How to Buy Books Online
So You Want to Be a Bookseller: Ten Questions…Some Answers
The Story of IOBA’s New Logo
Pistil Books Online, Seattle WA
Interview With A Collector: Jerry Morris
Bibliography Week
Bookstores: Three Continents, Eight Countries, A Travel Journal – Part II
My First Book Fair: A San Francisco Fairy Tale
You’ve been an avid collector for some time. at what point did you realize that you were a collector, and not just an accumulator or reader?
I have been an avid reader all my life. I became a collector in the late 1980s on my last tour before retiring from the U. S. Air Force. In England, I started collecting dictionaries and quotation books, and then I was accumulating almost everything else except science fiction. Slowly but surely, as my book collecting interests developed, many of the accumulations became collections.
What are your major areas of collecting?
My major areas of collecting are books about books, association copies, Samuel Johnson, Mary Hyde, and early editions of William Strunk’s Elements of Style. But I don’t ignore my other collections. I am always looking for interesting books on NYC and outhouses. Yes, outhouses.
I know that one of your collecting areas is association copies. in fact, you are a contributing author to the recently published other people’s books: Association Copies and the Stories They Tell (Chicago: The Caxton Club. 2011), which was reviewed in the last issue of the Standard. It seems that different collectors have different definitions of what makes an association copy. What is your definition?
In the simplest terms, I define an association copy as a book that once belonged to a famous person. My Sentimental Library Collection is a collection of books formerly owned by authors whose books I collect or formerly owned by other famous people. The essay I wrote for Other People’s Books…”Hither-unpublished Obiter Dicta” was based on another kind of association as well: the subject matter of a book formerly owned by Augustine Birrell (1850-1933), an English essayist and politician. Birrell was the irish Secretary who was sacked after the Easter Rising in Ireland in 1916. He wrote his opinions on revolution, freedom and other related topics in the margins and endpapers of his copy of Lectures on the French Revolution by Lord Acton, London, 1910.
How do you find the books that make it into your sentimental library collection? Is it all serendipitous, or do you actively seek certain books?
I actively seek association copies online and at bookstores and book fairs. Sometimes, though, an association copy will literally fall in my lap. I’ve written about some of my association copies in my blogs, particularly in http://mysentimentallibrary.blogspot.com.
As you may know, IOBA stands for Independent Online Booksellers Association, so a large portion of the audience for this article will be book sellers. Can you offer any advice for the online seller as far as listing books that you would find of interest? How can we help you find our wares?
At this time, there are no IOBA booksellers who list association copies as one of their specialties. That means I have to search the IOBA listings for association copies. The easiest way to attract my attention to an association copy you want me to buy is to use one of two phrases: “formerly owned by…”, or “from the library of….” I’ve also found numerous association copies by searching for “bookplate of, his bookplate, her bookplate, from the private library of, and previously owned by.” The most recent association copy I acquired on another site was identified with the phrase,” Bibliographer Jacob Blanck’s blind-stamp on ffep.” I almost missed that one!
What do you look for in a bookseller? what are the cues and practices that make you comfortable doing business with someone you haven’t met personally?
I judge a bookseller by the quality of her listing. She needs to list the book in such a professional manner that I will want to buy her copy of the book.
Do you have any favorite booksellers? If so, what kind of stock or service has moved them to the top of your list?
I’ve had numerous favorite booksellers. They become favorite booksellers primarily for having books available that I’m currently looking for. For online dealers, I like to see a personal note of thanks on the invoice or even an informal email saying the book was shipped. It is their listings that I will search first for future buys.
Do you recall having done business with any of our members?
I recognize a number of booksellers in the IOBA Member Directory and have done business with several of them either directly or through Abebooks — but never through IOBA. In fact, I didn’t open an IOBA buyer’s account until this past September. My first experience ordering a book via IOBA was quite pleasant, which begs the question: Why did I wait so long? Maybe a little publicity will help. On my biblio-connecting blog (biblio-connecting.blogspot.com) a running diary of connecting with people in the book world, I will write about my first experience with IOBA: buying a copy of Agnes Repplier’s Books and Men from Doug Clausen of Clausen Books in Colorado. And whose stock will I search first for association copies? Doug Clausen’s.
With IOBA well into its second decade, it seemed a good time to take a look at our logo and make sure it truly represented who we were and how we wanted to be perceived.
The first question, of course, was did we even need a new logo? Because they are such powerful representations of their organizations, logos should not be changed lightly. The IOBA Public Relations committee began with a survey of the membership to determine the general usage practices and perceptions about our logo.
We discovered that 57% of respondents displayed our logo on their website, and of those who did not, the overwhelming majority simply hadn’t gotten around to it or didn’t know where to get an image. But there were a small percentage that simply didn’t like it.
We also asked where else booksellers would consider using our logo, and found that there were many “paper” applications such as bookmarks, flyers, invoices and business cards that members would consider placing the logo on. This anticipated usage impacted design considerations as we got farther into the process.
Finally, we asked survey respondents to rank their preference of the following four options:
1) Keep the cat and IOBA letter logo as it is 2) Remove the cat and use just the IOBA letters as logo 3) Have two logo formats available for use (cat and letters combo, and letters only) 4) Design a new logo.
The first choice selections of respondents broke 51% for some sort of change against 49% for no change. With such a close margin, we might have decided to abandon the search for a new logo except for one thing.
Simple web searches revealed that the cat image that played such a big part in our first logo was not unique to IOBA. For example:
Given that our logo used three books while some of the other images had five, it appears that we used a modification of an existing image for our first logo. There was some indication that the cat image may have been designed in the 50’s or 60’s and may have belonged to the Antioch Book Company, however neither the Board nor the members of the IOBA Discuss list could completely confirm that.
With the copyright status in doubt, the Board decided that a possibly fruitless effort to acquire the rights to the image did not justify the difficulty and expense, and even if the rights to the image were acquired, its cat image would still not be unique to IOBA. Wanting IOBA to have unquestionable ownership of its own logo, the Board instructed the Public Relations committee to pursue a redesign.
We therefore moved ahead with designing a new logo image to present to the board.
We had both physical and philosophical considerations.
As to physical characteristics, we were looking for a clean design that would be attractive on both screen and paper. It had to look as good in black and white as it did in color, and it needed to “reverse” (be able to be displayed as white on a dark background) so that members could use it on a variety of website background colors.
It also needed to be clean and uncomplicated so it would look good even when reproduced on smaller laser or inkjet printers. We stayed away from embellishments like drop shadows and hairline design elements due to the difficulty of accurately reproducing them in the variety of circumstances we projected the members would use.
Finally, it had to “scale.” Many members in our survey indicated that they would consider using it on business cards and bookmarks, so the logo needed to be clear and legible even in a small size.
Philosophically, we wanted the logo to represent all parts of our organization and mission.
We decided early on to include a globe to represent the “international” nature of IOBA, but the globe itself went through several iterations. We considered and rejected longitude and latitude lines because they just became blurry at smaller sizes. Our first attempt tried to capture both Europe and the American continents, but we found that the Atlantic Ocean took up so much of the image that it was no longer easily recognizable as a globe, so we compromised on the current view, which includes North and South America, a bit of Africa, and a hint of Europe.
We also decided relatively early in the process that we should attempt to retain the Castellar font for the IOBA portion of the logo. We liked the idea of a tie-in to our first logo design. In the end, the board opted for the color green for the same reason.
Several suggestions on the survey indicated that members felt it was important to spell out “Independent Online Booksellers Association.” That choice represented challenges in legibility at smaller sizes, but using a serif font and keeping the name in lower case helped readability when the image was shrunk.
In all, we reviewed, discussed, and tweaked over 40 versions and variants of the new logo before making our final recommendations to the board. And in September, 2011, just nine months from when we sent out the first survey, the board approved the new logo.
IOBA members who wish to download the logo can get a copy in the members section of the IOBA website. Follow the link for IOBA logos. HTML text is provided for embedding the logo on member websites.
We’d also like to thank the PR committee members who worked on this project: Karin Bergsagel (ex-officio), Cathy Graham (chair), Sharon Heimann, Joe Orlando, Alice Voith, Chris Volk, and Justin Woolley.
