Special Announcements by Craig Stark #157, 12 September 2011

Some booksellers achieve such a high level of success in their careers that their personas, at least among other booksellers, seem to transcend the great books they bought and sold. Bernard Quaritch is a name that comes to mind when looking back at great 19th century booksellers. And there are several good 20th century candidates, among them A.S.W. Rosenbach, but H.P. Kraus, perhaps because he was contemporary to most of us and made headlines with many of his purchases, stands out with me especially. I recently read his autobiography - A Rare Book Saga - and today's feature article is a response to it and, in effect, a counterpoint to a recent BookThink article.

Chapter 8 of BookThink's Guide to Online Bookselling was delivered recently, and the topic is first edition identification. I take a sort of back door approach to this sometimes aggravating process, one that accelerates it considerably by learning how to identify books that aren't first editions. This greatly reduces the field of candidates we come across and frees up time for deeper research of books survive an initial screening. The focus of this chapter is on practices publishers use to indicate later printings and on dedicated reprint publishers. Included is a list of reprint publishers you are most likely to encounter. Purchase this guide now and receive all eight chapters and all additional chapters as they are issued. Click here.