Judy Feaster says scouts regularly hang out in their cars or browse the shelves towards the front of McKay’s, watching for employees taking cartons full of books out to the free bin. She’s pretty sure the store knows what they’re up to. Credit Nina Cardona/WPLN
The deep, wooden bins on either side of the doors to McKay’s are filled several times a day with what the giant, chain used bookstore can’t or won’t sell. But to a book scout like Judy Feaster–who is selling to a more focused kind of buyer than the store’s usual customer–there can be real finds. Even when it’s picked over, she can spot things like a radiology textbook that will sell for $20 on Amazon or an old religious paperback, signed by the author, that smaller, locally-owned bookstores might buy from her.
Believe it or not, book scouting makes more money than Feaster once earned as an adjunct professor.
A Keen Eye For Quality
This career began for Feaster with garden variety bargain shopping at thrift stores. She’d go in hoping to find a cashmere sweater or maybe some vintage ceramics. She always took a glance at the books, too, on the off chance there was something she wanted to read.
After a while, Feaster says, she took a look at her collection and realized it included an awful lot of first editions. She had an eye for noticing a quality book in the midst of the water-stained Harlequin romances. She’d also collected more books than her shelves could hold. It was time to start selling what she found.
Randy Elders and his wife, Anita, run the business begun by his father. With increasing demand for rare books, Elders says he’s become more careful about who he sells to–he wants to be sure the people who do buy valuable books will appreciate and care for them. Credit Nina Cardona/WPLN
A Changing Market
This is an interesting moment for used books. People are paying more and more for special ones. In just the last year, the average price for rare books at auction jumped 7%, according to the Americana Exchange. It follows with the kind of trend local bookstore owner Randy Elders has noted in the last decade or two.
“I can actually sell valuable books better than–I don’t mean just get more money for them but I actually have a better chance of selling them fairly quickly–than I can ordinary books,” Elders says. The rise of ebooks has made last year’s bestseller less interesting to his customers. But at the same time, he says books with some history to them seem to take on a new kind of appeal in the digital age.
The Competition
To feed that market, there are two kinds of scouts driving around the Nashville on the prowl for valuable books. The first is sometimes jokingly called the “scanner monkey.” Feaster says they can be seen at any library sale, using special smartphone apps to zap a book’s bar code and instantly check what it will sell for on Amazon. Feaster is part of the second, smaller group of about ten to fifteen who rely more on a keen eye and experience.
She says she’ll often bump into the other scouts, especially on the days when the Goodwill Outlet brings out a new, giant bin of books. It’s a cordial group. Everyone specializes in certain kinds of genres, at least to some extent. So if another scout grabs a textbook or a children’s book they’ll likely hand it to her, knowing she has a better grasp on that market.
Of course, sometimes she hopes not to bump into anyone else. “I think that people have their secret sources,” she says. “I have a few that I haven’t shared with everyone.”
The Feasters chat with Rhino Booksellers owner Fred Koller, who was a book scout himself before opening his first store. Credit Nina Cardona/WPLN
A Small Bet Pays Off Big
Feaster is something of a book scouting evangelist. She’s gotten friends interested in hunting for valuable books; visits with her mother and brother now regularly include sweeps of yard sales. When he’s got the time, her husband, Richard, scouts, too. On the day of our interview, he meets us at Rhino Booksellers with a limited edition book full of spooky illustrations that he’d nabbed at an estate sale for three bucks.
Detail of the copy of Barrett’s Magus that Richard Feaster brought to Rhino. Credit: Nina Cardona/WPLN
Rhino owner Fred Koller recognized the volume right away. He’d sold other editions of Barrett’s Magus recently, but his reaction made it clear this one was a little more special. As an employee behind the counter looked up that particular version online to determine the going price, Koller slowly flipped through the pages, declaring them “beautiful.”
After a few minutes, Koller determined he could sell the book for $150 and offered the Feasters half that amount to buy it from them. That’s a $72 profit on that three dollar investment.
Lasting Value
As we drive away, Judy Feaster reiterates something everyone has said: age is not enough. Old does not equal valuable. What matters is what’s inside, and whether that content is something people want. It’s also a matter of scarcity, certain kinds of stories or information just aren’t going to be reprinted or turned into ebooks. Feaster is confident there will always be a market for those kinds of books, “not just as collectibles but as repositories of information.”
For the Feasters, and for store owners Randy Elder and Fred Koller, that’s the point, really. It’s a hunt, but mostly it’s an act of preservation that they’re betting will always pay the bills.
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