"And yet, here I am. Fifty years old, irredeemably a bookseller, and more happy than if I’d…if I’d what? Well, than if I’d just about anything, I suppose. I’ll put it this way – if I were to win the lottery tomorrow, the only thing that would change would be the quality of my inventory. I just can’t imagine doing anything else. Even in those moments of blankest regret, when all the bills come due at once and my stock looks like it could have been chosen at random by a blind, crack-addicted three-year-old; when the office hasn’t been cleaned in a month and the coffee jitters set in because I forgot to eat my breakfast which is still sitting cold on the kitchen counter six hours later; when the phone rings and it’s some flea-market guy asking to “pick my brain” about a “real old book” he found buried in cowshit in his granddaddy’s barn; even when I get home after a house buy and realize that every book I just overpaid for smells irretrievably of cat piss…even then, I can only imagine one way forward: more books. And then, more books after that and, for dessert, more books. More books. More books. More books."

"The hoax proved not to be a total loss for its victims. The catalog they had received itself became a highly coveted collector’s item. Within a few decades it had more than quadrupled in price."

What's that old thing worth?

"Unfortunately, some web sites alter the books you are reading on-line in subtle ways that you, the reader may not be aware of: they use blended books."

Donna Kossy

via Garrett Scott, Bookseller

Donna Kossy, author of <i>Kooks</i> and <i>Kooks 2</i>, sells books by those same folks. Among others.