The New York Book Fair - a great success
- By Bruce McKinney
The traffic was steady, the business strong
To experience the ABAA Book Fair in New York first hand I flew over a day ahead of the Thursday preview and stayed nearby. It was a trip well worth making.
The 52nd New York Fair, the mother ship of the ABAA, opened in New York for its annual four day run on Thursday April 12th to run through Sunday the 15th. By consensus it was a grand success, catering to an audience long trained to expect the top dealers and their best material to be on display. Attendance was moderate but the audience motivated. In a departure from prior years sales were more evenly divided over the four days – suggesting the trend to retail [selling to the public rather than selling to dealers] continues. In past years, for many dealers, the pre-opening and opening night segments saw the best selling.
Continuing another now established trend dealers brought more unique and visually appealing items. With the Internet knee deep in material for sale this show and other book fairs have increasingly needed to showcase the truly rare and unique. The more pedestrian anymore is bought on line. At this fair this perspective was on clear display.
Across and down the rows an A list of beautiful bindings, signed and association copies, important manuscript material, early and beautiful maps, altogether gave impetus to institutions and collectors to buy, to in some cases request items be sent on approval, in other cases to open negotiations. However these processes started in many cases these purchases are already tucked safely into collections. For many acquirers the New York fair is justifiably their world series.
The rich and famous came out in force. Yoko Ono, John Larraquette, Lucie Liu, Chelsea Clinton, Steve Martin and Bill O’Reilly all browsed. The fair organizers were officially tweeting and when Steve Martin was mentioned the tweets are reported to have jumped from 100,000 to 2.1 million. He really is a wild and crazy guy.
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The New York Book Fair - a great success
- By Bruce McKinney
Claudia Strauss, continuing Schulson Autographs Ltd.
Random conversations with participating dealers provided some sense of how the show went. David Lilburne of Antipodean Books, John Schulman of Caliban Books and Dan Wechsler of Sanctuary Books all reported strong sales.
Several others expressed disappointment but overall the impression was positive. A few expressed concerns over the high number of auctions taking place in New York around the fair, openly wondering if auction activity had diminished show sales. Others mentioned the high number of participating overseas dealers as causing the fair committee to ration space and force some dealers who wanted whole booths to accept halves. Their question: was it necessary? Others welcomed their participation. In other words it was an absolutely normal event. For a large number of book dealers to agree on anything is unusual.
The ABAA dealer with the highest sales total for the week was not even an exhibitor. Ken Nebenzahl, an emeritus member, sold 165 lots at a Christie’s night sale on the Tuesday before for $11.6 million. In walking the show on Friday congratulations were called out throughout the room as he walked by and no doubt a few prices were adjusted post-Nebenzahl as many records were broken.
As mentioned above a special effort was made this year to accommodate every dealer who wanted to exhibit. To do so the organizing committee reconfigured the convention space dividing some booths and adding a dozen more. The effect was very positive. Every space, even the far corners were utilized and the building had a great buzz. It gave the show a whiff of the bazaar.
To some extent the show simply reconfirmed the now well-established trend toward unique objects. All the world has grown anxious about buying pedestrian rarities, interesting though they be. The buzz items these days are the “unique” ones that are as easy to sell as they are difficult to find.
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The New York Book Fair - a great success
- By Bruce McKinney
Robert Berg, Antiquariaat Berg
To this I’ll add a suggestion. For many reasons pamphlets, broadsides and ephemera are, to quote my astrologer, ascending. For the next generation of collectors as well as for collectors adjusting to the new possibilities today a database of all material on display would add immeasurably to the efficient use of time. Some will argue that knowledge of what’s available will deter a few from coming. The answer for a year or so is to have a complete database of what’s on the floor available for searching at the show and to provide terminals in the hall for guests to search. Thus armed with a printout and map they can then walk around the fair to see the examples. It turns out that rarer than a Gutenberg these days is the acquirer who has time to browse every booth and ask just the right question to elicit the “I have that right here.”
Certainly dealers have become adept at contextualizing their material but the material in 213 booths, taken together, is too daunting to fully examine, much less to read the lengthy descriptions. Bottom line, if I could have run searches I would have bought more.
So the show was a win all around and next year the smart folks who shoe-horned an extra dozen exhibitors in will certainly be asked to relive the Jesus, fishes and loaves parable and feed an even larger crowd. I’m now expecting a second floor.
Links to
Schulson Autographs
Antiquariaat Berg
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