Rare Book Monthly

Articles - September - 2008 Issue

Bookselling: Making it Personal

The 12th-century Theological Hall of the Strahov Abbey Library, Prague.


About a week later, the man called again. I recognized his name immediately. He told me that he had been taking care of his dying mother for 9 months, and that she had wanted him to read the book to her. The book arrived in time; she died the following morning. He was calling to thank us.

I became emotional and it was difficult to speak. He was calm. He had spent 9 months accepting her death and felt a calmness about it, he said. We hung out on the phone for a few minutes before saying goodbye.

The next day, a new email comes in from an entirely different customer, exuberant. "Who is this woman?" the email rhetorically says. She loves the packaging, the recycled paper, the postcard of my grandmother. And moreover, she is full of information and links to a wonderful website with pictures of fabulous libraries worldwide. And she is interested in textiles and mathematics. And she is an author.

I have to print this one out. I answer it quickly with more information. Just a quick business-type email won't do. I'm still working on a letter. It is one of those flash-connections that occasionally happen on the Web.

Other emails follow: a brief note from a gentleman out West who is studying the history of his family and has purchased a New England genealogical book. A query, followed by a sale, of a set of the writings of an early US president, combined with a request for help in developing a library of works that are related to his research. A now-daily telephone call from a friend, who bought some works by another American president, and now is working with me on an annotated bibliography to be published by Clock & Rose Press.

Why do these transactions turn into relationships and connections that enrich us beyond monetary profit? It is hard to say exactly. I think that certainly taking care that the information and the order are handled as well as possible creates a meaningful communication. Posting our contact information says we encourage dialogue. Adding a note or a question to a confirmation is another way in which we reach out.

Or maybe, something else is happening in the ether between us and our customers and the books.

In any event, when I feel bogged down, or overworked, I remember that we have chosen not to just sell widgets. It is a bit more work to go beyond just good transactions, and to make bookselling personal, but that is the only way we want to do it.

Renée Magriel Roberts can be reached at renee@roses-books.com.

Rare Book Monthly

  • 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
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    Part IX
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    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: FIRST PRINTING OF LINCOLN’S IMMORTAL GETTYSBURG ADDRESS. $4,000 to $6,000.
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    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.
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    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.
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    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
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    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
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    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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    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: ONLY KNOWN COPY OF THE ONLY BOOK BY THE REMARKABLE EVE ADAMS. $8,000 - $12,000
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