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Show Page 4 The Gunnison Valley Gazette Thursday, July 12, 2007 Ken Sander’s Book Store ACTION VIDEO PLUS 178 SOUTH MAIN • GUNNISON SPECIALS FOR JULY BUY FOUR (4) VHS MOVIES AND GET A 5TH FREE! BUY TWO (2) DVD’S VALUED AT $12.99 AND GET A THIRD VALUED AT $9.99 FREE! FOR OUR SOLDIERS FAMILY FROM THE 145TH GET 10% OFF MOVIE RENTALS WITH MILITARY ID If you’re a book lover, especially of antique, collectible books, chances are you’ve already visited Ken Sander’s book store in Salt Lake City located at 268 South 200 East. The store features local artists, poets and writers, and according to a 2004 feature article in the Salt Lake City Weekly, Sanders said the motto of the store is something akin to “creating chaos out of anarchy for a better tomorrow.” Sanders carries a wide variety of inventory in his 5,000 square foot store, specializing in Utah and western literature with a focus on exploration, wilderness and environment. He has a selection of new and used fiction, nonfiction, fantasy, science fiction, and other popular genres. The store has works of poetry, biographies, plays, art, photography, music and many other forms of performing art. For the antique lover, he carries rare first editions and other literary treasures, including a selection of 19th and early 20th century photography, maps and atlases, historical documents, postcards, posters, and Olympic memorabilia. Also at the store, Sanders hosts reading and performing events of local artists, poets and writers. The most recent one was held on Friday, June 22, 2007 at 7 p.m. where friends and poets gathered together, surrounded by more than 100,000 books lining the shelves of Sanders store, to read their favorite Ken Brewer poems. But perhaps the most interesting thing in the store is Sanders himself. At first glance, Ken Sanders looks like someone you might see pan handling outside Temple Square. With his navel-length beard, and thinning hair pulled back into a pony tail, he might look right at home in a flower painted Volkswagon bus, a veritable hippy that never quite grew out of the sixties. But Sanders, knows his stuff, and that is collecting books. For anyone who knows antiques, the name Ken Sanders is synonymous with rare and antique books. Besides being, chair of security committee for the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, Sanders heads up his own bookstore, founded his own publishing company, and is among the top names of antique book dealers. To Sanders, collecting rare and precious books is nothing short of a love affair. He said he doesn’t ever anticipate there being a time in his life when he will be able to resist collecting books. “Books are physical artifacts,” Sanders said. “The sum of all human knowledge is contained in their pages. There is a lot more to a book than just what you hold in your hand, but I love that, to hold them, to smell and feel them. I spend a lot of time playing around with and sorting my books. The core of my business is like finding something never seen or felt before, and making that articulation to someone else. Books are, at the root level, culturally valuable.” From his earliest years, Sanders had an affinity with reading, as well as trading. He loved comic books, and would skimp on the money his mom gave him for his hair cut so he could buy another comic book on his way home. Sanders learned the stores that carried older versions of comics that weren’t available anywhere else. He took them to school, and made good on the trades. He loved superhero comics, and said his all time favorite was “The Shy Stegosaurus of Cricket Creek.” Today his bookstore still has evidence of his early favorite in the form of a painted stegosaurus on the front window. Sanders started working in a bookstore when he was only 14 years old, but found it difficult to work for someone else. This attitude carried over into his grades through high school, or maybe it was just because he preferred reading to going to class. In a way, he is a self-educated man, feeding his mind Thoreau, Dickensen, Emerson, Hugo, and other literary classics. He did manage to graduate high school, however, and claims that he’s only had two haircuts since. Sanders’ first experience in bookstore ownership was the Cosmic Aeroplane, founded by him and a partner in 1970. It was a hugely successful venture from the beginning. Besides books, they sold jewelry and records, but Sanders ended up selling out because of rifts between him and his partners. The Cosmic Aeroplane led Sanders to the idea of his own publishing company to reprint books that he never was able to keep in stock in the store. He called it “Dream Garden Press,” and focused largely on building it up through the next few years until he purchased his current store in the early 1990s. Sanders said that one of his chief goals in life is to build the store to the point where he has more free time to dabble in some creative interests. “The store is pretty stable now,” he said, “but I would love to devote more time and energy to writing and publishing.” Sanders is writing a book of his own, but he said it’s slow going. “It’s something I have to MAKE time for,” he said, “but life keeps getting in the way.” Sanders’ life has been immersed in books, and it has led him through some surprising adventures in and outside the pages. The antique book world has undergone some major changes through the years, and Sanders, as chair of security for ABAA, has been at the core of it. He has worked side by side with police and FBI agents to find and identify persons involved in rare book sales fraud, which has become a major problem with the rise of Internet and eauctions. Rare books can be mimicked, easily transported, and quickly liquidated into large sums of money, and so have become a magnet for fraud. Sanders pools his resources of booksellers countrywide, and his personal expertise that has come from a lifetime of work in the field, to help track down and capture the perpetrators, but it is not without risk. High-end antique book dealers have disappeared before, their wares taken and resold. One of the chief suspects is David Holt, who is still at large. Sanders calls him a “phantom,” and although he can see the connecting clues in Holt’s schemes, as of yet, the police have been unable to apprehend him. Holt has even called Sanders at his store and threatened him, but Sanders will not back down in his work to protect rare and valuable books. He said he collects books vicariously through his store, and though he loves them, he has to let them go. “The money has to change hands to stay in business,” he said. But he has managed to hold on to a “core” of very personalized books, many of which are actually inscribed to him. “I’ve managed to hold on to them even through the poverty years,” he said. So despite the business success that Sanders has achieved , that’s just one more evidence that at the core, Sanders is a really a collector of books not a seller of books. is sponsored by: Send a Gift Subscription to your friends and family! Call the Gazette office today! 528-5178 Freedom RV & Sports Center 396 S Main • Gunnison 528-7244 Introducing as the Newest Member of the Gunnison Valley Hospital Medical Staff Dr. Willden graduated from the University of Utah School of Medicine and recently completed the McKay Dee Hospital Family Practice Residency program. Dr. Willden is trained in the broad spectrum of family practice medicine, including obstetrics and pediatrics. Dr. Willden will start seeing patients on July 16th at the new Medical Office Building located at 65 E. 100 N. in Gunnison. Appointments can be made by calling (435) 528-2130. |
