Terry On Books Blog

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.