Richard Davies who worked at Abebooks for 18 years, recently retired to pursue new adventures. Most recently our interactions with him were Abe’s reports of their most expensive books sold but he was much involved than that and he has provided his perspective about his tenure.
“I joined AbeBooks in January 2005 and it’s been a privilege to have been involved in the rare book business all this time. As everyone knows, there has been near-constant change in both technology and the rare book business since 2005. This ensured my work at AbeBooks was never mundane.
I’d prefer to dwell on the people I’ve got to know over the past 18 years, particularly the booksellers. They helped to educate me about rare books and have always been generous with their time. They helped me to help them… if that makes sense.
I noticed several changes in rare bookselling. As it’s possible to see exactly how many copies of a book are for sale online, ephemera has become more important as sellers want to offer unique items. Diaries, photo-albums, scrapbooks, and historical documents are all more important now. Sellers are also more creative in how they package certain listings – they often include letters and documents with books to make them stand out from the crowd.
Sellers are also much more adept in their use of high-quality and creative photography to merchandise their books. Sellers who invested in high-quality photos made my job much easier over the years.
I hope book collecting and bookselling becomes more diverse in the future. It’s good to see this starting to happen over the last couple of years.
Thank you to everyone who helped with my work at AbeBooks.
Regards
Richard”
If he turns his experiences into a book I’ll be ordering it.
Our best wishes -
