Now What! Tales from the Annals of a San Francisco Bookseller [Paperback]

Tro Harper (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2001

Meet the publisher's representative who sold books with the aid of a Colt .44 caliber pistol.

The sales clerk who told a hold-up man to "get lost."

The customer who bought a book on memory improvement and left it at the cash register.

The story of the biggest "remainder" ever, amounting to 70,000 copies jobbed off for five cents a copy. Then the author won the Nobel Prize for literature.

And for you who plan to open a bookstore, someday, there is a section of warnings, advice, and the best way to realize your dreams.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Overall a great book that has a lot to say about marketing in general. It tells the story and sells the author's character. It is America! -- Jim Richardson, Organized Comedy

About the Author

Tro Harper ran Tro Harper, Books in San Francisco for 32 years. He started out as an announcer, producer, and special events director for KSFO, at the time the CBS station for San Francisco. He left to become the Eleven O'Clock Newscaster (11 am &11pm) at WOR, New York, a career that was interrupted to join the US Marine Corps during WW II. He is now retired and living with his wife of 50 years in Santa Rosa, CA where he is an emeritus member of the Santa Rosa Symphony. His first book, "Nowhere Except San Fancisco: Memoirs of a Resident Tourist" is now in it second printing and copies are still available from Amazon.com.

Product Details

• Paperback: 189 pages
• Publisher: Oak Point Press; 1st edition (May 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0970970803
• ISBN-13: 978-0970970800
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,870,797 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars MERCHANT OF BOOKS, June 12, 2001

By 

Rex Hardy - See all my reviews

This review is from: Now What! Tales from the Annals of a San Francisco Bookseller (Paperback)

Many a book lover has harbored a secret ambition to own his own bookstore. Tro Harper has been there and done that and has written a warm and engaging book about it. The end of World War II signaled a change of direction for Harper. Packing away his Marine Corps uniform and abandoning his pre-war career in broadcasting, he made the somewhat drastic decision to become a bookseller. "Now What!" tells tthe story of how he found the location - on San Francisco's Powell Street (for a time there was a second store on Market Street as well) - and stocked it and learned the trade of a retail merchant. The book details the early difficulies and deals with the author's relations with customers, staff, and particularly with publishers' representatives and their efforts to induce him to carry their wares. Harper's previous book about San Francisco included tales of the cable cars which rattled up and down outside the Powell Street ddors of his book store. In "Now What!" his unpretentious good natured anecdotes will amuse the general reader and instruct those other wannabe bookstore proprietors.