Thursday, March 28, 2013

LIBRARY FOR SALE



At the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair, held at The Coliseum in St Petersburg on March 8th through the 10th, I gave out the following postcard-sized notice to about twenty booksellers:





My phone was not ringing off the hook, nor did I receive any emails from booksellers wanting to buy my collections right now –– as one bookseller friend told me, "Most booksellers are in the selling mode and not the buying mode." But several out-of-state booksellers expressed interest in buying some of my books for stock next year, saving them the trouble of transporting books to the show.

Several book collectors have expressed an interest in acquiring portions of my library as well. And it is up to me to decide when to sell to them. As the days go by, however, I am leaning more towards keeping most of my books for myself as long as possible, and less towards selling my books off lock, stock and barrel right now. I enjoy looking at my bookshelves just the way they are, and don't know if I can bear looking at bare shelves again.



But I am making a list of potential buyers and what books they might be interested in for the executors of my estate. And I am thinking of adding private comments to the listings of the books on Library Thing –– comments concerning the value and collectibility of some of my books.  All my books about books will have this bookplate lightly pasted in them:



Some collections, such as my Poetry Collection, are up for sale now.