beating the bushes for new collectors...

We, as dealers, owe it to ourselves and the entire collecting community to reach out and actively develop new collectors. It is not good enough to sit back on our laurels and wait for book buyers to come to us. Well, to be fair, this is fine if you run a high volume shop…but for those of us with more boutique practices, cultivating the next generation is critically important. More than half the collections I am currently building are for people who did not “collect” before we began working together. This is not only good for me and my business, but at least as importantly, it is good for the bookseller community (e.g. several of these “new collectors” have taken great pleasure in beginning to attend book fairs and/or are getting involved in local bibliophilic activities.

On that front, I also think we need to start pushing our local organizations (e.g. MABA, MARIAB, Baxter Society, etc.) to support such educational efforts. I know the ABAA is making some efforts on this front…I am inclined to think that their time might be best spent if they were supporting the regional organizations with ideas and content. There was a time when joining a state’s bookseller organization was primarily to get one’s name in the printed book that collector’s pick up at various sites…that is, it was largely a marketing matter. ABAA has succeeded in showing that it should also convey an ethical practices guarantee (this is likely to be the focus of a future post…the regionals need to really embrace this idea). I suggest that going forward, one of the defining foci of the regional organizations should be on the education and cultivation of new collectors. We need to show people that the greatest thing most of them will ever create is a private library. More to follow….