How to buy and sell collectible books.

What to collect? It goes without saying that you should collect authors or subjects that interest you. If all you want to do is amass and read and enjoy a bunch of old books, then many of these rules will not apply to you, but a true a??collectora?? is someone who focuses on a specific area of interest, with the intention of acquiring everything that relates to that area, whether he wants the collection for his own amusement or for investment purposes.

A Hemingway collector, for instance, would want not only first editions of all of Hemingway's books, but also every magazine Hemingway published an article or story in, as well as manuscripts, galleys, letters, and other written or printed ephemera, as well as possibly other objects connected to the writer, such as guns, articles of clothing, pens, jewelry, photographs, and so forth. The more complete a collection is, the more valuable it will be for resale.

And much depends on who is in fashion among collectors. Writers that were considered highly collectible 75 or even 50 years ago are in some cases all but forgotten. If your book collecting motives are chiefly financial, you should know, as a??US magazinea?? likes to say, a??Who's Hot and Who's Not.a??

Age and bindings. Just because a book is old, has an elaborate binding (yes even a leather binding), or interesting illustrations or other superficial decorative qualities, is no indication that the book has any value as a collectible. Research the market before you buy.

Be realistic. Unless you're fantastically wealthy, you can forget building up an unparalleled collection of the works of, say, Dickens or Thackeray. Materials that old or older seldom come up for sale anymore, and are in most cases already in institutional collections. But you can still collect works by more recent writers, such as Capote or Mailer, or even Kerouac or Henry Miller. And if you have a good feeling about the future of certain contemporary authors, you could build a solid collection fairly cheaply.

Condition. This is extremely important. Most reputable book dealers use a highly specialized and standardized vocabulary when discussing collectible books. Book condition is usually graded as Mint/As New, Fine, Very Good, Good, Fair, or Poor, with each term representing very specific qualities. If you see a book described, on an on-line auction for instance, as a??Mint ++a?? or a??Near-Fine,a?? the seller is clearly ignorant of the standards of the collectible book trade and you'd do well to take your money elsewhere.

First Editions. Why is this considered such a big deal? Well, since books sometimes are revised in subsequent editions, the first edition best represents the author's original intentions. But just because you see a??First Editiona?? printed on a book's copyright page that book may not necessarily be the first state of that book, state referring to the very first appearance of that book in any form, before any changes were made (such as correcting broken type and so forth). Different publishing houses have different codes and techniques of indicating first edition and first state in their booksa??you'll just have to learn how each press does it.

And remembera??a first edition of a book is no general indication of its rarity. A first edition of the latest book by Anne Rice, Tom Clancy, or J.K. Rowling is not likely to be all that valuable, even decades from now, because those are all highly popular writers and everything they write appears in a huge print run. A first edition of the very first book written by a major author is much more likely to become collectible because he or she was an unknown then and the initial press run was much smaller.

Autographs. While it's fun to go to readings and get an author to sign your books, the mere presence of the signature doesn't increase the book's value that much. If the inscription is personalized or if you are a friend of the author, then the book becomes somewhat more valuable. If you were the inspiration for a character in the book or the person to whom the book was dedicated, and especially if the inscription mentions this, then the book becomes even more valuable. More valuable yet are books autographed from one famous person to another, such as a copy of a??The Sun Also Rises,a?? inscribed by Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Selling/Disposal. Assuming you've finally amassed a great collection of books and related material on a particular subject or authora??now what? There is every likelihood that your heirs will not share your interest or level of knowledge in your hobby. So what do you want to do with all this stuff?

If you have a really complete and important collection, an institutional library may be interested, but if the collection is not complete, then that library may pick and choose the items it wants and pass on the rest. You may have to peddle the collection around to several libraries, then take your chances with collectible book dealers, who might not pay you what the collection's worth. You could sell the collection in bulk or in lots on-line or take it to an auction house, but there will be selling fees involved either way. But whatever course you take, it would be better for you to do the selling, rather than leaving it up to your heirs, who might bungle it all and leave the books to a a??Friends of the Public Librarya?? sale.