Cleveland Heights bookseller to attend book show

Larry Rakow’s lifelong love affair with books has taken him from reader to librarian and from collector to bookseller. Specializing in children’s literature, Rakow now operates an independent venture, Wonderland Books, from his home in Cleveland Heights. He will soon be showing his wares at the Cleveland Antiquarian Book and Paper Show, Sunday, October 2 at the Cleveland Skating Club in Shaker Heights. Book fairs remain one of the most important ways for independent sellers to connect with customers, find new stock, and keep a foothold in the changing market.

“Publishing and book selling have experienced tremendous change and tumult since the advent of the Internet,” Rakow said, “and this continues to transform an industry that had previously been stable and conservative for hundreds of years.” Large retail stores like Borders and Joseph-Beth have either gone bankrupt or removed themselves from the Cleveland metropolitan area, while independent brick-and-mortar stores and online specialists continue to navigate the choppy waters of the e-book era. For local booksellers success is closely tied to providing excellent customer service and paying special attention to the reading and collecting tastes of their customers.

It was Rakow’s passion for pop-up books that slowly transformed him from a parent buying books for his children to a collector of vintage children’s literature, and eventually into a dealer specializing in the same field. “It started with simply looking to sell off duplicate copies from my collection, but eventually took on a life of its own,” Rakow explained. “While the Web--Amazon and eBay specifically--radically changed the retail market, it has also enabled people like me to be successful selling within a specialty field.” Rakow sells his books through various means: at his home to interested collectors, via the Web through eBay and Abe Books (formerly the Advanced Book Exchange) and at book fairs.

Book fairs are so important to booksellers and collectors that Rakow, as president of the non-profit Northern Ohio Bibliophilic Society (NOBS), has helped resurrect the tradition of a Cleveland book fair. “NOBS used to hold annual book fairs at the Grays Armory downtown and still sponsors the annual fair in Akron, but it has been a while since the organization has had a show in Cleveland. We been looking for the right place to hold a Cleveland area show and feel we’ve found it with the Cleveland Skating Club.”

The October 2 show will be held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the club, 2500 Kemper Road, Shaker Heights. Conveniently located near Shaker Square and the Larchmere neighborhood, the show will feature over 25 dealers with rare and out-of-print books in a variety of genres, including children’s literature, mysteries, cookbooks, science, history, science fiction and first editions, as well as paper ephemera like vintage posters and postcards. More information on the Cleveland Antiquarian Book and Paper Show is available at the NOBS website (www.nobsweb.org).