A Novel Idea Bookstore - Ocala Florida
It's close to my birthday, and I had to travel a lot this week, so I hit some old favorites of mine in Fort Myers and Ocala. The Book Rack in Fort Myers is still owned by the same person, and I have posted about the store several other times in this blog. Its great for a twice a year stop in to see if any of the inventory has changed over. The other store I visited is A Novel Idea in Ocala, which I had been in once before, but there was really nothing in my price range. Their cheapest books are $2-$4 on average. I did find some gems however. They had an orange cat at checkout in a box of books, which is very good luck and much appreciated. Anyways, back to the Book Rack.
Well friends, she finally got wise to reseller and collector antics. There was a ton of new stuff in the store, but everything that was worth anything is now on a huge table behind the owner at the front, and to the side priced for eBay sale. Anything over an eBay sold value of $4 has been deemed as "Rare" and removed to be put on eBay. She did allow me to look behind the counter, but warned me it's prices as marked. There was two large wire racks in the middle of the sci-fi fantasy section just covered with Book Club Edition's for days. A lot of stuff I did not have, and all in good condition, but each one is marked with sharpie in the front cover insert as for sale for $8 each. The actual value of these books are around $5 each on eBay, so I think she is looking at listed values and not sold auctions. Either way, I caught her slipping on a Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe and a stack of Zelazny for $1 each on the very bottom shelf mixed in with some Shatner Tek War. I did notice if it was on the bottom shelf, it appeared to be priced years ago and untouched. It's also worth noting, any of the Timescape books are going for big money and I have no idea why.
The haul from both locations
Left stack is from the Book Rack, right stack is from Novel Idea. Some really great old pulpy sci-fi, and some great covers from Novel Idea, and they had some more stuff that I wanted. I broke the bank at $31, which is MUCH more than I would normally pay. $2 is the minimum price for a book there as mentioned previously. When I found The Black Horde by Lewis, I didn't feel bad spending the money, as I have one other copy and I knew it was worth $30+. The Origin of the Crabs really stood out for me, so got that as well and was pleasantly surprised of its value. The rest of the books I did not have, or had in a different edition so grabbed them on merit knowing I'm going to make my money back on the one book alone. Full transparency, I sell the doubles of books I find in the wild, and keep the better edition for myself to fund more book buying down the line. I also pick up books for fellow collectors, but I'm horrible about getting back to them and looking through mountains of storage for what they need. I spent just under $50 on this trip, got some stuff I wanted, and two books to sell to get that money back. Some cover shots below:
Artax the Book Cat paying the Cat Tax
Speaking of Cat Tax, Bastian the original book cat pictured in tons of my posts and in the margin to your right, died in February of old age at 18 years old. My wife and I got him at a yard sale in Lehigh Acres Florida, covered in fleas and had worms along with his sister Chloe. We had them both until they were 18 years old, and he still sat and watched me read and toppled over my stacks of books from time-to-time. So RIP Bastian, you will be missed.
RIP Bastian - 2004-2022
