Stealing Books-A Bookscout's Guide To Book Collecting

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Sections
  Introduction
  Chapter 1
  Chapter 2
  Chapter 3
  Chapter 4
  Chapter 5
  Chapter 6
  Chapter 7
  Chapter 8
  Appendix 1
  Appendix 2
  Appendix 3
  Appendix 4

Chapter 1 - What To Collect

What To Collect
The first thing you need to do is to identify the types of books that you want to collect. What kind of books do you like to read?

The trick to book scouting is to know more about the books than the people that you are buying the books from. And then to find the books, and then to buy them. In order to know more about the books you need to know what books you're collecting. Sit down and make a list of the types of things you want to, the types of books that you want to collect. Are you interested in first edition hard covers? Are you interested in psychology books. Are you interested in martial arts books? Or maybe 19th century cookbooks? Decide. And then what you are going to do is you're going to make a list of title. For instance if you are interested in collecting first edition hard covers of say Dean Koontz, what you want to do is make a list of the books that Dean Koontz has written. Many of his earlier books, the first editions were only paperbacks. Later on as he became a more well known author, his first editions were in hard cover. So what you want to do is make a list. Now you want to go out to some book comparison sites and look up the values of these books. Go out to say bookfinder.com and look up each of these books one by one. You can start off with putting in Dean Koontz's name, and check the box for first edition. You may also want to check the box for hardcover as well. Do a search, and find what the value to some of the cheaper copies are. Some of the cheapest copies may be ex-library copies which you may not be interested in, but you want to note these anyway. Look, also note down what fine condition hard cover in a fine dust jacket sells for. Try to get an idea for the value of, of what this book is selling for at different book stores. So now go ahead and make a list of the different books and what the values are, what they're worth. Make a list, make it as a computer file and keep adding to the computer file. And what you're going to do is, you're going to print this out into a small booklet, and with the booklet you'll be armed with your own personal price guide for the types of books you're interested in collecting. So as you go into a used book store, you find say a Dean Koontz book on the shelf. The book is priced at $35. Is it worth $35? If you can go off and buy a book in the same condition online for $10, why buy it for $35? On the other hand, if a book in similar condition, the cheapest copy available online is $100, that $35 book is probably a great deal. So what you have to do is make your list.

Don’t let people tell you what to collect or not collect. It’s your collection. If you want to collect all the books by a particular author, go ahead. If you want to collect first editions of that author, then go for it. Maybe you can’t afford a first edition of their first book. If you can find a nice book club edition of their first book, and you are okay with that, fine. It won’t have the resale value of a first edition, but it’s you collection, not anyone else’s. If later on you find a first edition of the book at a price you can afford, you can replace the book club copy. You can then sell the book club edition, or donate it, or give it away.

You decide what books interest you. Maybe you want to collect by author. Maybe you want to by subject, say books on quilting, or books on martial arts. Maybe you want to collect baseball related fiction. Maybe you want to collect the second novels of left handed authors whose names begin with a vowel. It’s entirely up to you.

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