Terry On Books Blog

When I had my bookstore in Vancouver,
except for the last couple of years, I had a
substantial mystery/detective fiction section–
usually over two thousand paperbacks and
about five hundred hardcovers. But then,
in the ’80’s and ’90’s, people who didn’t
already know the authors they were looking
for and were asking for advice would have
a choice of English or American, male or
female authors? Then I could recommend two
or three writers they could try. That’s all
changed today.

Sure, even twenty years ago, readers could
ask for mysteries by that English jockey or
that American P.I. who lived on a houseboat.
But there wasn’t the astounding selection of
private detectives that there are today. It seems
that every new mystery writer in the last ten
years has tried to carve out their own little niche
with a kooky hero or heroine to match.

Books for catlovers were quite the craze for
a while, and authors such as Lilian Jackson Braun,
Carole Nelson Douglas, Rita Mae Brown and Linda
Adamson happily obliged. Ellis Peters began her
medieval England series with Brother Cadfael, and
historical mysteries jumped to the forefront, with
offerings from a whole host of writers such as
Paul Doherty and John Maddox Roberts writing
about ancient Rome; Leonard Tourney writing
about Elizabethan England; plus mystery-solving
archaeoligists from the pens of Elizabeth Peters,
Lyn Hamilton and Val Davis.

Horseracing mysteries have been well-covered of
course by Dick Francis, Stephen Dobyns and
John Francombe. Bookstore owners Annie Darling
and Cliff Janeway solve mysteries at the bidding of
Carolyn Hart and John Dunning respectively. Forensic
anthropologists Temperance Brennan (Kathy Reichs)
and Kay Scarpetta (Patricia Cornwell) are more
adept at solving mysteries than their police counterparts.

Okay, so far, not so bad. I’ve read books by all of
the above authors and enjoyed them. I guess my
(mild) complaint is with the newer brand of “boutique”
mysteries. We have a choice of detectives now from
the vocations of: food writers (Angie Amalfi and Monsieur
Pamplemousse); caterer (Goldy of Goldilocks Catering);
bed-and-breakfast proprietor (Judith McMonigle Flynn);
newspaper publisher/editor (Emma Lord); bounty hunter
(Stephanie Plum); fisherman (retired dentist Doc Osborne);
ex-lawyer and herbalist (China Bayles); glassblower
(Sarah Atwell); and someone has even turned real-life
children’s book author Beatrix Potter into a detective
in the Cottage Tales series. Read a mystery and learn a
trade at the same time!

If you thought you’d never enjoy reading mysteries,
I think all of your excuses have gone out the window.
There’s a mystery out there that’s tailor-made just
for you. Simply match up your favourite interest or
hobby with an amateur detective who shares your
passion. And, if you can’t find that special mystery
series that’s just right for you, then write one.

Please take some time to visit my website:
www.stillmanbooks.com

Remember, the only book purchase you’ll
ever regret is the one you didn’t make.

Talk soon.

Book Review of “Kill Me” by Stephen White

I’ve read several Stephen White books over the years,
but this is the first story where psychologist Alan Gregory
is a secondary character.

White’s rich protagonist, who narrates the story, has a
potentially fatal skiing accident and starts thinking
about how he would feel if he ever became physically
or mentally incapacitated by another such accident or by
a serious medical condition. He decides that he
couldn’t handle it and would prefer to avoid months or
years of inactivity and helplessness.

So, when a friend tells him that he knows a guy who
knows a guy who can put him in touch with an
organization that will contract to end his life once a
certain threshold of sickness has been crossed, then
our rich protagonist loses little time in arranging the
substantial payment that will guarantee his own death
should certain circumstances occur.

This is a thrilling read, based on a moral and controversial
issue. Many people today come down on the side
of euthanasia and assisted suicide, but what if after a
certain point you had no choice, you couldn’t change
your mind, the action was going ahead despite a
reconsideration on your part? Perhaps you’ve decided
that here’s still something you feel you must do, or
complete, before your life is taken, but the contract has
been signed, you’ve crossed the agreed-on threshold–
the client-determined parameters–and the wheels
are in motion.

White’s protagonist has a dilemma, but with some help,
he arrives at an acceptable solution.
Great story!

Review of “A Philosophical Investigation” by Philip Kerr

The year is 2013. The place is London.

The first of two problems I had with this novel was that
it was published in 1992, but I didn’t read it until 2008.
Sixteen years after publication, and only five years before
the setting of the story, meant that any revolutionary,
futuristic advances in technology weren’t really very
surprising, and/or believable from this advanced
perspective. This is not the author’s fault really, but
it is always a risk writing about the future.

In 2013, the two main changes in society are:
“punitive coma”, wherein murderers and rapists are
put into a drug-induced coma instead of being
executed or becoming a drain on the public purse
for twenty or thirty years; and, the availability of a
“reality approximation machine” for you living room,
complete with protection gear for your exploits,
be they sexual or safari.

The crux of the story lies in the supposed discovery
that the brains of some males lack a Ventro Medial
Nucleus (VMN) which acts as an inhibitor to the
Sexually Dimorphic Nucleus (SDN), a preoptic area
of the male human brain which is the repository of
male aggressive response. The government in
England has identified the men who lack the VMN
and offer them counselling to control aggression.
This group of men are given pseudonyms which
happen to be the names of famous philosophers.
Our criminal is known only as “Wittgenstein” and
he displays many of the traits of the real Wittgenstein.
Except, this Wittgenstein decides it would be a
rather good idea to kill off all the other “philosophers”
in his group, for the good of mankind.

Of course, there is much philosophical discussion
and justification offered; which brings me to the
second problem I had with this book: too damn
much philosophy!

The premise of the story was very good, very
intelligent; and, I liked the female police investigator,
who was very good at her job. But really, for a
simple bloke like me, there was just too much
thinking involved. I have a feeling many readers
would agree with me.

Please take some time to visit my website:
www.stillmanbooks.com
for thousands of quality books.

Remember, the only book purchase you’ll
ever regret will be the one you didn’t make.

Talk soon.

Hi Everyone!
I hope you don’t mind, but for this week’s blog posting,
I’ve decided to rerun an article that I wrote back in
October, 1997, when I was still operating my
bookstore in Vancouver, and just getting started
on the Internet. I’ve copied the article here verbatim
so please, as you read it, keep reminding yourself
that it’s describing a situation–a time capsule moment
if you like–from eleven years ago.

The Romance of Bookselling

I was just musing on the way to work one day: “What
occupation could be more romantic than bookselling?” I am
not talking here of the heartfelt feelings between
soulmates, but rather that which appeals to fancy and
the imagination. How many people in the Western World
fantasize about owning their own bookstore? A very high
percentage I would venture. The realities of life prevent
a great many of these people from fulfilling their dream,
but nevertheless the dream persists.

Almost anyone can go into the book business. A person
may have only a Grade Eight formal education, another
person may be the proud possessor of a P.H.D., and there
are many other levels represented in between. Education
is not the main prerequisite…what one requires instead
is a “love of books” and a “love of reading”. And, I guess
a “thirst for knowledge” could be thrown into the equation,
for, regardless of the level of formal education achieved,
the people in the book business tend to have backgrounds
of voracious reading. And it is from reading books that you
learn of more books; these books you must also read. From
reading books follows the desire to possess the books, and
from possessing a fine library sometimes follows the desire
to help other people possess a fine library as well.

Personally, I’ve been buying and selling books for
twenty-six years. I began on a part-time basis while
working as an advertising copywriter in Toronto in 1971.
At that time, I was buying books mostly for my own interest.
However, it quickly became apparent that I could buy other
books and sell them to people who couldn’t or wouldn’t
take the time to look for their own books. These people
were mostly friends and co-workers and my resale business
was definitely small-scale, but it did help to finance
my own purchases. A few years later, after moving to the
West Coast, and accumulating many more books, I began
producing catalogues of Children’s Books and Detective
Fiction. I advertised in the AB(Bookman’s Weekly) to
acquire customers and continued selling books by mail
for three and a half years. In December, 1981, I bought
an existing bookstore in Vancouver, B.C. and I have had
a retail used bookstore ever since. For the first two
years, I worked as a technical writer for B.C. Gas and
hired personnel for most of the store’s opening hours.
A marriage break-up was my impetus to quit my regular
job and go full-time into the bookselling business.

In my fourteen years of full-time bookselling, I’ve
not once earned the amount of money that I made the last
year of having “a real job”. But then, I’m not in the
business to make a lot of money. Sure, it’d be nice to
start pulling down forty or fifty thousand dollars a
year for myself from selling books. I have to admit
that I’ve probably done a little day-dreaming to that
effect, and I know that there are some booksellers
making that kind of money and more. But, realistically,
I’ll probably always make only a modest income, and,
realistically, most booksellers in North America and
Europe can probably expect the same. However, the
important thing to remember? I, and thousands of others,
achieved a dream, a romantic dream of buying and
selling books for a livelihood, meagre or otherwise.

Today, it’s far easier for booklovers to join the
book business on a part-time basis. Some still go to
the great effort of producing catalogues of books for
sale and trying to build a mailing list of customers
for these catalogues. But, the numbers for this group
of people are quickly declining. The reason, of course,
is the advent of the Internet, the World Wide Web of
shopping possibilities. Literally thousands of book
buyers and collectors who never seriously considered
selling their books can now set up an internet book
business without much difficulty.

To my mind, every book collector is now a potential
bookseller, if only in the narrowest sense of the word.
Selling only a dozen or two books a year on a retail
basis would qualify a person as a bookseller. Previously,
these people would have simply traded or sold back
unwanted books to their regular bookdealers in town.
I, personally, know of two lawyers and a CGA in
Vancouver who buy and sell books part-time, all using
the Internet. Up to a couple of years ago, these people
were content to be book collectors. Now, they are each
partially fullfilling their romantic dream of being
a more intregal part of the bookselling business than
just the receiving conduit. If you spend some time on
the Internet, you will encounter thousands of these
new entrepreneurs. One reason, of course, is that books
are a natural product for sale on the Internet.

Many people ordering books from the Internet used
to order from dealers’ catalogues, even other dealers.
Most people selling on the Internet adhere to a
standardized set of descriptive terms for their books
and so the buyer is still fairly confident that what
he or she is ordering is going to arrive as described.
There are some exceptions, as we all know, but even
these sellers who seem to have difficulty in accurately
describing a book’s condition and edition are, in most
cases, very good about accepting returns and issuing
refunds. If they’re not, they may be crucified by
buyers and sellers alike in very short order.

Shipping of books is not usually too difficult.
Unless you’re fortunate enough to get a gigantic order–
let’s say all your books in a particular subject area–
then you won’t have much difficulty getting a few
orders to the local Post Office and sending them on
their merry way. If you did have a gigantic order,
I’m sure you wouldn’t mind the extra trouble to ship,
even to Timbuktu! Cost is not prohibitive for
shipping books and is usually cheerfully borne by the
buyer. On expensive items, the seller can often
absorb the cost. American booksellers have an edge on
their Canadian counterparts here. For one thing, the
cheaper surface mail rates in the United States are
about a third less than in Canada. Secondly, Canada
charges Goods and Service Tax(GST) on incoming packages
(usually with a twenty dollar or more declared value).
The Customs people assess the GST amount to be
collected, then the Post Office gets an additional
$5.00 for collecting the GST…that can get really
irritating and cost-prohibitive on single book orders!
For this reason, when ordering books from out of the
country, Canadian bookdealers, and even collectors,
should make sure that they inform the seller not to
overstate the value of the book(s) on their declaration
form.

Once a bookseller has obtained access to the
Internet–an Internet Service Provider charges about
thirty dollars a month in our area–he or she can set
up a Web Site fairly inexpensively and list various
categories of books on there for sale. The secret of
any degree of success here lies in how well the
bookseller establishes links to other sites (i.e.
lists of retail and antiquarian booksellers) and relates
as well to the number of Search Engines the bookseller
has registered with. If no one can find you, they sure
can’t buy from you. Updating the site on a regular and
frequent basis is also important.

By far, the most popular and most productive way
to sell books on the Internet would seem to be through
the various Book Matching Services. I deal with “Advanced
Book Exchange” (ABE), but there are several others,
including “Interloc”, “Bibliofind” and “Bibliocity”.
The idea here is to upload the titles and other
information about your books into the Data Base of the
Service and the Service matches your books with the
wants of people who are searching the Services for
those particular books. Once advised of the details and
availability of the book, the customer can go ahead
and order the book directly from you. The rates charged
for this service by the various companies is nominal,
especially if you are listing large quantities of books
with them.

Like most things in life, what you put into your
Internet business, in terms of time and effort,
determines what you get out of it. After nine months,
I still only maintain about five hundred titles in
ABE’s Data Base. This amount of participation nets me
a couple of sales a week, or about two thousand dollars
in sales over about nine months. Add approximately
another five hundred dollars from other types of Internet
sales for a total of twenty-five hundred dollars.
Condidering the cost of the books, the cost of operating
on the Net, as well as the many hours I’ve invested,
I’d have to say that so far the experiment has been
financially unsuccessful. However, the most important
thing to consider, I think, is that I’ve had the
experience, and I can see a definite upside potential
for this selling tool if and when I’m ready to spend
more time and list a couple more thousand books for sale.

I know of two other booksellers, neither of whom
have a storefront business, who maintain about three
thousand titles for sale on ABE. They both say that
from these listings, they get two or three sales a day.
I know another bookseller who operates a large store
and pays someone to just list books for sale on ABE
and handle all work pertaining to these sales. He told
me in August, 1997 that his Internet sales alone for
June and July were seventy-two hundred and seventy-
eight hundred dollars. Mind you, he maintains about
six thousand titles for sale on ABE. As I said though,
this tends to show the upside potential of Internet
selling. You may want to jump in and try it yourself.

Having said all this and given a cautious
endorsement of Internet Bookselling, I have to ask:
“Is there really much romance in that?” My opinion
is “No”. For me, the Internet is just another tool
for selling books and I’m willing to put a finite
amount of time into it to perhaps attain as much
as twenty per cent of my overall sales from that
source. But I run a five-day-a-week open bookshop
that also requires a lot of time and from which
I reap a great deal of enjoyment. It is indeed a
romantic way of life and I look forward to coming
to work every day. Wednesdays I scout other stores
for books and make housecalls to look at and
possibly buy private libraries. That’s even more
fun than being in the store!

For those people who have started selling
books on the Internet part-time, I do hope that
you go all the way some day and open your own store.
If you’re enthusiastic about books then you won’t
attain the ultimate “Book High” without having
your own open bookshop. There’s nothing to compare
with the self-satisfaction you’ll feel when you
unlock your front door and enter your warm, cosy,
book-lined shop every day and prepare to open
for business. You’ll soon develop your own regular
routine: you turn on the lights, get out your
“float”(the money for your cash drawer), turn on
the computer, go “on-line” to collect your E-mail,
and while that’s getting downloaded, you can
go through your regular(”snail”) mail. There might
be a couple of cheques…that’s always nice. If
so, you’ll have to plan to pack and ship those
books today. There might be a couple of dealer
catalogues…you’ll have to set aside a little
time to read through those in case there’s something
you can order for a customer, or even for
yourself. Just because you sell books now doesn’t
mean that you can’t still take some home for
yourself! Your computer’s telling you that you
have “new mail” so you can quickly run through
the “subject lines” to see if you have any orders.
If so, while you’re still on-line, you can
answer the requests to confirm that the books
are available and that you’ll hold them pending
receipt of the customer’s cheque for X dollars.
Now, get off-line and put out your “OPEN” sign.
You’re ready for business.

I don’t think there’s one day now that goes
by wherein I don’t have books to price that I
bought the day before, or the day before that.
There seems to always be a backlog now. But that’s
fine; I think that’s one sign of a healthy
bookstore. After you’ve had a bookstore for a
few years, you’ll have certain people, bookscouts,
who’ll bring books to you every week, as well as
all the other people who saw your Yellow Page ad
or were recommended to bring certain books to
you by other dealers. This is especially true if
you specialize in one or two subjects.

The thrill of your day will be when someone
comes into your store who has never been there
before. Perhaps they’ve overlooked you until
now or they are from out of town. They say what
a wonderful store you have and comment on what
an interesting selection of books that you have;
then, if they’re really sincere, they pay you
the best compliment of all: they buy a book.
This deserves more conversation, and you might
spend several more minutes talking with them
about various books. They leave but promise to
come back.

Over the next couple of hours, a few of
your regular customers come into the store,
some to pick out something new and discuss
the weather and last night’s hockey game or
baseball game. A couple of your regulars have
come in because you called them to pick up
a book or two that you have found for them.
They fondle the books unashamedly and thank
you profusely. You love this part of the
business. One or two friends come by and
you close down for half an hour and join
them for lunch at the pub around the corner,
leaving a note on the door saying where you
are and when you’ll be back. One of your
customers may come and find you there, chide
you about being away from your post and
join you for a coffee. Yes, it can be such
an idyllic life.

About mid-afternoon, there’s a call from
someone who is the Executor for an estate.
There’s an entire room full of books and the
out-of-town relatives don’t know what to do
with them. Can you come and look at them,
and perhaps take them away? It’s the kind of
call that you live for now. With a few questions,
you determine from the caller that there
would seem to be some worthwhile books and
you set an appointment time to call and look
at them. How about this evening after I close
the store? Perfect. No sense wasting time,
especially when your blood is already pumping
faster in anticipation.

Making “House Calls” is the most exciting
part of being in the used book trade. Nine
times out of ten you’re going to be disappointed,
but that tenth call often makes it all worthwhile.
You go into the room and you give the shelves
a quick once-over. The hard-cover spines of many
books that you recognize leap into your vision,
as well as many books that you don’t recognize
instantly but nevertheless have the look of
quality. It’s your “Book High” of the month.
Enjoy it. You tell the Executor that the Library
looks promising; there are definitely some books
here that you would like to buy. “Give me an
hour and I’ll tell you what we have.”

If it’s a collection of books that contains
a great number of books that you know you won’t
want to put on your store’s shelves for one
reason or another, then you should separate as
you go through the books and make your offer on
only the books you can use. If, after a quick
initial inspection, you think you can use most
of the books, then you can go through them as
quickly as possible, doing an overall estimate
as you go and come up with a collective assessment
on which to base your offer. As you go from shelf
to shelf you’ll see individual books that you
automatically associate with particular customers
and you look forward to contacting these people to
tell them of your latest find for them. Soon
you’re writing the cheque and bringing in fourteen
or fifteen boxes from your vehicle to start
packing up. In the book business, it’s advisable
to have a van or a station-wagon for these
situations. Perhaps for this particular buy,
you’re going to have to make two trips. You’ll
be eating your dinner late tonight, but it’s
going to be worth it!

The next day brings the second-best part
of this exercise: you get to unpack the boxes
one by one and price the books, setting aside
the volumes that need a little repair or special
research. This is a very enjoyable part of the
book business and I confess that I tend to
linger over it, especially enjoying the feel
and look of certain wonderful books and marvelling
that I actually have them there in my hands.
This is also a dangerous time, when you might
begin making a too-large pile of books to take
home. “Come on”, you scold yourself, “you can’t
take all the good ones home. You have to sell
some of these books to stay in business!” I force
myself to be very selective.

Because most booksellers like myself don’t
have a lot of money to tie up in stock for long,
we rely on steady cash flow to keep going. Thus,
every major buy(to me that would be any purchase
over five hundred dollars), becomes an immediate
game of “get-back-the-money-as-soon-as-possible”.
I price the books that fall within my specialty
areas, Children’s/Illustrated Books and Aviation/
Military/Naval and I get out my file cards for
my customers in these areas and inform them that
I have new stock, come in and see it. If you’re
as fortunate as I am, then several customers
will respond within the next few days and you
will get most or all of your investment back
right away. Then, the rest of your great new
stock is on your shelves for nothing and it will
provide your profits over the next weeks or months.

Sometime during the day, often shortly
before closing time, I’ll sit in my store and
look around at the thousands of books packed
row on row and just reflect on how lucky I am
to have such a store, such a business, such a
life. It’s a good life and I love it. Am I a
romantic or what?

Please feel free to make a comment about
bookselling, perhaps even your experience as
a bookseller, or your desire to become one.

When you have a little time, please check my
website at : www.stillmanbooks.com

Remember, the only book purchase you’ll
ever regret is the one you didn’t make.

Talk soon.

Some Inexpensive Options

Okay, you’ve chosen what type of books that
you want to collect, and you’ve narrowed the
field to a few authors or illustrators of a
particular era. You’ve even started making
your first tentative purchases.

Good for you! You’ve made a positive
beginning and you’ll soon be able to say that
you have a book collection at home. As you
venture forth, I can only reiterate that you
should always try to buy the best copies
available. They’re the ones that will hold their
value and hopefully increase in value within
a few years. Ignore the poor-condition books–
those with major damage from water-staining,
or those missing an illustration, or even an
endpaper–even if they are prime titles that
you need for your collection. Don’t bother
buying a Poor or Fair copy now with the
intention of replacing it later…force yourself
instead to wait for the VG to Near Fine copy;
it will turn up. Don’t buy Ex-Library copies,
even if the seller is telling you it’s “Near Fine”.
Honestly, where do some of these freaks
get their grading information!

Best of luck to all of you collectors who have
just made a start. Keep doing your research,
and keep looking in bookstores, in thrift stores,
at garage sales and online. You never know
when a book will show up and you have to put
yourself in position to spot it when it does.

When you’ve acquired forty or fifty, or a hundred
books–it depends on what level you’re buying at–
and you think the value is approaching $10,000 to
$15,000, you should think about having a reliable
bookseller appraise your collection for insurance
purposes, and add a rider to your home policy.
Reliable, experienced bookdealers usually
charge about $75 to $100 an hour (minimum
one hour) to appraise collections. If you have less
than a hundred books, the appraisal will probably
only take an hour or two, particularly if the dealer
is quite familiar with the type of books you collect.
He or she will give you a written or typed
appraisal on business stationery which you can
take to your insurance agent.

I recall a customer of mine asking me to do an
appraisal of his book collection. I had sold a few
dozen illustrated books to him over a period of four
or five years–some of them fairly expensive books–
so I told him I would do a free appraisal. You may
also get into a position where you’ve made a
considerable number of purchases from one dealer
that you trust, and perhaps you’ll get a free appraisal
as well. In this case, I went to the customer’s home
to value his books and I was looking forward to
seeing what other books he had acquired. To my
surprise, this customer had a collection of just fifty-six
books which, as I recall, I appraised at just over $25,000
for replacement value. The surprise was that I had
sold fifty-five of the fifty-six books to him, one being
a gift.

Now, some advice for you booklovers who want to
start a book collection but you don’t have a lot of
disposable cash. What can you possibly collect that’s
worth collecting? I can suggest a few options.

With the onset of the Internet, prices for First Edition
fiction plummeted, particularly books published within
the last thirty years. This doesn’t mean that you can’t
still collect modern bestselling fiction, detective fiction
or science fiction and fantasy. Get out your handy
“Pocket Guide to the Identification of First Editions”
and make sure you’re actually buying the true first
editions. Try to put together the entire output of two
or three authors to start with. If it’s a British author,
buy the British firsts, if it’s an American author, buy
the American firsts. When possible, buy
first editions that have been signed by the authors.
Failing that, watch for visiting authors to your city,
and try to get your copies signed if the author turns up.
Remember, in this genre, you have to buy Fine copies
in Fine dust-jackets.

You may choose to buy First Editions of Canadian
Literature authors. A friend of mine has over two
thousand titles, mostly by Canadian authors and
mostly signed…an impressive and valuable collection.
By hard work and diligence, he was able to acquire
this collection at a nominal cost and get most of the
books signed in person.

A good way to begin collecting is to choose a favourite
book from your childhood, a book that has been
popular for decades (or even up to a hundred years
or more) and has been published in many different
editions. Some prime examples might be “Alice in
Wonderland”, “Aesop’s Fables”, “A Child’s Garden
of Verses”, “Pinocchio”, the “Mother Goose” and
“Nursery Rhyme” Collections, or, the Fairy Tale
Collections of Hans C. Andersen or the Brothers
Grimm. You might acquire the books of a
particular author you liked, such as Enid Blyton, who
wrote the popular Adventure Series (Castle, Mountain,
etc.) and the Noddy books; or the textless books of
John S. Goodall.

You could also collect a certain type of children’s
book such as ABC books, Pop-Up Books, or
books on Folktales, Myths and Legends. Really,
the possibilities are almost endless. Take a good look
at my website, where you will find examples of all
of the books above. Search for other booksellers
in your area and see if they have their own websites
with catalogues of books for sale. You’re bound to
find exactly the types of books you were looking
for, even if you didn’t know it yet.

Good luck to all you new Book Collectors!

Please visit my website for quality offerings:
www.stillmanbooks.com

Remember, the only book purchase you’ll
ever regret is the one you didn’t make.

Talk soon.

Cautionary Tips for Buying

Let’s say you’ve decided upon a genre to
start collecting. It may be 1st Edition English
mysteries published before 1960. This may
include R. Austin Freeman, G.K. Chesterton,
Dorothy Sayers, Michael Innes, Agatha Christie,
plus a dozen or so other popular and collectible
mystery writers of the period.

Or, you may have chosen to collect women
children’s book illustrators from 1900 to the
1970’s. Some highlights here would be Beatrix
Potter, Jessie Wilcox Smith, Mabel Lucie
Attwell, Margaret Tarrant, Anne Anderson,
Cicely Mary Barker, Honor C. Appleton, and
even Lois Lenski, Tasha Tudor and Marie Angel.

First editions of these books and others can run
into the hundreds and even thousands of dollars.
If you’re serious about collecting in a highly
collectible and competitive field, you have to
know your prices, and you have to know just
what makes these books expensive.

If you’re collecting books in a field that is
“edition sensitive”, that is to say, the value of
the true first edition far outstrips the value of
the second and later printings, then you had
better learn how to identify a first edition.
Unfortunately, the publishers did not make
this easy for collectors. They did not conform
to any one or two common methods, but
pretty much just did their own thing. I
recommend obtaining a guide to first edition
identification. One that I’ve used for years
and through several editions is Bill McBride’s
“A Pocket Guide to the Identification of
First Editions”. Bill lists over 3000 English-
language publishers and their methods of
identifying first editions, including when they
changed their methods (which several did).

Bill also publishs a helpful book on “Points
of Issue”. The difference of a first edition,
first state, identified by one or two points of
issue, could mean several hundreds of dollars
difference from the first edition, second state.
Contact Bill at: McBride/Publisher .
56 Arbor Street . Hartford CT 06106
860-523-1622 . bill@firsteditionguide.com
For about $16 plus shipping, this could be
the most valuable book you’ll ever buy.

Some early publishers of children’s books
may not even show up in an identification
guide and their methods really have to be
learned from experience and more research.
Look to experts in the field for information
that they have acquired over decades of
selling children’s books: people like Jo Ann
Reisler in Virginia, Justin Schiller of New
York, Helen and Marc Younger of Aleph-Bet
Books in New York State, and even myself.
You can find many more specialist dealers
by searching on Google or Yahoo.
Check their websites–you’ll learn a lot
from every visit. You might send an email
outlining your initial collecting goals and
ask what they might suggest to start.
Professional booksellers are willing to
help you begin, but don’t be a pest, and
do buy a book or two to show you’re serious.

When you’ve decided what genre to
collect, visit the local bookstores in your
town or city and browse their sections.
Ask questions. If the bookseller doesn’t
seem to know much about the books you
want to collect, try another bookstore, or
google specialists on line. For Arctic and
other early exploration and travel books,
you might check the inventories of Aquila
Books in Calgary or Helen Kahn in
Montreal. For the best selection of books
about book collecting, book history and
the book arts, contact Oak Knoll Books
in Delaware. For extensive holdings of
early Canadiana, try David Mason in
Toronto or Macleod’s in Vancouver.

When you’re just starting a book collection
it really pays to pick the brains of the
experts, at least until you get on track and
make those first few important purchases.
Go with well-known and established
booksellers for quality of product and
information. Also do as much research as
you can on your own. Then you can start
looking about for bargains in other bookstores
and online with places like ebay. I’ve made
many good purchases on ebay and off-ebay
with ebay sellers, and you can too, but be
cautious and to begin, stick to sellers with
extensive and impeccable selling records.

That’s all for this week.

Please visit my website for children’s books,
aviation, military, sea/naval, Canadiana
and more:
www.stillmanbooks.com

Remember, the only book purchase you’ll
ever regret is the one you didn’t make.

Talk soon.

Where to Start?

Whatever your age, whatever your financial means,
you can begin to build a book collection.

Nearly all readers–except those people who rely
wholly on the library for their reading–buy books
that they want to actually read, mostly for pleasure,
sometimes for knowledge. If you keep these books
in a visable, accessible place in your home, you may
be inclined to say that you are a book collector,
but what you probably have is a personal “reading
library”. Building a book collection takes a little
more thought and planning.

Firstly, most book collections are composed of
books that reflect the collector’s main interest(s).
Perhaps you’re extremely interested in World War
II. Does your interest focus on aviation, land
battles, or the navies of the Allies and Axis countries,
or all three of the armed services? Perhaps World
War I, medieval warfare, the American Civil War,
the Napoleonic Wars, or even modern warfare is
more your preference.

You may have a keen interest in a hobby such
as gardening, painting, or music. Your profession
may be in science, medicine, law, architecture,
even farming and bookselling. You can collect
books on all of these subjects.

Are you enthralled by the many amazing children’s
book illustrators over the past one-hundred-and-
fifty years? Are you familiar enough yet to favour
any particular era of illustration, be it Victorian,
early 20th century, between the two Great Wars,
post-WWII and 1950’s, the ’60’s and ’70’s, or
the modern period of 1980’s to present?

If you are of modest means, you may have missed
the boat in terms of buying original editions of books
illustrated by the top children’s book artists in the
late 19th and early 20th century. If you enjoy
the work of Kate Greenaway, Walter Crane,
W. Heath Robinson, Arthur Rackham, Edmund
Dulac, Kay Nielsen and their many talented
contemporaries, you may still seek out much of
their output in later printings, some published as
late as the 1980’s.

If you have considerable disposable income for
collecting illustrated books, or first-edition literature,
then your possibilities are endless.

Once you decide to collect–be it children’s
authors or artists, military books, gardening books,
sports books, art books, books on games,
whatever–the first rule should be to focus. Choose
your genre, then choose your sub-genre. It may
be first edition books by American authors of the
1920’s and 1930’s. It may be English gardening
books from the 1880’s to the first World War;
or English true crime books from 1880 to the
second World War; or American gangsterism;
or all the first editions of Edward Gorey (that
might be a sub-sub-sub-genre). Start somewhere,
but use some sensible parameters. Secondly,
think about a budget. Can you afford a hundred
dollars a month, two hundred a month, ten
thousand a month? Set some sensible financial
parameters as well.

Check in next week for Part II of the series,
“Cautionary Tips for Buying”.

Book Review of James Lee Burke

For just plain old sittin’ and sippin’ on Sunday
afternoons or pre-lights-out bedtime reading,
one of my top ten authors is James Lee Burke,
mainly because he’s such a damn fine writer.

I just finished “Last Car to Elysian Fields”,
published in hardcover in 2003 and in paperback
a year later. (By the way, don’t expect me to
review new releases…afterall, I sell used books
so I read used books!) Burke’s mileau is New
Orleans and its colourful surroundings. His
protagonist is Dave Robicheaux, sometime
policeman in New Orleans and in New Iberia.
Dave’s got issues, tends to try to solve
frustrating situations with violence, has an even more-
violent sidekick and ex-partner, Clete Purcell,
but is, nevertheless, a moral, standup guy who
you could look to for help.

As often happens in Burke novels, the solution
for current murders lies buried in the past.
Robicheaux investigates the disappearance of
R&B guitarist and song-writer Junior Crudup
who ended up a victim of the corrupt penal
system in Louisiana in the 1950’s. Officially,
Junior never died in prison and there was no
record of his release. Robicheaux suspects
that someone had him killed, and that person
figures into the more recent murders. Add
into the mix the odd and intricate relationship
building between a Catholic priest and a
New Orleans hitman, a married ex-lover of
Robicheaux, the angry father of one of the
three teenage girls killed in a car crash because
they were able to buy illicit mixed liquor at
a roadside stand (owned ultimately by
Robicheaux’s rich main suspect), a cast of
minor questionable characters, and you’ve got
another captivating Burke story that never
lets up, nor follows a straight path to its
denouement.

For those who have never read James Lee Burke,
I offer this example of his writing:

“Ordinary people sometimes do bad things. A
wrong-headed business decision, a romantic
encounter in a late-night bar, a rivalry with a
neighbour over the placement of a fence, any of
these seemingly insignificant moments can initiate
a series of events that, like a rusty nail in the
sole of the foot, can systemically poison a normal,
law-abiding person’s life and propel him into a
world he thought existed only in the perverse
imaginings of pulp novelists.”

Now, if I recall correctly Miss Forsythe’s
instruction in Grade 9 English, that’s what is called
“foreshadowing”. And, indeed, that paragraph
did foreshadow some rather black events.

Read James Lee Burke because he’s a fine
storyteller as well as an educator.

I’d appreciate it if you’d take a little time to
review the many collectible books available
for purchase on my website:
www.stillmanbooks.com

Remember, the only book purchase you’ll
ever regret is the one you didn’t make.

Talk soon.

I was talking with a retired bookseller the
other day–well, perhaps 80% retired, since
few booksellers ever fully retire–and a
subject came up that has irritated us both
over the years. The subject of the long-lost
book and the various amounts of time that
some customer has been combing bookstores
in search of it.

We have both had similar experiences on a
number of occasions: a customer comes into
the store; he or she (usually a he) may look
around a little first or come right to the point.
“I know you won’t have it”, or, the slightly more
optimistic version, “I don’t imagine you’ll have it”,
but I’ve been looking for this book that I once
had for ____ (fill in the blank: 5, 10, 20) years,
and no one seems to have it. I look in every
bookstore I come across but I just can’t find it.

Once in a while, I was able to just walk a few
steps, pluck a book off the shelf, hand it to the
customer, and say “You mean this book?”.
Or, I may say, “I know the book and I can
probably get a copy for you if you want to
leave your name and phone number.” Quite
often, I was able to phone the customer in a
few days or a couple of weeks and tell him
that I had located a copy of his book for him.

Now here’s the disappointing, and sometimes
incredulous part for a bookseller: the customer
looks at the book in awe, says something like
“Well I’ll be” or, “I can’t believe it”, or, “I never
thought I’d ever see this book again”. He flips
through the book. If there are illustrations, he’ll
stop and look at a couple. He may check the
publication date and say “This is the very
same edition I had”. Then, he gets to the front
endpaper and sees the price, ___ (fill in the
blank: $5, $10, $20, $30). “Is this how much
you want for the book?”

“Yes”.

“Oh”, he replies as he hands the book back
to me, ” I’ll have to think about it.” Then the
customer starts to walk towards the door,
saying over his shoulder, “I’ll call you if I
decide to take it.”

Now, what the hell was that all about?
Either the customer was only using the long-
lost book line as an excuse so he could look
around unhindered and not be expected to
buy anything; or, he was just plain cheap.

My bookseller friend leans toward the cheap
theory. He once had a regular customer ask him
for a book that he’d had great difficulty in
finding. My friend produced the book within
a few days and the customer exclaimed how
happy he was to see the book again. The
bookseller priced the book at six dollars,
although the going price was eight to ten
dollars. Still, when the customer noticed the
price, he asked “So, you want six dollars for
this book? What kind of a special price can
I have it for?”

The bookseller looked at the guy for a few
seconds (in amazement); then he says “How
much do you want to pay?”

Without hesitation, the customer replied
“Three dollars.”

The bookseller took the book back from
the customer, opened it halfway and tore it
in half. He handed it back to the customer
and said “There. Now it’s a three-dollar book.”
The customer stomped away in a rage, never
to return. The bookseller said “Good riddance!”

There can’t be a bookseller out there who
hasn’t experienced at least a few of these
long-lost book customers who failed to purchase
once the treasured book appeared. However,
I’m sure all booksellers have also had good
experiences with customers who were elated
to get the book in question, no matter the price…
some even going so far as to say “Is that all you
want for it? Here’s an extra ten dollars for your
trouble. I’m just so thrilled to get this book.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

The happy, appreciative customers are part
of the reason we continue to buy and sell
books. For you beginning booksellers, when
a customer asks for a book you don’t have in
stock, be sure to get his or her personal
information so you can call when you get the
book. Chances are that you will find a good
number of the books that customers request
and most customers will be glad you did, even
if it’s a year or so later. If it’s an expensive book,
you may want to give the customer an idea of
price in advance. If it’s an inexpensive book,
you may have the fun of ripping it up.

Book Review

I’ve just read John Dunning’s book “The Sign
of the Book”, another in the bibliophile detective
series featuring bookselling ex-cop Cliff Janeway.
Dunning is not a great writer, but he’s a good
writer with an easy-to-read, engaging style. In
this story, Janeway is asked to do a little investigating
after a childhood friend of his lawyer girlfriend is
jailed for murdering her husband. One of the things
he’s asked to look at is the deceased man’s library
to determine if it is enough of an asset to help pay
the legal bills. At first glance, it’s a very ordinary-
looking collection of about a thousand books. On
closer inspection, the books become more interesting
since each one appears to be signed by the author
or the person who is the subject of the book.

Dunning manages to offer up a couple of candidates
for the murder, gives us a peek into the inner workings
of the collectible books field, shows us the opportunities
for illegal and unethical profits in the book business,
then provides a couple of interesting twists at the
end to wrap everything up neatly–albeit with a slightly
bitter taste on the subject of signed books.

Another good read, but I hope the hints in this book
and others that Cliff Janeway may give up his bookstore
and go back to fighting crime full time are just
speculative thoughts in the mind of Janeway and
don’t come to fruition. Janeway as strictly a head-
basher wouldn’t be nearly as interesting.

Please take a few minutes to check out the fine
books on my website:
www.stillmanbooks.com

Remember, the only book purchase you’ll
ever regret is the one you didn’t make.

Talk soon.

As I’ve touched on before, a great many
out-of-print children’s books sell because
of a strong nostalgic factor. I’ve been buying
and selling children’s books for over 35
years, during which time I’ve had thousands
of requests for titles people remember
fondly from their childhoods. Sometimes
the books can be found, sometimes
they can’t be, often because the customer
has too little detail, often because the
book is too obscure. If it’s a book I’m
familiar with, I can usually find a nice
copy for the prospective customer.

Because I present a lot of pictures of
children’s books on my website, the
customer can sometimes find the book
there himself (or herself).
Just yesterday, another example: an
Indo-American chap contacted me about
a copy of the Oxford Annual for Boys,
the 26th edition, published in 1933.
From a subsequent telephone conversation,
I gather that this gentleman is in his forties,
but he spent his childhood in India and
was subjected to a lot of English-published
books, including boys’ annuals. The sight
of the cover I had pictured triggered a
warm memory. He had to have this book.

While talking about the nostalgia factor,
this gentleman mentioned he had just
recently talked to a friend in California
about the subject and the friend had
mentioned that he’d like to get some
Noddy books from his childhood. I
said that I had a few of the Enid Blyton
Noddy books on my website, perhaps
this fellow could direct his friend to them.
“Just a minute”, he said, “I may be
interested in these Noddy books myself”.

So, I sent the link to my children’s book
page with the Noddy books. My new
customer wrote back with an order for
the three titles in dust-jacket for $18.50
each. Would I add them to his order
please? And he wants to spend some
more time exploring my website…there
may be more childhood memories to
be found there!

Hopefully, when he’s bought all the
books familiar to him, he will pass on
my website address to his California friend.

Review of “Lifeless”

“Lifeless” by Mark Billingham, published in
paperback in 2006, is another good read
featuring Detective Inspector Tom Thorne.

In England, the homeless people on the
streets are often referred to as “rough sleepers”
and Thorne becomes a rough sleeper himself
in order to help find the man who is killing
members of the homeless community.
In his undercover capacity, Thorne learns
the ins and outs of surviving on the streets,
makes friends, and comes to understand
the interplay among the various segments
of the street hierarchy. Basically, the
street population is comprised of three
groups: the drug-users, the alcoholics, and
the mentally unstable. Each group tends
to keep to itself. Thorne, a bit of a drinker
himself, fits easily into the alcoholics group.

Besides giving us an engrossing police
procedural, Billingham provides the reader
with a detailed social commentary on the
rough sleepers of London and what the
various government agencies are doing to
combat and rectify the situation. Comparisons
can be made to other major cities around
the world.

Call it an educational detective story.

Please visit my website when you have
some time:
www.stillmanbooks.com

Remember, the only book purchase you’ll
ever regret is the one you didn’t make.

Talk soon.

Who are the best illustrators of children’s books?
Which era do you like?

To me, everyone who followed owes a huge debt
to The Big Three Victorian children’s book illustrators:
Randolph Caldecott, Kate Greenaway and Walter
Crane. Their work was further enhanced by the
revolutionary colour block printing techniques of
the great Edmund Evans, engraver, printer and
visionary extraordinaire. Add to this group Edward
Lear, John Tenniel and Louis Wain and this era
stacks up pretty well to anything that followed.

Then there’s the turn of the 19th century
illustration of such talents as Arthur Rackham,
Edmund Dulac, Maxfield Parrish, Charles and
W. Heath Robinson, Willy Pogany, Jessie Wilcox
Smith, Maud Humphrey, Kay Nielsen, E.J.
Detmold, Harry Clarke and others. There seems
no doubt that this era (1905-1940) is truly the
Golden Age of Illustration.

Three of the best from the 1940s and 1950s
were Edward Ardizzone, Feodor Rojankovsky
and Maurice Sendak. Add to this list artists such
as Robert McCloskey, Roger Duvoisin, Leo Politi,
William Pene DuBois, Leonard Weisgard, Tasha
Tudor and Ingri and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire.

The careers of many of the above artists
continued into the 1960s and 1970s, when they
were joined by this talented group: Mercer Mayer,
Alan Aldridge, Brian Wildsmith, Ezra Jack Keats,
Arnold Lobel and Nancy Ekholm Burkert,
producing a large quantity of great colour work.

The 1980s and 1990s saw the rise of such
illustrating stars as Barry Moser, Chris van
Allsburg, Susan Jeffers, Trina Schart Hyman,
Charles Santore, and one of my favourites,
Lisbeth Zwerger, who did a lot of work for
North-South Books.

There you have it in a nutshell–over a
century of outstanding children’s book illustration.
Pick your era. You can’t really make a bad
choice. Choose the type of illustration you
like the best. Chances are your choices will
transcend the spectrum, something here,
something there, but a word of advice for
collecting illustrated children’s books:
it’s probably best if you stick with half
a dozen illustrators and buy as many of
their first printings as you can find.
As always, pay particular attention to
condition; a little extra paid now for a
better copy will benefit you down the road.

For an old article of mine on collectible
children’s book illustrators, please follow
this link to my website (you’ll be wishing
you could be paying those prices now!):
www.stillmanbooks.com/illustratorsarticle.htm

Remember, the only book purchase you’ll
ever regret will be the one you didn’t make.

Talk soon.

The Franklin Library was the publishing division
of The Franklin Mint. The Franklin Library
published its first book in 1973, and closed its
doors for good in 2000, after losing the competitive
battle with The Easton Press for the popular
market for finely-bound leather books. Today,
the lavishly-produced leather books and partly
leather-bound books issued by the Franklin
Library are in steady, but limited demand.

Many booksellers do not hold Franklin Library
books in high regard. Although most volumes
sold in the $30 to $40 range by subscription,
most bookdealers will rarely pay more than
$4 to $6 each for them. They may then price
the books for $15 to $35 but the books tend
to sell very slowly, with perhaps an increase
in interest for the Christmas gift-giving market.

Many of the books are very handsome and
the title-list is heavy on classic and detective
fiction titles. So why aren’t they more popular?

I think the main reason that Franklin Library
books are not in high demand is because
there is just too much of a “sameness” about
them. The volumes are mostly the same size and
format, and although three or four shelves of
them look “nice”, they have almost an artificial
look to them. Six or eight volumes scattered
amongst one’s library of five hundred books
are fine, but a wall of the shiny buggers is
really too much to take.

Another mistake that the Franklin Library
publishers made was in their choice of book
illustrators. Folio Society is guilty of the same
sin: to keep the cost of the book down, they
had to find artists who were willing to work
cheaply and produce a half a dozen illustrations
for a couple of thousand dollars. So the
inevitable happened. Except for the few
volumes that actually used original artwork
from the first or early printings of novels–
for example, E.W. Kemble, Thomas
Rowlandson, William Caxton and Frank
Pape come to mind–the majority of the
illustrations in Franklin Library books
are subpar, and, frankly, not too exciting.

The series of contemporary signed fiction
that Franklin issued naturally tend to
sell for a bit more; however,  my main
criticisms still apply.

But, sometimes we booksellers have to
make due with what we have and try to
extol the limited virtues of our product.
Franklin Library books are pretty and
make suitable gifts in quantities of one
or two, providing the recipient is actually
a fan of the book and author he or she
is getting.

To that end, I refer you to a small
collection of Franklin Library titles that
I just recently purchased (no, I don’t
have them on shelves!). So, if you’re
looking for a nice, pretty edition of
a favourite old title for yourself or a
friend, please check out the available
titles on my website at:
www.stillmanbooks.com/franklinmint.htm

As a comparison to the Franklin Library
books, you may also want to look at my
small collection of books for sale from
the Limited Editions Club:
www.stillmanbooks.com/limitededition.htm

Remember, the only book purchase you

will ever regret, is the one you didn’t make.

Talk soon.