This week the auction of the library of Frank Streeter at Christie’s reeled in over $16 million.
This weekend there are three different book fairs for non-new books taking place in New York including the New York Antiquarian Book Fair were you will find many of the best collectible books available for sale in the world.
This is strong evidence of the staying power of the book and a confirmation of its value to our culture or should I say a segment of our culture.
Sam Jordison’s piece for the Gaurdian “What are first editions worth? There’s is plenty of money to be made from them, but the genuine value of such fetishised rarities is hard to discern.” addresses the dilemma that book lovers face.
One of the complexities in the world of books is that there are different breeds of book lovers.
There is a continuum with readers on one side and collectors on the other.
You have the Readers who inhale words and are enthralled by the very act of reading. Most people in the new book world lean to this side and you have the Collector whose recent book purchases are “immediately fossilised.” Where the thought of actually reading one of the first editions is heresy. To them that’s what the paperback is for. Many people in the non-new book world lean this way.
Like most continuum’s one falls somewhere in between loving the book as an object (the collector) and loving the book for its content (the reader).
Jordison himself struggles with the reader/collector syndrome. He enjoys the usedness of his library while his “favourite section of shelf space is the least populated”. That’s the shelf of his Hemingway first editions.
One of the intriguing aspects of the reader/collector syndrome is how polarized the bookselling community is around this issue. There are very few bookstores that can make people who reside in the middle of this continuum happy.
This will have to change for bookstores to survive.