Wilson left his job at a cuckoo clock factory and scraped together the necessary $12,000, which was a tidy sum in 1962. His previous experience in the rarified world of bookmanship was basically limited to a serious hunt for the first editions of four particular authors. Wilson quickly realized that he was in...
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Bookselling is my second career. As a ’74 graduate of the US Coast Guard Academy, I spent the first 23 years of my professional life as a “Coastie.” In the mid-80s, I discovered collecting first editions, Charles Dickens specifically.
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A press release has a standard format and should be as brief and to the point as possible. Think of how long it takes you to decide whether to read an e-mail or not. That's about how long an editor will give your press release before deciding what to do with it.
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The type of appraisal this article addresses requires a written report with a lot of research backing it up. This type of appraisal usually gets scrutinized by the IRS or an insurance company.
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"Is it a first?" "What are the points of...?" "I can't find a price guide for...?" "No copy on the net, and need to know the value of...?" Such are the daily, ubiquitous questions found on the various bookish listservs to which many booksellers & collectors subscribe.
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Most booksellers when evaluating their business assets will consider the cost and potential market value of their inventory, the cost of computer equipment, and maybe even the replacement cost of their reference library, but it seems that the value of their book-selling database is often overlooked.
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In years past, aspiring book dealers learned the trade by apprenticing with experienced ones. Today, with so few “bricks and mortar” antiquarian book shops in business, those entering the field must seek out other ways to master this complex and challenging profession. In terms of formal educational opportunities, many dealers look to the highly...
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I had been hearing about the Colorado Antiquarian Book Market Seminar, as it is formally termed, for a number of years. Sometime a few years back I started thinking that it might be fun to go. So, with that in mind, I began following the emails and notices that showed up in various chat...
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The IOBA booksellers are gently tied to one another, even though much of what we do is rather solitary. Our days may be spent hunting for books, keying in data, and dealing with sales orders. The 'Independent' aspect of our work is significant. Paradoxically, we are united in our sense of personal freedom and...
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All of my life I have been a book collector and all of my adult life I wanted to open a second hand bookshop. I settled for school librarian and continued collecting and started a mail order catalogue which worked well for 15 years. I left my job and started selling books through markets...
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I started as a book dealer quite by accident back in the 1980s. As a collector of photography and other interesting item from Automobiles (Thunderbirds) to you name it I've have collected it. I have always had a passion for photography...I've been a collector of photography and art starting full force around 1988.
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