A book is an artistic medium in the sense that it is a collection of pictures, words or written information typically written in a single volume bound together and decorated with a cover. The technical term for such a physical arrangement is bookcase. Bookcases may consist of a single large bookcase or a series of smaller bookcases connected by glass or metal bars. Bookcases are most commonly found in libraries, schools or college dorms.
For convenience, we use the term bookcase to refer to any wooden, metal or digital furniture used to organize, display and safeguard written materials. Bookcases come in a variety of styles and sizes, but their basic function remains the same – to store, protect and display books and other reading material. Bookcases serve an important institutional trader function as well – they preserve and guard printed works of art for posterity. As such, we usually think of bookcases as belonging to the professional section of the furniture market – but that is only one segment of the market.
Order book values are determined by a number of factors. These include the condition of the book itself, its age (published or unpublished), its language (traditional, modern, academic or colloquial) and its provenance (who produced it, where it was published and who signed the copyright). While some of these specifications are beyond our scope of this article, a quick survey will reveal the major categories of book values for institutional traders: first edition, hardback or back-cover, limited, first published, publisher/authorited, author unknown, shelf not published, hardback/back-cover borrowed, publisher unknown, previously published, previously sold and hardback/back-cover new. (I note here the overlap between the previously published/known and author unknown categories – in which case we recommend learning more about the individual works.)
In terms of the physical shape of the book, the common practice is to leave one edge open. Traders do this because it facilitates quick retrieval and means they don’t have to bend over backwards to get the pages. Another advantage is the increased space available for notes and margin notes. The general rule is that one edge of the book should be roughly half a page in thickness. Note that the thickness of the pages does not have a direct bearing on the book’s value – the weight of the pages and the thickness of the cover have a greater impact on the value of the book.
Traders are advised to treat newly published books with care: the likelihood is that some unscrupulous publisher has bound together many similar but different pages. To differentiate one variant from another, it is usually preferable to examine the spine of the text block. Pages within a book can be loosely arranged in either front or inside covers (or sometimes even in back or end covers, depending on the overall design of the book). A book can be “closed” at any point along the spine – whether at the top or bottom, or at any location along the spine. (An “open book” is one in which the pages are spread across the spine in a left to right orientation.)
As is commonly the case with bad books (and even good books), a new book that is bound together by its author has had little or no editing at all – it may have been written with very little thought given to coherence. It is important not to think that the “bad book” label automatically applies to all new published works. In fact it is quite the opposite: many contemporary writers (including some of the best books today) are self-published and receive poor reviews for purely superficial reasons: the lack of editorial care and attention given to the text. As we shall see shortly, the “bad book” label can also be used to apply to certain kinds of published work that would not be classified as a “good book” by the established standards of publishing. This label is intended to be a short-term one; a publisher looking to market a book should always aim to make it into a closed book, rather than an open one.
A book publisher who wishes to publish a book of moderate size (around a thousand pages) can certainly save money by simply going the route of joint venture publishing with a co-publisher or co-writer. In this case both authors contribute to the writing of the book, with the author retaining copyrights and having the other person retain editorial rights (she is, in effect, acting as a publisher). The disadvantages of this are that joint venture book publishing can be expensive; it is often difficult to find a suitable co-publisher or co-writer; and in cases where the project is a commercial success, the work can take longer to complete. Moreover, if the publisher wants to be particularly hands on, she will have to give over editorial control to the other person involved, which can be difficult if she does not know their background or interests. This type of book publication model can alienate some authors who may have an interest in a more “creative” format.
A book publisher may decide to go the self-published route. In this case, she will retain all rights to the content of the book itself, with the only thing needing to be purchased being the printing rights. She would also work with a small team of editors and produce the book herself. There is also the cost savings here: with no need for a board of directors, no need for a significant amount of production funding, and little risk involved, self-publishing can be a highly cost-effective business model. The downside is that without a significant initial investment, the self-published author will probably not receive any profit until the book has been sold. Once it has been sold, the author will still need to do all the traditional book publishing marketing, including book reviews, book signings, and promotional activities.