Bericht von der 32. International Antiquarian Book Fair in Boston

With 140 exhibitors from 7 countries, the 32nd annual ABAA Book Fair was held November 14-16 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston’s Back Bay. The event was sold out this year, featuring a record number of dealers. Betty Fulton, the event organizer for many years, estimated by day three that the attendance figure would surpass the 3500 mark, a respectable level under any circumstances. Boston supports its book fairs in a big way, turning the city into a "Gesamtkunstwerk" for the week: along with the ABAA fair, a smaller "Satellite" book fair, still affectionately referred to as the "Garage" show, was also sold out, with 70+ dealers. Along with the two book fairs, Skinner Auctions always has one of its major auctions of the year and several arts and crafts fairs rounded out the weekend. All of this in the context of Boston, a city whose chief "industry" is education, with 50+ universities and over 250,000 (!) students in the area. But the "elephant in the room," to use a good American expression, was the economy, which presented itself, as one colleague called it, as a "cloud of caution" over the book fair. While many collectors were exuberant and looked closely at much of the exhibited material, in most cases they bought in a very focused, disciplined manner. And the book trade was largely cautious as well: a well known colleague from New York, who bought $14k worth of my stock last spring in New York, walked the entire "garage" show floor and appeared to buy nothing. Henry Wessells of James Cummins Books in New York commented to me, "The business has changed abruptly from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market." With the world stock markets in flux, there is less speculative buying. But, as always, experiences varied. Priscilla Juvelis sold three new livres d’artistes titles to an institutional customer for a "very high five digit" amount. John Kuenzig, a first time ABAA exhibitor, had a good book fair, but felt that what was being bought was the "unique and unusual." The gap in value between truly uncommon material and the commonplace item is widening. Twice during setup at the "garage" show, I found rare architectural items at colleagues' booths and when I returned with a check, they were gone! The lesson, clearly, is that good material is still highly sought after. William Reese, one of our best dealers of Americana, looked through every booth at the "Garage" show and commented to me that he was frequently offered mediocre copies of books he already had in inventory (oftentimes with his own description of the book inserted!) at higher prices than he was asking! He did, however buy very well at the ABAA event, even if his sales were off from previous years. I noted in my conversation with Bill that I saw a lot of young, enthusiastic collectors throughout both events. In Germany, by comparison, I tend to see largely an older collector crowd. Bill, whose best customers tend to be the 40+ year olds, who can focus on their intellectual interests once again, after kids and career are settled, was not lamenting a lack of young collectors, he was concerned about a lack of young DEALERS. "This business takes too long to learn, to become accomplished. I don’t see enough young, well educated bookish people going into the business as first careers these days. It requires too much experience to tackle as a 'second career.'" This is certainly something to think about when we’re discussing where the customer of the future will come from ("der Sammlernachwuchs"). Where are the dealers of the future? Perhaps on ebay? Despite falling on economic hard times, the dealers and collectors seemed united in their support of President-elect Barack Obama. Jeffrey Hirsch, a colleague from Evanston, Illinois (Obama's home state) had an inscribed copy of the first edition of Obama's "Audacity of Hope," which he had purchased already signed at the book's opening day in Skokie, Illinois. He sold it to a collector at his full retail price of $1500, while at my booth a pristine, signed copy of President Clinton’s book did not draw any interest, even at $100. As we all know, timing is everything!