"What is a rare book and what is it worth? How high is up? The first question is easily answered: A book is rare when the supply is short and the demand long. Its value is what one is willing to pay for it in a competitive market. Often, a rare book is rare by virtue of its limited first printing. If one hundred copies were printed and most of them landed in institutional collections, the chances are the price will be prohibitive."

~William Targ, p. 264 A Passion for BOOKS, Harold Rabinowitz & Rob Kaplan, Three Rivers Press, 1999.

The Neat Little Bookshop is a used bookshop.

Today we are meeting with a reporter from one of the local weekly newspapers. What is the story? What is the lead? The fact that we are now in our fourth location? The fact that we believe that there is a role for used bookshops even in small-town Ontario? The fact that the downtown business section of Cayuga has experienced an exciting revitalization in the last five years? (At one point in our entrepreneurship there were five empty, abandoned commercial spaces in our block! There is only one today ~ the one from which we just moved. Five years ago, an unimaginative landlord waved his hand over the main business block declaring, "This all needs to be converted to apartments." )

We get asked for "rare" books. We follow the legendary Herb Martindale who opened the first Neat Little Bookshop. He probably had more rare books than we have. His books were certainly old. When we have remained long enough in one location to have the confidence to house such treasures, we will have made it!

What is a bookshop and what is it worth?