By Mike Stillman
Antbo is looking for listing booksellers. According to their figures, they are already doing quite well. They claim to now have 5.9 million books listed by 529 booksellers. That is a lot of books and booksellers for a site that probably many readers, even those in the book business, had never heard of before. I come here neither to praise nor condemn Antbo. I know nothing about this German book listing site. I mention it only for illustration.
Perhaps counterintuitively, the online bookselling market seems to be expanding and fragmenting, rather than contracting. The...
By Bruce McKinney
Catalogues have been an essential tool for both buyers and sellers for fully two hundred years. For generations
book dealers issued catalogues to provide organized perspe...
By Renee Magriel Roberts
The Internet has not only pushed bookselling into automation, but also into hypertension-producing foreign markets. It's great having access to all those bookstores i...
By Bruce McKinney
In the AED there is an option to test your expectation of a book's present value against the computer generated estimate provided in the AED. This is possible because a link ...
By Michael Stillman
Google has landed another partner for its massive and controversial book scanning project. This time it is the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1825. T...
By Carl Burnham
When it comes to book collectors, we have seen interests run the gamut from fiction to nonfiction. Whatever the genre, a signature only adds to the value. When we are out book sco...
By Bruce McKinney
The opportunities to find interesting material for the book collector have never been greater. Neither have the
options for bidding and buying been better. How you appro...
By Michael Stillman
Biblio, third largest of the used and old book sites, announced some interesting and surprising data regarding visitors to their site. In a recent news release, they reporte...
By Bruce McKinney
The purpose of book catalogues is to sell books. In the modern era there have never been more books and fewer catalogues because the world has moved on to bigger and worse th...
By Michael Stillman
"Like a drop of oil on a still pond, the number of his victims spreads with time. Smiley's victims include students, scholars, academics, the general public and individuals...
The holidays create a popular season for booksellers to issue catalogues, and this year is no exception. This month, we review sixteen new ones in Section Two of AE Monthly. We find a variety of ty...
ALDE, Apr. 8: GUEVARA (ANTONIO DE). Histoire de Marc-Aurèle, Empereur Romain, vray miroir et horloge des Princes. Paris, Pierre et Galliot du Pré, frères, 1565. €3,000 to €4,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: HEURES DE LA VIERGE. Horæ in laudem beatissimæ virginis Mariæ ad usum Romanum. Paris, Charles L'Angelier, 1556. €4,000 to €5,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: MONTAIGNE (MICHEL DE). Les Essais. Édition nouvelle, trouvée après le deceds de l'autheur… Paris, Abel L'Angelier, 1595. €6,000 to €8,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: [ROJAS (FERNANDO DE)]. Celestina, tragicomedia di Calisto et Melibea, tradotta de lingua castigliana in italiano idioma… Venise, 1531. €2,000 to €3,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: CAMÕES (LUÍS DE). Os Lusiadas. Lisbonne, Pedro Crasbeeck, 1613. €2,000 to €3,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: CERVANTES (MIGUEL DE). El Ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Bruxelles, Roger Velpius & Huberto Antonio, 1611. €6,000 to €8,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: LA FONTAINE (JEAN DE). Fables choisies, mises en vers. Paris, Denys Thierry et Claude Barbin, 1678-1694. €6,000 to €8,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: CERVANTES (MIGUEL DE). El Ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Madrid, Joaquin Ibarra, 1780. €3,000 to €4,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: DIDEROT (DENIS) ET JEAN LE ROND D'ALEMBERT. Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. Paris, 1751-1765. €15,000 to €20,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: [LIVRE TISSÉ]. LAMARTINE (Alphonse de). Les Laboureurs. Poème tiré de Jocelyn… Lyon, J. A. Henry, 1883. €8,000 to €10,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: [LIVRE TISSÉ]. Livre de prières tissé d'après les enluminures des manuscrits du XIVe au XVIe siècle. Lyon, [A. Roux], 1886. €5,000 to €6,000.
Sotheby’s Books, Manuscripts & Objects from Three Important Collections Open for Bidding 2-17 April
Sotheby’s, Apr. 2-17: [Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun]. Le Roman de la Rose, [Geneva or Lyons, c.1481], first printed edition of the most important medieval French vernacular poem. £200,000 to £300,000.
Sotheby’s, Apr. 2-17: Castiglione. Il libro del cortegiano. [Venice], April 1528, first edition, in a magnificent binding by Jean Picard for Jean Grolier. £100,000 to £150,000.
Sotheby’s, Apr. 2-17: Jacobus de Cessolis. Schachzabelbuch, Strasbourg, 1483, von der Lasa copy. £50,000 to £70,000.
Sotheby’s, Apr. 2-17: World Championship, 1972. A collection of 84 press photographs of the famed match between Spassky and Fischer. £2,000 to £3,000.
Sotheby’s, Apr. 2-17: Ben Franklin. Autograph letter signed, to Lord Shelburne, British Prime Minister, during peace negotiations, November 1782. £15,000 to £20,000.
