Book Collecting For Newbies

A Short Introduction

This is the first part in a series of articles on book collecting for beginners. Future articles will cover book bindings, condition reports, in-person and online buying, etiquette, book fairs, rare book terminology, identifying first editions, and how to sell or donate your collection.

You’re reading this sentence on a bookstore’s Substack. Congratulations! You’ve hit the one requirement it takes to collect books and that’s loving books. You probably already have a lot of them but you look at your shelves and you don’t qualify yourself as a book collector because nothing you see was purchased for more than a couple dollars, maybe twenty at the most. This is a common misconception: the end result of book collecting must be a handsome private library lined with leather and gilt. Another common misconception: book collecting is an expensive pastime upon which thousands of dollars must be spent. Luckily there’s no limit to what you can spend or how. Spend a million dollars on books or spend next to nothing. The basic principles covered below can be applied to how you approach book collecting.

Rule Number One of One: Collect what you love.

If you plan on building a collection on a shoestring budget, first of all I recommend paying attention to the winners of some of the book collecting competitions that are held every year. For example, the winner of the 2021 National Collegiate Book Collecting contest was a young woman who put together a comprehensive bibliography of the children’s book illustrators Leo and Diane Dillon.

You may not know the name but if you grew up in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s you have probably read books adorned with the Dillons’ cover art or illustrations. Nice copies of most of the books in the collection can be found for under $20 and the most cherished item in the collection is a set of Readers Digest Condensed Books that included unrecorded Dillon contributions. Be aware that nowadays Readers Digest Condensed Books are usually doomed for the pulper, but this particular set came from the collector’s grandmother and was the beating heart of the collection.

This is a perfect example of how, with just a little bit of money, a collection now exists that can be used as an invaluable resource not just to the collector herself but also to historians of late 20th century children’s literature, graphic design, and illustration. Other annual book collecting prizes to pay attention to: the Adler Prize and the Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize. Chances are, after reading about these collections you may discover that you already have a collection burgeoning in your home.

A book collection usually has a common thread, even if that thread is simply “High Spots of 20th Century American Literature” or “Rad Dames Whose Books I Like.” Some collectors use an author bibliography as a checklist, while others approach their collection from a tangent. One of the brilliant collections featured by the Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize this year centered on the editorial legacy of Toni Morrison, comprising the works she edited during her tenure at Random House.

A few highlights from our 20th century casual dining menus collection

Members of the Capitol Hill Books team are also busy building collections that will expand our knowledge of the printed word a hundredfold. By which we mean that we are in the process of putting together a comprehensive collection of casual dining menus the likes of which the world has never seen, though we have yet to lay hands on the white whale of the collection — an Applebee’s menu from the 1970s that included roast quail of all things. I mean what’s next? Wild boar at TGI Fridays? It is also the only example of book collecting that exists in which caloric intake plays a key factor in the greatness of the collection. Once you approach book collecting as if it were a burger at your favorite urban sprawl restaurant chain rather than the flank steak wrapped in gold foil at a slightly higher-end restaurant chain, the possibilities are boundless.

L.N.G.