Stealing Books-A Bookscout's Guide To Book Collecting

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Sections
  Introduction
  Chapter 1
  Chapter 2
  Chapter 3
  Chapter 4
  Chapter 5
  Chapter 6
  Chapter 7
  Chapter 8
  Appendix 1
  Appendix 2
  Appendix 3
  Appendix 4

Chapter 2 - Where To Find The Books (continued)

USING A GPS UNIT:
Originally I used Delorme Street Atlas software and I would plot the book stores in the Street Atlas software and print out maps which would take me from each store to the next. And it’s kind of cumbersome using the maps. Later on I had a laptop and I had the software on the laptop and hooked an external GPS (Delorme Earthmate) to it, and it would route me from bookstore to bookstore. But it was kind of awkward using the laptop in my car. And on warm days the laptop would tend to overheat and work erratically. Also I did not like leaving the laptop computer on the passenger seat while I was in searching the used bookstores. So later on I got a Palm Pilot which I managed to hook up to the same Delorme Earthmate GPS and was running a program from Delorme called Solis which was written for the Palm Pilot. And it would route me from store to store. I would plot the bookstores on the Street Atlas software and then download the waypoints into the Palm Pilot which would then use that information to route me. It was generally very good. Later on when the handheld GPS units were becoming more available and dropping in price I started experimenting with those. I was in the Las Vegas area on vacation and found a list of used bookstores around there. I plotted them all in the Street Atlas software on my laptop which I had brought with me, and I downloaded the waypoints into a Garmin ETrex (the yellow basic model). The unit didn’t have any actual mapping capabilities, but it would point me to each bookstore by showing me the direction and distance. As I got close, I would start looking around, consulting the address list if I needed it, and in this way I hit over twenty bookstores, one after another, dragging my wife in tow.
Later on I upgraded to a Magellan Map 330 which had mapping capabilities, but still lacked actual routing. It would still point you to each bookstore, but it would also show you where you, and where the bookstores were on the map, and using the maps you could try to figure out how to get from here to there, maybe not in the most efficient way.
My wife bought me a Garmin GPS V for Christmas which besides having maps, also has routing capabilities. The routing works by giving you turn by turn directions, beeping as you approach a turn, and telling which way to turn on which street. It also gives you information on how far the next turn will be and how far the final destination. And if you miss a turn, it will recalculate, and tell you how to get back on route. Later on in the book I describe learning to use it for book scouting while on vacation in Las Vegas.
Using a GPS like this allows you to hit a lot of bookstores in area very efficiently. So you are not wasting a lot of time zig-zagging back and forth adding a lot of unnecessary extra miles to your trip. It also allows you to do some homework ahead of time. You can organize the route so that you can start at the bookstores that open earliest, and then go on to some of the others that open a little later. You might still have a short layover waiting for a store to open. What’s helpful is to make a list of all the bookstores in your particular area of the state and you can go hit a whole county or several counties on a Saturday. Some places are open Sundays but a lot of place just are not. So depending on the particular area, what type of stuff is there. You can hit a lot of stuff on a Sunday. Some thrift stores are open on Sundays, others are not. A lot of antique stores tend to be open on Sundays. And some bookstores are open of Sundays. Again it is good to check, because say if you are on vacation and you look around and you go off on a Monday, some bookstores are closed on Mondays or maybe Tuesdays, because they are open on the weekends. So planning ahead is very worthwhile.

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