Collector and Bookseller: A Vanishing Relationship?

It's a cliché, but it’s true: Things aren’t the same as they used to be. Over the last twenty-five years, we’ve transformed the way that we buy books and build our collections, and most of the familiar bookshops, old and new, have disappeared. There aren’t nearly as many local places to browse and buy books as there once were, but there are more books available to buy than ever, and great collections are still being formed. But collectors and booksellers have lost something along the way, and it’s important to recognize that just as Frank Bruni’s favorite restaurants offer something that he can’t get anywhere else, this is what the book market, at its best, used to do, and still sometimes does.

In Bruni’s world of local dining, proprietors and waitstaff know him, and he’s treated more like a member of the family than a customer. Money changes hands, and the meal is still a business transaction, but there are sincere greetings and extras along the way, and satisfying feelings on both sides. As diners know, not all restaurateurs or servers are friendly, but if diners don’t enjoy the gruff interchanges, they won’t return very often. But when they find the restaurants that are comfortable and nourishing, they become regulars, and everyone benefits.

Collecting books isn’t the same as going out to eat, but just as restaurants can be destinations of pleasure and possibility, social activity, expanding horizons, and fulfillment, so can bookshops, and no matter how many books we can now buy elsewhere, there’s something important that’s missing in most of these purchases—a personal relationship. The Internet, though it’s greatly expanded our possibilities, has made most of our book purchases routine and impersonal transactions, which are often handled by an automated third party. For better or worse, our contacts with booksellers are now usually limited to shipment notices, and though this makes for efficient buying and selling, it now takes special effort from both parties to build a relationship.

These changes aren’t all bad. Most longtime collectors and booksellers have found that there are some people on both sides who are much more pleasant to deal with in the virtual world than they are in person or on the telephone. But bookshops have also long filled an important educational function for collectors, and even if a bookseller has conducted business by catalogue only, the bookseller, through guidance and descriptions, has still served as a teacher to collectors of all levels. As John Carter expressed it in Taste and Technique in Book-Collecting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; and New York: Bowker, 1948): “The school of experience holds its classes in bookshops and in the auction room. And if the auctioneer is the examiner, a good bookseller can be an invaluable tutor. It is true that in his shop, as well as at a sale, the collector pits his judgment of price not only against that of his fellow-collectors but also against the dealer’s. In all other respects, his interests and his bookseller’s are one.”

And it’s in the matter of price and its judgment that our universe has changed most from the cozier world of books that Carter knew. Collectors want to build their collections, and booksellers want to sell books, but Internet bookselling is all about the lowest prices, and so often, a fine and interesting copy of a book can languish unsold because it’s priced just a few dollars more than a poor or “mildly ex-library” copy. In an earlier world, this copy might have been quoted to a particular customer, whose tastes and preferences were known, and whose collecting had been nurtured by the bookseller. This kind of relationship, whether in person or at a distance, underpinned the business model of the antiquarian book world. For a diminishing number of booksellers, it still does, but it’s in danger of disappearing as bookselling moves closer to a price-centric market, where descriptions of the characteristics of particular copies are now the province of an ever-smaller number of booksellers who still view this information as significant.

The demise of this kind of bookselling would be as damaging to collectors as the disappearance of local restaurants would be to a neighborhood. As Gordon N. Ray described it so well in his articles about the world of rare books, the antiquarian book world is made up of collectors, booksellers, and libraries and librarians, all existing in a symbiotic relationship in which the balance of power shifts according to collecting tastes, the state of financial markets, and university budgets. This world still exists, but the technological changes that have transformed it beyond anything that Ray would find familiar now threaten to speed the extinction of collectors who were willing to consider books other than high spots, and booksellers who could build their businesses selling individual books at all levels to collectors that they knew. 

Restaurants also depend on repeat customers, and as Bruni wrote, there’s something in it for the customers as well. “In return, regulars at most restaurants get extra consideration: a glass of sparkling wine that wasn’t asked for, a dessert that just appears, a promotion to the head of the waiting list when the place is full. There’s a practical, unemotional reason to join the frequent-flier club. Perks accrue.”

These perks have been there for book collectors as well, and though we’re never going back to the world—if it ever actually existed—that Helene Hanff depicted in 84, Charing Cross Road, collectors, booksellers, and libraries have all benefited from the symbiotic relationship in which they knew and learned from each other, and where it was understood that it took time and effort to learn about books. This learning came from repeated visits to bookshops and libraries, and from examining, reading, and researching the books that they found. As collecting and bookselling relationships disappear, something important is being lost, and we need to realize that collecting and bookselling can still be personal, and that there can and should be more to what we do than looking up prices online, and searching or uploading records to a database.