"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?

In the book, How to Write & Sell Your First Novel, Oscar Collier points out, "The editor, usually a person who has chosen the profession out of a love of reading, is first and foremost a reader, a consumer of books. For a novelist to have a successful dialogue, the necessary give-and-take, with his editor, the novelist must first regard the editor as a reader or fan and ignore the notion of the editor's power over the writer's business success. The relationship, to be successful, must be one between equals. Editors must find, and get along with, many types of authors. And unless you, the author, are interested in self-publishing -- a rough road for a first novelist -- you must work with an editor at a publishing house. Just remember the equation has two sides, separated by an equals sign, and you'll find it easier."

*Writer's Digest Books, F& W Publications Inc.

Lilly & Rebecca ~ Carving the Jack-O-Lanterns

"When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing."
~ Enrique Jardiel Poncela

"Write something to suit yourself and many people will like it; write something to suit everybody and scarcely anyone will care for it."
~ Jesse Stuart (1907 - 1984) American Writer

"Some editors are failed writers,
but so are most writers."
~ T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965) Nobel Prize in Literature, 1948

Treasury of Wit & Wisdom, 2006, Reader's Digest

Harold Robertson proudly shows us his latest stained-glass piece before he packages and ships it to a client. Laid off from a corporation during a down-turn, Harold took up an art which provides enjoyment and satisfaction. Meticulouly constructed, each piece of glass is chosen for its effect in the completed work. Colour, texture, variation, degree of clarity or opaqueness are considered.
For a glimpse into PICTURES IN GLASS visit http://www.haroldrobertson.blogspot.com/ The Neat Little Bookshop is pleased to display one of the artist's pieces available for purchase in our bookshop window.

". . . I'm going to imagine that I'm the wind that is blowing up there in those tree-tops. When I get tired of the trees I'll imagine I'm gently waving down here in the ferns ~ and then I'll fly over to Mrs. Lynde's garden and set the flowers dancing ~ and then I'll go with one great swoop over the clover field ~ and then I'll blow over the Lake of Shining Waters and ripple it all up into little sparkling waves. Oh, there's so much scope for imagination in a wind!"

Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables. L. M. Montgomery, 1908

"Every day is a new beginning,
Every morn' is the world born new."
~ L. M . Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables 1908
L . C. Page & Company Inc.