An Actual Internet Success Story

''There used to be a romance to it,'' he says. ''Now you're just a person who schleps. People have the idea that the book trade is a polite business for gentlemen. In fact, it's a lot more like the Mafia.'' He remembers how one dealer beat another with a tire iron in a dispute over a book and how a dealer was arrested for stealing the contents of an entire store when he realized the store's owner had died.