Rare Book Monthly Articles - July - 2009 Issue

Perspective on Books and the Net

Perspective on Books and the Net

By Bruce McKinney These days the world of collectible books is a warren of categories - on line listings, shops on Main Street, catalogues on line and through the mail, presentations at trade shows, and auctions, both traditional and eBay. These categories function independently. They sell to different customers - dividing the world of rare and collectible books into a mosaic of hundreds if not thousands of pieces. The scale of the venues for old and collectible books is exponentially increasing, the number of dealers, number of books, the number of auction houses and sales all incr...

W. Graham Arader: "Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated"

W. Graham Arader: "Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated"

By Bruce McKinney On June 19th the most recent and certainly not final chapter of the Graham Arader story was written in the auction rooms at Sotheby's, as they conducted a 202 lot sale of selec...

<i>In The News:</i>  Crime and Lawsuits

<i>In The News:</i> Crime and Lawsuits

By Michael Stillman A couple of the more notable cases involving books and bookselling have been delayed or deleted. The case of Raymond Scott, of Durham, England, was postponed until August whe...

Google Books:  A Tool for Book Collectors

Google Books: A Tool for Book Collectors

By Bruce McKinney I'm using Google Books to identify additional early [or old if you prefer] material for the Rondout Kingston Wiki Bibliography that I'm building on AE. The subject and purpos...

Browsers as Servers:  Is Change Coming to Bookselling?

Browsers as Servers: Is Change Coming to Bookselling?

By Michael Stillman Opera, the somewhat obscure Norwegian internet browser and software designer, recently announced the development of a browser that also lets your computer function as a serve...

$5-$10 Million Cache of Books and Other Antiquities, Found in Small Chicago Home, Returned to Italy

$5-$10 Million Cache of Books and Other Antiquities, Found in Small Chicago Home, Returned to Italy

By Michael Stillman What the FBI has described as a "literal treasure trove of artifacts," 1,600 relics including over 1,000 books and manuscripts, has been returned to Italy. The collection was...

Bibliopolis and Bookhound - Birds of a Feather

Bibliopolis and Bookhound - Birds of a Feather

By Karen Wright I had been trying to download my antiquated Access book inventory to Bookhound 7c through Biblio.com off and on for months. Bibliopolis, creators of Bookhound, allows the bookse...

Auction Updates:  By email every Sunday night

Auction Updates: By email every Sunday night

By Bruce McKinney Every 18 hours, more or less, a documented traditional auction completes somewhere in the world. The sale may be in North America, Europe, Central America or Australia; in New...

Long Missing Lincoln Letter Returns Home

Long Missing Lincoln Letter Returns Home

By Michael Stillman An interesting Lincoln letter, missing from the National Archives for many decades, perhaps longer, made its way home recently, a gift from a collector who purchased it from ...

Great Gatsby! There is a Light for Collectible Books

Great Gatsby! There is a Light for Collectible Books

By Michael Stillman This has been a tough year for the book trade. Our own figures, gathered from auction results around the world, indicate a drop of 30%-plus in prices since the peak a little ...

Exploiting Marketable Skills - The Bookseller as Knowledge Manager

Exploiting Marketable Skills - The Bookseller as Knowledge Manager

By Renée Magriel Roberts I can't seem to make the same dinner twice. Can't do it. I know that homemaker skills may have traditionally had the pot roast night or the fish night, with well-honed r...

An Update on Summer Possibilities

An Update on Summer Possibilities

By Bruce McKinney We now live in the internet age. This is the same age that just ten years ago was called the television age, which wrested the title from the "age of print" in the 1960s. The...

Now Available:  The Book All Collectors of L. Frank Baum and Oz Must Have

Now Available: The Book All Collectors of L. Frank Baum and Oz Must Have

By Michael Stillman A book has been published that is an absolute must for anyone who collects L. Frank Baum, the Oz books, or anything closely related. The title is The Book Collector's Guide t...

19 New Catalogues Up for Review

19 New Catalogues Up for Review

This month, we review 19 new bookseller catalogues. Literature is the focus of the William Reese Company, while James Pepper Rare Books features literature and film, James Cummins Bookseller litera...

Rare Book Monthly

  • Sotheby's
    Fine Books, Manuscripts & More
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s: Ian Fleming. Casino Royale, London, 1953. First edition, first printing. $58,610.
    Sotheby’s: A.A. Milne, Ernest Howard Shepard. Winnie The Pooh, United Kingdom, 1926. First UK edition. $17,580.
    Sotheby’s: Ernest Hemingway. Three Stories And Ten Poems, [Paris], (1923). First edition of Hemingway’s first published book. $75,000.
    Sotheby's
    Fine Books, Manuscripts & More
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s: L. Frank Baum. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chicago, 1900. First edition. $27,500.
    Sotheby’s: Man Ray. Photographs By Man Ray 1920 Paris 1934, Hartford, 1934. $7,860.
    Sotheby’s: Thomas Pennant. Zoologia Britannica, Augsburg, 1771. $49,125.
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