Panel presentation: Truth in vending

In many ways bookselling is a game. For us practitioners, it is the game, just as baseball is the game. To carry this late spring/early summer fantasy even further, to most folks baseball is quite simple: hit the ball, run 90 feet at a crack, score some runs, go home a winner, drink a lot of beer, and establish the winning tradition. Nothing to it. Just like bookselling. Nothing to it. All one does is fill the order, put the book in a box, and ship it to the library. What could be easier and thus more profitable? Nine folks play baseball, but how many are on the team? Just players? No, there are scouts, support personnel, etc. How many: 100 to ISO? including groundskeepers, minor league coaches and players, how many? It isn’t so simple. Bookselling is much like Thomas Boswell’s baseball idols, the Baltimore Orioles. The “winningest” team in baseball for not only the past 30 years, but also since the advent of free-agency (and they don’t buy players). The Baltimore organization has a book on how to react to every possible situation from every position. These fundamentals are stressed from the earliest days in the minor leagues to the final game of the World Series. Very basic, but very detailed. Hit the cutoff man, get the sure out, etc. For the first baseman it reads like this: