By Bruce McKinney

Catalogues have been an essential tool for both buyers and sellers for fully two hundred years. For generations book dealers issued catalogues to provide organized perspective and galvanize buyers. They did this to make sales and in the process educated generations of collectors. They organized material in the ways they thought appropriate grouped by subject, era, price, provenance and bibliographic ...more

By Bruce McKinney

In the AED there is an option to test your expectation of a book's present value against the computer generated estimate provided in the AED. This is possible because a link is provided in the preliminary results screen to "Get Current Estimate." Okay, it's not perfect but it's useful and thought provoking. To try it you need to be a paid member at any level. If you are simply curious you ...more

By Bruce McKinney

The opportunities to find interesting material for the book collector have never been greater. Neither have the options for bidding and buying been better. How you approach the holidays though depends on perspective. A collector will consider all the options but when you buy for a collector it's more complicated. Here goes an effort to simplify it.

If you are buying for a collector ...more

By Bruce McKinney

The purpose of book catalogues is to sell books. In the modern era there have never been more books and fewer catalogues because the world has moved on to bigger and worse things. The net is amazing but it doesn't yet convey the significance of material as effectively as catalogues, the endangered species of the book business. In the real world clams, snails, insects, arachnids and crustaceans all have ...more

By Renee Magriel Roberts

The Internet has not only pushed bookselling into automation, but also into hypertension-producing foreign markets. It's great having access to all those bookstores in Edinburgh, or the customers from Japan, but every single methodology commonly available to complete foreign transactions appears designed to create headaches and cost us money.

Where booksellers might have once just sold ...more

By Mike Stillman

Antbo is looking for listing booksellers. According to their figures, they are already doing quite well. They claim to now have 5.9 million books listed by 529 booksellers. That is a lot of books and booksellers for a site that probably many readers, even those in the book business, had never heard of before. I come here neither to praise nor condemn Antbo. I know nothing about this German book listing site. ...more

By Michael Stillman

Google has landed another partner for its massive and controversial book scanning project. This time it is the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1825. The University Library will make its 5 million-plus volumes available to Google for inclusion in its database. Virginia joins eight other major libraries, including Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, University of Michigan, and New York Public, ...more

By Michael Stillman

Biblio, third largest of the used and old book sites, announced some interesting and surprising data regarding visitors to their site. In a recent news release, they reported that traffic to the site is down, but contrary to what this might seem to imply, sales are up. The shortfall in traffic apparently comes primarily from a decrease in clicks from Google, the major search engine. Biblio attributed this ...more

By Michael Stillman

"Like a drop of oil on a still pond, the number of his victims spreads with time. Smiley's victims include students, scholars, academics, the general public and individuals yet to be born who will not have the opportunity to sit at a desk, open a leather bound volume, and see the world as Archbishop Cranmer and others saw it in the 16th Century."

The British Library made an emotional appeal ...more

By Carl Burnham

When it comes to book collectors, we have seen interests run the gamut from fiction to nonfiction. Whatever the genre, a signature only adds to the value. When we are out book scouting, there is nothing like the experience of finding one. Over the years with book selling, we have acquired several, from astronauts such as Alan Shepard and Jim Irwin, to celebrity biographies, including Henry Fonda, Charlton Heston, ...more

The holidays create a popular season for booksellers to issue catalogues, and this year is no exception. This month, we review sixteen new ones in Section Two of AE Monthly. We find a variety of types of books from noted booksellers such as Locus Solus, John Waite, and Antiquariaat Forum. Thomas Goldwasser focuses on literature and fine books, Hordern House on pacific voyages and other history, David Lesser ...more

By Michael Stillman

This month we review our first catalogue from David Schulson Autographs, though it is their number 132. Offered is a mix of manuscripts and other signed documents and letters, including partly printed forms, photographs, cards, and whatever else some famous person may have signed with his or her name. A great many of the signers come from the arts - painters, writers, poets, and musicians. Others ...more

By Michael Stillman

This month we received our first catalogue from Locus Solus Rare Books of New York City. This catalogue is divided into two sections. The first features art and illustrated books, the second first editions and rare books. Titles in this catalogue are overwhelmingly in the category of literature and poetry, rather than history and other nonfiction. There are both regular first editions and those of ...more

By Michael Stillman

We receive many exciting catalogues here at the Americana Exchange, but none are more fascinating than the occasional collection that crosses our mailbox from Garrett Scott, Bookseller, of Ann Arbor, Michigan. These catalogues are not the most artistic we see. The books offered are not among the classics of western civilization nor world culture. The authors are not the great writers of this time ...more

By Michael Stillman

We recently received our first catalogue from Old West Books of Arlington, Texas. For those not up on Texas geography, Arlington is a compromise between Dallas and Fort Worth, home of the Arlington Rangers baseball team, and future home of the Arlington Cowboys football team (though Arlington does not receive proper credit). Anyway, if Arlington today typifies the new west, it was once in the heart ...more

By Michael Stillman

From John Waite Rare Books we have received their Autumn 2006 Catalogue. Waite offers a wide variety of books and manuscripts, along with some photography. A few items reflect their northern New England location, in Ascutney, Vermont. However, most owe no such allegiance, and could as easily be found in a California bookshop. There is history, literature, poetry, "medicine," photography, art, ...more

By Michael Stillman

Just in is Catalogue 83 from Aleph-Bet Books. What could be more appropriate to the holiday season than a catalogue full of children's books? Any of these titles would make ideal gifts for your "children," that word being placed in quotation marks because these are really meant for the big kids. These books may have been published with the youngest readers in mind, but at this point, I would ...more

By Michael Stillman

Hordern House has released another of its fine catalogues of voyages and other historical items. The latest is titled A selection of rare books, manuscripts and other historical items. Hodern House is located in Sydney, Australia, so naturally there is much on the sixth continent. However, that is hardly an exclusive, as many of the explorations that touched Australia also reached many other areas ...more

By Michael Stillman

Thomas A. Goldwasser Rare Books of San Francisco has issued their 20th catalogue, one that comes in two sections. The first covers artists' books, bookbindings, fine presses and illustrated books. The second part focuses on printed and manuscript literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. What you can expect to find here are either artistic or important literary works when it comes to printed material. There ...more

By Michael Stillman

Bauman Rare Books has issued a catalogue just in time for the holiday season - Gift Suggestions. You can prove your love to someone special by presenting him or her with one of these fine works. There is undoubtedly someone in your life worthy of a gift of lasting value and interest, and you probably are struggling to think of what to buy that person anyway, so you might give Bauman a call. There ...more

By Michael Stillman

The latest catalogue from the William Reese Company is entitled The Era of Jefferson and Madison 1800-1815. These are the early days for the republic. The Federalists, tied to the hated Alien and Sedition Acts, have just been voted out of audience. They will fight to regain power, unsuccessfully, and by the end of this period, will be on their deathbed. Meanwhile, the Democratic-Republicans, ...more

By Michael Stillman

David M. Lesser Fine Antiquarian Books has issued their 94th catalogue of Rare Americana. This follows the pattern of most Lesser catalogues - obscure imprints from American colonial times roughly to the era of Reconstruction. The issues of the day, political, religious, moral, economic, and such are discussed by the people of the land from different points of view. These catalogues provide a look ...more

By Michael Stillman

Thomas Cullen, Rockland Bookman has issued his 41st catalogue of Manuscripts and Books. Cullen offers a mix of material, hard to easily pin down. There is a concentration of local materials from the northeastern states, but other items take us into the Midwest and southern states as well, and even Canada and England. One thing that can definitely be said is that you will find a great deal of manuscript ...more

By Michael Stillman

Gene W. Baade has issued Catalogue 1106 of "Books on the West." Baade regularly offers modestly priced material pertaining to the American and Canadian West of another era, though some of the books are more modern. You can find a recent publication next to one a century and a half old in this catalogue. Baade always offers an interesting mix of the familiar and obscure, heroes and villains remembered ...more

By Michael Stillman

Here is a catalogue for those whose dreams are to sail the seas. It is a collection of sea charts, roadmaps for those who traveled by water rather than by land. The catalogue is Blueback Charts (in One Hundred Charts) and it comes from British bookseller Bernard J. Shapero Rare Books. There are 100 of these charts that were used as sea maps during the late 18th through the 19th century. There ...more

By Michael Stillman

The Antiquariaat Forum of Utrecht, the Netherlands, published a pamphlet of items for the recent Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair. The Antiquariaat Forum is a regular participant at major book fairs around the world, and generally prints up small catalogues of material they exhibit. Naturally, there is no requirement that the items be purchased at the fair, so anything in the listings still ...more

By Michael Stillman

Catalogue number 277 from Oak Knoll Books will not break any new ground for the Delaware bookseller, but that is probably just fine with people who appreciate the material they offer. Oak Knoll is a specialist in the field of "books about books," and their catalogues usually provide large selections of material in this field. Catalogue 277 lists over 800 items, and most pertain to the book arts -- ...more