In the world of 'bricks and mortar' bookselling there are independent bookstores and there are branches of 'chains'. There are also one-of-a-kind stores which truly stand out from the herd, genuine 'institutions' of the book trade. New England Mobile Fair is such an establishment, and owed its odd layout and organization to the clientele it originally served - librarians and other book sellers!
Founded in 1975 by Louis Strymish, the NEMBF occupies a former tennis-racket factory in Newton Highlands (one of the 14 'villages' of Newton) in Massachusetts; this accounts for its sprawling, 35,000 square foot layout, but not the very odd original internal arrangements. You see, the Book Fair's stock was arranged by publisher, and not by sections such as 'gardening' or 'history' or 'new fiction'. This was done to enable individual publishers to visit and perform their own inventory and restock as required. Amazingly, this was the ONLY inventory-taking performed in the store. Imagine over a million books and NO inventory!
This was such a shocking state of affairs that the New England Mobile Book Fair was featured as a test case in a book on management and disorder - Chapter 7, 'Mess and Organization', in "A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits Of Disorder", by Eric Abrahamson and David H Freedman (Back Bay Books, 2007).
In December, 2011, Louis Strymish and his co-owner Steve Ganz sold NEMBF to a Brookline, Massachusetts native, Tom Lyons. Tom is an auditor by profession, so the chances of the Book Fair remaining unaudited and unorganized stood at zero! Soon, the mass of cobbled-together, rustic wooden shelving (see photograph) started bearing real, honest to goodness signs. Hand-lettered, I'll give you that, but signs, after all these years. It did seem that the previous chaotic mass of books worked, in that clients often bought far more than they had intended to do, as they discovered other gems as they wandered around looking for the book they originally came in for.
When the Book Fair was sold, the other book business on site, 'Jessica's Biscuit', a business dealing with the online sale of cookery books, which was NOT part of the sale and which was operated by the original owners, was moved away to a new location in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
I visited the Book Fair recently, not just to browse, which is impossible to stop yourself doing, but to see if the hundreds of linear feet of shelves and racking had arrived safely. This had previous stood in the Medical Library where I work, and we had donated it to the Book Fair, after all previous attempts to give it away to schools and other libraries had failed (due to excessively onerous product liability issues). I found some periodical racks still in the stores (as you can see), and other components neatly stacked in another area, ready to be assembled.
Was I able to get out of the place without buying a book? Impossible! I did manage to restrict myself to just one, however; a lovely copy of 'Aircraft of the Aces: Legends of the Skies', compiled by Terry Holmes (Osprey Books, 2004), which features the superb artwork of Iain Wyllie and Mark Postlethwaith. For those of you who know how expensive Osprey titles are, an absolute bargain at $9.99!
The New England Mobile Book Fair - an eccentric, one-of-a-kind place. Definitely not to be missed.
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7:33 PM PT: Just a quick note. I have decided that this will be the last SFBSD diary. Thank you for reading.