Summer 2007 (Vol. VIII, No. 3)

Table of Contents

• From the Editor

• Appraising for Booksellers

• An Interview with Donald Hawthorne of Noah’s Ark Book Attic

• “Meet Me in St. Louis,” or, A Book Dealer’s Travels to the Gateway to the West

• Ephemeral Assays: Face Cards

• Book Expo America 2007: “It’s About People and Books”

• Pros and Cons of Alibris.com for Buyers and Sellers

• Craig Horle and Laurie Wolfe of Classic Books and Ephemera

• Nancy Johnson, Bookseller, Denver, CO

• Brian Cassidy, Bookseller, Monterey, CA

• Ye Olde Booksellers : Adventures in American Bookshops, Antique Stores and Auction Rooms

• Addendum

From the Editor

I recently received a review copy of Fairs, Markets and the Itinerant Book Trade (various editors and authors), hot off the Oak Knoll Press, those heroes of books about bookselling. It is based on papers given at the 27th annual conference on book trade history, and covers such diverse topics as the rise and fall of the early German fairs; itinerant booksellers, printers, and peddlers in Sixteenth-Century Spain and Portugal; the legal entanglements and Italian-French-Spanish book trade insights occasioned by the 1586 street murder of prominent publisher Symphorien Beraud; rural East Anglia and urban Netherlands distribution channels; Scottish chapmen; and London street booksellers in the period 1690-1850. In the end, this is really a labor history, though the writers clearly embrace the subject of bookselling more than most labor historians would feel akin to, say, fish mongering, or some other early trade.

The tenuous thread of bookselling history recedes into the mists of time. The earliest references here are to the early modern era, where Latin works were brought to market at such internationally convenient gatherings as the Frankfurt fair. Eventually, colorful traveling merchants kept more popular printed material on hand for the edification of country folk. Books were carefully chosen due to the weight factor, and their main stock often consisted of more ephemeral leaflets, newsletters, pamphlets, songbooks, ballads, lurid broadsides, almanacs, prognostications, catchpenny prints, jest books, lampoons, nominas, and chapbooks. Street selling in towns and cities took on a variety of forms. There is a lengthy discussion of bookstalls, as opposed to barrows or mere boards on the ground, though all were hopeful stepping stones to the established shop. Hawkers would often gather a crowd by telling stories or singing from their texts, which were then sold on the spot. Itinerant peddlers and lowly street vendors, often blind or disabled, naturally left very little historical record. Finally, bookselling was a constantly evolving vocation, subject to a great number of natural and regulatory market forces, not the least of which was the law of supply and demand.

Fairs, Markets and the Itinerant Book Trade, edited by Robin Myers, Michael Harris and Giles Mandelbrote. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2007.

The little we know of these early practices and networks comes down largely in the form of legal records. Inquisition-style religious intolerance, Old Bailey transcripts, and a myriad of minor disputes and proceedings have added to our understanding of an otherwise transitory means of existence. Researchers are also aided by early market registers, handbills, lists, guild minutes, tax data, licenses, correspondence, accounts, reminiscences, and the occasional engraving. Booksellers were centuries ahead of other trades in the development of trust and credit, and in the use of printed catalogs.

Details emerge from these sources. In 1488 printer-publishers accounted for one-twelfth of the rental income for stalls at the Frankfurt fair. At one point there were 31 tolls on the Rhine just between Basle and Cologne, and it is calculated that such transportation costs added about a quarter to the price of the goods. Sigmund Feyerabend’s records for the years 1590-1597 shows he had around 350 customers from 110 different locations, 10-15% of these being individual readers not in the trade. Foreign imports at the Frankfurt fair declined from 39% down to 0.3% between the 1560s and 1710. A carrier is waylaid outside of Wimpfen and broken barrels of books thought to contain greater riches were ruined by a heavy rain (“There went my profit.”). There is even some speculation on the origin of double entry bookkeeping. An unspoken theme throughout this work is the trial and error of pioneer booksellers, often working under difficult and unstable conditions, that paved the way for us today (not to say that difficulty and instability have been eradicated).

Anyway, I read this on the train to Manhattan on May 30, where the boys caught a rock concert at the Garden and the girls a Broadway play. Meandering along endless blocks, I observed modern street booksellers representative of those who came before. One sharp fellow was selling Curious George reprints off a folding table at two for $5, while another on her last legs guarded a hopeless sheet of crappy paperbacks. The weekend fleas resemble ancient fairs, and Book Rows have been springing up for millennia. This connection to the past is somehow reassuring in the middle of the internet revolution. I also dropped into Bauman Rare Books for a look at the pinnacle of the commercial aspect, and from there into the Grolier Club, which exists solely for the deep appreciation of the printed word. (Check out their current miniature books exhibit before the end of July if you have a chance.) We passed through the Diamond District on the way—also built on the backs of those who came before—where the pecking order and trading is even more intense, but what a cold and facetless commodity when compared to the beauty and mission of books.

The electronic Standard arrayed in front of you includes a discussion of professional book appraising; an elegant interview with a modern old school bookseller who has been plying his trade since the 1940s; and a Perlman book trip to the Joe-Me state. There’s an ephemeral assay on fair of face postcards. Laura Smith tools over to Book Expo America; and Chris Volk presents the second installment (Alibris) in her series on search service Pros and Cons. There are Bookseller Profiles from PA, CO and CA; and there wasn’t much flotsam for the Addenda section so it’s mostly jetsam this time.

October, then, for the next issue. Have a nice summer.

IOBA Standard, Summer Edition 2007, Volume 8, No. 3.

Appraising for Booksellers

All of you have gotten the phone call. The person on the other end has inherited or been given or found at a garage sale a book/books which he believes may be the next record breaker at a Sotheby’s auction. “What’s it worth?” he wants to know. That is not the type of appraisal this article is going to address. Those appraisals can be handled with a few simple sentences such as, “That copy of Tarzan’s Revengepublished in 1952 missing the front cover and the last three pages is worth roughly 50 cents if I am in a charitable mood.” I get my share of these too, probably more than my share. This article also does not address the type of appraisal that we all do to raise money for a worthy cause. This is where you and other appraisers of antiques, fine art, toys, etc. donate your time and give verbal guesstimates of the fair market value of various “treasures” brought in by hopeful people. This last is the cheap version of the Antiques Roadshow. Those are sometimes fun, sometimes rewarding, and sometimes boring. 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.

In 2002 when I decided to explore adding “appraiser” to my business card, I started attending the meetings of the local chapter of the International Society of Appraisers (ISA). What I learned at those meetings was that I was ignorant of what it takes to get an appraisal accepted by insurance companies and that a poor appraisal could land me in trouble with the IRS. So I joined the appraisal society and took courses in appraisal theory and practice. The courses I took combined with my 8 years as a bookseller gave me the accreditation I wanted. I did my first appraisal on a library with approximately 4,000 books shortly after that.

I have done a number of appraisals since. Most of them have been for estate purposes: to value an estate for taxes or to value it for dissolution as in the case of a divorce. I have also worked on a few insurance damage claim appraisals and valued other collections so that they can be insured. The most critical types of appraisals are for items being donated where the donor wants to take a tax deduction. I’ll say more about this type of appraisal later.

Back in the 1980s the United States went through a painful and expensive savings and loan shakeout. A number of these organizations had loaned money based on real estate appraisals which were not realistic and were, in some cases, fraudulent. A standards setting board, the Appraisal Foundation, was founded and a standard called USPAP, for Uniform Standards for Professional Appraisal Practice, was written and accepted in 1989. This standard sets guidelines for ethics and report writing. It is updated periodically and appraisers are encouraged to keep up with the changes. It has become more and more important. Appraisals which are seen by the IRS are judged by this standard. USPAP has been cited in court cases as the standard to follow in writing appraisals. The appraisal societies teach courses on USPAP and members of the societies sit on the Appraisal Standards Board giving input to changes and keeping their members up-to-date.

What goes into a written appraisal? There is general information: identification of the client, purpose of the appraisal, where and when the items being appraised were seen by the appraiser, type of value being used (fair market value, replacement value), method of determining value, markets explored to determine value, and analysis of the markets’ present trends. There are statements relating to the appraiser’s ethical standards and the standards the appraiser follows in writing the report. For the higher valued books, a description of the book or set of books is written, a photograph is inserted into the description, and I include a listing of sources consulted in determining value (auction records, catalogs, online sources, other booksellers consulted) and the reasoning used in setting value. In the Addenda I also always include a page listing sources for bibliographic and value information, a glossary of terms used, my professional profile, and a page discussing how a book’s condition is determined.

The IRS has experts who review appraisals, especially the ones for donations. For donations of items valued at more than $5,000, a copy of the appraisal must be attached to the income tax return and a special form filled out and signed by both the appraiser, the donor and the donee. IRS regulations state that an appraisal of property being donated that is valued in excess of $5,000 must be done by a qualified appraiser and in the latest revision of regulations for Form 8283 dated December, 2006, they give their definition of a “qualified appraiser.” Their definition in simple terms says that this individual has earned appraiser designation from a recognized appraisal organization or has met certain minimum educational requirements and experience requirements, and regularly prepares appraisals for which he/she gets paid. The IRS’s Art Appraisal Services department reviews these appraisals.

Each year at the annual conference of the International Society of Appraisers, a representative of the IRS Art Appraisal Services discusses changes in the regulations governing appraisals. At the conference in April of this year, he said that they are looking more closely at appraisals in order to weed out those who do not have the qualifications and do not follow the regulations. Speculation is that the same requirements for “qualified appraiser” will soon be extended to estate appraisals as well.

If you are considering doing appraisals, I would advise you to join an appraisal society and get the education. In addition to education and keeping members abreast of changing regulations, I have found several other advantages to being a member of the ISA. Individuals in the society help each other and give each other advice. They also refer business to each other. My business is listed on the society’s main website and on the North Texas Chapter’s website. This last listing has brought me some business. The monthly meetings are fun and educational and the parties are great too. The other two well known appraisal societies are the American Society of Appraisers (ASA) and the American Association of Appraisers (AAA). All three set high standards of ethics for their members and are concerned with their continuing education.

I have done some very interesting appraisals on books outside the genres I sell. One was for an old, thirty two pound Catholic Gradual. The monks who hand wrote the musical notes and words to the chants drew small faces on two of the capitals. Were the faces self-portraits or portraits of other monks? I found it fascinating. The most interesting appraisal I have done so far was for an estate containing thirty six special books. What made this appraisal so interesting was that all of the books had fore-edge paintings on them. I read two books on fore-edge paintings, and talked to three booksellers who have sold a number of books with such decorations in order to determine value. Some of the paintings were quite unusual. Two of the books had double fore-edge paintings, so that if you fanned the pages in one direction, you saw one painting, and then fanned the pages the opposite direction, you saw a completely different painting. Another had a painting of a hunting scene which started on the bottom edges of the pages, continued onto the front of the page edges and ended on the top of the page edges; most unusual and delightful! In this appraisal the books without the paintings were not really valuable. The value was in the charm and subject matter of the paintings.

Now I need to say a word about the people who call and want an “appraisal” but are really interested in selling the books to me. I generally ask if they want an appraisal or want to sell me the books. Because of ethical concerns, I can’t do both things. I also explain to people who want to know the value because they are interested in selling that the verbal appraisal is for retail value which they will not get if they sell to a bookseller because the bookseller has to cover his costs and make a profit. Sometimes it is necessary to explain the facts of life to people wanting to get retail prices for their books. They don’t like hearing that there are costs associated with online auctions, that garage and estate sales rarely bring in retail prices, and that trying to sell on one of the online book sites requires work, has costs, and seldom means instant riches. Life is difficult and so is bookselling.

I want to conclude this article by saying that my impression of booksellers in general is very good. When I have called or emailed a bookseller who has expertise in a certain area asking for advice or an opinion, I almost always get a courteous and helpful response. Thanks to all of you for being nice guys.

Shirley Dyess operates The Dust Jacket out of Irving, TX and can be contacted at http://www.thedustjacket.biz.

IOBA Standard, Summer Edition 2007, Volume 8, No. 3.