Technology

For Used Books, a Shelf in Cyberspace

By ALAN BISBORT
Published: May 20, 2001

CONVENTIONAL wisdom notwithstanding, you can teach an old bookhound new tricks. Take the case of the Internet and the used book dealers of Connecticut. This would seem to be a clash of cultures, not unlike when the scribes of the 15th century were confronted with Gutenberg's press and told, ''This is the future.''

Some adapted and some ignored it at their peril.

The same can be said for the world of used books, but to a lesser degree. While a few sprawling meccas for browsers and venerable publications (like AB Bookman's Weekly) went out of business, the majority of old book dealers survived. They have found a niche in cyberspace.

Dan Gaeta, who runs John Bale Book Company in Waterbury, is one such dealer. His prodigious inventory of books, magazines, ephemera and ''interesting paper'' consumes the basement of a store on Bank Street.

But when he first arrived at this location six years ago, Mr. Gaeta noticed something right off the bat: he could not survive on normal hours of operation. ''The change in business has been dramatic and forced us to rethink how we display and handle our stock,'' Mr. Gaeta said. ''With the Web, we no longer have to depend on walk in traffic and the rounds of large and small antiquarian book shows to glean our income. Customer traffic through the Internet has expanded our sales region to 20 countries and all 50 states.''

His foray into selling books on the Internet almost five years ago was tentative at first, and not untypical: listing books on ABE.com and auctioning off items on eBay.

His wife, Edith Reynolds, who writes a column for AuctionBytes.com, started a ''small experimental Web site'' called USiana.com, but not much came of it.

What the two of them did not expect was that the Internet would actually make their business flourish. They found that they had to hire someone full time just to handle the eBay component of their sales. Not only that, but Mr. Gaeta discovered, to his joy, that there was a market for some of the material he had been dragging around for years.

''Every dealer has thousands of books they simply couldn't give away and now there's a demand for them,'' Mr. Gaeta said. ''The Internet has created a lot of efficiency in a market that traditionally has been inefficient, which was, of course, is part of its charm.''

Buoyed by the response, Mr. Gaeta has opened his shelves to all comers, as the supply of old books can't keep up with the demand. So he and Ms. Reynolds, with help from staffers, Vicky and Liz Semrow, and Furlan Primus, created www.SellUsYourBooks.com, a Web site whose motto is: ''We buy books. It's that simple!''

To connect with people who have books they might not otherwise know how to unload, the site offers a tutorial on ''determining condition,'' as well as a toll-free phone number. Once they submit their forms, Mr. Gaeta contacts them.

He does not buy everything, but he comes close. His shop has specialties (leather sets, Civil War books, books with maps, fine Americana), but he casts a wider net than most book dealers for this Web site experiment.

''I rarely walk away from a house call empty-handed and half the time I'm pleased with a buy, in that I've purchased books that are hard to find. I look at what we accumulate as artifacts that need to be preserved,'' he said, laughing. ''I'll think about what to do with them later. I have what I call 'electronic faith.' It's the belief that you can sell a book anywhere in the world eventually. Who knows. It may be true.''

Mr. Gaeta, for example, was recently contacted by someone in New Jersey. ''The seller had a collection of books related to gout, some dating back to the 1700's,'' he said. ''It was expensive, but how often do you get a chance to buy a collection on gout?''
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