Dave Robus Marketing Reviews

 Hi everyone welcome back again to my blog. On Sunday I decided to go for a stroll around the old market town near to where I live. It is famous for a number of reasons, among them being its history as a smugglers paradise in days long gone by. Because of its ancient history there are naturally still in existence a wealth of extremely old buildings. Most of these are either of wooden shiplap type construction or very strong medieval stone built. The buildings are mainly 3 storeys high in the oldest and most famous part of the town, nearest to the river, where shipbuilding companies once made their fortunes.

Why am I telling you all this? I have some very good reasons which I hope you will benefit from in the near future. In their heyday these buildings were used to house all of the associated industries that were needed to support the economy of an ancient town such as this one. Transport around the town and other’s nearby in them days was mainly by sea or river, with the only form of land transport being on foot or by horse and cart. Therefore every item needed was either produced locally or brought in by sea and river. In these buildings you could obtain virtually anything at all that you required in order to live or ply your trade.

There would have been grocers, bakers and butchers, along with many others in the food trade. Naturally a pub or 2 would also have featured strongly and in fact still do to this very day. Furniture makers and carpenters, wheelrights for the horse and carts, even coffin makers would have been around… all in the same little commercial area. Barrel makers (or Coopers as they are known), blacksmiths etc, in fact any and every trade you could think of would be there producing and selling their wares.

Pipemakers and Ropemakers in particular were there to make their products, selling them on to the shipping industry and fishing trade in general. In those times nearly every working man smoked a pipe and every boat or ship needed rope as indeed they still do. Even to this current time there still stands a pub on the site of the old pipe factory, named naturally “The Pipemakers Arms.”  ‘Rope Walk’ is still a street name in the town on the site of the old rope production plant. Rope was produced by hand and the strands were
pulled out gradually over a few hundred yards of straight walking area.

All the foregoing leads us on to my passion of Books and in particular “Old Books” as well you know by now. In the buildings would also have been rooms for writers, bookmakers- in both senses of the word; that is ‘bookies’ as betting shops are known even now, but also real book producers or publishers. A spin off trade from this would be bookbinders, who collated and stitched the pages together. All the above were in abundance as small business concerns, maybe one or two men or perhaps family businesses.. Probably as a sea faring and shipbuilding town there would have been map makers and nautical chart compilers in order that seafarers could try and navigate from the charts of the stars and planets surrounding our world.

In our current day and age all the above has long since gone and been replaced mainly with wine bars, up market restaurants, chic cafe’s and modern gift and flower shops, etc. The reason for this obviously being that manufacturing is now normally fully automated, using modern machinery on a large scale in purpose built factories. However for our purposes not everything is lost, because among all the bars and cafe’s are are considerable numbers of junk shops and stalls, many of which sell books.

Also there are a few dedicated book shops selling second hand and genuinely old books, maps, charts etc. In these junk shops and book shops loads of the books are in fair condition and exist from hundreds of years ago, just lying there waiting for you and I to buy them up cheaply and make a great living from them.

Junk shops! Book shops!… you must be joking,

I think of them more as Piggy Banks…

full of money waiting to be emptied out at my leisure,

whenever the mood takes me.

“Old Books Make Money”

There are hundreds of them in the craft, junk and second hand books shops in my nearest town. I feel sure the same applies to yours, do you agree? Why not take a good look around because quite soon if you so desire, you will be able to do something special with any old books you can lay your hands on. For example this weekend I picked up for literally pennies… titles such as;

How to Catch Trout;

How to Tie Knots;

Boatbuilding for beginners; and last but not least

“Sailor Sams Secret,”  a story of how to make ships in bottles, which has been a hobby of seafaring men for centuries.

I also found a children’s book entitled “Aunt Louisa’s Nursery Rhymes”. I paid a couple of pounds for this, got home and did a search on google, ebay, bookfinder, amazon and similar search engines, but could find not one of the same at the time. This one book alone has the ability to make me 1000’s of dollars.

Another magical book I came across and bought was called “Animal Stories”… a truly fantastic mix of childrens tales all in one large volume. I reckon it will earn a small fortune for me if I split it up and reprint each chapter seperately.

Hands Off…, these books are all mine!

Or perhaps not as they are in the Public Domain.

If you happen to come across them, then maybe you will choose to turn them into your very own profit making machine, making a tidy sum for yourself into the bargain. There are endless supplies out there and I have given you just a couple of examples from my Sunday morning forage locally. Why not get out now and have a browse about, always bearing in mind whilst you are looking that virtually any

“Old Books Make Money”

if you are prepared to put in a little effort and passion.

If an old book catches your eye and looks interesting to you, then it follows naturally that other’s will also find it interesting. This is where your “secret knowhow” and information comes into play.The book may not be too simple for them to find… unless of course it’s your version, which you have reprinted with the help very soon of

“Old Books Make Money.”

You can then market it to the world at large very easily from your home and computer using sites such as ebay and clickbank.

Until next time good bargain hunting in the junk shops and books shops,

or need I say it… …

more especially now you know what to look for… …

The Piggy Banks.

PS. Whilst you are browsing around take a good look at some of the old magazines you might find, usually there are hundreds of them and pages in rare magazines can fetch small fortunes as a stand alone item. Or you could use them as illustrations in your books according to your title and niche.

To find out more about old magazines take a look here

Bye for now

Dave.