1SEltawil
So I walked into a second hand book store with my almost 3 years old today and asked where the children's books where . I was told this bookshop is mainly for collectors and after a quick exchange i left without looking at any books. I feel snubbed.
A bit of background for context.I occasionally read adult young adult fiction but my interest in children books grew exponentially after I became a Mum. I started off buying popular baby board books and soon became interested in the variety of formats( pop ups, slides, shape books). I also found myself buying lots of chapter books. After a while I labelled myself a collector, mainly to sound more sane. I soon realised that for me books are interesting because of their content rather than their editions, and I am not willing to invest in a rare or first edition, and would prefer a newer, more legible format.
I buy a lot of new books for my child ( ventured more i to second hand after we stopped biting books). I visit charity (US thrift?) shops on a weekly basis and also buy a lot online. I never pay too much for a single book. My “collection “ is currently a few hundred strong.
My aim is completeness. For authors I like I would like to own everything they wrote. I look through lists of “ must read “book and books winning prizes aiming to own most acclaimed books. I would like to have examples of books that were popular in different eras and by authors from different countries, but not in languages i cannot understand. I am also looking for books I liked as a child.
I know it can take many years to build a decent collection ( if i maintain the interest and have the money and storage space). I don’t think i will be ever have something of a high monetary value, but hope it will have some value for other people interested in books.
So my question is; do I still count as a collector or do I need to relabel myself?
A bit of background for context.I occasionally read adult young adult fiction but my interest in children books grew exponentially after I became a Mum. I started off buying popular baby board books and soon became interested in the variety of formats( pop ups, slides, shape books). I also found myself buying lots of chapter books. After a while I labelled myself a collector, mainly to sound more sane. I soon realised that for me books are interesting because of their content rather than their editions, and I am not willing to invest in a rare or first edition, and would prefer a newer, more legible format.
I buy a lot of new books for my child ( ventured more i to second hand after we stopped biting books). I visit charity (US thrift?) shops on a weekly basis and also buy a lot online. I never pay too much for a single book. My “collection “ is currently a few hundred strong.
My aim is completeness. For authors I like I would like to own everything they wrote. I look through lists of “ must read “book and books winning prizes aiming to own most acclaimed books. I would like to have examples of books that were popular in different eras and by authors from different countries, but not in languages i cannot understand. I am also looking for books I liked as a child.
I know it can take many years to build a decent collection ( if i maintain the interest and have the money and storage space). I don’t think i will be ever have something of a high monetary value, but hope it will have some value for other people interested in books.
So my question is; do I still count as a collector or do I need to relabel myself?
2GraceCollection
You are still a collector. Some collectors focus only on the monetary value and condition of the items they have, this is probably the type of person that secondhand shop meant to appeal to. Some of us care about the content of the books we collect, and may not have or want to spend money on expensive books in such a condition that we probably shouldn't ever read them just in case it causes the value to go down.
It isn't really fair either way, but the shopkeep may have snubbed you out of fear that your child would cause damage to expensive/valuable items. I'm sure your child knows how to behave around books, but I wouldn't be surprised if that shop had had negative experiences with children whose parents couldn't be arsed to teach them proper manners and/or watch them whilst in public. Again, not really fair to you, but I can see the reasoning behind it.
I'm sorry you had this experience. Don't let others stop you from collecting!
It isn't really fair either way, but the shopkeep may have snubbed you out of fear that your child would cause damage to expensive/valuable items. I'm sure your child knows how to behave around books, but I wouldn't be surprised if that shop had had negative experiences with children whose parents couldn't be arsed to teach them proper manners and/or watch them whilst in public. Again, not really fair to you, but I can see the reasoning behind it.
I'm sorry you had this experience. Don't let others stop you from collecting!
3rshart3
>1 SEltawil: You sure sound like a collector to me. And there are people in this forum who collect children's or young adult books, including completists. There's still a fair amount of prejudice against children's & YA. I did readers advisory in libraries for years, and I can't count how many times I had to promote the fact that good books in those categories are just as good as "adult" books, including for adult readers. That store person may suffer from the prejudice. Happily, there are many other book stores...
4Keeline
When I managed an antiquarian bookstore specializing in children's books for a dozen years (1988-2000) in San Diego, California, USA, we had all sorts of people visit, browse, and sometimes buy books. We had books from 50¢ to $2,000 so hopefully there was something for most budgets. Some books were only available at higher prices though because of the scarcity factors.
I don't think it is a smart move to look down upon anyone who visits. It's true we often had questions about whether "this" was a "library." We tried to spin it in a positive way by saying that it was better because you could adopt the books and give them a forever home.
Of course many vehemently denied that they were collectors. I think the real issue was that they didn't want to spend very much on any given book. But when someone is interested in particular formats or tries to get everything by an author or artist or in a series, whether common or scarce, that person has slipped in to "collector" status, even if they are not ready to admit it to themselves.
We had a play room in the store with a castle motif that had some books that could stand rough treatment and wer not particularly expensive if anyone wanted to buy them.
The store had about 30,000 out-of-print and collectible children's books plus about 6,000 titles of new books. I left them in 2000 and it was not possible for the store to remain open for many years after I left.
I still collect and buy and sell children's books, especially juvenile series books. I'm writing a Series Book Encyclopedia to get into the hundreds of series, thousands of volumes, and many people who helped to make them. The draft is about 618 pages right now. My publisher has a cap of 700 pages.
Among the things I did a lot in the bookstore was play the "name that book" game. I also used our extensive reference library and resources (most pre-Internet) to pull together lists of books by an author, artist, or in a series so people could have an idea of what else was out there to find.
There are few bookstores remaining — less than 1/10 of what I used to see in the 1990s. Even in large cities like Los Angeles, there are just a few and they are spread far and wide. The place where the bookstore I managed was had as many as a dozen bookstores on Adams Avenue between 32nd Street (our corner) and 35th Street. Now there are no bookstores in that part of town in the conventional used book sense. There are maybe half a dozen stores across the entire county. Compare this with over 100 members of the San Diego Booksellers Association in the 1990s. The Internet and downturns in the economy were not kind to bookstores. It's too hard for them to meet the skyrocketing expenses of keeping an open shop.
Despite all of this, if you look around, you can find sellers and mentors who may be able to help. For a century and more book collecting has been something of a mentorship, often both ways, between seller and collector. Now with purchases made online in a largely anonymous transaction for the lowest price copy, it is harder to have that mutually-beneficial relationship.
If there are book fairs in your area, visit them too and learn what you can. Maybe you can't buy much at them but you can learn a lot. But if something is close to affordable to you, even a stretch, it may be well to get it. It helps you and the seller. It may be something you won't find again online or in stores, especially once shipping and/or gas and time are considered. The seller risks it all to bring items to a fair. Often you work a dozen hours a day just to make money for the booth costs and no real profit or even paying for the books sold.
For all of these reasons, I can't live from books and research. I have a computer career for my day job.
James
I don't think it is a smart move to look down upon anyone who visits. It's true we often had questions about whether "this" was a "library." We tried to spin it in a positive way by saying that it was better because you could adopt the books and give them a forever home.
Of course many vehemently denied that they were collectors. I think the real issue was that they didn't want to spend very much on any given book. But when someone is interested in particular formats or tries to get everything by an author or artist or in a series, whether common or scarce, that person has slipped in to "collector" status, even if they are not ready to admit it to themselves.
We had a play room in the store with a castle motif that had some books that could stand rough treatment and wer not particularly expensive if anyone wanted to buy them.
The store had about 30,000 out-of-print and collectible children's books plus about 6,000 titles of new books. I left them in 2000 and it was not possible for the store to remain open for many years after I left.
I still collect and buy and sell children's books, especially juvenile series books. I'm writing a Series Book Encyclopedia to get into the hundreds of series, thousands of volumes, and many people who helped to make them. The draft is about 618 pages right now. My publisher has a cap of 700 pages.
Among the things I did a lot in the bookstore was play the "name that book" game. I also used our extensive reference library and resources (most pre-Internet) to pull together lists of books by an author, artist, or in a series so people could have an idea of what else was out there to find.
There are few bookstores remaining — less than 1/10 of what I used to see in the 1990s. Even in large cities like Los Angeles, there are just a few and they are spread far and wide. The place where the bookstore I managed was had as many as a dozen bookstores on Adams Avenue between 32nd Street (our corner) and 35th Street. Now there are no bookstores in that part of town in the conventional used book sense. There are maybe half a dozen stores across the entire county. Compare this with over 100 members of the San Diego Booksellers Association in the 1990s. The Internet and downturns in the economy were not kind to bookstores. It's too hard for them to meet the skyrocketing expenses of keeping an open shop.
Despite all of this, if you look around, you can find sellers and mentors who may be able to help. For a century and more book collecting has been something of a mentorship, often both ways, between seller and collector. Now with purchases made online in a largely anonymous transaction for the lowest price copy, it is harder to have that mutually-beneficial relationship.
If there are book fairs in your area, visit them too and learn what you can. Maybe you can't buy much at them but you can learn a lot. But if something is close to affordable to you, even a stretch, it may be well to get it. It helps you and the seller. It may be something you won't find again online or in stores, especially once shipping and/or gas and time are considered. The seller risks it all to bring items to a fair. Often you work a dozen hours a day just to make money for the booth costs and no real profit or even paying for the books sold.
For all of these reasons, I can't live from books and research. I have a computer career for my day job.
James
5SEltawil
>3 rshart3: I do enjoy reading the books. And I do not buy books I am not interested ti rest either gir enjoyment or curiosity. I think GraceCollection is probably right the bookshop lady was a bit worried I had a small child with me. To be fair it is a very small space stacked with precious books and navigating safety would have been challenging
6Glacierman
>1 SEltawil: Oh, you are indeed a collector! You acquire books with a specific focus rather than take a scatter-gun approach. Books don't have to be expensive or rare to be collected.
I once knew a fellow who collected mass-market paperbacks for the cover art and as long as the cover was in decent shape and he didn't already have it, he'd buy it. He haunted the local used book shop which is drowning in paperbacks and rarely ever spent more than a few bucks on a book. He would upgrade one he had from a poor copy to a better one if the opportunity arose. He was most definitely a collector! Not a rare book collector, but a collector nonetheless.
Stay the course!
I once knew a fellow who collected mass-market paperbacks for the cover art and as long as the cover was in decent shape and he didn't already have it, he'd buy it. He haunted the local used book shop which is drowning in paperbacks and rarely ever spent more than a few bucks on a book. He would upgrade one he had from a poor copy to a better one if the opportunity arose. He was most definitely a collector! Not a rare book collector, but a collector nonetheless.
Stay the course!
7elahrairah
Yes, of course you're a collector. It was just the wrong shop!
Aside, people often describe me as a book collector, because I have quite a few books, but actually I am not a collector really, I don't think of my books as a collection per se, its just a big and heavy To Read pile. Of course, some of my LT 'collection' is stuff I have collected, but I am interested in ephemera, zines, fandom, that sort of thing.
Aside, people often describe me as a book collector, because I have quite a few books, but actually I am not a collector really, I don't think of my books as a collection per se, its just a big and heavy To Read pile. Of course, some of my LT 'collection' is stuff I have collected, but I am interested in ephemera, zines, fandom, that sort of thing.
8GlennaMacKenzie
I am a collector, but not a book hoarder or bibliophile. My books come and go (yes, more come than go!), but I buy what interests me that I would like to read. In fact, there is a Japanese word that describes me: tsundoku. It means literally "pile up" and "read". In other words, I buy books with the intention of reading them, but they pile up before I get to them! It makes me feel better that I am NOT a book hoarder.
