BY STEPHEN BAKES
You know that feeling you sometimes get where you come to the last page of a really great book and you can’t quite believe that it’s over? You want it to keep going. You want something more. That’s the first symptom of a burgeoning addiction to book collecting.
There isn’t one type of book collector. If you’ve ever kept a copy of a book that you had already finished reading, you’ve already started in collecting books. If you’ve ever bought a hardcover copy to replace the paperback, you are getting deep into addiction.
How to get started
Buy what you like.
Although your book collection may go up in value over time, it’s never guaranteed. If you focus your collection on books that you know that you love, you will always be surrounded with a collection that reflects your love.
Find a theme.
The focus of your collection may be a specific author, subject, binding style, series. You may want to collect rare works by classic authors, or you may collect paperback editions of golden era science fiction with their arresting cover illustrations. Collections are as diverse as their owners.
Start slowly.
One of the easiest ways to get started is to find a specific book that you love and buy a really nice copy of that book. It doesn’t need to be cost prohibitive to start. If, for example, one of your favorite books is For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway, you may be ready to spend a few hundred or a few thousand on a really lovely first edition, first issue with all the right points (what are points of issue?), but you can also buy a facsimile of the first edition, published by the First Edition Library, for only a few dollars.
You can read the complete article here.
No comments:
Post a Comment