Any collector, as opposed to a general reader who doesn’t care whether he has a first or a tenth edition of a book, has to face the fact that most of his books will have to be obtained through specialist dealers. Long gone—if they ever existed—are the days when a superior collection could be built by haunting thrift shops and general secondhand bookshops. The latter are themselves almost an extinct species, victims of the increasingly high rents for the amount of space needed to operate a large general bookstore, the increase in specialization in all fields, extending also into book collecting, and, not least, the prevalence of paperback editions. The resale possibilities of paperbacks is severely limited —many of them literally fall apart after a couple of readings; some don’t even last through the first reading. Also, a used-book dealer can hope to make only a slim margin of profit on secondhand paperbacks.
Of course, the occasional instance of serendipity still occurs on outdoor stands and in thrift shops, garage sales, and the like. Every collector has his favorite tale of the gem he obtained in just such a manner. But these finds are isolated instances at best, and happen so rarely that no serious collection can be built by depending on them. Once you are committed to any sort of collecting—first editions, or a subject collection such as chess books, color-plate books, or whatever—you will, of necessity, be obliged to go to specialist dealers to obtain the large majority of your books, especially the rare and more unusual items. Today, whenever a new, signed, limited edition by a major author is announced by a publisher, it is almost invariably oversubscribed, and all available copies taken up by specialist dealers. Very few, if any, find their way into regular bookstores. If you hope to get a copy, it will pay to have established a relationship with a dealer so that you will be guaranteed one of his. This is especially important when the demand is greater than the supply, for in that case the publisher is obliged to cut the number of copies allotted to each dealer.
The first problem, especially for the novice collector, is to discover which dealer can supply his needs, and where they are. Fortunately, in the United States and Great Britain there are several methods, relatively easy, of answering such questions. First of all, in the United States, there is the directory of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America, commonly known as the ABAA. Founded just after World War II, this group has over three hundred members sworn to fair practices and honorable dealings. While a great many American book dealers are members, there are several important ones who are not, for a variety of reasons. One of these is the Association’s rule that a prospective member must have been a full-time dealer in business for at least three years. This, of course, eliminates all fledglings, as well as part-time dealers. And there are some dealers, long established, with national and even international reputations, who are not members by reason of personal choice. The Association’s membership list is nonetheless a good place to begin to seek out dealers who can help you. The ABAA maintains a shop in New York City at 50 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10020, where a few representative volumes from several different members are on display. The shop usually has a supply of the latest catalogs of those members who issue them. The membership list of the ABAA can be obtained by going there in person, or by writing to the shop. If you write, be sure to enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope for the return of the list.
In Great Britain there is a similar organization known as the Antiquarian Book Dealers’ Association, 154 Buckingham Palace Road, London, S.W. 1, England.
The Book Review section of the Sunday New York Times always carries a page of advertisements by booksellers, many of whom are specialists. It must be admitted, however, that this group of advertisers is rather small, and tends to remain the same, year in, year out. Furthermore, most of them are members of the ABAA and will already have been located through that membership list. However, in this section there are also advertisements by book searchers, something quite different from regular book dealers. These people will undertake to search for books for a fee. Usually there is no charge if the book is not located. It is generally pointless to ask them to find even run-of-the-mill first editions, and hopeless to request great rarities. However, they are often quite helpful in finding secondary items such as later printings, obscure journals, and the like.
In Great Britain, there is an extremely useful guide to book sellers entitled A Directory of Dealers in Secondhand & Antiquarian Books in the British Isles. It is arranged geographically for easy reference to whatever area you may be in at any given time. It further gives a brief description of the kinds of books handled by each dealer, so that you will know at a glance whether or not it is likely to be worth your time to visit a particular shop.
There are several trade journals for the out-of-print, secondhand, antiquarian, or used-book market. Chief among these is the one familiarly known as “The AB” from the initials of its original name, The Antiquarian Bookmarket. In recent years the magazine has been called AB Bookman’s Weekly (Box AB, Clifton, New Jersey 07015). This can be an important source of information for any collector. While its primary function is to serve as a means of getting a dealer’s specific and immediate wants known to his fellow dealers (this feature takes up the bulk of every issue), it also issues an annual directory, known as the AB Bookman’s Yearbook. The Yearbook lists many small or part-time dealers who will not be found on the more august membership roll of the ABAA. They are honest, genuine dealers, and potential sources of desirable material. In Great Britain, there is a similar publication known as The Clique (75 World’s End Road, Handsworth Wood, Birmingham B20 2NS), and another named The Bookfinder. Finally, there is a journal catering more directly to collectors than to the book trade, known as the Antiquarian Book Monthly Review (30 Cornmarket Street, Oxford OX1 3EY).
The most direct way of getting in touch with dealers is to attend one or more of the various antiquarian book fairs. These are being held with increasing frequency in the United States. The oldest of these is the ABAA’s annual fair, held on the east and the west coasts in alternate years, generally in New York and in either Los Angeles or San Francisco. Lately there have been numerous other fairs of major importance. In England there are several regular book fairs in London as well as in the provinces. These fairs usually run for about five days and attract dealers from all over the world. From seventy to one hundred dealers may participate in a given fair and will display their choicest wares at booths. It is here that you can make the personal acquaintance of most of the dealers with whom you have been corresponding. For the neophyte it is an excellent way of ascertaining a dealer’s potential value to you, since you can browse in his booth, and from the selection of books he has brought to exhibit you can tell at once whether or not he is ever likely to have the kind of material you seek. Many collectors are reluctant or even embarrassed to enter a shop or even to initiate correspondence without having a specific book in mind to purchase. But at a book fair no one need be shy.
Most dealers save their best pieces for the fairs, and quite often you can obtain a long-sought item that has been kept in reserve for the occasion. So keen is the competition for such material that the admission fee for the opening night of the fair is usually at least double the normal amount, and even so the crowd is so great that it is virtually impossible to get near some of the booths. This apparently deters no one, and most collectors go home with at least one prize in hand. Unfortunately for collectors, there is often a good deal of pre-opening movement of choice items from one dealer to another, with, of course, a price escalation with each move. One such case at a recent California fair involved William Carlos Williams’ first book Poems (Rutherford, 1909), of which fewer than twenty copies are known to exist. A previously unregistered copy was on display in one dealer’s booth. Another dealer spotted it and, realizing that the $3,000 asking price was ridiculously low, bought it and marked it up to $5,000. A third dealer saw it and, still thinking it a bargain, bought it at that price less his 10 percent dealer’s discount (dealers customarily give one another 10 percent discount on purchases). When the fair opened, it was resting in the third dealer’s booth for sale at $12,000. Of course, such a tremendous price escalation is rare, but it does point up the importance of getting to a fair as early as possible.
Catalogs issued by specialist dealers are probably the most important means of acquiring the better items you need. Most first-edition dealers issue such catalogs, some regularly and frequently, others irregularly and a year or more apart. The physical appearance of these catalogs may vary from a few mimeographed sheets stapled together all the way up to lavishly printed volumes, replete with illustrations and even in some rare cases cloth-bound. The general appearance of a catalog will usually indicate the caliber of material inside and the rough price range to be expected, but this is not always the case. Some of the mimeographed catalogs—my own, I am pleased to say, included—contain material just as rare and desirable as that found in the more finely printed ones. It goes without saying, of course, that the cost of producing and mailing out catalogs has to be taken into account by a dealer when pricing his books, and most collectors realize, if only subconsciously, that the less expensive the makeup of the catalog, the more likely the items in it will be reasonably priced. But whatever the appearance of the catalog may be, it is essential for the collector to get on the mailing list of the dozen or so most important dealers in whatever his field of interest may be, and also to give the dealers in return some sign of interest in their catalogs. Costs force every dealer to scan his mailing list periodically and remove names of persons who have not responded for some time. If you find nothing of interest in a series of catalogs, the chances are that this dealer is not handling the sort of material you want, and he will be justified in removing your name. If, however, you still want to receive his catalogs, you should send a note—a postcard will do—asking to be kept on the list. Most dealers will then be happy to continue to send the catalogs.
Once you have received a catalog in the mail, drop everything and read it immediately. Competition for desirable material is so keen nowadays that often a matter of minutes determines whether or not you get the desired item before someone else does. It is best to look first for the entries under your pet author, or even for a particular book, and then go back and read through the complete catalog. Quite often books you want may be classified under another heading, or even under another author. For example, there exist three plays and one travel book written jointly by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, and while you may be interested only in Isherwood, the dealer may catalog these only under Auden. The 1915 Catholic Anthology, which contains, among other major items, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and is Eliot’s first book appearance, may be listed either in the section devoted to Ezra Pound, who edited the volume and also appears in it, or it may be listed among anthologies. (Once, to my own delight and profit, it appeared very cheaply in the catalog of an innocent dealer under “Religious Books.”) If you spot something that you want badly, especially a major item, telephone immediately. Any dealer will accept a telephone order, particularly from a customer already known to him. Direct dialing telephone rates are relatively inexpensive, and well worth the extra couple of dollars it may cost to secure an item. It doesn’t pay to wait until night rates are in effect. In fact, many wise collectors will telephone immediately on spotting an important item and will then go back and read the rest of the catalog, either making a second phone call for further choices, or perhaps ordering the minor items by mail. Many a collector has failed to get a crucial item merely by delaying an hour or so. Since most dealers who issue catalogs have extensive mailing lists, catalogs are usually sent bulk rate (third class) mail, which means that they are delivered by your local post office after all other mail has been taken care of. In some cases there can be a delay of four or five weeks between the actual mailing of the catalog and your receipt of it—a period of time in which most of the plums will have been plucked. It is thus essential to receive the catalogs by first class mail. Since this is often very costly, a dealer is naturally reluctant to go to such expense. If, however, you are a regular customer and a fairly liberal purchaser, he will usually bear the expense himself of sending your copy first class. If, on the other hand, you are either a new customer, or if you seldom buy, the dealer may ask you to pay for the first-class postage. Usually this will amount to little more than a couple of dollars a year, but will always be worth it in order to have a better chance of obtaining your coveted items.
The dangers of buying a book sight unseen, through the mail, are too obvious to need elaboration. Condition (see Chapter 8) is the prime factor in book collecting, as in other hobby fields, and must be ascertained from the dealer’s catalog description. It is here that interpretation enters in and disappointment occurs. Shades of meaning and gradations between “fine,” “good,” “mint,” and other terms commonly employed are a matter of judgment, and your standards of what is fine may not be the same as the dealer’s opinion. (See pages 107—8 for an analysis of commonly used terms.) “Condition cranks,” a term applied to collectors whose insistence on perfection borders on mania and who push such standards to illogical extremes, are bound to be disappointed often. But most collectors who adopt a reasonable attitude toward condition will find little to complain of. For one thing, no dealer likes the wasted time, trouble, and expense of returned shipments, to say nothing of the danger to the books in the hands of the postal service. He may have lost a sale to another customer who wanted the particular item. Therefore, if only out of self-interest, most dealers try to be accurate in their cataloging. They have discerning eyes, generally, and it will not take long for you to become acquainted with the general level of each dealer’s set of descriptive terms. Very few if any dealers will refuse to take a book back if it is returned within a reasonable length of time. This period is usually specified in the dealer’s terms in the front of his catalog, and as a rule is ten days after receipt. If you are going to return a book, notify the dealer at once, either by phone or at least by letter, since the return parcel may take quite a long time to reach him. Particularly with a new catalog, he may have had to turn down one or more other orders for the item. Thus, if he knows it is coming back, he still has time to sell it to another customer.
The most important single aspect of the dealer-customer relationship is the gradual development of friendship and rapport. The buying of books is a unique type of transaction, unlike the purchase of almost any other commodity. Friendly relationships between a dealer and a customer are common. A good dealer will warm almost at once to a customer who indicates a true passion for books. On the other hand he may never find much affection for a customer who is collecting because it is fashionable or—especially in recent years—because books seem to be a good form of investment. Despite the old dictum that a dealer should not be a collector, so as not to compete with his own customers, virtually every dealer does have a personal collection of some sort, and almost without exception, every rare-book dealer started as a collector. It is safe to say that every book dealer is in the business because he enjoys it, a statement that cannot be made of many other professions.
I shall never forget an occasion many years ago when I was browsing in a first-edition dealer’s shop while still a novice collector myself. A customer came in and asked for several titles of a particularly scarce and much sought-after author, who happened also to be the favorite author of that dealer, whose collection was rated one of the best in existence. Warming to what he thought was a fellow enthusiast, the dealer not only produced most of the wanted titles, but also brought out several other highly desirable items that he confessed he had been hoarding toward a catalog. The customer said that he would buy them and asked to have them shipped to his address in England. Then he made the cardinal error of boasting, “I can flog them for twice that price in England.” The dealer was obviously nettled and immediately froze up, feeling, quite rightly, that he had been taken advantage of by a pretense of personal interest in the author’s work. The customer left shortly thereafter, having given his London address, adding that he would send a check as soon as he got back to England. When he was safely out of the shop, the dealer said, as much to himself as to me, “He’ll never get those books.” If need be, the dealer said, he would advise the man that the shipment had got lost in the mail. “And besides,” he added, “he’s very slow to pay.”
Which brings up another crucial area in your relationship with a dealer. Except for a very occasional item that is in his shop on consignment, every book in a dealer’s stock has been bought and paid for by him before placing it on the shelf or in his catalog. He must therefore wait for payments to come in from customers in order to replenish his working capital before he can buy more books. Most dealers are chronically short of immediate cash. The more quickly payments come in, the more stock they can buy and, consequently, the better chance you have of obtaining from them the items you need. Therefore, prompt payment is not only courteous, it is also in your own interest. Most dealers require customers who are purchasing for the first time to pay for the initial shipment in advance, and ask that a charge account be deferred until references can be checked. Usually references from other book dealers are preferred over any credit card or department store account references, which are difficult, if not impossible, to check. Most dealers expect to be paid upon receipt of the merchandise, or at the very least by the end of the month. Naturally, once you have become an established customer, private agreements can be arranged, especially if you are purchasing a particularly expensive item.
When a new customer comes into a shop and asks for “anything” by a particularly prolific author, for example John Updike, Ted Hughes, Gertrude Stein, or any of a large number of major authors, the dealer may hedge a bit, especially if he happens to have a large or varied stock of the particular author. All too often a collector will use just that approach, either in person or by mail, when in actuality he is looking for one specific title or certain rarities. If the dealer’s quarters are spacious enough for him to have everything shelved, he will usually point to the place where the author’s books are displayed. But most dealers suffer chronically from lack of space, and not everything can be displayed at once. Sometimes there are other considerations, such as the exceptional fragility of an item, or an awkward size, or a rarity of such degree that the book would present too great a temptation to shoplifters. Or, with an unusually prolific author, the sheer bulk of the output may preclude displaying everything in one place. Most dealers will parry such an open-ended request, trying to narrow down the customer’s field of interest. It is therefore essential to be specific in stating your wants. It is a false although apparently widely held belief among novices that a dealer instantly increases the price if you ask for a specific title; almost all dealers have prices marked in their books. It is vital for the collector to gain the friendship and goodwill of the dealer, particularly one who specializes in his author or area of interest. Many dealers are eccentrics, most of them charmingly so, but almost all of them like to place especially desirable titles where they think they belong, and if rubbed the wrong way, can very easily deny having the very book you want.
There is another precaution to be observed by someone making his first purchase from a dealer. It is very unwise to try to bargain with a dealer, particularly a specialist who knows his field very well. His prices are usually scaled in accordance with the general levels of the market on most items. Prices are normally set on the basis of the book’s cost to the dealer. Most newly issued books are discounted at 40 percent to the dealer (plus, of course, postage or shipping charges, now a considerable figure). Many limited editions from small or private presses carry smaller dealer discounts, usually 30 percent, sometimes only 20 percent, and recently, when several such publishers have seen fit to issue an extremely limited edition of only twenty-six lettered copies, these have been sold to dealers at no discount at all, making it necessary for them to add something on the top in order to make even a modest profit. Many university presses allow dealers only 10 percent discount. When the postage is added to this, the cost to the dealer is often higher than the announced retail price, one reason why university press publications are often difficult to find in bookstores. On out-of-print books, the general practice in the book trade is to double the cost figure. This does not mean that the dealer is doubling his money on each item sold. He has rent, light, postage, printing, salaries—in short, all the expenses that used to be called overhead—to pay before his actual profit can be reckoned. Once in a while an item will come into a dealer’s possession on which he can more than double his money, but that is the exception rather than the rule, and only helps to even out items he has bought at a particularly high price—either for the fun or prestige of being able to offer a very rare item, or perhaps as a service to a customer —and ended by selling at a nominal 10 or 15 percent markup.
Most dealers also stockpile a certain number of copies of books by authors in whom they have faith, against future demand or future price rise. These caches, when released some years later, often provide the only available copies of titles suddenly in demand. Here, again, the dealer has invested money and storage space, both of which are chronically in short supply, and hence must charge a premium, if only to compensate for the amount of interest he could have had on the money thus tied up. There is one other form of stockpiling where the dealer can make a higher rate of return, and that is in the case of “remainders,” books wholesaled by the publishers at whatever price they will bring. Quite often first editions are remaindered, and many dealers in moderns watch the outlets for these with considerable care, buying quantities of titles by established authors and quietly putting them away until the remainder supply has dried up. Then the dealer will bring them out of storage and place them on the shelf at the original published price, or even at a markup, depending on the demand, how many copies are to be had from other dealers, and how many he himself has. The list of extremely desirable first editions that have been remaindered within the last quarter of a century is truly staggering, making one wonder why everyone was asleep. Just two examples should suffice. In the early 1960s the first four books of Edward Gorey were remaindered at 49c each; they now bring about two hundred times that figure. In 1960 the Yale edition of The Unpublished Work of Gertrude Stein, in eight volumes, was remaindered at half the original publication price. Sets now bring at least fifty times that amount and are rarely seen.
It is both unfair and unwise to ask a dealer to lower his price. One dealer, whenever he was asked to change a price, would look at the price penciled in the book, smile, say, “Oh, you’re right, that’s wrong,” and then calmly add another digit. His customers learned very quickly not to haggle. A dealer may offer on his own initiative to lower a price, particularly if it is a book he has had in stock for a long period of time with no apparent interest in it, or he may even wish to give you a break on an item—but the initiative for such a reduction should come from him, not from you, unless your friendship with him is of such a degree that you can politely ask if that’s the best he can do. But even such a request as this should be made rarely, only in the most exceptional circumstances, where there is some valid reason to suggest that the price may be too high. It must never be used as a standard operating procedure.
Once you have established a firm relationship with a dealer, he will be anxious to help you obtain the items you are looking for. He will take pride in helping build your collection, often spotting items in other dealers’ catalogs, buying them for you and passing them on to you for little or no profit, just to have the pleasure of supplying something you need.
While some old-fashioned rare-book dealers felt that a customer should be loyal to only one dealer, this outlook is simply not realistic, and few if any of the dealers now in operation believe that a collector should buy from only one. No one dealer, no matter how active he is, can possibly supply you with every single item you need. Specialist dealers have, of course, many sources from which to draw, but the rare and fugitive items simply cannot be commanded at will. Dealers must also wait for certain items to appear, and be on the spot when they do surface. Some dealers seem to have more luck at this than others, and the talent is inexplicable. If you are determined to have an exceptional collection, you must simply try to establish good relationships with all the major dealers specializing in your area. It is of course not only good taste but wise to exercise some discretion and not talk too much about the foibles, the stock, or the prices of one dealer when in another’s shop.
Want lists are both helpful and dangerous. Every collector, of course, has one, be it written on paper or merely carried in his head. But it is unwise to spread your written want lists to the four winds. If you send such a list out simultaneously to every dealer, the net result may well be a sudden false surge of interest in the titles on the list. Many dealers run periodic ads in the trade journals and comb each other’s stock, either in person or by telephone. They also alert their book scouts. Several copies of your want list in the midst of all this activity may touch off what looks like a boom in a certain author or in particular titles, and could cause an abnormal escalation of prices. It is best to give the list to one dealer and let him work with it a few weeks or even months before passing it on to one of his competitors. Unless your want list is composed exclusively of “impossibles,” a good dealer will normally come up with a few of your items in a reasonable length of time. Of course, if the list is primarily the impossibles, an experienced dealer won’t waste much time or energy on it; if he were able to locate such items he’d be happy to buy them anyway. Such difficult books are star items in a catalog and are usually in demand by many people.
Above all, remember that the dealer is the necessary connection between you and most of the books you want. Also remember that he has seen and handled a lot of that material at some time, usually many times over, and will know many fine points that you may be unaware of. Without the dealer, you will never form a significant collection. As one proof of this, consult the acknowledgments page of a bibliography of a modern author published in the last two decades and see how consistently dealers are thanked for their help and advice.