Sharon Morgan - rare books

Speaker 1 00:02

This is a Vision Australia Radio podcast.

Speaker 2 00:18

on Vision Australia Radio. Welcome to our conversations on the work and experiences of emerging writers. I'm Kate Cooper and I guess today is Sharon Morgan, manager of Morgan's Rare Books, an online bookstore based in the Adelaide Hills. One of the aims of this programme is to include reflections from people and organisations involved in supporting, encouraging and promoting writers and writing. Included in our plan is a series profiling book sellers in our state, so we're delighted to be able to speak with Sharon today about her work in and perspectives on the art of rare book selling.

Speaker 2 01:00

Sharon, welcome to the programme. Morgan's Rare Books was founded by your father, Brian Morgan. Would you tell us first of all about him and about what inspired his passion for rare books?

Speaker 3 01:13

Dad was a, he was a very creative and knowledgeable man and he's always had a fond love of books. He's always always been surrounded by books and he's always had many different interests. I guess he started collecting books as a result of his interests and his own hobbies. If there was any subject matter or topic that he wanted to know anything about he would he would buy a book about it and then that collection just grew until eventually regardless what he was doing in his life he would buy a book on the on the topic and yeah he was just he had a thirst for knowledge that just built this collection of books up to the amount of books that he has today.

Speaker 2 01:57

And what about the story of Morgan's Rare Books? When was the business founded and how has it changed over the years?

Speaker 3 02:06

So the business, I guess we could say it was founded in the early 1990s, late 1980s, and I'm sort of throwing that day out there because that would be about when he started playing with a HTML-based website. He had so many books and was just collecting books, and by that point he'd started to collect books that he thought other people might like as well. So he started to enter them onto this HTML text-based website and started playing around with that until several years later eBay came along and then he would list books on eBay as well and make a little bit of money from them in that way.

But the business how it is today was when he passed away in 2017 we were left with thousands of books and mum was kind of left with, oh what am I going to do with all of these books? Do we just call in a book dealer and get rid of them? Or what do we do? And at the time I was a full -time carer for my son who had had a prior accident. So it kind of gave me, I sort of turned around to mum and said, well how about I have a look at the website and rejig it a little bit and I'll sell the books, which gave me something to do. So I got stuck into some research with e -commerce websites and social media and kind of dragged it from that old -school HTML -based text kind of website into what it is today.

Speaker 2 03:46

And it's a fantastic website and we'll certainly be talking about that during the program. Before we talk more about Morgan's Rare Books though, can I ask what it was like for you growing up surrounded by so many books?

Speaker 3 04:01

Wonderful.

Speaker 2 04:02

Really? 

Speaker 3

It was really good. I had a love of books from a very early age and being able to come home and access our personal library for research projects and things that were happening at school and I would often, because my dad was very clever, I would often ask him, you know, oh dad, can you explain this to me or can you explain that to me? And he'd say, Well there's a whole library of books in there, go look it up in the encyclopedia. So it was really, it was really helpful. It was really helpful to build that thirst for knowledge like he had in us kids. That was, yeah, that was really beneficial.

Speaker 2 04:41

And you love reading as well.

Speaker 3 04:43

I do, I'm a big reader and I read quite a variety of different genres of books myself.

Speaker 2 04:51

We'll talk about that a bit more during the program as well. So you've mentioned briefly about your own background and when you first became involved in Morgan's rare books. So did you always think that one day you'd work in the book trade?

Speaker 3 05:09

Well, my dream job has always been to have a little bookshop slash coffee shop slash art gallery kind of set up. So I did always love the idea of being in a bookstore, but my background before my son had his accident was in childcare and the food industry. So I kind of fell into the business that I'm in today as a result of Dad dying and me having to then rekindle all of that knowledge of research and book collecting that he had taught me over the years. So, yeah, I kind of I grew up around it and I grew up using it and accessing it, but I kind of fell by the wayside through most of my adult years until he passed away.

Speaker 2 06:01

You mentioned the Morgan's Rare Books website before and the site explains that you have over 15 ,000 used books in the collection and you're adding more titles to your website daily. I have several questions about this. Firstly, where and how do you store and maintain all of these books?

Speaker 3 06:22

Okay, my mother, because we don't have an actual bookstore, we store all the books in sealed plastic containers at her place. We actually, when I list the books and put them into these containers, I have a filing system on my computer, and each box, each container has a number on it. So when a book sells, I will then look up in my filing system on the computer what box number it's in, let mum know, and then mum will then hunt down that book in that box and bring it over to me and we'll post it, package it up and post it from there.

Speaker 2 07:01

So a family tea method. It is.

Speaker 3 07:04

It is. My mum and I, it's a partnership business. Admittedly, I do most of the work, but it's very helpful having her, because the collection was hers and my dad's to begin with, so the books are all there. So it's helpful having her having a property that has the space to store them.

Speaker 2 07:24

Fantastic. What do you need to consider when you're caring for a rare book collection?

Speaker 3 07:31

Well, our books, because the majority of our books are written post 1900, they're not, I think a lot of people assume when you say rare books that it conjures up an image of a rare antiquarian type book. So as I said, the majority of our collection are post 1900, so there's not a huge amount of that level of care that's needed and because of all of our containers are sealed, we don't have to worry about dust or anything like that gathering on them, so there's not a huge amount of maintenance really needed for caring for them.

Speaker 2 08:13

What led you to decide to choose sealed plastic containers as the way to store them? I mean, I'm thinking of my own book collection and the amount of dust that I regularly remove from it. So obviously, dust isn't a problem if you've got them in sealed containers. They don't sweat in the containers.

Speaker 3 08:33

No, they don't sweat. The plastic containers are actually really, really helpful. And the reason that we decided to use those containers was because we didn't have the space to be having all of the books on shelves. We also didn't have the time or manpower to be constantly making sure that these shelves were not going to be light affected or dusty or anything like that. So it was just easier for our filing system of how I explained earlier with the filing system on the computer and then corresponding with a box number. It was just easier, especially for my mum, to be able to access any given book. There's thousands of books. So this way she can access any book at any time as soon as it's sold. I think if we did have them all on shelves, then we'd have that added hindrance of having to scan the shelves every time a book sold.

And if anybody happens to have picked a book up and moved it and put it somewhere else, then you're forever going to be looking for books. So this way you've got 30 or 40 books in one container and you've just got to sift through that container to find the title that you're looking for.

Speaker 2 09:49

Sounds like a great system and given there are 15 000 books you really can't be looking for the missing one it would take far too long.

Speaker 3 09:57

There's been many times we've gone looking for a book and I have put it in the wrong container or I have listed it on the file under the wrong number and that can be a nightmare. That can take us several hours to find a book. I think there's even been maybe one or two customers over the last seven years that I've had to email and let them know and refund them because I can't find the book. It doesn't happen very often, but yeah, and that's why we have the system that we have so that that doesn't happen.

Speaker 2 10:28

It sounds like an excellent system for sure, so how do you go about sourcing books for the collection and how do you get a feel for which ones are likely to be of interest to potential customers?

Speaker 3 10:42

Haven't needed to, we haven't really needed to source books at this stage. I do keep an eye out when I'm in op shops or garage sales or anything like that. I will keep an eye out, but mostly the books are still within dad's collection. We have acquired a couple of deceased estates over the last few years, but when I'm sorting through those collections and deciding what to put on the website, a lot of it comes down to the subject matter and the condition of the book. I will research each individual book, see how many copies there are out there already online, see what the demand for that subject matter is. 

Look, I think a lot of getting the feel for what customers are wanting comes with practice and I think because initially it was a little bit of a struggle, but these days because I have been selling for several years now, I've learnt to gauge what subject matter customers are going to be interested in. There's a lot of niche type subjects and topics that while they may seem quite obscure or eclectic, they're the kinds of books that are definitely going to be sold. They're the kinds of books that, because it's worldwide, you've got people all over the planet who are going to be hunting down specific topics or material.

Speaker 2 12:11

We mentioned before that there are over 15 ,000 books in the Morgan's Rare Books collection. Your website shows the incredible range of books that you have and very helpfully organised into categories. There are over 30 main categories and numerous subcategories and each book entry comes with a clear photograph and descriptors of the content and the condition of the item. A lot of work must have gone into setting up your website and you must put in a lot of work to maintain it. Would you tell us more about the story of your website, the transition that you made from the original HTML site and your role in establishing and maintaining it now?

Speaker 3 12:55

I guess my role is everything. My role goes from sourcing the books and researching each individual book, taking the photographs of the books, finding a price for the books, and listing all of that information onto the website, then speaking and responding with customers who might email me or call me with requests or information regarding a specific title. Yeah, so really I'm kind of all round from beginning to end of the the entire process. Pretty much everything. My role is everything really.

Speaker 2 13:38

So, did you have the web development skills before you started or have you been learning along the way how to maintain the website?

Speaker 3 13:48

I did have web development skills to begin with. I, back in the early 2000s, maybe 2004 or 2005, I remember Dad had purchased quite a big collection of paperback books for the sake of one or two boxes of hardcover books that he was really interested in. So he was then developed, with a little bit of help from Dad, teaching me how to use these programs, like Frontpage, Microsoft Frontpage was then what was used for developing websites. And I put together a website called Pre -Love Paperbacks and put all of these paperback books on a website.

So I already had, by the time Dad had passed away, I did have that existing knowledge of how to, back then it was, you know, you use your delimiters and it was very text orientated back then. So I did have that basic knowledge of how to, what kinds of information to present for sale online for books.

Speaker 2 15:00

Brilliant. I'm Vision Australia Radio, you're listening to our conversation program Emerging Writers. Our guest today is Sharon Morgan, manager of Morgan's Rare Books, an online bookstore based in the Adelaide Hills. And so would you tell us exactly how the process works when someone's interested in purchasing a book for their collection? What do they do?

Speaker 3 15:31

I think the website is fairly user-friendly and self-explanatory with that. There are multiple ways on the website of accessing the different categories or searching for specific titles. At the moment, for the last couple of months, this is a very big job, I've currently been trying to broaden our categories and arrange our categories in such a way so that people can, if you're looking at an example, is Australiana category, Australia and Australia and then under that category, I'll break it down into all of the Australian states so that people who are looking for local histories or regional histories can then browse that state and find other books that may not come up in a search for a specific township or author.

So I'm trying to work on doing that across the board, I'm trying to work on doing that on the website. Art is another one that I'm trying to expand those options for finding different books within the website.

Speaker 2 16:44

And did you come up with the categories or was it a combination of what your father already had and your work on expanding them?

Speaker 3 16:55

When I first, after Dad had died and I first looked at the Morgan's rarebooks .com website that he had put together with HTML, there were a number of categories that he already had. So I was using those ones initially, but as I listed more and more books and as we got more and more customers, I realized that there were books and I had a number of repeat customers who were buying, it was obvious that they were buying books from within the same category, but they clearly weren't finding these books the first or second time round. And that alerted me to the fact that, okay, we need to do these categories in such a way that people can hone in on the specific area that they are wanting. 

So I kind of, the categories I came up with were a, partially were what I felt our business needed and the kind of categories that the bulk of our books were catering to, but also I had a look at other online bookstores and tried to keep in sync with the kinds of categories that they were using as well, like Yudimics and Angus and Robertson, all of those big booksellers. But I was also looking at some of the used booksellers as well to see what categories they were using. So it's a bit of a mixture of both. I sort of went with what dad had, went with what I knew we needed with what our books were, as well as what the standard or benchmark, if you will, was for what the bigger bookstores use, because I figured the bigger bookstores, people are going to be familiar with those categories and the hierarchy of those categories as well. So yeah, I've tried to do that a lot.

Speaker 2 18:49

little bit. It certainly works because you've got the categories laid out in a way that the user can see at a glance and then just scroll down and as we mentioned you've got more than 30 categories already with lots and lots of subcategories there. You mentioned other used booksellers and I wanted to ask you for your thoughts on the market for rare book selling here in Australia. Is there a network or an association of rare booksellers?

Speaker 3 19:16

There are actually a couple of different networks and associations. At this stage, I'm not a member of them, but they're definitely there and they're definitely worthwhile visiting and looking into. They're something that I'm very keen to access very soon. But yeah, at this stage, I haven't accessed them. And I think a big part of the reason for that is because I don't have a physical bookstore, so the process of selling or customer relations for me is a little bit different to your average used or rare book dealer. And I think that's why I haven't taken part as yet. But I think I will eventually. They're definitely there and they're definitely very helpful.

Speaker 2 20:04

And you mentioned before about your own reading interest, that you're interested in a wide range of books. Do you have favourite writers?

Speaker 3 20:12

I do. I have a few favourite writers. The writers that I will march straight out and buy their books the second they're released are writers like the Trent Downtons, Hannah Kent, Lucy Trillore, Christos Tsiolkas or Leanne Moriarty or something as well. So I tend to like Australian writers, but yeah, I will read pretty much anything. And I like reading non-fiction as well as fiction.

Speaker 2 20:48

So this is a question that I have been asking booksellers on this program. What are some of the day-to-day rewards of your work?

Speaker 3 20:56

Finding homes for the books and listening to people's, to the story and the journey of how they came across the book. I will get a lot of emails and I look, I even get emails from people who want to call me because they want to talk to me about why they want this book and how they came to be looking for it. And that can be because they've been researching their family history and somebody is mentioned in a specific book or a book covers a specific region that their ancestors are from, but it's the stories. It's the stories and the journeys of the books. 

I recently had somebody from Victoria who was researching her family history and she arranged for a local pickup for this book because she was visiting South Australia anyway and she went out of her way to come to me to pick this book up and she just, she couldn't wait to tell me, it was a book about Peter Burrow. She'd already, this was the second or third copy that she had found, but she had another three copies that she wanted to find because she was trying to distribute a copy of this book to each of her family members who were relevant to this Peter Burrow area before she was even born.

So that was, that was a lovely story and there's other stories very similar to that as well. So that's, that's probably the best, the best part of it is listening to people's journeys and stories as to why they've been seeking out a specific title.

Speaker 2 22:34

Following on from that question, what are some of the day-to-day challenges involved in managing an online rare book store?

Speaker 3 22:43

Storage. Probably the fact that all of the books aren't on bookshelves and I can't allow people to come. Often I will get asked, somebody will buy a couple of books on a specific topic or subject matter, but then they will ask, oh, do you have any other books about this or any other books that mention that and not being able to let them browse other books in that similar category can sometimes be difficult because as I'd explained before, all of the books are in these plastic containers and of course there's no other than the titles being listed in a filing system on the computer.

They're all very random. You will have books from a specific subject in one box and then you'll have books from that same subject, 50 boxes down. So it's really hard, that's probably the biggest challenge, is that it's really hard to say no to people who want to or to try to explain to people that you can't view our collection. It's the storage that is probably the most challenging for the online bookstore.

Speaker 2 23:57

And then the way you manage that, as we said before, is that you have pictures of the books, really lovely photographs of the books on your website and you describe not only the content but also the condition. So that's a lot of time spent and care that you spend putting into making sure you provide as much information as possible.

Speaker 3 24:20

It is a lot of time, it's very time consuming and the photographs that you've mentioned, that's probably another challenge of the online bookstore as well is the taking the photographs is very difficult. I started, I tried to do it with, I've got a SLR camera at home and I started to attempt to take photographs with that thinking that that was going to take better photographs. But now I just use my mobile phone because I find that the lighting and the editing of the mobile phone just allows for clearer photos than what my actual camera does, but it's probably taking the photos that can be very time consuming and very difficult to, yeah.

And I like to take a lot of photos because I like to, being that it's online only, I like to present the book as if they were flipping through it, as if they were having a flick through, they can then see that somebody signed on the frontispace or there might be a tear to one of the images or one of the plates in the book, there might be a clipped dust jacket or something. So it just, it allows the customer to have a better feel and I think they trust us. I think because they see all of that information, because I am very forthcoming with any little mark or problem with the book, yeah, that's all in the description. So they trust that there's not going to be any added things wrong with the book when they receive it.

Speaker 2 25:58

That's really helpful. So yours, as we've said, is an online bookstore. Would you tell our listeners what your web address is and how they can contact you?

Speaker 3 26:08

The website is www.morgansrarebooks.com and there is actually a contact button on the website that you people can click on that and ask me a question or send an email. The email at the moment is mortgensrarebooksatgmail .com so that's another way that people can contact me or ask questions as well.

Speaker 2 26:36

Thank you so much Sharon. It's lovely to talk with you about your work in the book trade and I think we can say with confidence that book selling and book buying will always be an essential part of our community and our cultural life in South Australia. Our guest on Emerging Writers today was Sharon Morgan, Manager of Morgan's Rare Books, an online bookstore based in the Adelaide Hills. This programme can be heard at the same time each week here on Vision Australia Radio, FA Radio on Digital, online at varadio.org and also on Vision Australia Radio podcasts where you can catch up on earlier episodes.

Speaker 1 27:31

Thanks for listening to this Vision Australia Radio Podcast. Don't forget to subscribe on your preferred podcast platform. Visit varadio.org for more.

Speaker 1 27:41

Vision Australia Radio... Blindness Low vision Opportunity.