"I've been in the business for over 70 years and fancy I know a thing or two about it. Nowadays there are far too many amateurs around, and bookshops have deteriorated everywhere. In fact, I can only think of about 20 good bookshops left in this country."
-- English bookseller Charles Traylen, shortly before he died in 2002 at age 96
Traylen was a proud member of the auction ring that got books cheap for decades in a way later ruled to be illegal. He fought enthusiastically against the buyer's premium at the auction houses, believed bookselling was a profession, thought you should buy only the best copy and believed it much smarter when buying a large lot to get rid of the dross first and then keep the good stuff -- the reverse of most booksellers. ABE would have horrified him, eBay made him sick.
Proof Traylen was right about condition arrives in the failure of one of the few known copies of the John Lane edition of Nabokov's Camera Obscura to find a buyer at auction. It was estimated at 9,000 to 12,000 pounds. One look at the copy tells why: it was rather rough, with a new jacket spine reducing the price to a "cheap edition." Reportedly, this is the third attempt to sell it this decade, at ever-lower prices.
Comments