ACROSS the buying counter at the Strand Book Store,which is as worn and battered as an old school desk, has flowed much of the secondhand-book trade of the city of novel York. Dog-eared tomes in college bags; shiny review copies dropped in by critics; bland boxes of publishers’ remainders, or tantalising parcels from private estates; leather-bound volumes with uncut pages,and paperbacks rescued by vagrants from the trash. The whole momentum of novel York publishing and reading seems to push towards that counter where Fred Bass presided, building up his stock from 70000 in 1956 to 2.5m by the 1990s, and so rapidly exceeding his sales space that many books also sit in a warehouse at Sunset Park,in Brooklyn.
To this plenitude of books he was forever adding more. Every day he approached his counter like a small boy on a treasure-hunt. And treasure did turn up: a first edition of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” (he paid $7000; resale price, $38000), and a moment folio Shakespeare (sold for $100000)....
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Source: economist.com