An Informal & Historical Intro to Book Cases

by Jim Rock, Parnassus on the Net

Artist’s rendering of the Ark of the Covenant Early portable case for your basic binding-contract in book or scroll form.1

Owners, authors, couriers, and caretakers have endeavored to encase documents containing the written word in protective and decorative cases almost since the advent of writing itself. In the period since the invention of the movable metal type printing press in the 15th century and even earlier in post Roman Empire Europe these protective coverings have in most cases been physically attached to the writings themselves and formed the artifact which we revere and trade, sharing with the vintner the ancient question, “What do they buy that is half so dear as that which they sell?”

However a much older tradition, and one which is still with us today, albeit in rarified form, is that of the separate case or box to protect writing in a number of varied forms, including that of the book. This is a tradition that goes back to the Romans, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Japanese –even the Sumerians. Perhaps the example of the earliest portrayals of a “book” case most of us have seen is in epic and historical movies. Perhaps Gustav Doré’s depiction of “The Ark of the Covenant” shown in an “Indiana Jones” movie, the ornate gold and jewel encrusted sheaths in which the messages of Yul Brenner were carried in The Ten Commandments, or the sturdy leather cases carrying Imperial edicts to the commanders of the Legions in many a sword and sandal movie.. These all predate the modern book “binding” and belong to another heritage, that which has come down to us in the form of the “slip case” and book boxes of various kinds.

Japanese Dharani Woodblock scrolls from 770 A.D. with wooden pagoda shaped case.2

This article is a short essay on the type of non attached coverings one may find encasing books, pamphlets, and ephemera produced in the late 19th and throughout the 20th century. This article is not meant to be either comprehensive or esoteric in its scope but, rather, helpful and concise; comporting, it is hoped, to the interests, proclivities, and tempo of its audience.

The four most common types of cases encountered by the book collector or dealer, according to John Carter in An ABC for Book Collectors, a book to which this article is deeply indebted, are slip cases, the fall-down-back box, the pull off case, and the four-fold-wrapper or the portfolio with flaps.

The slip case is an open faced box which is designed to hold the book snugly and, usually, to leave the spine open and unprotected for viewing on a shelf. This is the most common and easiest to describe of Carter’s four types. Usually a slip case from the 20th century is a plain enough item, perhaps following the design and materials of the encased book’s cover. Often a slip case is just a plain cloth or paper covered chipboard affair with a stamped spine or one with a paper label attached. In general these simple slip cases can be described using the type of condition oriented description reserved for the underlying book’s dust jacket. Their more ornate leather, gilt, and hand tooled brethren can almost always be described using the same terminology one would use for the underlying book (half-leather, etc.) to describe special features. Occasionally there is some feature such as thumb-and-forefinger cutouts for grabbing the book. The special features of some slip cases are so unusual that there is no common specialized term to describe them. For instance I have seen several descriptions of a single unusual configuration, a large slip case which includes a smaller piggy-back slip case for a miniature copy of Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary to accompany an oversized copy of Boswell’s Life. When confronted by such non-standard cases you must choose the description that you find comfortable, in my case “piggy-back,” eschew the others, or in some cases bravely use your own descriptive words if your perusing of catalogs and lists of descriptive terms such as the one at IOBA and such books as Carter’s have not provided you with a comfortable vocabulary. But, in the main, the features of the slip case may be described with the common vocabulary of used and rare book description.

The names used in this article for various types of case are ones that have become standard in the traditional book world and, I think, you should consider using them in your description of these cases because they provide a comfortable common language for those in the book world. However, in the brave new world of internet book selling communication with potential book buyers always trumps the desire to use one’s descriptions as heuristic devices for the reader or any need on the seller’s part to show erudition. I would not only use the correct word when describing these cases on the internet, I would always provide a description in simple language of what the term means in terms of the actual functioning of the type of protective case being described. This make for a little longer description but leaves your potential customer better informed and less likely to feel confused, put off, or irritated by your description.

Medieval Bag Binding c 15th Century, Right is the Apostle Jacob holding bag binding from c1435 alter piece from Church of the Benedictine Nuns in Preetz (Holstein), in National Museum Copenhagen 3

There is a modern description pitfall I would point out regarding the slip case. There are problems for those who have traditionally used the terms cased or case bound to describe a hardback book, in an attempt to describe the distinction between the older method of binding a book, i.e., placing the outer cover on as an integral part of the book page gathering and sewing process as opposed to casing a book, i.e., producing a number of completed book bodies and then placing the case on them in a subsequent step. The problem is that the newer generation of buyers, collectors, and even book dealers, do not understand this distinction and are aware of the term case only in as it regards a slip case. I was recently asked by a dealer to allow a return on a modern book I had described as case bound due to the fact it had no slip case.

The clam shell, or as Carter refers to it, the fall-down-back box is fairly rare in American books as a publisher supplied item, although it appears rather more often in books of the early part of the century and may often have been added by a collector or library, especially when the enclosed material was of a rather fragile nature. The fall-down-back box is rather like some pre-scored boxes used for mailing books. It has a back (spine) which is scored at the front and back allowing the box to lie open, the front portion folds over the back allowing the book to be completely enclosed and displayed, often the spines are designed to appear as the spine to a book, even if the enclosed material is a pamphlet or ephemera. The fall-down-back box is a very nice way to protect fragile material because it allows one to open it and view the book’s front cover and spine without ever touching the protected piece.

The pull-off case comes in two flavors, one, which is like a double slip case involves the addition of a second, slightly larger slip case which slides over the smaller one and thus covers the book completely. The second type of pull-off case is rather like a chocolate box, the book is placed within and a tightly fitted lid is placed over the bottom portion of the case. These cases are often leather and are sometimes designed to be waterproof, air tight, and even fire-proof. By the way, Carter points out that in the earlier part of the century these cases may have an asbestos lining, be careful if you run across one of these!

Lovely clam shell or fall-down-back box (larger detail ill. at end of article) Interior showing the protected early D.H Lawrence pamphlet The fourth type of case mentioned by Carter is the four-fold-wrapper or the portfolio with flaps. This is fairly common, but is not always thought of as a case. In the early part of the 20th century and in a number of genre publications such as Fantasy and Science Fiction art portfolios this type of case or protective covering is quite common to this day. It has also been widely used to preserve poetry or other small press books originally bound in wrappers.

As far as evaluation of the various types of slip cases go there are two general rules. If the book or ephemera was issued by the publisher, its condition and presence are subtractive in value. That is, the value of a fine copy assumes the presence of the fine protective case and any flaws in the case, or the fact that it is missing will redound heavily against the piece in the market place. On the other hand, cases and protective coverings added by collectors or others, after publication, are purely additive. They fall into the category of signature and association material, they can only enhance the value of the piece. In fact, a fine beautifully executed leather case on a mediocre copy of a book may constitute the majority of value for the piece.

We hope that this brief description will serve to acquaint the nascent book seller with some of the basic facts about protective cases for books.

The following books may be of help in further pursuing the subject.

ABC for Book Collectors by John Carter

Collectors Book of Books by Eric Quayle

History of the Book by Svend Dahl

A Short History of the Printed Word by Warren Chappell

THE ILLUSTRATED BOOK: A SURVEY OF GENRES by Richard Minsky

---

and we leave you with, The More Things Change Department:

Is it all the Book? Is it part Book Protective Case? Is it Art? Enjoy.

Edna Lazaron Terrorism, 1985 45.8 cm x 17.8 cm diameter

Two scrolls of collaged mixed media mounted on unbleached muslin in ceramic container with nails and cork top and miniature cap pistol. Edition of 6.

The scroll in a vessel is among the most ancient of book forms. Here a contemporary artist utilizes our association of this form with the Dead Sea Scrolls and other relics of the Holy Land to create another visual association with the book’s theme, terrorism. See the work at this site:

http://www.colophon.com/gallery/minskyshow/structur.htm

---

Foot notes: 1. From Ark of the Covenant in Ethiopia Website 2. From pub domain ill. in A Short History of the Printed Word by Warren Chappell 3. From illustration in 1918-202 notes on The History of the Book by Svend Dahl

A Conversation with Dick Weatherford of Alibris

Second of a series on the various bookselling services.

I was hired as a consultant by Bookquest which was sponsored by a company called Faxon. At that time I was a partner with Taylor Bowie in a bookstore in Pioneer Square in Seattle and had been writing articles and giving seminars on the use of computers in the used book business for some years. Not too long after this Faxon dissolved and shut down Bookquest. There were 125 dealers involved at that time and a number of them wanted this kind of service to continue. I contacted Tom Sawyer, who had written Bookquest and Brad Councilman and in March 1994 we launched Interloc with about 35 dealers and 35,000 records.

Were you surprised by the success of the web based services like Bibliofind and ABE?

I talked to Rick Pura quite a bit while they were getting going so it certainly wasn’t a surprise. They are good people and had a good idea and they were the first to go live on the net. We did not do so immediately because we always felt that if the dealers wanted to keep their customers the system would have to remain dealer to dealer. We felt that this was going to generate too many listing services and no one, or at least very few, would make any money since no revenue was being generated on transactions. Another effect would be to bring a tremendous amount of supply without corresponding demand generating a price decline for many types of books and this has certainly happened particularly with fiction. And without criticizing ABE or anyone else, they started out by using our software for their clients and undercutting our prices. I continue to believe that there is a very strong market but that the collector market does not define it. It is world wide and in all languages and is our job to reach that market.

You recently announced the dropping of your high-profile advertising campaign. What will you be replacing it with?

Our primary strategy has always been to service companies who already had customers who were or might be intererested in out of print books. We have important agreements with Barnes and Noble, Chapters – the largest bookseller in Canda , and other organizations. I am leaving for Germany tomorrow to develop our opportunities in Europe. Companies like these like the fact that we source the books from our own warehouse and from our family of dealers, that we approve them, ship them and guarantee them. This will be our major area of growth.

Do you plan to continue buying bookseller inventories?

We buy inventories of booksellers who have approached us – they might have lost their lease, want to retire or any number of reasons. I can’t think of any case where we have bought an inventory from someone who had not approached us first. When that happens we have professional buyers who come in and make an offer and they can accept it or not. I know there is a perception of us a kind of Book Grim Reaper with a scythe mowing though the field of independent booksellers but that’s just not the case.

What About the Book Buying and Referral Program. Many people think that you are competing against your own members with these storefront buying operations.

We are NOT a listing service. Alibris is a dealer and we have never made any bones about this. We don’t charge a fee to list with us and we buy our members’ books when they are sold and we assume the risks of that sale and even pay the postage. Of course we compete to buy books and people are welcome to compete with us by opening their own locations or by paying higher prices for books. One of our longtime members commented that you either compete or don’t or fail but there’s no point in crying about the fact of competition itself. I thought competition was what the American model of business was all about.

Some people don’t like to give us a discount and in fact many say that they don’t discount their books to anyone. That’s fine, although I personally find it unprofessional and in that case we simply don’t buy their books and life goes on.

Do you have any comment on allegations that Alibris substitutes books from its own inventory for independent bookseller orders made by such bulk buyers as Amazon.

We don’t do it. Even if we wanted to it would be far more trouble than it’s worth to attempt to find an identical copy of a book and then ship it. We would have to do a manual search for a copy and then go send someone to get it. It makes far more sense to just ship the book the customer ordered.

Why did you withdraw support for Record Manager and Bookmaster even though you had made very strong personal commitments that you would not?

We have not withdrawn support for these products. Anyone who continues to do business with us is entitled to free technical support on an ongoing basis. There are many copies of these programs outstanding and from our travels around North America presenting seminars it appears that the majority of people in the book trade continue to use them. We do not provide support for people who are not doing business with Alibris. It is ridiculous to think that you can continue to provide free support for products that you might have sold a decade ago. No company would.

What about the future?

The biggest single step was an affordable electronic marketplace for books and Interloc first provided that – four or five companies tried it before me by the way. The services have really proven that more people wanted more books than anyone realized. It removed the out of print book trade from its small cocoon of dealers and collectors. The real expansion will come through working on business to business arrangements with organizations with their own customers and processes, who deal in their own country and the language of their customers. There will be ongoing issues with supply created before the demand is there and with the lack of standards among the huge number of sellers on the Internet. ABAA is too small and too focused on the antiquarian trade – hopefully IOBA will be able to provide those standards.

#Alibris #booksellers

Digital Photography for Booksellers

Booksellers are in an enviable position among retailers of rarities on the Web. For decades and even centuries, the book business has commonly been carried on by remote, through the catalogues of dealers and auction houses, by mail and by telephone, and through advertisements in trade journals. There is also a general consensus on description standards, however widely these may vary in practice. In marked contrast to dealers in paintings or porcelain, booksellers have long-held standards regarding the conduct of long-distance business, and generally don’t need to furnish photos or drawings of their wares to prospective customers, however far-flung.

However, it would be a great mistake to discount the value of photos in selling your books. Photos stimulate online sales by forestalling the uncertainty that might make a potential buyer back off. So, in fact, photos should be included in online descriptions whenever possible. For example: in the mind of a jaded buyer, the phrase “slightly foxed” instantly conjures an image of sickening blotchiness and mildew . With a photo, not only can you show precisely what you mean by this highly subjective term, but when he actually sees the inoffensively freckled page, your formerly apprehensive prospect will instead be convinced of your blamelessly conservative and professional character. (Ch-ching!)

In the following article we will go over the basics of preparing photographs for your online sales. We will be focusing on digital cameras rather than scanners, because they are both faster and more practical for our purposes. By all means continue to use your scanner if you have one, but do consider investing in a low-end digital camera as well. There are bargains to be had in used cameras these days, since many early adopters are upgrading. I’m told that online retailers and auction houses don’t have the best prices; your best bet for a used camera is probably your local Recycler, Loot, or newspaper classified section.

Choosing a camera

For Web purposes, it is not necessary to have a spectacularly fancy camera. I’m still using the old Casio QV-300 I bought through a classified ad for $200, three years ago, and it still takes great photos for regular Web use. Remember, Web graphics cannot display at greater than 72dpi resolution, and you need to produce images that will download fast: that means small files. In short, you needn’t buy a cannon, when what you really want for this task is a pop-gun.

Great in-depth digital camera reviews, tutorials, articles and classified ads are available at the excellent Megapixel magazine.

The main features you will need on a digital camera for Web use are:

Zoom feature (also known as macro or macro mode) A decent sized screen, so you can see what you’re doing Low light settings (newer cameras are vastly improved in this regard) Reasonably easy import of images to your computer Software for photo optimization

Zoom is definitely the single most important feature for Web photos of your books. Instead of just saying “bumped” you’ll be able to show it exactly, like so:

This photo is small and not at all detailed by print graphics standards, but it gets the point across nicely and, at 20K, will download in a flash. Such a photo can really tip the scales on the decision to buy an expensive book.

Screen. Some of the newer entry-level cameras have an inadequate display. For ease of use, make sure you have a full-color display that is easy to read.

Low light setting. The worst problem with my old Casio is its inadequate light sensitivity. I have to use photo lights or very strong diffused natural light to get the best results. Dark photos can be lightened using image editing software, but you’ll lose a lot of detail and probably have hard-to-correct color imbalances. You’ll be photographing books indoors, like as not, so make sure the camera can handle low light. Also, you’ll need a strong working light (those halogen emergency lights you can get at the drugstore have gotten really inexpensive, and they are very strong.)

Image import. Newer cameras come with special memory cards such as CompactFlash and SmartMedia that can be removed, sent to print on paper and reused. There are also card readers available for image download (around $50). And there are popular new models that save the information straight onto a floppy disk that you pop right into the camera. These fancy accoutrements do provide a convenient alternative to film cameras, but I find it’s quite easy to plug the camera right into the computer (mine comes with a cord that goes into a serial port). If your camera is to be used for selling online, again, you can keep things quite simple and inexpensive.

AC adapter!! You’ll definitely need your AC adapter most of the time–these cameras eat batteries like no other appliance I have ever seen.

Image editing software. New cameras come bundled with easy-to-use image editing software. One of my partners uses his free bundled software with excellent results. If you want to get a little more professional, though, I highly recommend Photoshop 4. You won’t need the latest (expensive!) version, Photoshop 6, which contains improvements mainly for Acrobat and vector graphics files. Photoshop 4 included the first version of layers, the most important single improvement yet made in this near-miraculous program. (I have 5, but I still actually prefer 4!! Ho well.) You should be able to buy a used copy of Photoshop 4 with registration for between $50 and $100. Again, the best place is your local classified paper. Note: make sure you don’t get Photoshop LE (Limited Edition) by mistake-it’s not the complete program.

A note on file formats: the only graphics formats you can post to the web are .gif and .jpeg. Don’t save your photo files in .gif format, though; .gif is intended for solid blocks of color, not gradations. Your photos will look best on the web in .jpeg format.

You’ll be able to import images to your computer in a variety of formats using image editing software. Many use .jpeg compressed downloads, because you can pack in more images, but I prefer a lossless format (such as .bmp or .tif) for the download. Note that each time you edit and resave a .jpeg file, the image recompresses and degrades. The “powdery” look you see on many Web images comes from excessive compression and the resulting degradation. You can protect the crispness of your images by saving in .bmp or .tif until the very last save–then use .jpeg for the final version.

Let’s take a Picture.

Okay, here is a book I am rather fond of, A Nose to Fit your Face by Murray Berger, M.D. This copy (signed!) is in tolerable shape, except for the dustjacket, which is pretty ghastly. We’ll take a photo of the worst flaws, and a photo of one of the great illustrations.

As far as composition goes, a very few principles will suffice to make your photos look professional. The main one, again, is lighting. With a little practice you’ll find the right room and the right time of day to light your photos. Add artificial light if you need to. The main trick is to have the light as even as you can, and watch out for glare. Don’t have your hand showing; don’t have distractions like windows or cats or coffee cups showing. Just a plain background and the book makes the handsomest presentation. If you need to hold the book open, crop your hand out afterwards. Another hint: pure white or black backgrounds are not the best. They make the camera work too hard to equalize the color balance in the rest of the photo. Any neutral to cool pastel color makes a far better background–buff, pale blue and the like. (If you use fabric, make sure it’s not wrinkled!! You can always “iron” the background in Photoshop, but that’s a little time-consuming.)

<images missing>

Here is the original image I downloaded from my camera:

Let’s crop that, shall we?

Much too dark! Let’s lighten it up a bit and add some contrast. (Accuracy is the goal here-sometimes I get carried away and wind up improving on Nature; a bad idea, for obvious reasons.)

That’s starting to look pretty good … this camera doesn’t read reds very well, so maybe I should balance the colors a little bit …

And finally, we can add a little explanatory text.

A note on compression: the original image downloaded at 225K in .tif format. When I compress, we’ll have a far smaller file; in fact, this last image comes in at 26K. But I don’t want to compress too much, because I want the sharpest small photo I can get. This takes a little practice, but you’ll soon get the hang of it. On Photoshop, you can see the file size you’re working with at the lower left of the program window. You can also check the resulting file size in Windows Explorer or Winfile. (Apologies to Mac users; I haven’t a clue how the Mac directory system works.) I generally save at 6 .jpeg compression for the average 72 dpi photo, which results in a file size of 15-40K. Another tip – a broad range of colors won’t compress as well as an image in a narrow tonal range of colors, so you can get away with a bit more detail on a tonal photograph and still come in under 25K, the suggested size for single images on the Web. Many will argue that 50K is a fine file size, but I tend to err on the side of caution. Having to wait for images to download really puts people off, and puts them into a not-buying frame of mind.

Here are the three finished images for this book. You can put up as many images as you want, practically, on all the auction sites. But always consider download times as a matter of paramount importance. Most people have 28.8 or 56.6 modems; I think three is kind of a natural upper limit, considering that each photo will take several seconds to download. That said, patience grows proportionately with risk. Prospective buyers of your choicest stuff will definitely be willing to wait a little longer for that last detail shot.

Photo hosting.

The next step is to publish your photos on the web; that is, to a server (a computer which is constantly connected to and providing files to the Web.) Most ISPs, including AOL and Earthlink, offer their customers a fixed amount of storage space with the monthly fees. It used to be a bit tricky to use the AOL system, but I understand it is simpler now. Each system is different, but any ISP can provide sufficient online instruction for putting up pictures–or failing that, at least an impatient kid who can walk you through the process over the phone.

In the case of auctions, you don’t have to worry about where your photos go; you can have the auction itself keep your photos on the Web for free. In fact, they’ve nearly all made it extremely easy to do this. There are plenty of well-meaning creatures providing customer service at such places, I can say with absolute authority.

To my knowledge, it isn’t possible to add photos to listings at fixed-price venues like ABE and Bibliofind. This is a pity (and is liable to change, I think) because the efficacy of photos is well known to auction sellers, and to those dealers who maintain inventory on their own sites.

While is isn’t a good idea to invest too much time on lower-priced books, you’ll find that photographing those particularly rare, lovely or bizarre books well worth the trouble.

#photography