By Bruce McKinney

An interesting shop in the San Francisco barrio south of Market Street; this is Bolerium Books on Mission. The street is busy, the traffic young. From down the street a giant BOOKS sign, in the same type and size New York used a few years ago to salute the Yankees after winning their umpteenth baseball championship, is visible on the building front. Across the street an unusual combination of loiters suggest ...more

By Michael Stillman

The recent application of Amazon.com's "price parity" policy to European booksellers has resulted in a great outcry from those countries' dealers. The policy has been in effect in the U.S. for several years as part of their seller's agreement, though how widely this is understood, or how carefully obeyed and enforced, is uncertain.

"Price parity," which was recently extended to the U.K., France, ...more

By Bruce McKinney

Books are composed mostly of words, occasional numbers and infrequent images. The history of books on the Americana Exchange is the matter of description and the number of times such titles appear. Toward a clearer understanding of rarity we have begun a year-long project to more than double the records in the AED (Americana Exchange Database). To accomplish this we are working backward, filling in the ...more

By Tom McKinney

Last month, Mike Stillman wrote about the new Kobo eBook reader which Borders is now selling for $149. Last month, that price was cheaper than the competition, but the price made sense in that the Kobo reader makes some compromises in terms of features. What a difference a month can make! Literally overnight, first ...more

By Susan Halas

"What a long strange trip it¡¦s been...." This year Bud Plant celebrates the 40th year of Bud's Art Books. That's forty years since 1970, when he started in the mail order book business with a specialty in comic arts and illustration. That's forty years that's seen "pop culture" go from an obscure cult to one of the heavy hitters in the collectible world.

It's the same forty years that ...more

By Michael Stillman

Maybe there's something in the water. England has become the site of two dramatic and unusual book theft cases. One involves the legendary "Tome Raider," who officially became a two-time loser a few days back. The other implicates one of the more colorful characters ever accused of stealing a Shakespeare First Folio, a trial currently underway.

William Jacques, better known as the "Tome Raider" ...more

By Bruce McKinney

In a few weeks Bonhams will announce they are handling my second sale - The American Experience - 1626 - 1850, the second auction of books, manuscripts and ephemera from the collections I've built over the past twenty years. The December sale is to be held in New York. The auction follows, by one year, The De Orbe Novo sale - Exploration of the New World 1492-1625 that was organized by Bloomsbury and raised ...more

By Lee Kirk, The Prints & The Paper - www.kirksbooks.com

This was the first show I have done in 7 years due to family and personal health issues, eldercare, etc. Since it was the 5th year for the show, I hadn't even had a chance to attend and see what it was like. It bills itself as "an unpretentious book fair" which I think is very smart, for reasons ...more

By Bruce McKinney

Susan Heller of Pages 4 Sages of Beachwood, Ohio is a young 75+ and looking to wrap up her four-decade career in the book business. As is the experience of most booksellers she developed many categories of inventory, sold some and retained others as favorites. It is hard to let go but she has decided it's time.

That said, while still a few years shy of where Fulton J. Sheen told several generations ...more

By Michael Stillman

Items in the books, manuscripts and ephemera field do not have to be antiquarian to bring in big money. Indeed, we are witnessing something of a changing of the guard in what is collectible, as personally relevant may be gaining ground on historically significant. It is a point worth understanding in building collections or building inventory to sell to the new collector.

Last month, Sotheby's ...more

By Tom McKinney

This month I'm writing a step-by-step guide to the AE premium service MatchMaker. If you're already a premium member and don't use the service, maybe this will make it less intimidating! I've included a screenshot thumbnail at each step¡Xclick the smaller image to open a larger one.

So, first, getting to MatchMaker. There are a few ways, but the simplest, is to click on the Premium Services link in ...more

By Michael Stillman

When is a book more desirable after its covers have been torn from the pages? When are terms such as "foxed" and "faded" a positive selling feature? Welcome to the new world of books as art. Wait long enough and just about anything can get turned upside down.

Books have been collected as objects of art at least as far back as Jean Grolier, who put together his library almost five centuries ago. ...more

Fourteen new catalogues are reviewed in Section Two this month. Travel and exploration are the subjects of catalogues from Peter Harrington and Gert Jan Bestebreurtje Rare Books. Autographs and manuscripts are featured by James Cummins Bookseller, while the Raab Collection offers important signed documents. Samuel Gedge Ltd. Rare Books has both manuscripts and books.

The William Reese Company ...more