Collecting ARC's / Uncorrected Proofs

Why Collect Proofs?

by Ken Lopez


In first edition collecting, "the earlier the better" is the rule. Originally, first editions were valuable for a pragmatic reason: the printing plates were composed of soft lead, and after a certain number of impressions on paper, the sharp edges of the lead would tend to wear down. Later editions or impressions would be noticeably less clearly printed than the first edition; when illustrations or maps were involved, this could be a particular problem. In collecting literary first editions today, this practical reason has become an article of faith: earlier is better--the first issue of a book is always more desirable and more expensive than a later issue. And the proof of the assumption is that, taken to its logical extreme--the author's manuscript--it is clear that "earliest is best." The "best" copy, or state, of any given book is the author's own manuscript; any earlier than that and we are in the realm of metaphysics, dealing with the creative spark itself, or the "vision" that impelled a work.

While most collectors don't often have a chance to acquire the manuscripts of their favorite authors' books, they do have ready access to a preliminary state of the book that precedes the first published edition--that of the "uncorrected proof" or "advance reading copy."

Publishers have long issued advance copies of forthcoming books, prior to the book's publication date, for a number of reasons: they want reviewers and periodicals to have a chance to read them and schedule reviews to coincide with publication, even given the long lead times many magazines require for production; they want to get the opinions of important buyers who are likely to purchase large quantities of the book if they believe in it--buyers for the major wholesalers, the chain bookstores, and the large independent stores around the country; they want to get early copies to the author's friends and peers--preferably well-known ones--who can give comments about the book that the publisher can use for promotion, on the dust jacket as "blurbs," in ads, and in the special promotional literature sent out to the news media as press releases.

In the Thirties and Forties, the typical advance copy was a set of typeset sheets, bound directly into the dust jacket--that is, identical to the finished book with the exception of the lack of hard covers. The advantage to this was that a previewer could see what the book would look like; the disadvantage was that by the time these copies could be ready, the regular edition of the book was nearly finished as well: they couldn't be issued very far in advance of publication. The late Thirties and Forties brought on the advent of large-scale paperback publication in this country, and some publishers realized the inherent possibilities of printing up a separate paperback edition prior to publication, to send out or give away for promotional purposes. It wasn't until well into the Fifties, however, that the practice that has become commonplace today--of sending out an "uncorrected" edition months before publication--became widespread.

The motivator behind the movement seems to have been the printer--Crane Duplicating Service, on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts--who sent out brochures to the publishing industry advocating the cost-effectiveness of their product and suggesting the many benefits that could accrue to the publisher who had Crane print an advance edition, which could be used for a range of purposes, both technical and promotional. Slowly, the idea took hold as one publisher and then another began to see the benefits of such an edition--particularly when compared with the various alternatives: galley sheets for the author for final corrections; hardcover books for the reviewers, but only right before publication date; "f & g's" for everyone else--folded and gathered sheets, an unwieldy idea but one whose merit was primarily that they could be ready a bit sooner than bound volumes as review copies. By the Sixties, the major publishers were routinely doing bound softcover volumes of "uncorrected proofs"--which, for a time, were called "Cranes," after the printing company that had proposed them.

Most of the proofs one sees from the early Sixties are "spiralbound"--or, more properly, "ringbound." Often they are on tall sheets, as if they were taken directly from the publisher's own long galleys. Sometimes they are printed on the rectos only. Over the years, production values have refined, passing through a period when "pad-bound" proofs were relatively common, to the present, when typical proof copies are as well printed and almost as well-bound as many trade paperbacks.

As well they should be. The unit cost of proof copies is generally several times the cost of a printed and bound book, including dust jacket, because of the economies of scale involved: the set-up and production costs of even a modest, 5000-copy print run are still much more easily amortized over the cost of the edition than are the simpler, but still present set-up costs for a 300-copy run of advance proofs. When bound books averaged $10-12 retail (in the early Eighties), production costs could safely be figured at $2-$3, or roughly 1/5 to 1/4 of retail: that was, and still is, the usual publisher's ratio of production cost to retail price. At the same time, proof copies typically cost $4-$6 or more to produce, because the smaller print run still left the printer with a sizable job.

Several things happened as a result: sometimes proofs were done in minuscule numbers--in effect, being "hand-bound" in quantities probably no more than a dozen or two. In other cases, the expense of the proof was seen as large enough to justify an even greater expense--"in for a penny, in for a pound"--and the print runs were increased and the production values improved, until you had a flashy, glossy paperback being printed in an edition of 500 or 750, or even 1000, copies, and being given out at every opportunity by the publisher, in hopes of creating an interest that would justify an increased first printing of the published "trade" edition (the edition released to the book trade in general).

No one knows how many copies of a particular proof are done because those kinds of numbers tend to be well-kept secrets at publishing houses. Too few will suggest to an author or agent that the publisher isn't really trying very hard to sell their book; too many might be seen by the bean counters or others in the company as threatening to compete with actual sales--flooding the market with free "product" to the detriment of the final published book. In the few cases where specific numbers have emerged, they are very small: Robert Stone's first book, A Hall of Mirrors, was printed in a proof run of 57 copies, according to the publisher's records. Generally, however, even without specific numbers, a broad notion of the cost of print jobs combined with a reasonable set of assumptions about economies of scale, suggests the following: that for most plain proofs--the kind of books we see in simple, undecorated printed wrappers, with bare-bones publication data imprinted--the number of copies almost certainly is less than 500, and most probably would tend to revolve around a median figure of 200 copies. That's a small enough number that the shipping of the books to the publisher would not be cost-prohibitive, but that enough copies would exist for all the legitimate uses--solicitation of "blurbs," as well as copies for the author, early reviewers, major bookstore and wholesale buyers, and regional sales reps.

For the more elaborately produced volumes, with illustrated wrappers, more thorough promotional material, and often with a more "finished" look to the typesetting and pagination, the lower range of cost-effectiveness would likely be found at around 500 copies, and in many cases could be more. At least one advance reading copy I know of--Gorky Park, which was the "breakthrough" book for its author, Martin Cruz Smith--had a print run of 1500 copies, and then went back to press for a second printing of another 1000 copies--all prior to publication.

So why are proofs and advance reading copies collected? They're early--that is, earlier than the first edition. As such, they are closer to the author's manuscript, at least in time, and often in content. The number of examples of proof or advance reading copies that have textual differences from the final published book is staggering, and probably most books with such differences go unnoticed, since nobody has collated them yet. Tim O'Brien's National Book Award-winning Going After Cacciato contained numerous changes after the proof: O'Brien's own copy of the proof came on the market, with his corrections by hand, and they were extensive--whole paragraphs and pages were deleted or changed, sentences were rewritten, etc. Even without having the author's own copy, an astute collector or a scholar can often compare the proof copy of a book with its final form and see the changes the author (or in some cases, a copy editor) made in between.

They're rare. Quantities of 200 or so are comparable to the issue size of the collectible limited editions being published by a number of small publishers around the country today. But those books virtually all go directly into the rare book market. Proofs, on the other hand, despite what sometimes seems like a glut of them, do tend to get put to the purposes for which they are designed: they are used, read, reviewed, and often wrecked or discarded. Of a print run of 200 copies, it is reasonable to suppose that the number that finally makes it into the rare book market for a collectible author will be, at the upper end, 50 copies or so. Even the glossy advance reading copies, printed in runs of 500 or more, and seemingly ubiquitous, will turn out to be limited to a couple of hundred that actually make it into book dealers' stocks and collectors' collections.

So, they're early and they're scarce, the two most important criteria for determining value in the world of collectible books. Even so, some people argue against them. They say that "they're ugly." Well, they are; but so are authors' manuscripts--piles of marked up typing paper. They say that they're common and everybody has them. Proofs are usually "common"--i.e., readily available--for an extremely short window of time surrounding publication; for anywhere from 6 weeks to 6 months before and after publication, proofs can seem "common" but try finding one much later than that: it's very hard. Where are all those Cormac McCarthy proofs now that the world knows who he is? They're gone. People say they're artificially expensive--just another chance for a book dealer to gouge a collector who has to have them for a "complete" collection. But most proofs sell for $25 to $75 for collected authors; the number of authors whose proofs automatically command $100 or more can almost be counted on one's fingers--Updike, McMurtry, Tyler, and a tiny handful of others. When proofs get expensive is when the window of time has passed during which they were common, and one tries to go back and, with new retrospective knowledge, find the early Peter Matthiessen proof, the early Louise Erdrich proof, the early Sue Grafton proof. By then, demand has so outstripped what was already a small, and is now an almost nonexistent, supply that prices can get astronomical. But even so, the typical proof will not cost much more than three times what the first trade edition of a book sells for, and will often cost less than that multiple. And yet, they are many, many times scarcer.

The year 1978 marks something of a dividing line in proofs' relative scarcity. Before that time, collecting proofs was practically unheard of because collecting contemporary literature was not widely done; collecting first editions generally meant collecting those authors whose literary reputations were already more or less established. Not only were those authors often from an era when proofs were much less commonly done, but even if there had been proofs of their works the "window" of time during which they might have been easily available had long since passed. That changed when Serendipity Books almost overnight legitimized the notion of collecting contemporary literature. Serendipity's now-legendary Catalogue 38--"American Fiction of the 1960s"--brought a whole new generation of writers in front of a whole new book buying and collecting audience. The catalogue was so thorough and so interesting and engaging that it didn't have to argue for the collectibility of this new field: it was self-evident. And among the many offerings of writers who were, in many cases, still writing were the uncorrected proofs of their recent books. Where the in-print titles would be offered at the list price--say, $8.95--the uncorrected proof would be offered at, say, $27.50. Clearly, here was something available, reasonably priced, and much scarcer than the first edition. After that catalogue, the idea gained wide currency that proofs were collectible items and many reviewers, writers and publishing house employees began to squirrel away books that would otherwise have been discarded and to funnel them toward first edition dealers. I have exhibited at book fairs in New York--the publishing capital of the United States, if not the world--where more people offered me proofs than bought any from me. Still, when one recognizes the actual scarcity of them, and how quickly the market can absorb the ones that are in demand, it is hard to credit the notion that they are a commonplace and should be ignored. Only when a collector's interests are so wide-ranging that collecting proofs--i.e., collecting at least two states of each title--would be economically prohibitive do I discourage collectors from pursuing them.

When an author becomes collectible enough, and the author's works "age" enough, it becomes obvious that the proofs are valuable and are desirable additions to a collection. No one would argue that Hemingway proofs or Faulkner proofs or Salinger proofs are not collectibles. But in many cases, proofs by the current writers, who are perhaps in line to be tomorrow's Faulkners and Hemingways, are deemed, by those who pretend to know, to be superfluous oddities, not worth the $40 or $75 dealers are asking for them. The same could have been (and probably was) said by some curmudgeon about Faulkner proofs when he was still writing.

The first edition market, particularly the modern first edition market, is fueled by speculation. That's part of what makes it fun. It is still possible to follow one's nose and find out, after a while, that one has discovered a Cormac McCarthy or a Tony Hillerman, years before the rest of the world catches on. There are many collectors on my mailing list who have been buying those writers from me since a copy of The Orchard Keeper could be had for $35, or a copy of The Boy Who Made Dragonfly for $25.

Proof copies, if you follow your nose and are willing to take small risks, can be great investments--because even if the author doesn't "hit" and the monetary values don't go sky-high, you've still got a scarce, unusual, often textually significant version of the author's work, and thus your collection is that much more special, that much less run-of-the-mill, and that much more complete.

Copyright Ken Lopez.

Quote - Karen Armstrong

"It is always difficult to forgive people we have harmed."



Karen Armstrong - The Spiral Staircase p.146



Religion & spiritualty.

Banned Books Week Sep. 29 to Oct. 6

Celebrate your freedom to read.

Here is the American Library Association's list of 100 most frequently challenged books (1990–2000).

First 25 below.

1: Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
2: Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
3: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
4: The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
5: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
7: Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
8: Forever by Judy Blume
9: Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
10: Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
11: Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
12: My Brother Sam is Dead by James L. Collier & Christopher Collier
13: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
14: The Giver by Lois Lowry
15: It's Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
16: Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
17: A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
18: The Color Purple by Alice Walker
19: Sex by Madonna
20: Earth's Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
21: The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
22: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
23: Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
24: Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
25: In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak

Book Search Tips 1

Book Search Tips:

You can save money on shipping by buying more than one book from a bookseller.

You'd be surprised how many people don't realize that most booksellers offer a lower shipping cost for the second and third (and so on) book when ordering all together.

* To search our inventory on ABEbooks: From the search results screen, the book details screen or the Bookseller Information screen, simply click the [Search This Seller's Books or Browse This Seller's Books] link or button. This will take you to an Advanced Search screen for that particular Bookseller.

Grading Terms

A description of the grading terms used (with examples):

For paperbacks we use the following:

• FINE PLUS (FN + ) : As issued. The book is absolutely brand-new and perfect in every way.

• FINE (FN) : Very slight wear is beginning to show. Possibly a very faint or slight crease along the edge of the spine to indicate the book was carefully read once. No major signs of wear. Plastic lamination (if any) will be intact.

• FINE MINUS (FN - ) : Also known as Near Fine. May have been read carefully several times, but the spine will still be very clean although with a slightly more visible reading crease. There may be some very minor fading of the cover or spine. Still no stress lines on the spine. No creases or bends in the covers themselves. Pages will still be largely white or very slightly tanning. Lamination (if any) may be slightly chipped at the corners or other spots. Minor color flaking or minor rubbing noticeable on extremities. Still a very nice copy.

• VERY GOOD PLUS (VG + ) : A read copy, but very tight. Cover luster and gloss is showing slight wear but not gone. Slight bends and creases in cover. Pages are fresh, but mildly tanned. Stress lines on spine are noticeable, but not severe. Minor wear spots, chipping and rubbing. No tears or splits in spine.

• VERY GOOD (VG) : A read copy, but still fairly tight. Cover lustre and gloss is showing some wear but not gone. Plastic laminate (if any) is noticeably peeling in spots. Some bends and creases in the cover. Pages fairly fresh but tanning. Spine is bent from several readings but not broken or torn. Wear spots, chipping and rubbing is noticeable but not major. No tears in the spine and no tape repairs. Very minor nicks at some edges.

• VERY GOOD MINUS (VG - ) : The average copy but still complete with no pages missing. Cover has slight bends, creases, and is starting to fade. Minor spine tear, not more than a quarter inch, but still intact on either end. Very slight roll to spine is possible. Minor nicks could be present on some pages. No pieces of cover missing.

• GOOD PLUS (G + ) : A read copy. Complete and readable. Small tears in cover or pages (at edges) is likely. Roll to spine is possible. Spine may be loose with tears (no more than quarter inch) on either end. Stamps or writing in book is possible. Cover has noticeable bends, creases, and could be slightly faded. Possible price sticker damage on cover.

• GOOD (G) : Your average read copy. Possibly slightly soiled, but still complete and readable. Torn cover or pages (no more than half an inch) is likely, as is a rolled spine. Spine heavily creased with possible small (no more than half inch) pieces missing from each end. Could have tears at top and bottom of spine. Stamps or writing in book is possible.

• GOOD Minus (G - ) : Your very well-read copy. Possibly slightly soiled, but still complete and readable. Torn cover or pages (no more than half an inch) is likely, as is a rolled spine. Spine heavily creased with possible small (no more than half inch) pieces missing from each end. Could have tears at top and bottom of spine. Stamps or writing in book is possible. Interior loose pages likely. Beginning spine crack.

• Fair (FR) : This is a reading copy only and is the minimal rating we will sell or buy. Book is readable.

For hard-covers, we use the IOBA standard.

For comic books, we use the Overstreet standard.

The Sword, The Scalpel – The Story of Dr. Norman Bethune by Ted Allan and Sydney Gordon. A review.

Norman Bethune is still a hero to many Canadians and non-Canadians, especially in China where he spent the last years of his life in Mao’s fight against the Japanese, Chinese imperialists and capitalists. Socialists, medical professionals and many Montréalers (where he spent a good part of his life as chief of thoracic surgery at Ste. Justine Hospital) revere Bethune as a noble doctor who helped the underprivileged. His many exploits of genius, from designing better surgical tools to inventing the modern mobile medical unit used in wars since 1939, have made him a Canadian to be proud of. His almost single-handed and constant fight against tuberculosis alone (which he himself suffered from), would make him a great humanitarian.

Which makes it all the more unfortunate that Ted Allan and Sydney Gordon’s biography has two things (among many) that hinder our understanding and appreciation of this man: The book is more propaganda than art which serves to make a truly great man somehow less and the information gathered and given to the reader is subsumed by the authors’ agenda in pushing a particular point of view, that of the glorious communist future awaiting us. The book is more hagiography than biography.

Now, I don’t have an issue with a socialist or communist ideologist attempting to convince us of the greatness of that way of life, but the effect of items such as getting to age 34 of his life by page 20 of a 319 page book, but writing with great heavy-handed detail on his death, to the extent that we know the exact time of his passing and the exact words spoken by those around him full of camaraderie and brotherhood, is to feel like we are being beaten over the head. Yes, we know that all the communists fighting in Mao’s army were really, really hard-working and never complained about their lot because they believed in the brotherhood of man. Enough already.

Those looking for an in depth analyses of Bethune’s early childhood and formative experiences should look elsewhere. For example, where did Bethune get such a single-minded ability to focus and his zeal for causes? We are given scant information on his parents; his father was a minister and his mother a missionary is basically all we’re told. A proper biography would have explored his upbringing and relationship to his parents to bring into focus his later stubbornness and attachment to causes. The authors write of Bethune’s “idealism of adolescence” but try as I might, I can not find any reference to his adolescence as Bethune’s teen-age years don’t even rate a sentence.

Bethune joined the Canadian armed forces the day World War 1 begun. He spent time at the front and was wounded at Ypres where many Canadian historians note that "Canada was truly born as a nation". Surely such a horrendous experience would make some sort of impression and help us to understand his later hatred of unworthy causes. After all, many post-war writers, the Lost Generation as Gertrude Stein called them, felt such deep scars that they wrote and drank and talked in some fashion about their experiences for the rest of their lives. These authors see fit to give us exactly one page on Bethune and the First World War.

The propensity to propaganda comes early in the book. We are told that Bethune’s decision to start his first medical practice in Detroit is partly because “America was rich, and a great torrent of its riches washed through Detroit…There, he told himself, he would have to kiss no one’s hand, bend the knee to no British upper-class dowager…” There is nothing inherently wrong with this statement except that we haven’t been given a proper explanation or set-up before hand to tell us why he felt he had to “bend his knee”. In the paragraphs preceding this statement we are told he is living the good life and quite enjoying it. We are told of his jaunts in London, Paris and Italy, carousing and carrying-on like any young man at the time. He seems to be happy. Where did he get the feeling he was “bending the knee” while drinking in London pubs or picking up girls in Parisian cafes? Approximately 2 pages later we are told that money no longer satisfies him, he needs to be able to be the “old” Bethune, healing the poor with no thought to monetary reward. Unfortunately the authors have already made him out to be a bit of a spoiled rich kid…how many of us get to go to medical school in England and Italy and squander the money sent by his parents on drinks and food. At least make the propaganda a little more subtle guys!

Now I know this book was written in 1952 during a time of Communist witch-hunts and paranoia so maybe the message had to be heavy-handed but it doesn’t excuse sloppy writing. The move from self-serving to self-sacrificing young doctor is unclear and one of the problems I think is that both authors knew Bethune and the only detailed biographical information we get comes in the years that Allan and Gordon had dealings with their subject.

I had seen the Donald Sutherland movie (Bethune – The Making of a Hero) many years ago and the only part that made an impression on me was when Sutherland, playing Bethune, collapses his own lung in order to stave off or cure the effects of tuberculosis. My thoughts at the time were, my god, what absolute balls does it take to be able to operate on yourself and is this what Bethune really did or did the film makers take the hero title a little too seriously.

I bought Bethune’s biography soon after to confirm for myself. Although Bethune never actually collapsed his own lung, this biography would have us believe that this medical genius, inventor and communist was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

The sainthood attributed to Bethune sometimes so far outweighs the often truly astonishing things he has done, that this biography makes the man Bethune much less real and the story of his life, ironically, much less interesting.

Quote - Charles Baudelaire

"Et, comme le soleil dans son enfer polaire,
Mon coeur sera plus qu'un bloc rouge et glace."

From: Chant D'Automne by Charles Baudelaire.

Quote - Nikos Kazantzakis

"We call nonexistant that which we do not desire."

Columbus to Isabella.

From the play Christopher Columbus in the collection Three Plays by Nikos Kazantzakis. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1969 - page 65.

Quote - J.G. Ballard

"In a sense, we’re policing ourselves and that’s the ultimate police state, where people are terrified of challenge."

J.G. Ballard from an interview in the summer of 1997.

Reading Camus

Albert Camus' L'Etranger.

I always read this in the autumn, just as the children are heading back to school.

This might seem odd because the book mostly takes place in the hot Algerian summer, but this novel reminds me of French class in grade 11 where the teacher introduced me to this classic of existentialist writings. Although I now understand that Camus himself would have given it another label, absurdist perhaps, reading the novel always takes me back to being young and impressionable to outsiders and writings about outsiders.