Rare Book Monthly

Articles - September - 2006 Issue

AE Introduces a Listing Service [without the standard charges]

The focus is on the book AND the seller.

The focus is on the book AND the seller.


Let's try a search. Let's try ALBANY is the Keyword Search. The results quickly appear in a multi-field array. If you have a preference for how the material is ordered you can select any of the blue links across the top of the page. Click on Price and then click again. We'll re-sequence the results and remember your preference for future searches. You can see the listings from highest to lowest or lowest to highest price.

Now click on any blue title link. The red link at the top of the listing shows you the seller's file, where he lists, their homepage link, a schedule of catalogues [if they issue them], payment options, some business history and various ways to contact them.

Now scroll down the page. The listing you clicked on is there. Keep on going and there is a link "Click here to purchase or inquire about this book." Select this option.

This opens an email to the seller. It contains all necessary information for the seller to identify the item of interest. You have options to select "I'd like to inquire" or "I'd like to purchase." Next you identify yourself and ask questions or inquire how the sale will be completed. At the bottom you select your preferences for contact. If you click telephone a field will open for your number. If you prefer email select that option. The "Copy me" box is pre-checked. It will send a copy to the email address you have provided to the seller.

Searches can also be initiated on the top of every page through the Rare Book Search and Research link. Auction searches now contain a link to also search the same item in BFS and there is a second link to directly search BFS.

If you are a seller your experience will be different. Your material will be uploaded to be on the other side of the searches.

To list your material in Books for Sale you need to be a Premium Services member. If you aren't a member at this level you'll need to first upgrade to Premium Services ?Octavo. If you are a research member we'll credit you the remaining balance on your subscription and charge you the difference. If you are creating an entirely new account simply look in the Sign-in box for the Sign-Up link. If you are upgrading send us an email [bmckinney@americanaexchange.com]. We'll calculate your credit before you upgrade.

Once signed in the first thing to do is to create your listing in the International Bookseller's Directory. What you put here will be linked to every record you upload or post to BFS. Look in the free services section of the menu [on the left] for the International Bookseller's Directory and then select it. Next you'll see a red link "I want to join this directory." Click here.

Rare Book Monthly

  • Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    26th March 2026
    Forum, Mar. 26: Book of Hours.- Heures a lusaige de Romme, printed on vellum, with 14 full-page illuminated miniatures, Paris, N. Higman for J. de Brie, [c.1521]. £20,000-30,000
    Forum, Mar. 26: France.- Book of Hours, perhaps Use of the Abbey of Saint-Gildas de Rhuys, with thirteen miniatures surviving from an original cycle of at least twenty, [c. 1430]. £15,000-20,000
    Forum, Mar. 26: Milton (John). Paradise lost. A Poem in Ten Books, first edition, Pforzheimer's sixth state, S. Simmons, 1669. £8,000-12,000
    Forum, Mar. 26: Blake (William). Illustrations of the Book of Job, one of 215 first issue "Proof" copies, this one of 65 copies on "French" paper, Published by the Author, March 8, 1825 [but March, 1826]. £15,000-20,000
    Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    26th March 2026
    Forum, Mar. 26: Christie (Agatha). The ABC Murders, first edition, The Crime Club, 1936. £15,000-20,000
    Forum, Mar. 26: Halley (Edmund). Astronomiae Cometicae Synopsis, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, no. 297, pp.1882-99, March 1705. £10,000-15,000
    Forum, Mar. 26: Haytham (Ibn al) [known as Alhazen]. Opticae Thesaurus...Item Vitellonis Thuringopoloni libri X..., first edition, Basel, August, 1572. £20,000-30,000
    Forum, Mar. 26: Kepler (Johannes). Dioptrice seu demonstratio eorum quae visui & visibilibus propter conspicilla non ita pridem inventa accidunt, first edition, Augsburg, David Frank, 1611. £12,000-18,000

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