“You write this one,” LB said. Graciously, all Lady Bountiful, like I ought to welcome the chance as an opportunity for personal growth. Right.
I’ll start with the auction. If I manage to time this email correctly, the auction will be live on eBay by the time you read this. The first lot goes on view at 5pm Eastern time on Wednesday, October 29, and they pop into play every ten or fifteen minutes until around 8:30. (And one item, a nice new Random House edition of The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza, is already live, because I skipped a step and posted it immediately instead of setting a delayed start time. The culpa, as LB would say, is entirely mea. I mention it because the effect is that it gets hammered down a day earlier than the others, so you’ll want to pay attention to closing times. It closes Sunday afternoon. The others close Monday evening.)
And what’s in the auction? Several items from LB’s mother’s library, some of them personally inscribed to her, others identifiable as such by her address label on the flyleaf. These include Burglar and Scudder first editions, a Penzler Books Tanner hardcover, and a scarce galley of When the Sacred Ginmill Closes. We’ve also included small-press limited production—a gorgeous ASAP Press first edition of Ehrengraf For the Defense, the G&G boxed limited lettered edition of In the Midst of Death with the Martin Cruz Smith intro, and the boxed limited Dark Harvest edition of Time to Murder and Create, signed by both LB and Jonathan Kellerman. It’ll take you less time to see the 18 items for yourself than you’d spend reading an explanation from me, so I’ll stop now. Just click this link and see for yourself.
Besides the auction lots, I’ve been able to add several new books to the bookstore listings, and dropped the price on some popular items. Additions include signed copies of some of LB’s foreign-language editions. A couple of years ago, when LB moved his office, we wound up discarding many boxes of books for lack of space—and we hated to do it. So I’ve put up a batch of French and Spanish and Portuguese and Italian and Chinese books and priced them at $9.99 apiece with free domestic shipping, and if they find a market I’ll post more.
Oh, here’s one you can’t have for $9.99, and isn’t it beautiful? It’s a 
4-volume boxed set of the Chip Harrison series, and I’m posting a picture of one side of the box here, but you’ll want to see the Pop Art covers of the individual books in the store listing. We’ve got five of these, and my guess is they’re the only ones to be found outside of China. Our price is $39.99, and we can only ship this item to US addresses. What an great gift for someone who can read Chinese! And so what if you can’t? I’d like to have one of these myself, just to put on the shelf, and I can’t even cope with the Specials menu at the Golden Panda.
What else? A batch of ARCs, four or five new audiobooks, and a couple of boxed lots of signed paperbacks you wouldn’t know about unless you saw our Facebook posts. 8 Burglar paperbacks, 8 Scudder paperbacks—all of them signed, which makes them great stocking stuffers. (Alas, we can’t ship these large lots to addresses outside the US. Sorry!)
Did I mention that we’ve cut some prices? The most dramatic reduction—was $99.99, now $39.99—is for the UK hardcover edition of Even the Wicked. Check the listing to see what makes it special. As for what made us drop the price through the floor, well, LB realized he’d rather sell the books than have them on the shelf where he can admire them.
We’ve reduced several popular trade paperbacks as well. A Drop of the Hard Stuff is now $4.99, Hit Me and Getting Off are $9.99. Telling Lies for Fun & Profit, LB’s most popular writing book, is rare in hardcover, and we’ve been selling signed first editions for $24.99. But, see, we haven’t been selling many of them, and while the book’s scarce everywhere else, it’s not scarce in our storeroom—so I’ve just cut the price clear down to $9.99. Now that’s been our price for the paperback edition, and how can we sell them both for the same price? I asked LB, and he said to revise the paperback listing so that it’s still $9.99 but the shipping is free. So that what’s I’ve done.
When A Walk Among the Tombstones opened last month in theaters worldwide, we were able to obtain a supply of posters and lobby cards, and sold more than half of them right away. But we had a problem with the 11 x 17 lobby cards. We mailed them flat, and while most of them arrived with no trouble, a few postal employees ignored our DO NOT FOLD instructions, and when a couple of buyers complained, LB had me take the item off sale entirely. So here’s what we’re doing: We want to sell off the remaining 15 copies of the 27 x 40 poster, and if you buy one we’ll include a lobby card absolutely free; it’ll ship safely in the same square tube as the large poster. You’ll get a nice item at absolutely no cost, and we can stop wondering what to do with the damn things.
I think that’s all. It seems to me there was something else I was supposed to do, perhaps because there almost always is, but I can’t think of it and I’ve already put in too many hours today. There’s probably a better way to phrase that.) Check out the auction, check out the store listing, and get a jump on your Christmas shopping. I’ll be adding items for the next week or so, and probably cutting some more prices while I’m at it, but if you’re a frequent visitor to the store you’ll have a good chance to snap up the one-of-a-kind bargains before I can tell the rest of the world about them. Hot times at LB’s Bookstore, by Jingo!
David Trevor for
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Twitter: @LawrenceBlock
