Discover Mid-America | The Good Eye

Writing is a hard thing to make a living at all by itself, so in my never-ending quest to cobble together a livelihood, I also teach English composition to college students. These days, I prefer to do my teaching online, where I can do it on my own flexible terms and without the hassle of commuting. In a recent online discussion with one of my classes, someone asked if technology — e-book readers, online books, audio books — will make paper books…well, antique. The question is of more than academic concern to the antiques trade.

Throughout the 1990s, a consumer could go to a bookstore’s magazine stand and choose from among several magazines, generic and specific, devoted to collecting. Collectors could buy two or three monthlies or bi-monthlies at a time, then hit the book section and buy a couple of collector books to boot.

Moorcroft miniature plate or butter pat (4” diameter) in the Hibiscus pattern, blue and red on a white ground. This popular Moorcroft pattern is more commonly seen as an orange-toned hibiscus on a green ground. You could research this item online but you might end up with only with hearsay information from a seller who knows less about it than you do. Even the Moorcroft section of a published price guide such as Kovel’s will give you more reliable information. (Yes, Kovel’s has an online database, but you can probably find the info quicker in the book!) (Photo by the author from her own collection.)

Then, in the year 2000, it seemed one couldn’t find a collector magazine anywhere; as if practically overnight, they’d all ceased publication. As for books, readers had wised up to the fact that new editions of even the most expensive collector books were pretty much just reprints of the prior edition with new dust jackets. Collectors stopped buying these expensive “new” books that told them precious little more than they already knew. Eventually, sizeable “Antiques and Collectibles” sections in book stores were reduced to one or two shelves in a corner.

Our straining economy seems like it’s been trying to lay a golden egg for the better part of a decade now. But even before that, inflated values for the collecting equivalent of junk food had begun to burst. De-motivated “investors” who’d bought allegedly rare contemporary collectibles at the high end of the market now found themselves selling at a loss. The contemporary collectibles market shrank to a figment of its former size. As went the collectibles market, so went the collector book.

A few years ago, I took a course in web design and launched a website (www.elportalporcelana.info) for fellow fans of 20th century Spanish porcelains, of which Lladro is the premiere maker. I did the website in lieu of writing a new book on Lladro to replace my old book that was about to go out of print.

The collector book industry can be something of a barracuda tank from an author’s perspective and, at the time, I couldn’t find a publisher who would recognize an understandable desire on an author’s part not to be eaten alive. I figured the website would be enough to keep Lladró collectors satisfied. But no! Collectors kept harassing me to bring out a physical book, despite the fact that pretty much everything I knew was already on my fairly expansive, heavily trafficked, and entirely free website.

The most commonly seen items made by Lladro, the Spanish porcelain manufacturer, are small and relatively simple models bought by tourists who couldn’t afford the more expensive items. The plethora of these items gives the secondary trade a skewed view of Lladro’s aesthetic. This spectacular “Horses Group” model really shows Lladro’s stuff and illustrates why collectors are crazy for it – and, as it turns out, for published books about it! (Photo courtesy of Jorge Luis Gonzalez, AAA, certified appraiser.)

Well, eventually, I was lucky enough to find my current, author-friendly publisher, and my latest book, A Collector’s Book of Retired Lladro, has been selling reasonably well since its release last year. What’s more, the two editions of my previous book on Lladro, both out of print, are now being offered on the secondary market at prices ranging from a low of around $65 to a high of more than $200! Why would people pay that much for a collector book when they can get the information on the web for free?

My students, most of whom are much younger than me, have tried their hand at all the electronic readers and books online. And you know what? They don’t much like them. They say computerized books are hard on the eyes. Besides, there’s hardly a job around anymore that doesn’t require spending several hours a day keeping one’s eyes glued to a computer screen.

The last thing anyone with that kind of day job wants is to spend his or her leisure time reading more computer screens. (It’s true that the very young are smitten by their iPhones and other hand-held apps, texting and tweeting every hour of the day, but as texting proves, they’re not actually reading online.)

My students also claim that, for reference purposes, it’s often easier and faster to find specific passages in a print book than it is to scroll through a hundred computer screens looking for it. Besides, as one of my students discovered to her chagrin, the electronic version of a given book may not even have the same content as its print edition.

This has significant implications for antique dealers who make it a point to be informed about what they sell and who make a conscientious effort to try to answer consumer questions: ironically, dealers might find an answer quicker in the pages of the reference books on their office shelves than they would on the Web.

So dealers, I predict you’ll always be able to find reference books for your business, whether old tried-and-true or newly revised and expanded. And if you have books to sell, you’ll find they still have a loyal consumer following, even among younger readers tired of straining their eyes reading text on an electronic screen.

When all is said and done, people buy books for the same reason they buy art and antiques. There’s a visceral pleasure to reading, just as there is to collecting. It’s about holding a thing in your hand. It’s about having a tangible object to embody the intangible act of reading. Some of us just can’t imagine ourselves curling up with a good Kindle™ on a cold winter’s night.

Peggy Whiteneck is a writer and collector living in East Randolph, VT. If you would like to suggest a topic she can address in her column, email her at allwrite@sover.net.