How I Made $600 Selling One Book: What Makes a First Edition Valuable
There is a series of murder mysteries by John Dunning featuring a book dealer/crime solver that I both love and find infuriating. In the novels, the former police officer turned bookseller Cliff Janeway goes from bookstore to bookstore and thrift store to thrift store and at each stop he happens across first editions valued in the thousands, or an a bad afternoon stop, he might *just* come across a couple of minor Jack Kerouac first editions. This is basically softcore porn for book collectors, so I like them in the same way I enjoy reading something like Mark Halperin and John Heilman’s gossipy behind-the-scenes campaign book Game Change. It’s trash but addictive trash.
I also find these books infuriating because living in Springfield, Missouri and having spent over a decade constantly scouring the city for rare and collectible books, my best finds equate to a mediocre Thursday morning at a garage sale for Janeway. Also, I’ve never solved an antiquarian bookstore murder or been seduced by a bookish two-timing heiress that I later learn killed her own father, so she could sell his collection of 17th century Thumb Bibles because he had cut her out of the will. Both things I desperately want to happen.
Earlier this week, I discussed how to identify a first edition, so now let’s look at some of the things that make a particular book valuable. One thing used booksellers have to commonly do is explain to a hopeful person that the “old” books they are pretty certain are worth a small fortune can actually be purchased in better condition online for $1.00 plus $3.99 shipping. It’s a bit like being the Antiques Roadshow host except I don’t have that six-figure PBS salary from thousands of fundraising pledges, yet I still have to continually break hearts by explaining that “No, this 1930’s copy of Little Women with water damage isn’t going to put your son through college. I’m sorry.”
- Condition
This one is fairly obvious. No one wants your first edition of White Noise that reeks of cat spray and has dented corners and chocolate stain fingerprints from the time you needed to find out what was going on with that Airborne Toxic Event but also just had to have a Dove Bar right then. For the biggest lunatics, like me, the smallest blemish, a slight dent to a corner, will make the book worthless for my collection (personal collection, not the store: bring me your dented White Noises!)
Many of the biggest near-finds of my book searching have been rendered nearly worthless due to condition. I found a third printing of the first edition of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at a book fair in Iowa that looked like someone had dumped an entire bottle of grape juice onto it at whatever commune they were passing it around. You hippies cost me $1000.00.
Other heartbreaks included former library first printings of Don Delillo’s first novel Americana and Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Ex-library copies will usually have library stickers that cannot be removed without damaging the book and library stamps on the first page. Many used bookstores won’t take former library books — collectible or otherwise — since they make the shelves look tacky.
2. Scarcity
In 2006, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road received just about every possible accolade imaginable: a Pulitzer Prize, a deal for a movie adaptation to star Viggo Mortensen, Oprah’s seal of approval as well as wide critical and commercial success; however, even though The Road is considered by many to be one of McCarthy’s greatest works, it will never be as valuable as McCarthy’s early, less commercially successful novels. His second novel Outer Dark sells for something in the $1,000 range while I will sell you a first printing of The Road for $20.00 (okay, I just checked and we’re out of first editions right now, give me a week and I’ll find you one). This is simply due to scarcity of each. The first print run of The Road was 250,000 copies; whereas, even a book like Blood Meridian now considered by many to be his masterpiece had an initial print run of only 5,000.
This is why first editions from massively popular writers like John Grisham and James Patterson will never be valuable. The print runs are far too large and copies are too easily found. Go to just about any Goodwill in the country and see how many copies of Stephanie Meyer’s New Moon you see (see also: our sales shelf. Please, come buy it from our sales shelf!).
This is why a lot of collectors will speculate with new novelists and buy up a number of their first novels before the young writer wins a Pulitzer or receives wide readership. Sure, you could end up with a shelf full of Mark Leyner (sorry, Mark) but you could also have a row of copies of David Foster Wallace’s The Broom of the System now worth $2,000.
3. Desirability
This is obviously the most important factor because if you have a pristine, signed copy of a book with a limited edition print run of 100, written by a former cast member of The Bachelorette and no one wants it, then who cares. So what goes into making a book desirable?
Scarcity can play into desirability. As I mentioned above although very well regarded, McCarthy’s earliest novels wouldn’t have the same value if he had not later established himself as one of the best novelists of his generation.
The main other components that go into a book’s desirability are the popularity (or cult following) of the author, literary merit (is the book destined to be a classic or will it be out of print in twenty years), and literary awards (when a novel wins the Pulitzer Prize it becomes automatically collectible — even if just briefly, depending on the print run).
There are a few other things that can make a first edition temporarily desirable: a movie adaptation (when the Gone Girl film came out, I sold a first edition for $75), a literary prize (when A Visit From the Goon Squad won the Pulitzer, I went to Borders and bought 3 first editions and sold them for $100 each; they can now be purchased for about $30), or an author death.
4. Signatures
Is the book signed? Yes. Then it’s worth more. Duh. A signature becomes more or less valuable depending on how prolific a signer is. The signature of an author who tours and signs consistently will be worth much less than recluses like Thomas Pynchon or Cormac McCarthy whose signatures you are likely only to get by winning a charity auction for a signed copy. A signed first edition of Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon that was won at a charity auction sells for $20,000. I’m currently staring at two unsigned first editions on our shelves, $8.00 each.
So the combination of all of these factors, typically leads to a collectible book. In 2010, I attended the Printer’s Row Book Fair in Chicago where Christopher Hitchens was reading from his newly released memoir Hitch-22. I purchased a first edition, which I then got inscribed by Hitchens. Hitchens would cut the book tour short after being diagnosed with cancer, which he died from a year later. Because there were few signed copies of Hitch-22 (scarcity) and he was a prominent literary figure who had just passed away (desirability) and it was a first printing in excellent condition, there were very few similar copies available for sale after his death. So my copy, for which I paid $25 dollars sold a few hours after I listed it online for $600 (The cheapest one currently available sells for $850).
I will deal with the question of whether or not bookdealers are opportunistic vultures and untrustworthy scumbags in a later post — the answer to both, of course, is yes. I’m convinced most would have been graverobbers in an earlier era.
