To mark the 75th Anniversary of 1939, we've asked some ABAA members to discuss publications from that momentous year. Garrett Scott, a prominent Ann Arbor bookseller, offers a divagation upon At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O'Brien's proto-post-modern first book– published in 1939. Biographical reminiscence, part the first: Sometime in 1991, I had taken up temporary residence in a storage closet in a university-owned cooperative house. This was during a period in college in which I was neither enrolled in any classes nor strictly speaking in the eyes of the university a resident of the university-owned cooperative house. The storage closet was situated within one easy extension-cord's length of a hallway electrical outlet and thus easily outfitted with a small fan and a reading lamp and a clock radio. A spare mattress fit neatly between the stacks of cardboard boxes and assorted lumber. The storage closet had the added utility of providing my then-girlfriend with a place to lodge me when she sought respite from my company. One evening prior to another bout of rustication she endeavored to occupy me by handing me a paperback copy of a book written by a man named Flann O'Brien, a member of the Irish nation. The name of the book was At Swim-Two-Birds. She told me the book was about a college student trying to write a book. Nature of her summary: Perfunctory. The figure of speech she had inadvertently employed: Understatement. And thus with nothing but the hum of the fan beside my mat... [more 1939: At Swim-Two-Birds]

We asked Michael Hackenberg, Chair of the Northern California Book Fair Committee, to provide his personal perspective on the decision to move the ABAA-sponsored California International Antiquarian Book Fair from San Francisco to Oakland. (Our California fairs alternate between Southern California and Northern California.) Knowing the Concourse was no more, the Book Fair Committee basically had two options (since the Yerba Buena Center and its big San Francisco downtown Marriott laughed at our small size): Fort Mason or the Oakland Marriott City Center. Site visits and many discussions led the Committee to select the Oakland location. It boasts a brightly lit and large exhibit hall with no dividing wall (and no leaking roof), easy self-loading and unloading, plus smooth arrangements for both EPI (our local union crew located on nearby Alameda and already very familiar with the venue) and Caladex (I personally walked through the venue with both of those firms' representatives, and they were quite pleased with the logistical situation). It has a quality hotel on-site with very advantageous room rates (the Committee looked over the rooms carefully). Its great East Bay location has three freeways joining at the Bay Bridge approach and an ample parking garage. There is a 12th Street BART stop right at the door, with direct connections from Millbrae on the SF Peninsula, Fremont, Richmond/Berkeley, and all the wealthy Bay Area suburbs on the back side of the East Bay hills (Walnut ... [more Across the Bay: ABAA California Fair Moves to Oakland]

The following is an excerpt from the third chapter of Collecting, Curating, And Researching Writers' Libraries, A Handbook, edited by Richard Oram and Joseph Nicholson (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). This chapter deals with the role of the bookseller; other chapters deal with the roles of librarians, curators, and researchers, with accounts of some libraries, a list of authors' libraries preserved in public and private hands, and interviews conducted by Oram and MacDonnell with five well-known authors who describe candidly just how they organize and use their books. In this chapter MacDonnell outlines the five-stage process a bookseller employs when assessing a writer's library: defining what is in the library; assessing its salability; providing valuation; preparing the library for sale; and finally, negotiating its sale. The full article, as well as information on how to order a discounted copy, can be found here. III. The First Order of Business: Defining the Library A bookseller's first order of business when dealing with an author's library is defining just what comprises the author's library. This sounds simple, but books are often mixed with magazines and miscellaneous papers, and the day may soon be coming when an author might have more titles stored on his e-reader than on his shelves. An author might also have listened to audio books, now lurking on CDs or MP3s in some nearby device like a laptop, or iPhone, etc. Distinguishing an author's library from a “household�... [more Writers’ Libraries: The Bookseller’s Perspective]

As if the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's (ISIL; also referred to as IS, ISIS, and Daesh) actions weren't troubling enough, last week the US Department of State reported on the irrevocable damage the terror organization continues to wreak on cultural artifacts in Iraq and Syria. The destruction goes beyond wartime collateral damage– ISIL is celebrating their destruction of religious monuments and profiting from the systematic looting taking place. Corine Wegener, a cultural heritage preservationist at the Smithsonian Institution, called the current situation "one of the biggest problems to confront the cultural heritage community in decades." Secretary of State John Kerry joined Thomas Campbell, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in hosting a conference last week at the Met to call attention to the issue. Some remarks from Secretary of State Kerry: We gather in the midst of one of the most tragic and one of the most outrageous assaults on our shared heritage that perhaps any of us have seen in a lifetime. Ancient treasures in Iraq and in Syria have now become the casualties of continuing warfare and looting. And no one group has done more to put our shared cultural heritage in the gun sights than ISIL. ISIL is not only beheading individuals; it is tearing at the fabric of whole civilizations. It has no respect for life. It has no respect for religion. And it has no respect for culture, which for millions is actually the foundation of life...ISIL is stealing ... [more Destruction of Cultural Artifacts in Iraq and Syria]

Two weeks ago, I was in York for the inaugural York Antiquarian Book Seminar (a British equivalent of the highly successful Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar). The whole experience was hugely invigorating. Here were 25 students, young and old, starting out in the rare book trade, full of promise, eagerness— and questions! One of the sessions I led was on cataloguing. For, as Roger Gaskell notes in his Terms of the Trade, "a large part of the trade in antiquarian books is conducted by catalogues, whether printed or online, and books offered in shops or at book fairs will usually be accompanied by a written description." It's those printed catalogues I want to talk about today. Earlier this year, Lorne Bair, on this very blog, waxed eloquently on the benefits of producing printed catalogues, and I agree with him wholeheartedly. People often ask me about my printed catalogues (six to date), so I thought I would share something of their history here. I set up on my own in January 2010, and right from the start I knew I wanted to do printed catalogues. I could have just sold books by e-mail, sending out PDF lists of what I have (and I do do that, too), but book collectors like books, physical objects that they can carry around, read on the bus, write comments on, mark by turning over the corner of a page. Because it is so easy now (and, of course, much cheaper) to create one's own catalogues, in Word or whatever with a few scans dropped in, that is what many booksellers do, but ... [more Catablog]

To mark the 75th Anniversary of 1939, we've asked some ABAA members to discuss publications from that momentous year. Marc Selvaggio, whose specialties include World's Fairs and International Expositions, takes us down memory lane as he examines the publications of the 1939 World's Fairs held in New York and San Francisco. On September 23rd, 1938, a group of men in dark suits gathered around a construction site in Queens and watched as a 90-inch, 800-pound cylinder, made of the special new alloy called “Cupaloy,” was lowered down a 500-foot tube. The solemn ceremony involved in the placement of this cylinder—officially known as the Westinghouse Time Capsule– inaugurated the site for the New York World's Fair. The Fair itself opened to an enthusiastic public on April 30, 1939. Meanwhile independent of the planning frenzy in New York, crews were busy creating a fabricated spit of land in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, a square 400-acre piece of artificial land-fill that would be romantically labeled, “Treasure Island.” Here, on February 18, 1939, the Golden Gate International Exposition was officially opened. Both Fairs would return in 1940, more to correct their balance books (ultimately, unsuccessfully) than for public demand. The Westinghouse Time Capsule contained what its creators considered “a complete record of our civilization”—a selection of fabrics, a fountain pen, seeds and metals, a slide rule, Barney Google comics, microfilm of hundreds of b... [more 1939: Before The War, The Fairs]

This item is still missing as of 5/29/2019. The following item has been reported stolen from a personal library in Texas: Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence First Edition. Signed and numbered, No 249. If you have any information reagding this item, please contact Shannon Dorsey at (512) 922-2185 or shannonrose.dorsey@gmail.com. [more Stolen: Signed First Edition of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’]

SELLING ON FACEBOOK? In my last post I talked a lot about the advantages of having a Facebook account for your business, including interacting with customers and colleagues, sharing content, getting “liked,” and learning about trends in your field; or, as one friend of mine put it, “the warm fuzzies.” So let's switch into copper baron mode here and discuss the other dimension that you've all been wondering about: how do we turn the warm fuzzies into customers and sales? The truth is that it takes time to build a following and reap the rewards of social media engagement. The real reward, in my opinion, is realized in the long-term with enriched interactions with your audience, a boost in your reputation, and more sales through your website as a result. But I would be remiss to not discuss a few other options at your disposal, so I want to look at two specific features that have been hot topics lately: Facebook storefronts and Facebook advertising. To make things simple, I'll split these services into two posts and begin today with the storefront. I actually have some pretty firm opinions about selling on Facebook (which I will share at the end for those of you who are interested), but I believe the choice is always yours. What works for one brand may not be right for another. And full disclosure: I am writing the following after careful research, not through personal experience as in previous posts, so please keep that in mind and if something piques your interest, do ... [more THE SAVVY BOOKSELLER: Social Media for the Antiquarian Book Trade, Post #4]

We are thrilled to announce that the winners of this year's National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest: First Prize: Katya Soll, University of Kansas, Dictatorship, Recovery, and Innovation: Contemporary Theatre of the Southern Cone Second Prize: Hanna Kipnis King, Swarthmore College, "Plucked from a holy book": Ashkenazim on the margins Third Prize: Audrey Golden, University of Virginia, Pablo Neruda and the Global Politics of Poetry First Prize Katya Soll, Dictatorship, Recovery and Innovation: Contemporary Theater of the Southern Cone Missouri native Katya Soll is a doctoral candidate in Theatre and Spanish at the University of Kansas. Her collection focuses on how theater has been a conduit through which citizens in South America's Southern Cone have protested, absorbed, and recovered from dictatorship and oppression. Many parts of the collection were purchased during research trips to Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. Second Prize Hanna Kipnis King, "Plucked from a holy book": Ashkenazim on the Margins Hanna Kipnis King is a student at Swarthmore College and the winner of Swarthmore's A. Edward Newton Book Collection Competition. Her collection deals with the disenfranchised members of the Ashkenazi Jewish community, and how they have dealt with inadequate acceptance within its culture and traditions. Hanna gravitates to the poets, zinesters, novelists, theologians, and diarists; those that are writing in divergent and deeply personal ways of their experiences of misogyny,... [more National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest Announces 2014 Winners]

To mark the 75th Anniversary of 1939, we've asked some ABAA members to discuss publications from that momentous year. Jim Dourgarian, a specialist in Steinbeck (among other authors), recounts his experiences reading and selling The Grapes of Wrath. The 1930s were a turbulent and momentous decade for John Steinbeck. He published such diverse and quality books as The Pastures of Heaven, Tortilla Flat, In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, The Red Pony, and finally, on April 14, 1939, his masterpiece— The Grapes of Wrath. I had been introduced to Steinbeck as a high school freshman. My English teacher said we could read only one of his books per semester because he was “too brutal,” but brutal was exactly what I wanted. I was hooked. Steinbeck spoke for the underdog, the oppressed— and that was me! And many of the people who populated his books seemed to be my people. Both sets of my grandparents were poor. They struggled mightily, all while maintaining their dignity and belief in hard work. Eventually I read The Grapes of Wrath. It's a 600-page book, and I am not a speed reader, but I liked the story. And I even liked wading through the inner chapters wherein Steinbeck writes of man's struggle and agricultural politics. I probably read it for the first time in the equally turbulent 1960s. Comparing those decades, the 1930s and the 1960s, was a revelation. Not much had changed. The Man still oppressed the people. The fear of communism was ever-present. Rage against the Mac... [more 1939: The Grapes of Wrath]