Rare Book Monthly Articles - January - 2009 Issue

AE Top 500 at Auction for 2008!

AE Top 500 at Auction for 2008!

By Michael Stillman Another year has come to an end, which means it is time to look back at the AE Top 500 of book and ephemera sales at auction for 2008. This was a tough year. It certainly started well enough, a robust economy providing high-end book collectors with sufficient funds to feed their obsession. As late as July, $4 gas, painful for drivers, reflected just how booming the economy was. The year did not end this way. Next month we will have a chance to gather all of the sales figures for 2008 to present a more detailed look at the market for books. For now, the anecdotal evide...

Reorganizing the Web for Bookselling

Reorganizing the Web for Bookselling

By Bruce McKinney The Case for and Logic behind Wiki Bibliographies: Organizing material into collectible subjects Online book selling is tied to dated technology and assumptions that no lon...

eBay Seller Ratings Dispute Leads to Lawsuit

eBay Seller Ratings Dispute Leads to Lawsuit

By Michael Stillman What nightmares has eBay wrought with its new seller rating system? With a system that affords sellers little defense against unhappy buyers, the ugly L-word - lawsuit - has ...

Timing is Everything

Timing is Everything

By Bruce McKinney Timing is everything. In the December issue of AE Monthly we wrote the improbable but true story of a book posted in September to eBay for $2332 [BP1,299] by an English bookse...

Mining the World of Bargain Books

Mining the World of Bargain Books

By Renée Magriel Roberts There are many different ways to buy books: from individuals, estate sales, auctions, publishers, distributors, and library sales. You can even publish books yourself, a...

Wikis Come into Focus

Wikis Come into Focus

By Bruce McKinney Wiki Bibliographies and Reductive Pooling Wiki Bibliographies are the answer to two questions: [1] what material lies within a field and [2] which items are available today. W...

BookFinder's Top 10 for 2008:  Do It Yourself and With Someone Else

BookFinder's Top 10 for 2008: Do It Yourself and With Someone Else

By Michael Stillman BookFinder.com has released its top 10 list of the most sought after out-of-print books of 2008. BookFinder provides searches of dozens of book listing sites, so they get a g...

The Americana Exchange Database:  Two Million and Counting

The Americana Exchange Database: Two Million and Counting

By Bruce McKinney The AED, the historical database of books, manuscripts and ephemera reached two million full text records a week or so ago. This database came on line September 3rd 2002 with ...

Police Blotter:  284,000 Stolen Books, and a Scholar-Thief

Police Blotter: 284,000 Stolen Books, and a Scholar-Thief

By Michael Stillman For those who thought library theft was a big problem in the West, a survey conducted by Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun found that 284,000 books were stolen from Japanese libraries ...

A Few Rhymes for the Carrier Boys

A Few Rhymes for the Carrier Boys

By Bruce McKinney In the 19th century it was not uncommon for newspapers to publish a 'Carrier Call' or 'Carrier's Address' on the first of the year. Carriers could give this ephemera to recipi...

<i>In The News:</i>  Abe Sale Official, Lincoln Museum Sold, Google Scans Magazines

<i>In The News:</i> Abe Sale Official, Lincoln Museum Sold, Google Scans Magazines

By Michael Stillman The tentative sale of AbeBooks to Amazon announced last summer has now become official. The agreement announced on August 1 has gone through the appropriate due diligence, an...

23 New Catalogues Reviewed This Month

23 New Catalogues Reviewed This Month

The time of the year for new book catalogues has arrived as we welcome 23 new additions/editions for 2009. They are as varied as the fields of book collecting. The William Reese Company celebra...

Rare Book Monthly

  • Sotheby's
    Fine Books, Manuscripts & More
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s: William Shakespeare.
    The Poems and Sonnets of William Shakespeare, 1960. 7,210 USD
    Sotheby’s: Charles Dickens.
    A Christmas Carol, First Edition, 1843. 17,500 USD
    Sotheby’s: William Golding.
    Lord of the Flies, First Edition, 1954. 5,400 USD
    Sotheby's
    Fine Books, Manuscripts & More
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s: Lewis Carroll.
    Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, Inscribed First Edition, 1872. 25,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: J.R.R. Tolkien.
    The Hobbit, First Edition, 1937. 12,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: John Milton.
    Paradise Lost, 1759. 5,400 USD

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