In my eight years working at an independent bookstore, I lost count
of how many shoplifters I chased through the streets of Seattle while
shouting “Drop the book!” I chased them down crowded pedestrian plazas
in the afternoon, I chased them through alleys at night, I even chased
one into a train tunnel. I chased a book thief to the waterfront, where
he shouted, “Here are your fucking books!” and threw a
half-dozen paperbacks, including Bomb the Suburbs and A
People’s History of the United States, into Puget Sound,
preferring to watch them slowly sink into the muck rather than hand
them back to the bookseller they were stolen from. He had that
ferocious, orgasmic gleam in his eye of somebody who was living in the
climax of his own movie: I suppose he felt like he was liberating them
somehow.
To work in an independent bookstore is to always be aware of
shoplifters. It can devour you; you can spend all your time watching
people, wondering if they’re watching you. Every shoplifter caught is a
major victory against the forces of darkness; every one who escapes is
another 10 minutes kept awake at night with gnashing teeth.
I know a few booksellers who have literally been driven a little bit
crazy at the thought of their inventory evaporating out the door, and
with good reason: An overabundance of shoplifters can put bookstores
out of business. One local bookstore owner can famously talk about
shoplifters with total strangers for hours, with the detail and passion
that some people reserve for sexual conquests.
There’s an underground economy of boosted books. These values are
commonly understood and roundly agreed upon through word of mouth, and
the values always seem to be true. Once, a scruffy, large man
approached me, holding a folded-up piece of paper. “Do you have any
Buck?” He paused and looked at the piece of paper. “Any books by
Buckorsick?” I suspected that he meant Bukowski, but I played
dumb, and asked to see the piece of paper he was holding. It was
written in crisp handwriting that clearly didn’t belong to him, and it
read:
1. Charles Bukowski
2. Jim Thompson
3. Philip K. Dick
4. William S. Burroughs
5. Any Graphic Novel
This is pretty much the authoritative top five, the New York
Times best-seller list of stolen books. Its origins still mystify
me. It might have belonged to an unscrupulous used bookseller who sent
the homeless out, Fagin-like, to do his bidding, or it might have been
another book thief helping a semi-illiterate friend identify the
valuable merchandise. I asked the man whether he preferred Bukowski’s
Pulp to his Women, as I did, and whether his favorite
Thompson book was The Getaway or The Killer Inside
Me. First the book chatter made him nervous, but then it made him
angry: He bellowed, “You’re just a little bitch, ain’t’cha?” and
stormed out.
Most used bookstores try to avoid buying unread-looking books from
the list above, but they do always sell, and so any crook who
figures out how to roll a spine can turn a profit pretty easily. The
list of popular books is surprisingly static, although newer artists
have earned their place in the pantheon with Hunter S. Thompson and the
Beats: Palahniuk, Murakami, and Danielewski have become hugely popular
antisellers in the last five years. I’ve had hundreds of dollars of
graphic novels—Sandman, Preacher, The Dark
Knight Returns—lifted from right under my nose all at once.
Science fiction and fantasy are high in demand, too: The coin of the
realm is now, and has always been, the fiction that young white men
read, and self-satisfied young white men, the kind who love to
stick it to the man, are the majority of book shoplifters.
When I worked at a big-box chain bookstore, shoplifters never
crossed my mind; the corporation paid security guards for that.
Employees were told not to get involved. The legal issues were too
Byzantine for us peons to understand. The guards, instead, created
problems: We had to fire one for masturbating in the children’s
section.
But independent booksellers, understanding that the line between
profit and failure is so fine, take it personally, and sprint after
thieves all the time. On the rare occasion when a shoplifter would run
faster than I could, I would shout at his back as he escaped into the
city: “Why don’t you steal from a fucking corporate bookstore,
you asshole?” None of them ever responded. They just kept running.
Enjoyed the read. I hadn’t realized there were target books out there for shoplifting. Then again, I pay for my books so I guess I’ve no need to pay attention to that. It might explain why I can’t find a decent graphic novel in our used book stores to save my life. Thanks for the knowledge!
If you added Jack Kerouac, Franz Kafka, Hunter S. Thompson, Harlan Ellison, David Goodis to the five you alteady named, this looks like s list of the 10 authors you almost never see at a Goodwill or the shelves of a used book store. Unless they are in the window or under glass, the store won’t have it.
Haha, I was searching for a list of top stolen books and this was the first result. Great narrative.
As someone who has recovered from a very real addiction to stealing books, I’m shocked that there are so many young, wannabe-bohemian white men stealing from independent stores. The only way I was ever able to justify this selfish act to myself was by limiting my theft to Borders and Barnes N Noble, a rule to myself that I never broke. It still troubles me, that I was so cavalier about my actions for so long, but at least I wasn’t actively destroying the lives of a few individuals; I was dipping into the profit margin of the enormous corporation and its insurers, raising the price of books that already cost too much, are read too little, and understood even less.
i try to only steal books written by authors who are dead or aren’t likely to miss the money. i don’t ever really steal from indie bookstores, though. I’m not sure exactly what the reasoning is. But I guess it has something to do with the fact that I don’t feel as much empathy for large corporate entities as I feel for smaller, less bureaucratized and money-focused human endeavors. Anyway, but considering the kind of value that independent bookstores have for a community, it is fucked up that people still steal from them. There are some books that have been life-changing experiences for me that I would have never found at my local Barnes & Noble. If not for independent book sellers that make an effort to promote good literature and serve as a counterweight to the commercialized mess of corporate retailers, this world would lose would lose a bit of its flavor and romance.
to all book thieves: you know there’s a place called the library where the books are FREE!
The picture of portly Paul Constant waddling after a book thief is quite amusing.
Don’t forget Zane. That should be the No. 1 most shoplifted book in The South. Seriously. At the big box bookseller I work, we do not have any Zane on the bookshelf, despite the computer saying we should have 8 different titles in varying quantity. My store manager won’t order more in, despite the obvious absence, because they’ll just get stolen again. I love to watch the thieves come ask about the Zane books. I tell them if they aren’t on the shelf we don’t have any. Their evil little faces look so sad.