By Michael Stillman

Another year has come to an end, which means it is time to look back at the AE Top 500 of book and ephemera sales at auction for 2008. This was a tough year. It certainly started well enough, a robust economy providing high-end book collectors with sufficient funds to feed their obsession. As late as July, $4 gas, painful for drivers, reflected just how booming the economy was. The year did not end ...more

By Bruce McKinney

The Case for and Logic behind Wiki Bibliographies: Organizing material into collectible subjects

Online book selling is tied to dated technology and assumptions that no longer apply. We live in a faster paced world that the rare book field will adapt to or face continuing decline. The good news is that the solution won't be difficult.

More than ten years ago online book selling ...more

By Michael Stillman

What nightmares has eBay wrought with its new seller rating system? With a system that affords sellers little defense against unhappy buyers, the ugly L-word - lawsuit - has begun to rear its ghastly head. Ironically enough, this threatens to throw the balance of intimidation from one extreme to the other, from buyer to seller. Ebay really needs to step in, though there is no indication the auction monopoly ...more

By Bruce McKinney

Timing is everything. In the December issue of AE Monthly we wrote the improbable but true story of a book posted in September to eBay for $2332 [BP1,299] by an English bookseller. It was then purchased by Michael Burnley of Los Angeles who sent it on to Christie's in New York who accepted, catalogued, composed, printed and distributed its description as lot 267 in its December 5th sale: Fine Printed Books ...more

By Renee Magriel Roberts

There are many different ways to buy books: from individuals, estate sales, auctions, publishers, distributors, and library sales. You can even publish books yourself, as we do. But another way to acquire stock expeditiously and at very low prices is to buy bargain books.

Bargain books are typically acquired either directly from the publisher as titles that are just not moving rapidly enough ...more

By Bruce McKinney

Wiki Bibliographies and Reductive Pooling

Wiki Bibliographies are the answer to two questions: [1] what material lies within a field and [2] which items are available today. Wiki Bibliographies are narrowly focused on specific collecting areas, always evolving and ever more complete. They are intended to encompass a subject completely. They are living bibliographies. Online listings require some ...more

By Michael Stillman

BookFinder.com has released its top 10 list of the most sought after out-of-print books of 2008. BookFinder provides searches of dozens of book listing sites, so they get a good picture of what older titles people are most trying to find. The list is a varied, eclectic lot, which, come to think of it, reflects who we are.

This year's list features activities we can perform on our own, such as do-it-yourself ...more

By Bruce McKinney

The AED, the historical database of books, manuscripts and ephemera reached two million full text records a week or so ago. This database came on line September 3rd 2002 with 151,000 records, 2/3rds of which were the 29 volumes [106,000+ records] of Sabin's Bibliotheca Americana. In the sixty-four months since, the AED has grown by about a thousand records a day. Initially the records were primarily historical ...more

By Michael Stillman

For those who thought library theft was a big problem in the West, a survey conducted by Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun found that 284,000 books were stolen from Japanese libraries in 2007. The books are valued at 400 million yen, or over $4 million in American currency. The librarians expressed the frustrations common to libraries in the West - tight budgets make it difficult to employ the type of security ...more

By Bruce McKinney

In the 19th century it was not uncommon for newspapers to publish a 'Carrier Call' or 'Carrier's Address' on the first of the year. Carriers could give this ephemera to recipients in the hope, if not expectation, of a gift for their service. The form of request was humble, typically a single sheet covered on two sides with 6 point type, tightly leaded and quarter folded. The form was poetry, the subject, ...more

By Michael Stillman

The tentative sale of AbeBooks to Amazon announced last summer has now become official. The agreement announced on August 1 has gone through the appropriate due diligence, and with the completion of this process, Abe is now a part of Amazon. However, in its announcement, Amazon stressed that "AbeBooks will continue to function as a stand-alone operation based in Victoria, British Columbia." Additionally, ...more

The time of the year for new book catalogues has arrived as we welcome 23 new additions/editions for 2009. They are as varied as the fields of book collecting.

The William Reese Company celebrates the recent election with a collection on American politics. David Lesser Antiquarian Books has unusual American historic pamphlets, while Mark Selvaggio Bookseller has American pamphlets that are very unusual if not ...more