Carving up the profits from second-hand books

In the years before Covid, when one attended the Charleston Conference in person, one of the joyful ways of relaxing from the intensity of the conference itself was to visit the wonderful local bookshops. My favourite was always Blue Bicycle Books, just two minutes up King Street from the Francis Marion Hotel. I fondly remember browsing there on one occasion and finding a copy of a naval history book which I had jointly edited on sale for ten dollars. I joked about this to the bookshop manager on the till. He asked me to sign the copy, trebled its price and in return gave me a 10% discount on two books I was going to buy anyway. Now that’s hospitality!