The joys of book dealing - an interview with Stephen Conway
I love second hand bookshops and one of the many pleasures of my recent trip to Shetland was the chance to visit a lovely new second hand bookshop on the island. It's really heartening to see people moving into this fascinating trade - reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated, I'm delighted to say. A few weeks ago, I was glad to host Stephen Conway on this blog when he talked about his great passion, bookbinding. Stephen has moved into dealing in second hand books, and his premises at Halifax now hold some mouth-watering titles. I interviewed him recently by email about this branch of his activities. Here's what he had to tell me:
1. What first led you into book dealing?
For a long time now, several years in fact, I have wanted toopen and run a small bookshop. It seems to be a natural route for Bookbindersto take. Being based in Halifax, West Yorkshire, I follow in the illustriousfootsteps of Edwards of Halifax, world renowned Bookbinders and Booksellers,most notably known for their For-edge paintings and painting under vellum. Itis surprising how much knowledge one accumulates over time, especially havingworked with rare and valuable books over many years.
With impeccable timing, we finally made the decision to openour new Bookshop in 2019, just two weeks before the first Covid lockdown. Wecouldn’t have planned such a scenario had we tried.
However, moving forward, this realistically gave us thebreathing space to work on our stock and our online presence and withhindsight, this was not a disaster and in fact, has worked out well.
Without doubt, the majority of our sales are online, asexpected. However, our Bookbinding business already has its own premises, soany alterations have been internal only. We have a large frontage, with sixlarge windows to view. As planned, we down sized the Bindery to create a largebookshop space internally. We now have four book rooms with more planned overthe short term.
Our strength we feel, lay in the fact that we can produceour own fine bindings to sell in the shop/online and also that we can repairand rebind books in poor condition, either for ourselves to sell through theshop or for our customers.
A part of our bookbinding business is box making,particularly for valuable first editions and many Private Press editions. Thisis something relatively unique that we can offer to our customers and hasproved popular.
As a relative newcomer to book dealing, my thoughts on thematter are, as yet, not fully formed. Looking at online sales, we seem to sella healthy cross section of subjects across a full price range. Our shop hasmany more books than we have online and I am constantly amazed at which titlessell and which don’t. For us, condition is important and as a general rule, wedo not put books out which are inferior. Books which are signed tend to bepopular, especially with modern fiction and our own fine bindings have alsobeen well received.
Whilst we have a good selection of crime novels,particularly in the shop, we would not class ourselves as crime specialists.Like many other book dealers, we are constantly on the look -out for earlysought-after titles, particularly in good condition. As you know, crime novelsare popular with collectors and collectible titles in good condition commandhuge prices. Without comprehensive knowledge of this area of book collecting, weare keen to avoid costly mistakes. At the moment, gently, gently!
As a lifelong book collector, I was already aware that thecondition of the dust jacket is important. What has been an eye opener is thefact that this can be a game changer, significantly reducing the price if inpoor condition. Even with books just a few years old, spines can be very badlyfaded if stored in direct sunlight. As a shop owner, with several windows ofdisplay, this is a problem.
6. What advice would you give to anyone who was interested incollecting crime fiction?
For the established collector, they will be aware of some ofthe pitfalls associated with collecting. Obviously, condition is paramount, butso too is rarity, signed copy, inscribed, association copy etc.
People collect books for many, many reasons; a particularauthor, signed copies, dust jacket artwork, a particular illustrator etc. Thegreat beauty of book collecting is that there is something of interest foreveryone, regardless of price.
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