Just twenty years ago the book trade was so different as to almost defy memory. A bookseller carried knowledge in their head, not on their laptop. Research involved searching through bibliographies and history books in our personal reference collections and in libraries; we didn't have the internet to give us instant access to the holdings and records of the world's major institutions.

Many of the books that appeared in those pre-internet days we didn't know, and often couldn't track down. Books that hadn't appeared in a generation or longer needed to be assessed and priced, with no touchstones for comparison. Nicky Drumbolis, the most imaginative Canadian bookseller I've ever known, rails constantly against the puerile, self-defeating system of copying other dealer's prices used by so many unimaginative booksellers. The true bookseller, says Nicky, must assess intrinsic importance, rarity, and other factors to properly value any cultural object. Now everybody prices by the internet. Supposedly the great equalizer, the internet is in fact the worst offender against informed judgment, for it encourages the simple-minded to ask a bit less than whoever is offering a book at a higher price, but with absolutely no knowledge of the qualifications of the person whose price they copy. This method gives the appearance of logic where no real value has
been established. An experienced dealer looking at internet entries nowadays often finds five to ten copies of a book offered by dealers they've never heard of before they see names they know and credible prices. It takes just one ignorant fool putting a ludicrous price on a book to give other ignorant fools something to copy. They usually price their own copy ten percent or so less, assuming they're being clever, when what they're really doing is adding to the general ignorance.
The blind lead the blind into the bog of imbecility, all of which makes the internet a dangerous cesspool. Needless to say, these ludicrous prices presented by people with no clue what they're doing demean us all. This is what I now tell people who bring in books to sell with ABE receipts inserted in them. If this doesn't register, I simply tell them I'm not interested in their books. It's easier
than attempting lengthy explanations.

When I had no reputable book-pricing touchstone to compare with in those old days-as we now find
ourselves referring to them-I devised one based on my reading of Herodotus. Considered the first historian and certainly my all-time favourite, Herodotus, in his History, relates that when a certain tribe from present-day Iraq (if I recall correctly) had a serious problem to resolve, they would call a meeting of the tribal elders. The first night would be spent discussing their options. On the next night they would meet again, but this time they would drink copious amounts of wine while discussing the
problem. (It actually might have been marijuana. Herodotus, as I remember, is one of the first of the ancients to mention the use of what had to be pot, which we used to justify our then-illegal indulgences in the sixties.) Their imaginations and passions inflamed, and their natural caution and cowardice obliterated by the alcohol (or pot), the elders' solutions on the second night were always excessive and often outrageous. When they met again on the third night, they would compare the two wildly divergent solutions and, moderating their excesses with the cautiousness of sober reflection, reach a workable solution somewhere between folly and cowardice.

I thought this an incredibly clever system and I took to using it to price books. Of course, I drank a bottle or two of wine every night anyway, so it wasn't much of a hardship.

'The first time I remember using that system was with a copy of Morley CaIlaghan's No Man's Meat, a short novella published in 1930s Paris by Edward Titus at his Black Manikin Press. Titus was married to, and I guess funded by, Helena Rubenstein, which allowed him to indulge his passion for literature and fine printing by publishing important avant-garde writing. He published people like Hemingway and Pound and other worthies when no one else would. When I received it, no one had seen a copy of CaIlaghan's novella around here for over thirty years. Margie Cohen of House of Books in New York was asking $50 for it-when I phoned her I was surprised and delighted to learn it hadn't yet sold. Later, I realized that Callaghan was by then largely ignored outside Canada, in eclipse amongst collectors.

How to judge what to ask for a limited, signed edition of a great Canadian rarity published in Paris and not seen by any Canadian dealer in thirty years? I tested what I now called my "Herodotus Solution." That night, it took me, with the aid of some tasty wine, to $500 or so; the following morning's sobriety then reduced it to around $275. I got about six Canadian orders for the book in my next catalogue, where I called it "perhaps the rarest book in modem Canadian literature." This pompous assertion caused me some embarrassment a few years later, when it turned out that an American dealer had discovered, and bought, the entire residue of Titus' press and had a seemingly unending supply of CaIlaghan's, so-called-by-me, "rare" book.

Obviously, that's where Margie Cohen had gotten hers. But the "Herodotus Solution" worked, and I've used it ever since with great success. Actually, according to Nicky Drumbolis, who knows these things, there are two books that really do qualify as the rarest items in modern Canadian literature: George Bowering's first book, Sticks and Stones (1962), and Gwen MacEwen's Selah (1961). Selah, which was printed, it is said, by MacEwen herself in a hundred copies, must have only had a few bound up and distributed, because it is very rare indeed. I just sold one, for the second time, having repurchased it from the person I originally sold it to. I sold another copy quite a few years ago, and those two copies are the only ones I've ever seen, or even heard about. The person who bought the last copy told me that Steve Temple, who knows CanLit much better than I do, had told her he didn't believe it even existed. He thought it was a "ghost"-what we call in the trade a book that is announced but never gets published. "Ghosts" are a scout's dream, and we all have secret ones we hope to find before we die. Every once in a while, Poe's Tamerlane or the American Declaration of Independence shows up in a junk venue just to prove it can happen.

The rarity of Bowering's book seems due to the printing having been botched and the edition scrapped. Apparently Vancouver CanLit specialist Bill Hoffer rescued some sheets from the printer's
trash (another clue to the good bookseller, scouting garbage). Hoffer made up a few copies of the complete book, but no one knows how many. Even Hoffer couldn't remember, apparently.

As for No Man's Meat, there are still a fair number of copies for around $150. So much for Mason the expert. But, that doesn't affect the brilliance of the Herodotus Solution. There's a long list of great "rarities" that turned out not to be scarce at all, never mind rare; there's nothing like money to bring rare things out of the woodwork, and the internet has proven just how common some rarities can be.

Even I, never a specialist in Canadian literature, have owned several copies of Margaret Atwood's first book. And it was long known in the trade that if one had a customer for Al Purdy's first book, The Enchanted Echo, the best place to seek it was in Al's own back room; he always seemed able to find a copy for the proper price.

And then there's that basic rule in all capitalistic commerce: supply and demand. There are a finite number of book collectors, and at some stage most books will reach a saturation point where every collector who wants that book has it, and the remaining copies will sit on dealer's shelves, or in their safes, maybe until another collector is born.

And then there's the case of the hungry scout who offers a very rare book to a reluctant dealer. "That's a very rare book you know," the scout tells the dealer. "Yes," answers the dealer, "I know it is. Almost as rare as customers for it."

This saturation happens not just to titles, but to authors as well, but that's a subject I'll leave for another time.

On the question of rarity, there are of course still many things that necessitate the Herodotus Solution, which I still use. Copies that are unique due to presentation inscriptions, manuscripts, and letters and association copies made immensely desirable because of who owned them. And, of course, those books that are so truly rare that no comparisons can be found. For all these forty-five years 1 have used wine, marijuana (until it was forbidden by my doctors-a bitter, if just punishment for my youthful excesses with tobacco), and Nicky Drumbolis' wisdom to help me price those incredible treasures that still render book scouting such an exciting sport.

Another reason so many of our customers envy us, and one of the real rewards for the pitiful income booksellers can expect.

And a final gift to the reader. The Herodotus Solution works reliably and often perfectly for many of life's other predicaments. Try it. You can thank me, but the real credit belongs to Herodotus, who, in addition to the solution, gave us all that wonderful history.

-David Mason