Measuring Your Social Media Success Whether you are just beginning your magical foray into the world of social media or have been tweeting for years, there comes a time when we all stop and wonder, “Is this thing on?” In other words, how can you tell if your posts are actually reaching anyone and generating more traffic to your website or just echoing back at you? For newbies and old hands ali... [more]

The ABAA has recently approved several new members, all of whom have successfully proven themselves to be, in the words of the ABAA Guarantee "established, knowledgeable, and of excellent reputation." These new members were sponsored by existing members, and have undergone a rigorous screening process. We welcome the newest members of the ABAA. FULL MEMBERS: Sammy Blade Berk of Harlan J. Berk, Ltd... [more]

Recently Anne and David Bromer, proprietors of Bromer Booksellers in Boston, made a $10,000 stock gift to the Antiquarian Booksellers' Benevolent Fund. It hasn't been my practice to single out contributors to our charitable funds for public thanks — but this gift is important on several levels and should be recognized publicly. First of all, I should point out the extraordinary generosity of a d... [more]

The ABAA has recently admitted three new members, Don Myers, of Pacific Coast Books, Ezra Tishman of Aardvark Books, and Nicole Reiss of Brattle Book Shop. Full Members: Don Myers (Pacific Coast Books) Don Myers established Pacific Coast Books in 2000 and actively sells books at west coast book fairs. In 2009, after a 25 year career serving as Executive Director for national non- profit organizati... [more]

ABAA members are not only experts in their fields, but also very involved in scholarship and philanthropy. Here are some of the many ways members have been in the headlines this past month. New Mark Twain Plagiarism Scandal Exposed Antiquarian bookseller and scholar Kevin Mac Donnell uncovered unacknowledged copying in a new book about Mark Twain from the Library of Congress. McDonnell identified ... [more]

Ken Sanders Rare Books released Rare Books Catalogue #48, which features new acquisitions in the fields of Utah & the Mormons, Native & Western Americana, Maps & Photographs, and Illustrated Books & Wordless Novels. Catalogue 48 also offers some fantastic original artworks for sale and an exciting Charles Bukowski archive. The Lawbook Exchange is pleased to announce the publication of Catalogue 78... [more]

Things have changed in the Boston since the first ABAA Boston Book Fair was launched. And in a profession that deals in the old, change can be a good thing. There were shops that were within walking distance from each other. Others were a short subway ride or car ride away. And while we're going down memory lane, let's include Cambridge and a suburb or two. (Greg, Gloucester is not a suburb of Bos... [more]

This item is still missing as of 5/31/2019. A collector in the Los Angeles area reported the theft of the following item: Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton First Edition (1st Issue) in dust jacket. The book is housed in a blue half leather clamshell box. The dust jacket is unrestored and has a small tape repair on the verso of the jacket near the foot of the spine. A photo of the book is below. If... [more]

I've been asked to dredge up a few memories about the Boston book fair, the venues it occupied prior to its current home at the Hines Convention Center, and some of the dealers who exhibited in Boston in previous generations. Our firm, Howard S. Mott, Inc., is one of six firms to have exhibited at every Boston book fair since its inception in 1976, the upcoming fair being the 38th Annual. The othe... [more]

Peter L. Stern introduces several notable characters in the Boston rare-book trade. I have been asked to write a blog for the ABAA along the lines of “characters in the Boston book trade.” I hardly know where to begin, but I'll give myself a pass and leave it to others to extoll my virtues and undisputed genius. My own career in the antiquarian trade started at the Starr Book Company on Kingst... [more]

A New England Correspondence Archive: Descriptive Notes and Approach to Valuation Recently a Massachusetts antiques dealer sought me out to evaluate an archive of approximately 100 autograph letters received by one Edward B. Dearborn (1807-1886), including many related to teaching, mostly in rural New England schools in the late 1820s and early 1830s. What at first appeared to be a boring batch of... [more]

The 1960s was a decade of both discovery and protest, riots and revolutions, from anti-war marches, assassinations of world leaders, man's first landing on the moon, and the birth of a new brand of music led by The Beatles. Change was in the air and nowhere was it more obvious than in modern China with the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution in August 1966. But more than two years earlier, before ... [more]

Enter the Blogosphere I promised another Facebook related post this week, but instead I think it's time to switch gears and get acquainted with some other social media options out there before you start to think that I'm on Mark Zuckerberg's payroll. This week I will consider the pros and cons of blogging as well as some of the better sites out there that support the endeavor. The fact that anyone... [more]

The Lawbook Exchange just issued an E-List: Blackstone: 30 Items, inspired by the recent publication of Ann J. Laeuchli's Bibliographical Catalog of William Blackstone. Lowry-James Rare Prints & Books announced the publication of Catalogue Number Ten: Charles Livingston Bull. Joslin Hall Rare Books released Catalog #351: A Selection of Jane Yolen's Signed Poetry Broadsides and Catalog 352 - A Sele... [more]

ILAB is coordinating a series of Pop-Up Book Fairs across the world for UNESCO World Book and Copyright Day on April 23, 2015. The two organizations have created an offiial partnership for the event and ILAB is asking as many members as possible to organize and attend as many pop-up fairs as possible. Former President of the ABA Laurence Worms describes the envisioned pop-ups: “Some booksellers,... [more]

Rock Toews (Back Creek Books LLC) is a key player in determining whether a Maryland area slated for development was the site of a Civil War parole camp. Priscilla Juvelis contributed a chapter to an upcoming book on William T. Vollmann entitled William T. Volmann: A Critical Companion. Don Lindgren of Rabelais Inc. is interviewed for Eater's piece on 72 Ways Food Can Change the World. He is in goo... [more]

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 t... [more]

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 i... [more]

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 a... [more]

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 N... [more]

ABAA member Raymond Smith (R.W. Smith Bookseller) recently published In Time We Shall Know Ourselves, a book of 52 photographs taken during his three-month road trip through the Eastern half of the United States in 1974. Publication of the book coincided with a traveling exhibition of the photographs that commenced at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in June. The exhibition will be on display at... [more]

Coming soon: Catalogue 108 from Aleph-Bet Books, offering 500 collectible and rare children's and illustrated books. Ten Pound Island Co. just released Maritime List 225, entitled 'Old, Rare and Short'. Click here to browse. Tavistock Books recently issued 'A Catalogue of Catalogues'. Click here to browse. Kenneth Karmiole Bookseller, Inc. has issued "New Miscellany #38", a 16 page catalog of rec... [more]

UCLA's annual Kenneth Karmiole Lecture in Archival Studies will be presented by Professor Heather MacNeil on The Archive/Archives as Text: Themes and Variations on October 27. The Monk, the Bookseller, and the Manuscript: Tracking Lydgate's Boke of the Sege of Troy Through Bernard Quaritch's Catalogues PBS NewsHour's segment with Peter Mendelsund, the author of What We See When We Read and Cover,... [more]

Ray Smith of R.W. Smith Bookseller has published his long awaited photo book, In Time We Shall Know Ourselves (images available at the link). It contains 52 photographs from a three-month photographic road trip through the Eastern half of the United States in 1974, and includes essays on the photographs by Alexander Nemerov and Richard H. King of the University of Nottingham, and an afterword by ... [more]

UPDATE (12/8/14): BOOK RECOVERED Bromer Booksellers has reported a missing children's book (description below). If you are offered this item, please contact Bromer Booksellers at (617) 247-2818 or email shop manager Philip Salmon (phil@bromer.com). (Juvenile). W. BELCH'S HISTORY OF BEASTS. Newington Butts, London, W. Belch, c. 1820. 12mo. 8 ff. Illustrated with sixteen hand-colored engravings of v... [more]

At the request of the ILAB Committee, Munich-based auction house Zisska & Lacher (formerly Zisska & Schauer) has provided a list of the books confiscated or withdrawn from their auction No. 59 (May 2012) as material suspected of having been taken illegally from the Girolamini library. Because the computer belonging to the firm's former manager Herbert Schauer has been confiscated by the Bavarian p... [more]

Facebook 101 Let's start with a little statistic: Facebook has over 1 billion active users; Earth has about 7 billion users by last count. Now, I know book dealers are not always known for their math skills, but I'm pretty sure that works out to about 1 in 7 people ON THE PLANET who use this particular social network. But don't let the numbers intimidate you. Facebook is as much about fostering sm... [more]

Choices, choices. If you are reading this, that means I didn't scare you off too badly with my last post about the wonderful world of social media. Huzzah! Gold stars all around! Now that we've dispelled some of the myths surrounding social media, there is the little matter of paring down the incredible number of networks out there into a manageable set from which to get started. As I mentioned in... [more]

In a few days I'll be heading out to Colorado Springs for my fifth tour of duty on the faculty of the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar. Hard as it is for me to believe that five years have passed since my first visit to CABS, as a guest lecturer in 2010, harder still must it be for those who were involved with it from the start — wonderful dealers like Ed Glaser and Mike Ginsberg — to realize... [more]

The ABAA is delighted to welcome the following new members to the Association: Lawrence O'Shaughnessy of Franklin Books LLC and Teri Osborn of William Reese Company. Read a little more about each member below. Full Member Lawrence O'Shaughnessy, Franklin Books LLC (Oldwick, NJ) Larry O'Shaughnessy established Franklin Books in 2006 after spending over three decades in general management, investmen... [more]