Rare Books. Rare Brothers. Rare Chance to Profit. Closed
by Edward Wyatt
LOS ANGELES, July 3 —
- “My biggest concern about selling is that I’m not concerned about it,” Lou Weinstein said. I’ve been mentally doing it for a long time,” he said, adding that Ben didn’t want to run the shop by himself.”
- “The brothers maintained that they were not forced out of business by the Internet…or by the unwillingness of Generation iPod to crack open a book from time to time.”
- “One factor the brothers credited for their success was their creation of an extensive reference library on rare books: more than 12,000 volumes, including bibliographies, auction records and books on books.”
- “Heritage’s rare-book collection has been sold, though the brothers won’t say to whom.”
- “If the Weinstein brothers’ decision to retire was truly a mere business decision, it would be in keeping with the their reputations in the antiquarian book world.”
- “They did deal with a lot of wealthy collectors, and they had one of the largest inventories in the business. Neither one of them is intellectual or a reader. But they are both phenomenal businessmen.”
- “We don’t divorce ourselves emotionally from the fact that we’re selling books,” Lou said. “We’ve been more successful than most because we treat this as a business. And we didn’t enter the business because we wanted to pursue knowledge.”
July 5, 2007
The Arts/Cultural Desk
Late Edition - Final, Section E, Page 3, Column , 634 words
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