Is the printed book dead? Sometimes it seems that way. Anyone with an iPad or a Kindle or even a cell phone can access tens of thousands of books electronically, saving time, paper and distribution costs. Still, no cold electronic device can replace the warm, familiar heft of a book in the hand, the texture of the pages, the smell of the ink.
Books, Old Books, Very Old Books and Rare Books
There is no love of books quite like the love of old books. Ask anyone who browses in second-hand bookstores in search of serendipitous treasure. The gems found there may have little monetary value, but they have great meaning for their owners.
Then there is the love of very old books, with their connection to times and circumstances. Any lover of old books may be described as an antiquarian, although that term is often used in the sense of someone who deals in old books—that is, in buying and selling old books, an antiquarian bookseller.
How to Become an Antiquarian Bookseller
Philip Pirages is an antiquarian bookseller based in Wilsonville, Oregon. Asked how one can become an antiquarian bookseller, he says “that's very complicated ... are you sure you want to?” He points out that in the profession today, everyone seems to be older than 60. And few are coming into the business—“either indicating that you want to stay away or that you want to jump right in.” Take your choice.
Pirages, who has been in the business ever since he found, at a garage sale in Kalamazoo, Michigan, an architecture treatise printed in London in 1669, has had a successful and satisfying career, making enough to live on and eventually to start a small charitable foundation.
He would not suggest trying to find antiquarian books at garage sales these days. “Oh, man, what a waste of time.” There are three ways to find books effectively, he says— at auction, from other dealers, or from private parties. Beginners will probably use the first method mostly, traveling to auctions and sales and picking up inventory. But as dealers become more widely known and respected, people will seek them out, both to sell to them and to have them find just the right rare book.
Roger Wendlick's insatiable thirst for Lewis and Clark
For Roger Wendlick, being an antiquarian was not a business pursuit. A college dropout, Wendlick worked in construction. It wasn’t the kind of income that could easily support a rare book addiction—and Wendlick was an addict, so bitten by the collecting bug that at one point he was carrying $140,000 in credit card debt.
His specialty was material relating to the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1805, and as he became known as a collector, his reputation grew. He even began to sleep with a shotgun in his bed for fear of burglars invading his North Portland home by night. He found a way to ease his worries about theft by selling his collection to Portland's Lewis & Clark College in 1998.
Wendlick was not really in the business of buying and selling antiquarian books—he was following his passion. But he employed the methods that make antiquarian booksellers successful, chiefly networking, and over time he built a reputation as an honest and reputable person to deal with.
The Investment Potential of Rare Books
Ancient books, like artworks, seldom decline in value, although, also like art, their value at any given time depends on the market at that time. After all, there are no more of them being made, and every year their numbers dwindle through accidents, fire and acts of war.
The Antiquarian Booksellers Association (ABA) resists the idea that rare books can be an investment, stating in its Code of Good Conduct that “members must not promote antiquarian and rare books, or allied materials, as investment vehicles in themselves, or as part of investment schemes.”
Or as Pirages puts it, when booksellers want to get rich and move to the top quickly, “it just never works unless you come in with a lot of money”— and even then it doesn’t work well. Better practices: working hard, knowing the market, accepting “that it’s got to be a gradual thing,” and being willing to learn and accept help when it’s offered.
There’s gold in antiquarian books, no doubt about it. Nobody is ever going to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a Kindle first edition. But buying and selling work best when bound by the love of the books themselves—books that you can hold, admire and display. Real, touchable, nonelectronic objects that are warmer than an iPad and infinitely more long-lasting than a cell phone.
Fran Gardner - Fran Gardner is a writer and editor who lives in Portland, Oregon. She retired in 2008 from The Oregonian, a big newspaper in town. She ...
