Make love for books pay
G.S.Cheema

Having committed myself to paying what most sane people would consider an absurd amount for a single book, I decided to do some research on book collecting as an investment. That books can be a good investment is indisputable, but not all books. One has to apply one’s mind, and study the market, and it helps if one is a little crazy about books.

On eBay first editions of Hemingway’s novels routinely sell for hundreds of dollars, while Ian Fleming’s thrillers can fetch ten times that sum. But the tragedy is that the stray copy of Casino Royale or The Old Man and the Sea is much more likely to get thrown out with the raddi than those elegant looking volumes of the Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, which are in fact perfectly worthless. Yes, even that leather-bound volume of War and Peace, which one’s grandfather may have picked up in a London flea-market during a visit abroad in the 1950s – classic though it no doubt is!

The story of Audubon’s Birds of America – one of the world’s most famous books – is particularly instructive. Audubon published his Birds in parts over a period of 11 years. The completed work, containing 435 plates was bound in four massive volumes (or ‘double elephant folios’ as they are called on account of their size), which sold for about $1000 in 1838. By no means a small sum today, in 1838 it was unquestionably prodigious. In all, only about 200 complete sets were sold. The last time one of them came on the market was in 2000 and it was snapped up by the Emir of Qatar for the sum of $8.8 million, which is twice what the previous set fetched in 1992! It is the highest price ever paid for a single work.

After this extravagantly expensive edition Audubon came out with a smaller and cheaper edition published in seven volumes in `royal octavo’. This too was sold initially by subscription and proved a resounding success, seeing eight printings by 1871. Today this sells for around $100,000.

In 1971 a facsimile of the massive original edition of 1838 was brought out in Amsterdam. It was a limited edition of only 250 copies. This too now retails for $100,000! Its prints –originally sold individually for $12.50 – can fetch thousands of dollars!

Besides Audubon, other illustrated natural history works (particularly on birds and flowers) are good investments. Till the end of the nineteenth century, illustrations were usually hand painted, so in the case of the finer books, they are often extremely attractive. Jardine’s 40-volume Naturalists’ Library, and A History of British Birds (6 volumes) by F. O. Morris are lovely books and still very reasonably priced. The folio works of John Gould and Edward Lear (the same who also wrote nonsense verses for children) have on the other hand reached stratospheric levels. Print for print, they are nearly as expensive as Audubon.

But Natural History constitutes a highly specialised sub-group among bibliomaniacs. The beginner would probably be more comfortable with illustrated history and travel books, and in this country one could not do better than specialise in books about India. Nolan’s History of the British Empire in India, Montgomery Martin’s Indian Empire and the works of Emma Roberts are still very moderately priced – by which I mean they can be obtained for sums around Rs 20,000 to Rs 30,000.

But the supply is dwindling, book-breakers who sell individual engravings for sums ranging from Rs. 1000 to Rs. 5000, being partly responsible. In a very short time they will become as expensive as the comparable works of Miss Pardoe and John Carne on the Bosphorus, the Danube and the Near East.

Coming to contemporary fiction, first editions of Salman Rushdie, in fine condition, fetch a few hundred dollars – and if they happened to be signed copies (i.e. if they bear the great man’s autograph), prices may double. Even The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy’s sole work of fiction – can fetch more than a thousand dollars, provided if it is a true first edition.

A few thumb-rules for would be collectors need to be kept in mind. First, when buying eighteenth and nineteenth century works on travel and history, illustrated books will be worth much more than others. Books with engravings (or etchings) are more valuable than wood-cuts. The former are always printed on superior paper and bound in afterwards, while wood-cuts (which resemble simple line drawings) are printed `in text’.

Secondly, except in rare circumstances, paperback first editions are rarely worth anything. Go for hardbacks alone, and the condition of dust jackets is as important as the rest of the book.

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