Rare Book Monthly

Articles - January - 2007 Issue

The Year just Past, the Year Ahead

Every dealer sees the future differently.

Every dealer sees the future differently.


By Bruce McKinney

Thread by thread the world of books, manuscripts and ephemera is being sewn on the net into forms inconceivable only a few years ago. These are some of the most traditional fields and their online transitions now underway are resisted, fought, swore at and lamented by many sellers -- all to no avail. The genie is not going back into the bottle and no one is exempted. The market is remaking itself.

For many sellers the forced transition is both painful and exhilarating. Those well established in traditional bookselling have only a marginal advantage online. They may have shops, issue catalogs, and attend shows but online the focus is laser-like on the book, its condition, the price, and shipping. The name of the seller does not trump a better copy at a lower price.

If the internet is creating an increasingly impersonal market it is also creating a much larger one. The wife's tale, oft told, by dealers of "declining market" is hard to hear amid the babble of the increasingly busy online marketplace. Such sellers are actually talking about loss of pricing power which is shifting to the net; their demands now bracketed both by other copies and sales history. The "I expect to get" perspective of many booksellers is now giving way as increasingly experienced buyers, who know what material has brought, are not inclined to move far beyond what the market has demonstrated a buyer should pay.

Some dealers respond by moving away from material that has easily identified online comparables that provide unwelcome perspective on a dealer's pricing overall. These dealers would rather quit than be compared. If a buyer can see that a seller is regularly asking twice the online listing price others ask and four times eBay realizations the easy assumption is that all of a seller's material is priced this way. It's not that simple but the suspicion is there.

Entering 2007 it's starting to come down to who sets the price. The dealer has always been able to set the price and their assumption has been that the single variable is time. If the price was low the item might sell in a week, if priced too high perhaps it would remain unsold even five years later. These days though the high price has a doubly bad effect. The over-priced item is increasingly continuously visible to the buyer who has learned to track material and is unwilling to consider anything else from sellers who price material without regard to its selling history. Very few buyers had this perspective in the past but it's increasingly common today.

Rare Book Monthly

  • Sotheby'sSell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts Sotheby'sSell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: The Shem Tov Bible, 1312 | A Masterpiece from the Golden Age of Spain. Sold: 6,960,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Ten Commandments Tablet, 300-800 CE | One of humanity's earliest and most enduring moral codes. Sold: 5,040,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: William Blake | Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Sold: 4,320,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: The Declaration of Independence | The Holt printing, the only copy in private hands. Sold: 3,360,000 USD
    Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: Thomas Taylor | The original cover art for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Sold: 1,920,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Machiavelli | Il Principe, a previously unrecorded copy of the book where modern political thought began. Sold: 576,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura, ca. 1639, a very fine pre-publication manuscript. Sold: 381,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Henri Matisse | Jazz, Paris 1947, the complete portfolio. Sold: 312,000 EUR
  • Leland Little, Jan. 22: The First Issue of Robert Frost's A Boy's Will, In Extremely Scarce Binding.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Knight's An Account of the Remains of the Worship of Priapus.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: First Edition of Locke's Important Treatise Some Thoughts Concerning Education.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: The Richly Illustrated First French Edition of Voyages de Corneille Le Brun par la Moscovie, en Perse, et aux Indes Orientales.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Scarce First Issue of An Account of the Province of Carolina in America, Finely Bound and With Celebrated John Speed Map.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Humphrey's An Historical Account, Complete with Scarce Folding Maps.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: First Edition of Chamberlain's Scarce Civil War Memoir The Passing of the Armies.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: A Rare Photograph of David Bruce Brown and #48 Fiat.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: George Cruikshank (England, 1792-1878), Archive of Sketches, Notes, and Letters.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Extremely Scarce Copy of Die Samländische Ode (The Samland Ode), Signed by Max Pechstein.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Andy Warhol's The Thirteen Most Wanted Men Exhibition Catalogue.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Edward Ruscha (American, b. 1937), Every Building on the Sunset Strip.
  • RareBookBuyer.comWe Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide RareBookBuyer.comWe Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
    RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
    RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
    RareBookBuyer.com
    Specialized in Purchasing
    Institutional Collections & Deacccessioned Books
    RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
    RareBookBuyer.com
    Specialized in Purchasing
    Institutional Collections & Deacccessioned Books
    RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
    RareBookBuyer.com
    Specialized in Purchasing
    Institutional Collections & Deacccessioned Books
    RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
    RareBookBuyer.com
    Specialized in Purchasing
    Institutional Collections & Deacccessioned Books
    RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide

Article Search

Archived Articles

Ask Questions