How I Finally Caught My White Whale Book

[image description: a bookshelf with a circular hole cut out of the middle, through which there are other book-filled shelves. In the center of the cutout is an open book floating.]

I know a lot of readers who have white whale books. A book they’re constantly on the lookout for, but for reasons of scarcity or high price won’t have an easy time finding. Maybe it’s a rare edition of their childhood favorite or a signed first edition of a book that’s had a meaningful impact on their lives.

My white whale book was a little simpler, but it still led me on a years-long hunt.

For Independent Bookstore Day 2016, there were a series of booklets published and sold for $6. The booklets were published specifically for Indie Bookstore Day, were only available at a limited number of indie booksellers, and were published in limited quantities. Meaning, when they’re gone, they’re gone.

Unfortunately for me, the local indie I visited didn’t have any copies of the booklets––at least not that I saw. Months later I heard about The Care and Feeding of an Independent Bookstore by author and bookstore owner Ann Patchett and decided I must have it.

A quick aside is necessary here. Many people have told me I’d be a wonderful bookseller, though despite having entrepreneurial leanings I don’t want to open a brick-and-mortar bookstore. (Though I do sell books in my vintage shop!) I have great respect for booksellers, though I’d prefer to write the books sold on their shelves.

Nonetheless, I love reading about the business side of bookstores and publishing. When it comes to books, I enjoy learning how the sausage gets made.

Which explains why I was so excited about The Care and Feeding of an Independent Bookstore. At the time I found out about it, I didn’t realize it was one of the limited edition booklets for the previous Independent Bookstore Day and was surprised at how nearly every retailer I found said it was out of stock.

Ironically, Amazon has a copy or two available, though at a highly marked-up cost. Plus, I couldn’t bear to buy a book about independent bookstores from the store that made it their mission to kill them off.

I started scouring the catalogs of indie bookstores online and learned, disappointingly, that not only do the majority of indie bookstores not sell online (in this day and age!), nearly all the ones who do were out of copies.

Finally, I found an indie bookstore that had a copy of The Care and Feeding of an Independent Bookstore and I couldn’t hit the buy button fast enough. A couple of days passed and I didn’t get a shipping notification, so I got worried. Not long after that, I received an email that said although their website says they have a copy of the book, they couldn’t find it anywhere in their warehouse and it was possible their inventory numbers were incorrect.

I got the idea to set up a google alert for the title and that proved useful when over a year later someone listed a copy on eBay for $10. I hit that buy button so fast my finger cramped afterward.

When it arrived in the mail, I had another surprise waiting for me; this time, a good one. Although I don’t recall it saying so in the description online, the copy I ended up buying was signed! I swooned on the spot.

I probably wouldn’t have continued my search in earnest if it hadn’t been for the foresight I had to set up a google alert. So if there’s a rare white whale of a book you’re looking for, I recommend doing that.

What’s your white whale book? Let me know in the comments!