Thanks to Simon of http://www.hydraxia.com for permission to reprint this article. Hydraxia is a very interesting site for book collectors and book dealers. Their sister site: http://www.hyraxiabooks.com is a good source for purchasing collectible books.
Most products have a lifespan. Some are here for weeks (for example, 2010 World Cup souvenirs), some persist for months (Sunny Delight), some for years (The Ford Fiesta, Care Bears) and some for decades (Coca Cola). Those with a longer lifespan are updated regularly, be it a new design or a new feature. Whatever the product, it will be subject to trending. The same happens with every collectable book, but to very different extents.
Let’s start at the top and look at those least affected by trending, but remember, no book is immune.
Books Important in History
Take a book such as Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, since its significance to science became established it’s been a collectable book, its price has generally risen through the intervening decades from then until now. This is an example of a book that’s subject primarily to positive trending, that is, events in the real world that increase the price beyond its usual rate of change. Events such as a renewed interest in the subject area, such as was recently observed with media attention on Richard Dawkins, fuelling the God vs. Science debate and thus an surge in popularity of Darwin. Such books do take dips too, the recession likely hit this book as it hit many other books, and in October people might be selling off Darwin in favour of buying Religious books when the Rapture hits (or the Zombie Apocalypse).
Books which have a massive relevance to contemporary culture are usually the least affected by trending, even where the content is outdated. If the item is of significant historical influence, then demand stays fairly stable. It’s only when they become less relevant that they become subject to negative trending (they can of course have a similar correlation with positive trending as mentioned above). As long as a book remains active in the collective conscience, it will remain collectable and increase in price. That sounds like a sweeping statement, and it is, but all it’s really saying is that if the demand stays constant, as it would if the book remains significant, and the supply decreases, as the print run gets older, tattier and rarer, then prices will increase.
The salient factor here though is identifying which books are important to mankind. On the Road, A Passage to India, Catcher in the Rye - all these books remain important as they are important historical artefacts documenting the changes of mankind. It’s hard to argue that the statements made by these books will be diluted over the next few decades, they cover a very large playing field. There are of course books that are important at the time of writing but soon disappear in to obscurity as their relevance lessens or narrows. Nineteen Eighty Four and Animal Farm are still pretty relevant and their message will probably remain for decades to come, but books such as Bonfire of the Vanities may become less and less relevant due in part to their scope (covering only a change in a small part of the global culture) and also their relevance (Wall Street in the 1980s was significant, but it’s not as significant as the Indian Independence Movement or the Second World War).
Of course, there are thousands of books having active historical relevance but the majority of those become less significant with time, usually because they either don’t say something new, or say something new but execute it poorly. This applies equally well to non-fiction as it does to fiction, though there’s much more room in literature for one to woo society with well written prose. Saying something new may be about the writer’s style or the basic premise of the story or scientific advances, executing it well may be something as simple as writing a good story, even if it’s been told a thousand times before. These books, these good books that have something important to stay, they ride the trends and they remain on university reading lists, these are valuable books and its hard to see them becoming suddenly unimportant and tanking.
Books Important to Literature
Ulysses is hardly a textbook of world history, it is however a landmark piece of literature. The style, the subject matter, even the route to market are all highly notable. The importance of this book to literature is likely to never diminish. Writers who contribute so massively to the advancement of literature are few and far between, but there are plenty whose contributions are not to be sniffed at Thomas Pynchon, William S. Burroughs, Franz Kafka, T.S. Eliot. There are also those geniuses that, although they exert very little influence on the style of literature, they are catalysts for entire genre: Wells and Verne for Science Fiction; Conan Doyle, Christie, Chandler for the crime genre. And those who progress a genre and keep it fresh.
Now, we’re only talking about particular books, not authors – not every H.G. Wells First Edition is valuable, but some books are. Those books that are important to literary style are subject to trending in a very similar way to the books in the previous section. But those books significant to a genre can be very subject to trending. Generally, authors who really define a genre can ride the trends, but those who seem to push it forward can really be subject to negative trending. This is being seen at the moment with a lot of 1980′s crime writers who quite recently were very collectable but now seem to be losing a bit of traction as their contribution to the genre is seen as being less important. Sara Paretsky did great things for female roles in crime fiction and remains influential, but has she been significant enough to be remembered in 100 years?
So if you’re collecting authors in a particular genre, you have to speculate on how they are going to be affected by trends – are the author’s books good enough to place them on the wall of fame or are they just best-sellers?
Good Books
And then there are those books that are just good. Some books don’t do anything for society, genre or literature itself. They’re just good books. A Clockwork Orange springs to mind, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. These are books that are very subject to trending, generally they go up but as the generations change they become less-relevant, especially outside of established genres. Jean Brodie is a classic example, a great book by all accounts, not particularly significant to genre or the progression of literature, but a novel that literature should be proud of. The younger generation are less interested in it though, it’s taught on fewer syllabuses and is less relevant to the general reader as the general reader never ages with the book. Other books like A Clockwork Orange though still feel very cutting edge – they’re effectively timeless. I could be wrong about Jean Brodie, it’s still a very good book. It could see a resurgence and become a classic like Wuthering Heights or Dracula (I point these two out as they’re classics without being massively influential on genre or style). And this is my point, in fifty years Jean Brodie might be worth thousands, but it might spend the next fifty years gaining steadily. In Patagonia is another book like this – a veritable highlight ten years ago – but less read and less appreciated now. Prices aren’t what they used to be.
So here’s the point – if you’re buying a book because it’s a highlight of literature, take a look to see how significant it’s been to genre, literary style or society. If it doesn’t hit any of those then it’s just a good book that’s added to the list of classics. You then have to decide whether it really is timeless.
Children’s Books
Finally, a simple genre. The books we read as children are the books we want to collect as adults. My generation rarely read Biggles, we read Blyton. Over the next few decades a generation of Biggles readers will pass on. Biggles books may no longer be significant, then again they may. Similarly, a generation of readers of Jacqueline Wilson will in a few decades start collecting books, you may need to watch this space!
The point of this article wasn’t really to point out trends, but just to think about the environmental factors that can affect the value of a book. Every book is subject to this in some way or another. As time passes books become start to stick to the trendline of the market as a whole. The rate of change of the price of Gulliver’s Travels is likely to be tied tightly to the rate of change of the price of Robinson Crusoe, films or adaptations may move the price a little bit, but in general, they’re like the FTSE 100 – they are the market setters.
