 Welcome to another in my series of a series on independent bookstores of San Diego Today I'm talking with Craig Maxwell of Maxwell's house of books is 82 85 La Mesa Boulevard in La Mesa, California Which he runs with his cat of Warsaw. So I think we may just have heard in the background there And my employer to be exact Okay, well the Some kind of working relationship and the cats do not generally welcomes uh, the The website is maxwells house of books calm There's also a facebook page, but it's got too many numbers for me to say but i'll have i'll have this stuff in the description So hi craig Hello, and we start by telling telling us a bit about about your bookstore well My bookstore is the fulfillment of a long-standing dream Owning my own used bookstore We've been in business close to 20 years now And prior to that I had I had worked for some time at Adams avenue used bookstore and The fulfillment of a long-standing dream I'd always wanted to have a bookstore. Am I coming through okay? Yes, you are okay All right, we're gonna turn it up just a little bit and I had worked in the used business before owning my own shop We've been here now about 20 years that prior to this I worked at Adams avenue bookstore and My grandfather owned a big bookstore downtown warm brocks book house He started that store in the 30s and so I'd like to think that bookselling runs in the in the blood So what kind of what kind of books do you carry? So i'm a general bookstore. We have everything from scholarly and academic Topics to just general reading. We have a lot of mysteries and science fiction paperbacks, too But our specialty is in In in academic and scholarly hardcover titles university presses We have a lot of philosophy fair amount of science literary criticism A lot of poetry history world history american history constitutional theory and law Etc. So that that's our specialty Oh, is it um, is it all used or used and new or or what? It it's all used really the only new books we have in the store are To fulfill requests for very popular titles from say students like 1984 or Brave New World We never seem to have enough of those on hand and so we order a stock of those New from Ingram periodically just to have them on hand What's it like, um You know, uh, you know for uh a few years ago everyone was was panicking about the the death of the independent bookstore The more recently there's been sort of more optimism that maybe They're coming back The pandemic has probably I think Oh, how's that gone? Both the Of amazon and the plague of Okay, well amazon has been the real the real plight on the second hand bookstore industry I was in the business before The advent of e-sales and so I remember what it was like to own a store or work for a store That had a regular clientele coming into the shop And buying books and looking for their favorite favorite titles and calling the store constantly to see if we had the Kinds of books they were looking for on hand And we would draw of course, uh a lot of locals Into the shop And but people from abroad too People from los angeles other parts of california and even even other parts of the country Would come and visit your shop to see if they could find the book they were looking for now Of course most of that is gone Uh and that was all due to amazon amazon killed the usebook business But in addition to that burden The latest pandemic of course is has put a strain on the walk-in Bookselling industry. We're still able to sell quite a few books online and the irony in all this may be that People's reluctance to go outside and buy Might mean that they're sitting in front of their computers and ordering more things. We've noticed No real decline in online sales, but the walk-in business has been slow So have you any particular strategy for Trying to deal with the you know with the amazon threat. I know that some people have talked to have Have talked about trying to provide some kind of services that a local usebook store can Provide that amazon can't so easily, um If you've got anything Along those lines You know, I'm a real leadite and so I I wouldn't know how to approach that Well, for example, they have um, some of them have had uh, like, um I've hosted uh, author talks in their Yeah, bookstores and or or reading groups or or things like that I've read about some of those those ventures and they sound like good ideas to me I have not participated in many of them We do have very occasional readings in the store And We have made contacts with regular buyers abroad Who have been good enough to give us their email addresses and so we're able to call them and and tell them about The arrivals of New inventory that might interest them if you want to donate them, but I haven't been especially innovative in that You know, I hate to admit this But we we have We've been selling on amazon of necessity and as much as I resent what they've done to the business Uh Using them has been Essential we we try to emphasize sales on smaller sites like uh, Biblio and ab books a little bit more and that's probably where we sell more of our better books But I would say Again, regretfully somewhat guiltily The bulk of our material goes out the the mail in Or through amazon Yeah, well, I've sold some things on amazon too Although amazon's getting sort of less and less friendly to independent sellers on amazon in various ways as well Oh, yes, no doubt They they are about as impersonal A leviathan as they could be, you know, and they're very hard to deal with Well, that's one advantage that um, you know that indy bookstores have over amazon is that um you know, if you've got a problem with amazon trying to Contact someone and get some kind of coherent resolution of it is you know is a bureaucratic Nightmare, it's virtually impossible. Whereas you you know, if there's something with you oh with the Whereas you know, if I order a book from you and you accidentally send me the wrong book You know, I can get fixed pretty quickly. Uh, you know, I was I was able to you know get a hold of you pretty quickly Getting a hold of you whoever the the equivalent would be at amazon with someone who could fix the problem Would be a Where I ordered something From uh, I can't remember whether it was amazon or morons and noble But they kept sending me the wrong thing and they kept sending it back Again, there's something that's unlike yeah, the indy book store where Some there's some conscious human who Who has some understanding of what's going on Yeah, yeah, it's dealing with them whether you're dealing with them as a buyer or a seller can Can be an experience ranging anywhere from disappointment To to inadvertent comedy, you know, it's it's almost impossible to find anyone to talk to um, and it it kind of reminds me of the the uh Some of the scenes in the mel brooks movie silent movie with the engulf and devour a corporation You know, that's that's my nickname for amazon, you know, it's It says this gigantic Impersonal behemoth, you know that we that won't talk to us as sellers and you know from the stories I've heard from buyers is every bit is bad Yeah, I mean, uh, you know, I've I've ordered a lot of things from amazon but uh, you know Where I live there aren't a lot of you know, there's not much in the way of independent bookstores where I live uh, so I Yeah, well, I guess I can order online very much Of course, that uh amazon tends to you know, have a good, you know, the better price point for um For ordering at least you've got the amazon prime, which I I can best I do um, but uh You know if I lived where there were more independent bookstores, I I would like to think that I would uh, I would patronize them more because Uh, you know, I like living in a place over there where they have them and yeah And so it's uh, you know, it's a perfectly self-interested thing to uh, uh, you know to stop there and try to keep them Going yeah, and I don't doubt you'd be one of those people and there are some others like you still The people that I remember back in the day when I worked at Adams Avenue bookstore who would come into the shop once or twice a week Not for anything In particular, but just to browse Uh, that was a regular part of the book business. They were names you knew and they were people who Over time became friends That has mostly disappeared, but there are still a few And I I get some of the old timers in the shop who will come in and just wander through the stacks Pick up small arm loads of books that they never intended Uh on encountering or buying But they just come into browse and that's I think as you were saying earlier One of those experiences that's possible in a physical store That uh, is not physical certainly not possible on amazon and not even possible In, you know, the countless In-home in garage Stores that people are running now as strictly online businesses You can't see their stuff Shoppers and browsers and to me that's that's the use And with you know with amazon, you know, sometimes you can look inside the book Uh online, although sometimes they'll show you a different Different edition from the one that you actually are interested in and see you think well I don't know whether you know this one looks like that one and sometimes you click on it and they actually get you the wrong book because um Yeah you Yeah, and and even there, you know, a lot of files that they have to semi-coordinate so And there's no human involved in doing it Well, they're human Right and you know, although You know, we all grew up hearing the the phrase you can't judge a book by its cover Although that may be strictly speaking true You can kind of a cover can arouse your interest Just the physicality of a book can pique your interest, you know an interesting old binding Or or some interesting cover art on a more recent book that has a dust jacket things like that can make you think I wonder what this is and and you wind up picking up three or four books like that and walking out with them. Well You know as a used bookseller, uh as someone with a physical store Uh That really warms my heart. I love to see people do that and to me that is the book business Not all this online selling that we do is a matter of necessity Uh, you know, even making you know deals with the devil like amazon in order to survive I I sure as hell wish I I could tell him to go to hell But um, but I can't You know, they've they've set the terms of of the survival of the modern bookseller and really I know very few very few who have been able to wean themselves away from from amazon People like larry McMurtry who have made a fortune writing Or other people there's one here in town. Uh, I know who runs a bookstore almost as a hobby They have other means of income and so they don't depend on amazon and and they don't use them Some of them don't sell online at all, but again that that's uh That's something I can't indulge Yeah, and um, you know, of course on amazon sometimes in the older book They just don't have any cover image at all and just have sort of a A blank rectangle Yeah, or or even worse. They give you what they call a stock image Which is a generic picture of a book that may not be the book you're expecting And a lot of people who order books are wanting to buy the book That that they bought originally years ago and you wind up with disappointed customers if they don't think that they've You know gotten gotten the exact book even if it's down to the correct pagination Or the correct illustrator for the book And sometimes I want to know whether you know, there'll be some reprint of some old book And I want to know whether this this reprint, you know, has copies of the original pages or whether it's been scanned With new text and if you can't open it Sometimes the description will tell you but often it won't and exactly and some of the you know, and some of those The scan jobs are very sloppy And you know, some yes, you know, some there's some places just sort of churns these things out So they scan them, but then no one really looks at it after it's been scanned and sometimes you get gibberish or Sometimes you get I remember one book that had a whole bunch of end note Numbers but they'd left out the actual end note uh um I remember I remember getting one book where I don't know what happened, but just all the pages were just scrambled It was just total chaos and oh my gosh about another time um because they you know, and the these You know, these places they're sort of the You know, they're the the book printer is equivalent of amazon only worse. I think Uh, and they just they just turn out these reprints and often they'll slap a copyright on them even if they're You know from the 18th century or something they'll just oh, yes They'll just do it and then uh, you know aggressively copyright troll anyone who wants to Who wants to sell a you know a more authentic version of it? So You know, they're there are sharks in these waters Oh, yes, even even Even book selling waters publishing waters you'd expect the the breed to be entirely benign They're not They're businessmen and jeff bezos proved that above all, you know, uh, it's for some people it's all about making money Yeah, whereas um, you know, I mean, you know, I'm all for making money, but you know uh, you know, there's something about you know You know just the the physical books a lot of people have predicted the physical books They're gonna go away and they're just gonna have the electronic books, but I don't think it's gonna happen I mean, I'll have you know, it'll happen with some people will be happy to go with the you know with the kindle or whatever but For me at least there's no substitute for having the the physical book. I mean having an electronic version can be useful, too doing um sometimes it's nice to have both because if you're uh, if you're You know, if you're searching for a particular word or phrase it might be better to have the Okay, just remembering, you know, what the page looked like that you're looking for then it's actually easier to find things up in the physical book right I was asked a number Years ago fairly regularly whether I thought uh, ebooks would replace Uh physical books and you know, and I I have never doubted the physical book Would survive but I've never been more confident of that than I am now. Uh, and uh I would say my My confidence has been both bolstered most of all by young readers because you know Old farts like me, you know Are still relatively enthralled with digital technology to the extent that we're interested in it Uh, it's something new to us. We remember a world that didn't have it And and so, you know, I think when I hear people my age and I'm nearly 60 talking about uh, you know, the conveniences or the ease of downloading books Uh, I have to kind of laugh because To kids this is nothing. Uh, they can do this in their sleep and The way kids respond to physical books in the store now Uh is is a response that I used to see years ago From older buyers. They're entranced by physical books by the beauty By the fact that they actually own something that no one can ever take a take back and You know, that's that's downloading a book is really leasing a title You never really own anything But they like the idea of having a physical object that has an appearance and aesthetic And they're they're crazy about books some of them and that really bolsters my confidence for the future and it's not going to suddenly vanish because uh, you know, because the You know, the publishing company suddenly decides to change the the rights on it. So just, you know pages will go blank. Yeah Uh, which can happen with with amazon and places like that Oddly, I find that some of my students Are not that expert with online stuff. They are not They're not okay. There's a lot of things I'm familiar with they often they don't know about google books, for example Okay, which surprised me And they don't know about the internet archive archive.org I'm saying, you know, when website website dies, they have no idea what to do next So I don't know whether that's something specific what my students are not but they Not all of them are some of them, of course, are very tech savvy, but Not all of them are of course one thing that They're all becoming pretty good at at zoom because Since we've had to teach a lot of courses online You know, we're doing it all through zoom and so they're getting yeah, they're getting used to that So In person in the fall, I reckon given that the The way Yeah I'm sure some of their Talent, you know has been honed by this latest pan by the necessities of the pandemic and you know schooling at home But thanks, right But some of them are Are awfully good. Yeah in my experience limited experience. There's virtually no problem I've ever had that I haven't been able to solve by turning to someone You know 30 years 40 years my junior and saying help Oh, yeah, they'll just walk me right through it, you know Experts and yes, but they do do like web design and on the side as a right, yes but but the The miracle of digital technology is has worn off on them And I think most of them are are more interested in physical books I don't I don't have any doubt at all that the physical book will survive Indefinitely, I don't think there will be any shortage of interest in books Going into the future. I sometimes worry more generally about Lack of readers It does seem to me that a significant significant number of people are being wooed away from From physical books and and the discipline It is sort of a discipline of reading by using their thumbs and texting people and you know Watching videos online and youtube etc etc That that is an issue, but But but I know I know enough young readers to be helpful Yeah, um Yeah, and I I don't think that the physical book is gonna is going to go away either In the uh Of course the experience of going into an actual bookstore Especially a used bookstore because used bookstores often have sort of more unpredictable Content, of course, I knew a really good new bookstore will too But a lot of new bookstores are just all gonna have the same stuff again. I have like the latest best sellers and so on um Whereas a used bookstore is going to have um, you know unpredictable things and You know, you're wandering down the aisles and to see something that You might not have um You might not have known to search for on amazon Uh, I mean amazon's algorithm is it's pretty good at suggesting You know things that might complement your interests usually all the sometimes it goes nuts But you know, it's you know, it's not really going to know what kind of it's going to catch your eye and I've discovered So many things just wandering around in in used bookstores And just question it's a whole environment of it. I remember one time um Uh, I was visiting a chicago with my girlfriend at the time and She said do you need to go to a bookstore like? bathroom Not that she wasn't a bookstore type too, but she was not quite as manic as I was Yeah Yeah I think I think you've touched on something there, you know, I have a number of subjects in the store That rarely sell And yet I I think that in order to be a real bookstore I need to have them And and so, you know, I I beef up on literary criticism on drama On on any number of subjects that uh, you know Are not exactly flying out the front door and that we only get requests for occasionally and that when you sell mostly sell online to scholars in in london or berlin or in china or russia But I feel like dammit This is a subject that to be a real bookstore. I have to have And i'm not going to get rid of it to make more space for paperback mysteries even though I make a lot more money off of them Uh, so there are holdouts like us and and you know, I'm I'm as committed to Uh perpetuating the the legitimate used bookstore experience as I am selling books Yeah, on a related note this is about libraries rather than bookstores. Well, when I was in grad school there was some trustee of the university who went into the Library and started making a fuss saying well, look, there are a lot of these books that haven't been checked out in You know 20 years We should get rid of any book that hasn't been checked out in the last 20 years Um, thankfully, you know sainter heads prevailed um, but you know Instead of asking, you know, how many how often has this book been checked out in the last 20 years? Yeah, what he should have asked himself was was uh, you know, how often Um, how often does a book that hasn't been checked out in the last 20 years Get checked out and that would be a much higher Uh, and of course also people don't check out everything they read They might uh, you know, they might read it in the library or look up some particular thing in the library So the idea the idea that someone like that should be a trustee of a Of universities, uh, you know, it was depressing It is Disheartening to say the least So much of the idea, I don't know what I've done in You know in university libraries has been looking at stuff that nobody had checked out for For 20 years or longer of because I had some you know weird arcane interest and something and uh If they just, you know, reduce it to like whatever everyone was doing it would drastically Reduce the value of Yeah, yeah I am More pleased to have customers come in the store and go to those sections that rarely sell and and and buy Find the things that they're looking for or find things that they didn't expect and And be excited about what they found Then I am Selling a box load of more popular stuff. I I think this is wonderful You know, here's that one guy that one gal who's who's you know, been hoping to find a store like mine It has say a big literary criticism section And they'll they'll buy a fair amount of it Uh, well that pleases me because I think that's something I need to have You know the only shake the only drama we ever sell Is is Shakespeare for students But I have a full theater section, of course And um You know, I I wouldn't consider not having uh, and when that occasional Uh drama aficionado comes in the shop and finds what they're after May it makes me happy. That's why we're here a little bit depressing that the only You know drama that students are being assigned to Shakespeare not everything in Shakespeare, but you know Not that I not that I love uh Shakespeare less, but you know, there's a lot of other drama Uh, sure as well that you know, were I teaching drama? I would I would want to assign Uh all kinds of stuff um Uh, you know right now although, you know, although I teach philosophy right now I'm teaching a Nietzsche and modern literature course and we need to teach Middle-Incubosity Development here and that's sort of I don't get to do that course very often. So that's sort of Delight to me wonderful Yeah, we have a big philosophy section in the store and you know We have the mainstays, you know the kinds of philosophers like Descartes and Hume and Kierkegaard and Nietzsche who are assigned But we have a lot of other thinkers too obscure continental Uh Thinkers obscure analytic Uh thinkers uh in obscure Even more obscure texts that uh, you know one in a million Uh would be interested in but we have them and and they're on the shelf for that one again that one devotee You know who's looking for the kind of stuff we carry. So And you know, it's difficult to keep the section stocked especially with used material because You know, it's hard to find good collections of philosophy Uh, but uh, but when I do it, it just pleases me greatly because I I have made an A point of carrying Uh more philosophy than the average use bookstore Well, again, another question I'm teaching right now is early modern philosophy and what we're doing a lot of the standards You know Descartes and Locke and so forth. I'm also As I always do my my reading lists are nightmares for my students I'm very Lots of reading, uh, but I'm also, you know, giving them, uh, you know, much more obscure things like, um this This piece on unfree will by Arthur Collins. No one ever reads Um, but a lot of these guys were responding to each other Uh, and if you you know, if you're only you're only getting part of the conversation if you just reading only the big names and not little bits of The other people right conversation with them Uh, you know, so I stick in a lot of these Uh, you know these more obscure thinkers, you know, not always at the same link. There's the longer ones Although sometimes right sometimes the fewer thinkers think are like really worth paying attention to I stick them in um, but uh you know, um Because you know because it's uh, you know because it's the um Uh, you know 17th and 18th century. Uh, it's pretty easy to find online Copyright free versions at least of this text that are in English um That uh, you know that kind of sign so I haven't I haven't assigned the physical copies because a lot of them are just Some of these things are just out of print. Um, like the Collins book. I think it's out of print. Um, uh, and it's uh um He's taking Locke's theory of free will and then he's doing something with it the block probably would not have liked But he's uh, but you know, it shows how how these people are picking up on some idea and then developing and so forth as a I want to give the feeling that there's a whole conversation. It wasn't just that there were these titans marching across the landscape um And uh, you know, but all these people were responding to each other and And uh part of an intellectual community Certainly Well, let's see, um Don't know, but I have any other questions. You have any other final comments or uh only Thank you to you for your interest in the business and Uh, and for your willingness to to do the interview and you know, I hope you have some luck and gain some exposure with it Uh, again, sometimes this is a hard business to be in but it's it's never not gratifying it's I look forward to every day here and uh, I love what we do and and um, you know, it wouldn't um wouldn't amount to much in the in the grand scheme of of Business goings on in the united states anymore the usebook business doesn't count for much in the eyes of most people But I'm so it's heartening to see someone like yourself take an interest in it I really thank you. I mean one reason I got started doing this is you know, being a displaced san diego and I you know, joy, uh, you know, some of his nostalgia reasons looking at uh travel videos about san diego But they never see anything about bookstores. They talk about beaches and restaurants and shopping malls things and you know, a lot of it's fine But uh, you know, I think a lot of people don't really realize that the san diego area has much of an Bookstores scene. They think it was sort of an anti-intellectual beach-oriented place and so I wanted to You know, I wanted to do the series and also find out a bit more myself about what some of the Yeah, the bookstores are and since I you know, since I can't visit personally both because of the pandemic and because I'm a thousand miles away Uh, you know the uh, you know, advantage of zoom is I can uh do this and um you know Hopefully sometime when I get uh, you know get back to the area. I can actually visit some of these places in person Terrific. Well, you know Yeah, well, I'd love to meet you and chat a little bit more in person I think you're right about people's impression of san diego as being mostly about you know girls surfing in the beach and parties but And it is all that but uh, but at san diego was actually on the map for used booksellers and and buyers It was an outstanding used book town in the day Um shops like my grandfather's which was the biggest in san diego for many years Um shops like joe. I was a kid. There was a place downtown called this is like in the 70s called Herwig or something like that. Does that joe herwigs? joe herwigs joe Was one of our best booksellers uh, joe started out as an employee of my grandfather Uh at warmbrocks Yeah, and eventually took off and founded his own shop. It was just around the corner from warmbrocks Uh, it was a a three-story store as well These were back in the days when you could afford those kinds of rents in a downtown district and when downtown districts were still real shopping mechas for people in big cities And uh, he was an outstanding bookseller I remember that yeah, we we would call him and say do you have and we just like give like the first couple words of the title and you say yes Oh, and he knew where it was. He knew exactly what it was and where it was and Yeah, oh joe must have had a kind of photographic memory because and did something that A lot of books booksellers don't do anymore. That is spend time in the stacks putting books away arranging things neatening, you know doing a little cleaning Today we spend all of our time in front of this idiot device, you know cataloging books And and hoping that we'll sell, you know enough to to stay alive Back in the day booksellers could would wander around their store and talk to customers and You know do a little dusting and a little straightening and you know Take a cartload of books with them down aisle three and shelve books all day. They knew what they had Today my god, I I'm hard pressed to know what I have anymore because I'm never in the stacks I spend all time on my time either cataloging books finding books or wrapping books to mail One of my favorite jobs when I was in college as a work study student was was being a A shelver and checker in the libraries. I'd be The books appointed also going down the um, you know to see that all the books were in the right Places and moving them to where they ought to be if they if they weren't in their in their correct Yes, either Library of Congress or Dewey Decimal order because that's right That library was in the course of transitioning from Dewey Decimal to Library of Congress So some sections were under one and some were under another Yeah Yeah, I I worked in the library uh at my high school too And I think it was the only thing I ever did that I liked I had a Very undistinguished career in high school, but I love to read and I liked being in the library and And so yeah, I had that same taste that you did and it it's been with me a lifetime Yeah, well also in the course of doing that. I also that was also another way I discovered Books that I was interested in I might not have discovered This and um When I'd leave my shift I'd often be checking out some of the books I'd been shelving Okay, well, anyway, thanks a lot. Uh, this has been fun. I um, I hope that uh, you know that the Pandemic restrictions and and soon and you'll have more people Backing a store and although as I said this, you know, it's not like my channel has a huge viewership Particularly huge viewership in San Diego. So I hope that it helps a little bit Bring your store to the attention of someone or other Yeah, thank you Most appreciated Been a lot of fun. Thanks, Roger. Bye. Bye. Bye