Street smarts: book vendors count on foot traffic, marketing instincts and the First Amendment in the battle for profits.

Selling books on the street can be intimidating and confusing, yet it's a lucrative business for the aggressive and savvy, say authors and booksellers who play the game.

It is played hardest on the sidewalks of New York City, specifically in Harlem, explained Clara Villarosa, who operated a bookstore in Denver and in 2002 opened Hue-Man Bookstore on 125th Street with her partners before retiring earlier this year. [See BIBR, May-June 2005, "Starting Over."]

"There is no street like that," Villarosa says. "For three to four blocks, there is a high concentration of wall-to-wall African American street traffic; you can hardly walk."

That's why street bookselling is a New York City phenomenon that does not really exist in other black metropolises, says Villarosa. In Harlem, she adds, "Vendors number about three to four per block, from St. Nicholas to Lenox Avenues. They set up their card tables on the south side of 125th Street."

These vendors offer variety. "They're selling what people ask for," says Villarosa. "They offer mainstream best-sellers like The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (Doubleday March 2003), as well as books by black authors from mainstream houses or self publishers."

Vendors also move many "remainders," publisher overstocks they obtain at 80 percent off the retail price, then sell to customers as half-price off bargains. For example, Terry McMillan's k Day Late and a Dollar Short (Signet Books, January 2002) is an old overstock to the publisher, but it is a reasonably new, saleable book to African American customers, says Villarosa.

Also popular with black customers are softcover school workbooks and children's books, she says.

Urban Lit Hits

Vendors carry a wide selection of the dries because they want to have what people ask for. But a handful of booksellers and authors say so-called urban literature dominates the street scene.

Villarosa says initially many self-published authors hawked their books on the street, but over time, chain bookstores saw an income stream and this genre ended up on bookshelves of Borders, Barnes and Noble or Wal-Mart, as well as on Web sites like Amazon.com. Mainstream publishers and new urban-oriented publishers have also begun turning out the books, often contracting with authors who were once self-published.

Julia Shaw, a Queens, New York-based book publicist and former bookseller, says urban fiction writers and other self-published authors who sell on the street create a climate "that is almost equal to having their books in retail stores."

"Why? The books on the street are there in front of the people," she says.

"Self-published authors are using their own money. They're under pressure, and selling on the street is a quicker way of making their money back than working with distributors,"

Brenda Piper of Queens, New York, says she and Carol Rogers began street book vending in the late 1990s and continued through 2002. Now they operate C&B Book Distribution. Their customers include street vendors.

The Peddlers' Picks

What are the hot titles that vendors want?

The top five titles carried and sold on the streets, according to distributors and street sellers are: Caught in the Struggle by C. Rene West (Primadonna Publishing Inc., December 2004); Dutch by Teri Woods (November 2003); A Hustler's Wife by Nikki Turner (Triple Crown Publishing, March 2003); The Last Kingpin (Relentless Content, February 2004), Platinum Dolls (February 2000,) and other titles by Relentless Aaron; and The Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave by Kashif Malik Hassan-el (Lushena, March 1999).

Piper says that all popular sellers each move at least two to three cases of books a week, or about 100 to 150.

If vendors don't have certain titles in stock, says Villarosa, customers might ask the street seller, "can you have it tomorrow or in three days?" The vendors go to the local distributor and get the product.

David Reeves, of Sellers Books, Inc., "also in Queens, New York, says a number of his regular street vendors ask for five to 10 copies each of about 20 different authors.

"Conspiracy books" says Villarosa, sell well on street, too. Popular sellers, Reeves and Piper agree, include The Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave. It is a perennial on the BIBR FLYING OFF THE SHELVES list (see page 78) and is based on 18th-century writings about how to control the master/slave relationship. Another is Behold a Pale Horse (Light Technology Publications, December 1991) by William Cooper, which explores various theories on assorted, alleged government "conspiracies."

The Art of War

Street-book selling inspired an independent film, Book Wars by Jason Rosette, that in 2000 took viewers inside the sometimes zany world. A review that year by John High explained that street booksellers acquired stock from estate sales, remainder bins, foundations, used books stores and trash heaps.

Black street vendors, says Shaw, can trace their starts to Luther Warner of Lushena book distributors in Chicago about a 12 years ago. Shaw worked for the company then and explained: "He used to give the vendors books on consignment, then they would 'balance' and pay for what they sold, sixty percent for Lushena, forty percent for them."

In the 1990s, Lushena distribution centers were in a handful of major cities such as Atlanta and Philadelphia. The business scaled back to the Chicago location only. In a telephone interview, Warner confirmed his involvement in book selling, but declined several requests to elaborate.

Former peddlers, says Shaw, moved on to form their own distribution companies. Other street vendors became bookstore owners, like Karibu in the Washington, D.C. area. On its Web site www.karibubooks.com, the owners explain that in 1992 they started with $500 and sold their goods on the street. Now Karibu says it is the largest black-owned bookstore chain in the country, with five stores in Maryland and Virginia. [See BIBR, January-February 2005, MARKET BUZZ, "Notes of a Native Bookseller."]

In Washington, D.C., street vendors sell books outside the Farragut North and Foggy Bottom Metro train stations, said Karibu co-owner Brother Yao.

Seller's Market

Street-sale customers, Yao says, tend to be girls and women from the mid-teens to thirties, and twentysomething men.

"They may have hit a Terry McMillan," says Brother Yao, "and a lot of the other readers are hip to Omar Tyree's Flyy Girl (Simon & Schuster, October 1996). Then there are folks who found that The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah was the breakout book for them." Coldest Winter was first published in 1999 and reissued in a Collector's Edition by Atria in October 2004 (see BIBR, March-April 2005, 'ROUND THE WAY, "After a Season").

Brother Yao also says that sales of The Willie Lynch Letter got a boost because of references in Minister Louis Farrakhan's 1995 Million Man March speech. "Without question," says the bookseller, "It was a dramatic thing."

In 1712, Virginia plantation owner William Lynch allegedly stated a plan to control enslaved people for generations. In his speech, Farrakhan said: "Remember the letter of Willie Lynch and let's not let Willie Lynch lynch our new spirit and our new attitude and new mind ... We want Willie Lynch to die a natural death. And the only way we can kill the idea of Willie Lynch, we have to build trust in each other."

Many established authors continue selling books on the streets. "I still sell my stuff out of the trunk of my Mercedes," says Nikki Turner, an author in Richmond, Virginia. "And at car washes and beauty salons. The grind is always on," she said in an e-mail exchange. "Street sales are big. There have been times when I sold more than two hundred books in a matter of a couple of hours."

The peddlers, in some instances, compete with the stores. "Of course, it's very annoying [to have them nearby]," Villarosa adds, "but they are protected by freedom of speech. Most of them do not charge sales tax, and sometimes they can negotiate the price with customers. That's very competitive."

The bookstore's advantage is that it is protected from bad weather, and it is better suited for author signings and other special events. "Sometimes," Villarosa adds, "peddlers refer customers to us, but we don't refer to them."

The Exercise of Free Speech

Relentless Aaron, an author of several urban-lit titles (see BIBR, November-December 2004, SELF-PUBLISHING, "Starting Here, Starting Now"), says, "At first I felt threatened by the laws. Vendors were everywhere. There was uncertainty about what could or couldn't be done, by the vendors and police. Police would ask, 'where is your license?'

"Now that I'm knowledgeable, I say, 'I'm a First Amendment vendor.' We're a different breed."

Dina Improta, spokeswoman for the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, said: "Some materials, generally including newspapers, books and items bearing political messages, as well as paintings, photographs, prints and sculptures, have First Amendment protection and can be sold without such a license. This protection for free speech does not exempt would-be vendors from other relevant laws, including copyright laws."

In Washington, D.C., Simba Sana, another Karibu co-owner, says the city Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs requires a vending license that has an annual fee. About five years ago, he says, licenses became tougher to obtain and existing ones are nontransferable.

"We couldn't do today," says Sana, "what we did in 1992."