The Bookman Cometh

By Daniel J. Ennis

Behind his back, I called him "Hickey," after the charismatic hardware salesman in Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. Hickey's real name was embossed on his business card above his title: "Book Buyer." He was the guy who came by a couple of times each semester to buy the desk copies that publishers send out by the thousands, and like O'Neill's creation, he was a glad-handing, eager, and positive fellow.

Hickey knew his business. He would whip out a belt-mounted computer, unsling his rucksack, and scan the bookcase in one quick motion. He never gave the impression that he was involved in something sordid. He had a wad of cash, good manners, and a winning smile. His signature rap at the office door, followed by a cheery, "Hey, buddy, got any books?" was a harbinger of good times.

When I was in graduate school, the bookman (and there were many, and they were always men) was popular in my building. During those lean years, an extra $10 meant going out to lunch on Friday instead of brown-bagging it, and since the bookmen were busiest at the end of the semester, a brisk trade of desk copies for cash in December meant you could upgrade the metaphorical Cratchit goose for something meatier come December 25.

If you were dumb enough to have babies while in graduate school, the bookman was Santa Claus, or at least helped make Santa a little more plausible. Come spring, selling a few books on your way out of the office might help you make rent until your summer job kicked in.

Still, the visits from the bookman would usually stimulate debate within the department. In the absence of a clear policy, and with conflicting examples being set by our mentors, we graduate students sorted ourselves into three groups.

The Purists would never sell to the bookman, either because they truly believed that doing so would contribute to the rising costs of textbooks or because they viewed complimentary texts as temptations to be resisted. The Purist position was almost impregnable: Examination copies were to be examined, to be considered for potential adoption. The bookman, to them, was part of the problem.

I admired the Purists, with their metallic integrity and independent wealth. There were days when I wanted to be among them, letting my examination copies pile up on my shelf, like so much forbidden fruit, keeping book prices under control.

Yet in those days I couldn't resist selling a few books, and after a while, the Purists seemed to me too precious by half, rudely dismissing the bookman as if he'd offered to do something dirty for (or to) them. Since the bookman -- even clean-cut, cheerful ones like Hickey -- exists on the very bottom of the academic-book-industry ladder (lower even than the "Book Rep" with her pharmaceutical-sales charm and eagerness to shower you with the very desk copies that lead to temptation), it is easy to treat him like a criminal.

Too many Purists, I observed, took Cromwellian delight in rejecting the bookman's crisp sawbucks: I don't sell books to you people. The industry apologists at the Text and Academic Authors Association must have had the Purists in mind when they attempted to popularize a printable sign that read, "Reseller? Forget It. I don't sell complimentary copies." The slogan, like "Just Say No," has a certain graceless firmness that will keep creeps out of your face.

As far from the Purists as heaven is from hell, the Profligates would sell anything not nailed down, from the anthologies on their desks to instructor's editions pulled from the communal collections that accumulate in mailrooms across academe. Profligates, like sailors on leave, would get and spend with equal enthusiasm, and viewed any and all nearby books as potential cash.

The most committed Profligates refused to view desk copies as anything more or less than material examples of absolute and unrestricted grace. Unsolicited books showed up in the departmental mailroom on Monday, and by Wednesday, they were miraculously transformed into cases of beer, or a fully charged library copy card, or maybe those prescriptions that lay unfilled lo these many weeks, grad-student medical coverage being what it is (or isn't).

I liked the Profligates for their blithe unconcern, their "you snooze, you lose" playground ethos, and the good times they could squeeze out of a book stamped "NOT FOR RESALE."

Still, I couldn't join their ranks either. First, you couldn't trust a Profligate. Sharing an office with one meant that your desk copies might just disappear, even as you were teaching with them, and when confronted, a Profligate was just as likely to shrug her shoulders as make you whole.

Worse, though, were Profligates who were into cultural theory, for they soon became as insufferable as the Purists. A radicalized Profligate would metamorphose from a guy who kept the office free of clutter into an annoying type: "Book selling is part of a larger political project to defeat the multinational corporate publishing blah blah blah . . .." When a Profligate greets the bookman with a solemn "Hasta la victoria siempre," you know it's about to get tedious.

The rest of my peers in those days might be grouped under the banner of the Pragmatists. All of them worked their own deals with their consciences and the bookman, and those deals usually meant selling some books under some conditions.

One might point out that a book stamped "COMPLIMENTARY COPY" was fair game, "complimentary" being just that: a gift.

When the books started coming in stamped "COMPLIMENTARY COPY -- NOT FOR RESALE," the linguistic dance became a bit more complicated. Could one attach conditions to something complimentary? And if it wasn't for resale, how to dispose of this textbook -- unrequested, by the way, and meant for a class that was no longer offered? Throw it out? Recycle it? Leave it on the shelf until a Profligate came along?

Most absurd, perhaps, were the publishers' requests to take time out of the dissertation (and that darned baby you should have waited to conceive) to repackage and send back the book they had sent unsolicited. A Pragmatist could use righteous irritation to justify selling that book right then and there.

Most often, though, I encountered this creed amongst the Pragmatists: If the book was actually solicited and requested for review, it should be kept. If a book arrived unsolicited, it was destined for the bookman.

Judging from the practices of my peers, it seems the Pragmatists have won the day. Yet there is still a stigma attached to the bookman and his trade, which may explain why I find my friends at other institutions willing to talk (sotto voce) about the selling of complimentary textbooks, but requesting anonymity before they admit to doing so.

For some, it is a matter of university policy. Most institutions prohibit all nonapproved campus solicitation, a policy that would prevent the bookman from entering your building at all (along with all manner of evangelists and your colleague's daughter who sells Girl Scout cookies).

Other campuses single out the bookman for particular sanction. Eastern Kentucky University brands the selling of desk copies "unethical and unprofessional." Nova Southeastern University's Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences declares that dealings with the bookman are "inappropriate." Western Washington University even has an elaborate contraption of a policy whereby faculty members who receive review copies have a range of options that include "giving them to the university or to a charitable organization, as provided in RCW 42.52.010(10)(g)" or "dispos[ing] of them in accordance with agency adopted surplus property procedures." Whew.

There is even a lively debate about the bookman on The Chronicle's forums. A poster called "Fiona" warns that when it comes to selling desk copies, "People get fired for that. Give them away, but don't sell them." Ah, a Purist!

Nobody can actually cite an example of a faculty member being fired for consorting with the bookman, but we now have the seeds of an academic urban legend. If only we had more signs on our doors saying "Reseller? Forget It."

Another poster responds, "Send me one without my asking for it -- Cha Ching!" The cry of the Pragmatist! This thicket of apparently unenforceable official policy and ad populum ethics leads one Forum poster to declare, "I think our entire building would get canned for this behavior."

Indeed, I don't think I know any academics who haven't sold to the bookman, although I suspect I may be running with a low crowd. Adding to that murk is the progressive instinct for which American academics are justly famous. A number of Forum posts suggest worthy causes to which desk copies can be donated (nobody suggested donating them back to the publishers). One can send them to betterworldbooks.com, or booksforafrica.org, or even drop them off at the campus library.

In terms of acting locally, nobody beats an old friend of mine who now chairs a department. He collects the books that make their way into his office, sells them to the bookman, and maintains an account to provide his adjuncts with some gas and meal money when they go to conferences. The bookman gets his, the adjuncts get a tiny boost, and some office clutter is vanquished.

He seems neither ashamed nor proud of his "book fund," just, well, settled. He has found his place on that long continuum between Purist and Profligate.

But as academics puzzle over the ethics of the bookman, as we think of ingenious and morally acceptable ways to deal with the unwanted books that arrive two, three, and occasionally four or five times a month, we ought not spend too much time parsing our choices and hoping the book publishers will slow down the absurd flood.

I half think some book reps send out desk copies knowing they're destined for the bookman, tendering a small bribe to be recalled during the next textbook-adoption cycle. Why else send two or three of the same title?

If my suspicions are correct, if I'm being led into temptation by a methinks-she-doth-protest-too-much publisher's rep or three, then perhaps I'm absolved of my past dealings with the bookman. How can I avoid the near occasion of sin if it greets me in my mailbox, if it piles up on my shelves, if the bookman makes it so easy to slake the thirst?

Get thee behind me, textbook publishers! As the fictional Hickey put it in Act IV of The Iceman Cometh, "There's a limit to the guilt you can feel and the forgiveness and the pity you can take! You have to begin blaming someone else, too."