More About Books As Investments

Plus part two of the Salvatore Collection, Book Photography, and eBay box lots

Additional Comments About Investing in Books

Shortly after I published last week’s missive on books as investments, an article on the subject appeared on the Wall Street Journal website and made the rounds of various bookselling listservs.

It offered some interesting views on collecting, including this gem: “A lot of American book collectors start buying when they visit England.”

“A lot” is one of those weasel phrases that makes it seem like Americans add a third item to their to-do lists when they come home from a trip to London. In addition to making Earl Grey tea with milk at home and looking for a pub that serves Cornish pasties, we apparently also begin collecting first editions.

The first item is, of course, disgusting—there must be something special about British water that makes tea with milk palatable there. The second is an impossibility. And the third happens so infrequently that “a lot” must mean something like “nearly fifty” collectors got their start on a UK vacation.

The article did add support to my observations about collectors who value their collections at the highest possible price. (If you missed it, I gave the example of a collector who estimated the top 25 items in his collection at $49,000, when at the time anyone could buy identical books on AbeBooks for no more than $14,000).

The Wall Street Journal article quotes a collector who said he bought a signed first edition of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation and Earth for $40, which he now values at $1,000, “because Asimov passed away in 1992 and his lore grew.” (Little known fact: Asimov died from complications of HIV contracted from a blood transfusion during heart surgery.)

I almost hate to point out that the $1,000 figure is double the highest price currently being asked for that book. My colleague Ian Kahn at Lux Mentis will sell a signed first for $375 and David Aronovitz, of the Fine Books Company, who has dealt in science fiction for more than 40 years, will sell you a copy inscribed to one of Asimov’s publishers for $532. (No, I don’t have any idea how Mr. Aronovitz comes up with his distinctively precise prices, like $532, $364, $442.40, etc.)

Perhaps you can see why buying books from collectors is sometimes difficult. I never know how to start negotiating when the seller thinks their book is worth $1,000 when I could buy one for a third of that on the open market.

The most useful advice in the WSJ article came from Christina Geiger, the head of the book department at Christie’s in New York:

“You won’t make any money out of water skiing,” she said (emphasis added).

Her point, I believe, is that most hobbies offer no hope of financial return (e.g., a boat is a hole in the water you throw money into).

Collectible books, at least, will likely produce some financial return when they are sold, and perhaps even something of a profit.

While book collecting has a financial side, it is fundamentally a creative enterprise. The collector and book scholar Thomas Tanselle likened a book collection to a form of autobiography in his essay, “Extracts from ‘The Living Room: A Memoir’”, where he explores “how one’s life story can be partially epitomized in one’s accumulation of things.” While we all accumulate stuff, often seemingly at random, collections tell a specific story about their creators.

This personal, creative aspect of collecting is why collections resonate with people, even non collectors. They can become something like art, which provokes an emotional reaction—not universally positive—but always humming with life.

Was I Wrong About Book Photography?

My dispatch on why I decline most requests for additional photographs of books generated some heated responses (direct to me; my readers don’t use Substack’s comments very much).

One of my arguments was that photographs are time-consuming, which means expensive, and that below a certain price point, my time and that of most booksellers is better spent on other things.

A Czech bookselling site seems hellbent on proving me wrong.

It provides multiple photographs (usually 4) of all the books offered for sale, even those priced as low as €3.60 (about $4). At first I thought the site must be using AI to generate book photographs because I can’t see how they can afford to take four photographs of a €3.60 book. But they seem to be real photos, as evidenced by this listing for an ex-library Harry Potter (priced under $8), illustrated with seven photographs.

I find browsing the books to be mesmerizing—all the different sweaters, shirts, tattoos, and fingernail hygiene of the people holding the books are even more interesting than the books themselves.

The company is based in Prague, where it operates as Knihobot. It recently expanded from the Czech Republic into Slovakia and then into German-speaking countries as BookBot.de. It claims to sell 100,000 books per month and boasted of nearly $1 million in annual profits.

The company says it pays 60% of the sales price, less €1.19. An article about the company said it grossed 182,000,000 Czech koruna (about $8 million) in 2022 and paid 77 million koruna (about $3.5 million) to people who sold it books.

To sell your books, all you have to do is send in a picture of the books on the shelf, spine out. Within 24 hours, BookBot tells you which books they want; they pay the shipping to their warehouses. In Prague and Berlin, the company will even send its BookTaxi to pick up books.

Bookbot is a cool idea, and I wouldn’t mind too much if the company came to the US and forced the megasellers to up their game. The book web is flooded with generic listings for books (“Condition: good. Pages can have notes highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. May have varying covers. Fast Shipping - Mailed in plastic mailer!”)

But I hope it doesn’t force the dealers of collectible books to take even more photos. I really don’t want to spend more time on photography than I already do. For the 61 items on this week’s new arrivals list, I took 291 photographs. I can’t do any more.

Until next time,

Scott Brown