: Five.
Munster & Company provided a well needed collegial break in Corvallis, Oregon on the drive up;
Long Bros. Fine & Rare Books – a true jewel box of a shop – hosted wine & snacks;
Mercer Street Books, directly by the venue allowed for lovely browsing;
after pack-up I visited my good friend Nils’s shop Ballard Books combined with respite at Hattie’s Hat (a true Seattle institution); and Monday after the fair, Peruse the Stacks in Gig Harbor, Washington hosted a scrumptious breakfast for dealers heading back south.
By all accounts the 2024 Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair was fantastic, and I hope you will join us in 2025.
There is Thingumbob shouting!” the Bellman said,
“He is shouting like mad, only hark!
He is waving his hands, he is wagging his head,
He has certainly found a Snark – free rare book show review.
It sounds like a good time was had by all.
Jeff