• Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Alken (Henry). Sporting Notions, first edition, T.McLean, 1832-33. £800 to £1,200.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Bardi (Lorenzo). Nuova Raccolta delle piu interessanti Vedute della Citta di Firenze…, Florence, Lorenzo Bardi, [c.1840]. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Crawfurd (John). Journal of an Embassy from the Governor-General of India to the Court of Ava..., first edition, 1829. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Dawe (George, engraver). The Life of a Nobleman, first edition, Geo. Henderson, [c.1825]. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: [Doyle (John)], "H.B.". Political Sketches &c., 10 vol. including The Descriptive Key to H.B., Thomas McLean, [1829-51]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Eben (Adolphus Christian Frederick, Baron von) and Nicolaus Heideloff. Modèles de l'Uniforme Militaire Adopté dans l'Armée Royale de Suède, Rudolph Ackerman, 1808. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Geissler (J.G.G.) and Friedrich Hempel. Mahlerische Darstellungen der Sitten, Gebrauche und Lustbarkeiten bey den Russischen, Tartarischen…, 4 parts in 1, Leipzig and Paris, [1804]. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Hunt (Charles). Portraits of Winning Horses...of the Derby, Oaks, & St. Leger, from the Year 1842 to 1849…, Rock Brothers & Payne, 1849. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Kunike (Adolf Friedrich). Zwey hundert und sechzig Donau-Ansichten nach dem Laufe des Donaustromes…, Vienna, Leopold Grund, 1826. £3,000 to £5,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Lasinio (Carlo). [Matrimony], Florence, 1790. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Reinhardt (Joseph). A Collection of Swiss Costumes, in Miniature, second English edition, James Goodwin, [1828]. £800 to £1,200.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Wengen (Gottfried Durst von). Die Öffentliche Maskerade Bamberg am Fastnachts-Montage 1833…, Bamberg, [1833]. £2,000 to £3,000.
  • Sotheby’s
    Modern First Editions
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Winston Churchill. The Second World War. Set of First-Edition Volumes. 6,000 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: A.A. Milne, Ernest H. Shepard. A Collection of The Pooh Books. Set of First-Editions. 18,600 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Salvador Dalí, Lewis Carroll. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Finely Bound and Signed Limited Edition. 15,000 USD
    Sotheby’s
    Modern First Editions
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Ian Fleming. Live and Let Die. First Edition. 9,500 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter Series. Finely Bound First Printing Set of Complete Series. 5,650 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Ernest Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms. First Edition, First Printing. 4,200 USD
  • Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A RUTH BADER GINSBURG BEADED JUDICIAL COLLAR. $80,000 - $120,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: ONLY KNOWN COPY OF THE ONLY BOOK BY THE REMARKABLE EVE ADAMS. $8,000 - $12,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A COMPLETE RUN OF VISIONAIRE MAGAZINE THROUGH 2010. $6,000 - $9,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: LAW REVIEW OFFPRINT SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY RUTH BADER GINSBURG. $3,000 - $5,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: META REBNER'S WORKING SCRIPT OF THE LOVED ONE. $1,500 - $2,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A KATHY GROVE PORTRAIT OF CYNDI LAUPER FOR THE FEBRUARY 1989 DETAILS COVER. $800 - $1,200
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A PLASTIC COAT BY MILLIE DAVID FEATURED IN SOHO NEWS STYLE SECTION, FROM THE COLLECTION OF ANNIE FLANDERS. $500 - $700
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A RUTH BADER GINSBURG JEWELRY BOX. $600 - $900
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A SET OF JONI MITCHELL LYRICS FOR "IF I HAD A HEART." $2,000 - $3,000
  • 19th Century Shop
    Catalogue 198 just published
    19th Century Shop. Darwin and Wallace, first printing of the first paper on natural selection
    19th Century Shop. Shakespeare’s Poems, first collected edition
    19th Century Shop. Walt Whitman portrait inscribed with a Leaves of Grass poem
    19th Century Shop. Major Elizabeth Barrett Browning manuscript notebook
    19th Century Shop. Spock's Baby Book, original MS
    19th Century Shop. Cellarius, Harmonia Macrocosmica, the great celestial atlas

Rare Book Monthly

Articles - February - 2016 Issue

IOBA - Promotes Professionalism and Customer Satisfaction in Online Bookselling

IOBA (Independent Online Booksellers Association) has 341 members in 15 countries.

Ah yes, “professional standards,” in the world of online book selling, particularly of antiquarian books and paper, that term has many meanings. The bar can be set high - as with membership in the ABAA (Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America) which requires substantial experience, recommendations from fellow ABAA members, actual vetting and annual dues.



Or it can be set low…. so low as to be non-existent - witness the thousands of sellers who have no trade affiliation, no professional experience and would not know a first edition from a cheap reprint. These are booksellers who in some cases do not even actually have the book they’re offering, not to mention may have also lifted its description too. Low. Low. Low. “Caveat Emptor:” Let the buyer beware.



Somewhere between those two ends there is IOBA (Independent Online Booksellers Association). It is one of many groups that sellers can join to increase professionalism and help assure customer satisfaction. The IOBA logo is a good indication of a quality operation.



In January 2016 IOBA had 341 members in 15 countries. It offers substantial benefits for a modest fee of $75 a year. The qualifications for membership are reasonable and the IOBA logo after a seller’s name inspires a degree of customer confidence because it indicates that the seller has been reviewed by others working in the trade and meets certain basic professional standards.



They are according to the IOBA website:



  1. You must have a minimum of one year prior bookselling experience.

  2. You must be an owner/partner/member of an online bookselling business that is not a publicly traded corporation.

  3. You must have and provide a valid resale license or business registration number if one is required to conduct business in your locality.

  4. You must agree to conduct business in accordance with the IOBA Code of Ethics.

(See more at: www.ioba.org/pages/member-application/#sthash.Bm2BHVEV.dpuf)



Meet those standands and pay the $75 once a year and you’ll receive quite a few benefits that comes with the territory.



They include the IOBA “Discuss List “ where members educate each other on best practices and other items of interest to online booksellers. There is also an active Wants/For Sale venue for members to do business with each other which is commission free.



IOBA is an all-volunteer trade association and there are many opportunities to join an active committee and contribute if you wish,” said Phil Keener of Keener Books and Collectibles ("The books you want...from booksellers you can trust") in Wisconsin..



Other IOBA benefits, he said in a letter encouraging membership in the organization, include a number of educational opportunities and scholarships for members such as scholarships to the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar (CABS) (www.bookseminars.com), the Rare Books School (www.rarebookschool.org), or the York Antiquarian Booksellers Seminar (YABS) (www.yabseminar.com) in England.



Our organization is open to all professional online booksellers and is not restricted to antiquarian booksellers,” he added.



Joan White, on the membership committee for over ten years and most recently chairman, explained that the process to join  is quite simple.  Fill out the application on line: www.ioba.org/pages/member-application. It goes to the chair, the chair checks it out and shares the results with the committee and you’re in. Sometimes the applicants need a little coaching. White said there is a mentorship program for those who almost qualify but are not quite up to speed.



She pointed to the ability to write an accurate description of the merchandise, “including the flaws,” as the most frequent area where help is needed. In other cases, sellers may not have the necessary tax paperwork in place. White was clear, if you’re receiving income but not reporting it, this is probably not the place for you. For others the return policy is a sticky point: Those with AS IS - FINAL SALE and “no return” practices do not meet the guidelines.



But obviously, with more than 300 members, there are quite a few that do.



Asking other members for comments about IOBA produced an enthusiastic response. They liked the lists, the book school and the networking with others in the trade. “The IOBA lists, said one, “are good because you know that the people you’re dealing with are a lot like you.”



"I was attracted to IOBA as a newcomer to the trade,” said William Knox of the Penang Bookshelf - outgoing president. Located in “a part of the world where professional used booksellers' associations barely exist, IOBA offered me a home, “ he said. Knox is a specialist in books about Malaysia and also the rest of Asia.




IOBA, he wrote in an email, is, ”The broad church of booksellers from all over the world, both novices and experienced hands, promoting independence and ethical selling. It has, in a short time, grown to become the largest international bookselling organisation devoted exclusively to online bookselling. This has been achieved and will be continued largely by the volunteering efforts of our members. IOBA maintains its position because it is sufficiently flexible to incorporate ideas of newer booksellers with the authoritative experience of those who have been in the trade for decades.”



Charles Fedorowicz of the UK, who started selling books online in 2001, wrote “I have been a member of IOBA since 2009 and served on the Internet Committee and now I chair the Outreach Committee. “I joined IOBA shortly after I launched my website after having cut my teeth selling on eBay. I knew that I needed some endorsement to give my customers confidence in making their purchase from my website and one of the several ways of doing this was joining IOBA and being able to show their logo on all my web pages.



That is possibly over simplifying things but that is pretty much as it was. Having retired from full time employment in the IT industry I decided on selling books online to keep me busy. Starting in this way made it difficult to join many of the established bookselling organisations because they all asked for more experience and references, which I did not have at the time.



I did though qualify to join IOBA…. I am truly pleased that I did as I have learned a great deal more about bookselling both from the website and from the very active Discuss List and from my sponsorship on the YABS program. I now understand that IOBA has given me so much more than just the logo that I initially wanted.”



Chris Volk, a California online dealer and a past IOBA president, also observed that there’s quite a bit of overlap between IOBA and ABAA.



ABAA has stiffer membership requirements and it costs more. Some dealers join IOBA on the way to ABAA and quite a few in the ABAA see the benefits of a group that’s exclusively focused on the online portion of the trade and join IOBA too.



In case you’re wondering if the long slog to the high end is worth it, John F. Kuenzig, of Kuenzig Books, a science and engineering specialist in Massachusetts, commented via emailThe ABAA designation is certainly worth it if you want to sell to the best collectors. After becoming an ABAA dealer, we started selling things online that had been there for a long time. Now we get cold calls from collectors in our area. Worth it? Absolutely.”



As for other groups that encourage professionalism, Madlyn Bloom in Florida reminded RBH readers that there are many state organizations. She’s an officer of the Florida Antiquarian Booksellers Association and urges those in her area to visit their site: floridabooksellers.com



There does not seem to be a complete list of state organizations, but there are certainly active groups in Northern and Southern California and Texas to name a few. It was hard to find a complete list. The one list we found coming from the publishing side may not be current or all inclusive: www.ibpa-online.org/resources/bookseller-associations/

------------------------

 

IOBA Election results

After 10 years with the membership committee, most recently as chair, Joan White, co-owner of White Unicorn Books in Dallas, Texas, a science fiction and fantasy specialist, is the new 2016 IOBA president.

 

Here is the complete list of officers:

 

President : Joan White

Vice President : Heidi Congalton

Secretary : Doug Nelson

Treasurer : Sharon Eisenberg

Members at Large : Zhenya Dzhavgova, Charles Fedorowicz, Sharon Heimann, Rachel Jagareski, Betty Kilner and Andrea Tomberg.



Karin Bergsagel, who was the co-chair, will replace Joan as chair of the membership committee.

Rare Book Monthly

  • Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [RUTH, George Herman “Babe” (1895-1948)]. Signed photograph. Circa 1930s. 191 x 248 mm. $1,500 to $2,500.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: HARRISON, Benjamin. Document signed (“Benj Harrison”) as governor of Virginia, certifying the service of Daniel Cumbo, a Black Revolutionary soldier. $6,000 to $9,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: ONE OF THE FIRST PRINTED ANNOUNCEMENTS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: FIRST PRINTING OF LINCOLN’S IMMORTAL GETTYSBURG ADDRESS. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: HIGHLY IMPORTANT MORMON ARCHIVE. ALLEY, George. Archive of 23 Autograph Letters Signed by Mormon Convert George Alley to His Brother Joseph Alley. $10,000 to $20,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [AVIATION]. [ARMSTRONG, Neil A.] Aviation Hall of Fame Gold Medal MS64 NGC, Awarded to Neil Armstrong in 1979. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: NEWLY DISCOVERED FIRST PRINTING OF "WITH MALICE TOWARDS NONE... " FROM THE ONLY NEWSPAPER ACTUALLY ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE IN LINCOLN’S SECOND INAUGURAL PROCESSION. $4,000 to $8,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: THE MOST IMPORTANT GEORGE WASHINGTON DOCUMENT IN PRIVATE HANDS; GEORGE WASHINGTON’S COMMISSION AS COMMANDER IN CHIEF, 1775, ONE OF ONLY TWO ORIGINALS. $150,000 to $250,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: A VERY RARE ACCOUNT OF BLACKBEARD’S DEATH AND ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PIRATE ITEMS EXTANT. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: EDISON, Thomas. Patent for Edison’s Improvements on the Electric-Light, No. 219,628. [Washington, D.C.: U.S. Patent Office], 16 September 1879. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [VIETNAM WAR]. The original pen used by Secretary of State William P. Rogers to sign the Vietnam Peace Agreement, Paris, 27 January 1973. $10,000 to $15,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: SONS OF LIBERTY FOUNDER COLONEL BARRÉ ANNOTATED TITLE-PAGE, “WHICH OUGHT TO ROUSE UP BRITISH ATTENTION”. $4,000 to $6,000.
  • Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: [Langland (William)]. The vision of Pierce Plowman, nowe the seconde time imprinted..., Roberte Crowley, 1550. £8,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: [Shakespeare (William)]. [Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies], second folio edition, [by Tho.Cotes, for Robert Allot], [1632]. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Bible, Czech Biblia Bohemica, first complete Bible printed in the Czech vernacular, Prague, August 1488. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Shabthai Tzvi.- Collection of four printed and illustrated broadsides detailing the appearance, rise and fall of the false messiah, Shabthai Tzvi, Augsburg, 1666-67. £40,000 to £60,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Leaf from the Beauvais Missal, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment, [Northern France (perhaps Beauvais or Amiens)], [fourteenth century (c.1310)]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Aubrey (John). [Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme], manuscript in English, Latin and Greek, [c. 1693]. £30,000 to £50,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Poems on Various Occasions, first edition, Harriet Maltby's copy, Newark, Printed by S. & J. Ridge, 1807. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Tolkien (J.R.R.) The Hobbit, first edition, second impression with dust-jacket, 1937 [but 1938]. £7,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Blake (William).- Thornton (Robert John). The Pastorals of Virgil, 2 vol., engraved plates by William Blake, 1821. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: America.- Mount (William J.) & Thomas Page. The English Pilot…, [bound with] The Fourth Book, describing The West Indies Navigation from Hudson's-Bay to the River Amazones, 1721. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Oldfield (Henry Ambrose), Rajman Singh Chitrakar & others. An album of 160 photographs and 13 original artworks, (1833-1919), [c. 1850s-1880s]. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Audubon (John James) [and William MacGillivray]. Ornithological Biography…, 5 vol., first edition, presentation copy inscribed by Audubon, Edinburgh, 1831-49 [i.e. 1831-39]. £10,000 to £15,000.

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