Collecting Book Club Editions

I've heard some, though certainly not all book club editions can be collecting/worth a bit of money. I was wondering how one would know whether or not this was the case? Obviously, my recent SFBC books probably aren't worth much. However, I have a hardback bc ediiton of Hichhiker's Guideto the Galaxy from the 70's with dustjacket, in a protector, although without having it in front of me, I couldn't say who the publisher was.

My experience is MOST book club editions are worth far less than regular editions, I would guess the reverse is a minority situation.

I've heard the same as #2 from rare book dealers, that book club editions are worth less than non-book-club-editions, though there may be exceptions.

Book Club editions are worthless to collectors. I quote Firsts magazine.

# 4 - Unless you are a collector of book club editions.

There are a handful of notable exceptions, but they are that--- notable. There are a few BCEs that are the only hardback edition of the work, or the regular trade edition is so rare, and so far out of most collectors' reach, the BCE is sold at a premium- i.e. a pristine To Kill a Mockingbird 1960 book club edition is nothing to sneeze at.

I have the Robert E Howard SFBC hardbacks. Del Ray only released then as trades. I also have the Wandering Star editions but I thought it worth grabbing the SFBC hardbacks. Not sure if they will ever be valuable or anything but I like having them. I know that they released some Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter hardbacks not too long ago also that didn't even have a corresponding regular release. So sometimes the BC edition is the only edition.

I read somewhere that non-fiction BCEs are often more valuable to collectors. Can't remember why, but maybe it's because they didn't offer as many. At any rate, through research I've done via ABE since I bought my used bookstore a year ago, I've noted that this has been somewhat born out.

This is probably an elementary question to most here, but can anybody tell me why BCEs are considered so worthless? Is it because so many of them were printed? I've also speculated that since they were produced to be mailed they were made lighter and therefore of poorer physical quality. Am I in the ballpark?

I wouldn't say they are "worthless." However, they are often printed on cheaper paper with cheaper-feeling jackets than are trade editions. Place a trade and a bce of the same title side by side -- you can tell at a glance. Then there is 'priority' for what that's worth -- presumably the trade editions precede the bookclub eds.

As to the relative worth of fiction vs non-fiction bce's, I suspect that has to do with there being more 'collecting' of literary writers as opposed to folks just wanting to read up on their non-fiction subjects. The NF bce's aren't more valuable in themselves, they're just less rejected-as-not-collectable.

I mostly avoid bce's in areas where I 'collect' but in some cases I'd rather have a nice bce with a nice jacket than a beat-up mass-market pb, or a trade edition I'd have to pay $100 for..

First edition hardbacks are for collectors. BCEs are for people who like to read AND keep what they've read on the shelf. I buy FE hardbacks only when they're cheap (i.e.: less than $12) in VG of F condition. The rest of the time I'll settle for any edition I can get for cheap, any printing in hardback, VG or F, w/dustjacket. I don't buy what I don't want to read.

8 rocketjk

They were often manufactured from lower quality materials and with weak bindings, particularly in the 60s, 70s and 80s. In more recent times they seem to be made of much better materials.

(From a Booksellers Point of View... I am a Fantasy and SF Specialist Bookseller) They mostly have a lesser value than proper editions. Sometimes there are exceptions, there is a very good set of collected John Grimes stories by A. Bertram Chandler (6 Volumes), which they did a real nice job of, and there are others like that. Again where the real editions are scarce, this may jack up the values of BCE on a case by case basis.

Also there are some titles which were book club only.

~12

There are, of course, "book clubs" that aren't in business to produce cheap editions of current good sellers. For instance, I have a couple dozen titles of The Legal Classics Library, which was a "book club" that produced quality (leather covers, signature binding, gilt edged, marble end paper, very high quality paper) reprints of out of print legal classics. You subscribed for one title a month on an approval basis. I don't think that these volumes are extremely valuable, but they have kept their value and appreciated slightly over the past 2-3 decades.

I think that would be considered more of a producer of collectibles by subscription rather than a true book club. More like Easton Press for Example, who also have a similar model for some of their stuff.

Book Club editions are not "worthless" but they are "worth less" than equivalent trade editions. Sometimes the only hardcover for a title is a book club.

The Doubleday trade first printings state "First Edition" on the copyright page. Both book club and trade editions (but often not the library bindings) have a date code on the last few pages in the gutter ("gutter code").

When looking at the Happy Hollisters books, I observed two interesting things. The trade editions shifted to pictorial cover at a certain point while the book clubs retained the dust jackets. Hence, if you want a consistent format set in DJ, you have to include book clubs. Indeed, in that series, there is no particular stigma in book clubs. The materials are essentially the same.

Based on the date codes I have also seen Happy Hollisters examples (Golden Witch I believe) where the book club has an earlier code than the trade with "First Edition".

For books like Princess Bride, the book club was just about the only hardcover you could find and afford.

James

Of course, there's always the exception to help prove the rule. The Limited Editions Club was a book club; yet, its editions are highly valued due to their high quality and limited quantity (usually 1500 books). I know, I know, in the book world the LEC is considered a fine press and not a book club. My point is that quality and quantity generally drive price. BOMC has huge volume and quality often inferior to the standard trade edition.

SFBC edition of Ray Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles" is the true first edition. But the later trade edition still sells for more and is often described as the first.

Probably lots of other examples.

one example of a book club series that is worth collecting is the Victor Gollancz 1930s Left book club and a prize item in my library is George Orwell's the road to Wigan Pier. These books were usually limp covers in a sturdy orange fabric. there was indeed a political theme and agenda to the titles commissioned and published. On the other hand there was also a right (as in politically to the right) book club but these authors were incredibly conservative and to me have no collecting appeal.

I totally ignore the "Left" and the "Right" book clubs, but reading above items #17 next to #18 mean we are living, thank God, in a free world. Hurrah!!!

Here in the great western democracies, the plutocrats who actually govern allow us to collect what we want because: 1) Plutocrats realize that most of us don't know what we want; 2) Plutocrats understand that we want typically isn't good for us.

As alluded to above, I have seen this mostly with Science Fiction/Fantasy where a BCE is the only practical Hardcover edition available.

Robert E. Howard's Del Rey books, published in trade paperback are one example...the trades retailed for about $17 each while the Wandering Star small press deluxe hardcovers were about $300 each...SFBC hardcover editions became a desired alternative and can sell for $20-40 each.

Star Wars paperback series books that were collected into 2 or 3 book omnibuses by SFBC or even single books are another example...for example the Han Solo Trilogy of paperbacks verse the single edition hardcover omnibus...many of these commonly sell for $20-75 each...

Agents of Caos
Edge of Victory
Enemy Lines
Exile
Force Heretic
Fury
Traitor
Coruscant Nights
The Black Fleet Crisis
The Dark Nest Trilogy
The Jedi Academy Trilogy
The Corellian Trilogy
The Han Solo Trilogy
Bounty Hunters
Medstar

Late to the party am I.

The thing is, if you want to collect book club books, do so. The money value should be secondary. Assembling as complete a collection of SFBC books as possible, including variants, would make a fascinating collection in and of itself. And you likely won't go broke forming it.

Food for thought.

The SFBC Edition of The Watchmen was the only hardcover edition available for many years and thus sells for a bit - however the binding is so bad that it's usually ripped from the covers.

>24 johnnyapollo: My Absolute edition of Watchmen from 2005 has held up well.

The problem with paying much for a Book Club edition of a particular title is that the Book Club edition may not retain any value, especially if a better edition becomes available. Usually the only reason a Book Club does become of any value is because a trade edition has never been published in hard cover or the price of the trade edition has grown to the point that many people can't afford it. It is the same with the value of early reprints of the trade edition. At times when a book that has some demand becomes worth say in high 3 figures or more, the value of later or lesser editions will see some upward movement. This is to fill the void in collections of people who can't afford a real First Edition. But the buyer should always be aware that such books may not retain the value they paid for the book. It is all a matter of supply and demand. If a new edition becomes available it may better fill the demand and cause the value of the reprints and Book Clubs to plummet. If you are buying these books for your own enjoyment and you are not paying much for the books, then you should be happy with what you have. If you hope to get your money back some day, you may not be as happy. I have seen this exact thing happen with some children's titles that had some demand. The Price went up, but when a press was started to reprint these titles the value of the books, that were only wanted to be read, dropped down to a few dollars. Booksellers will tell you that "some" Book Club titles do have value, but then they are in business to market books. They hope to get the best prices for what they are trying to sell.

Bindings are inevitably poor due to cheap materials. On a case by case basis some have value due to other market conditions. Occasionally they are the nicest edition to collect, or even the most convenient way to read a series. I do love my collected 6 volume Grimes set by A. Bertram Chandler. The bindings are still crap though. I may have them rebound at some point.

The collected editions like the Grimes set or Manly Wade Wellman's "John the Balladeer" (Silver John) collection are the type of Book Club books that are popular. I think more for the convenience than for anything else.

The Science Fiction Book Club (SFBC), as mentioned several times above, did publish some true first editions, but don't ask me to list them!

I believe, for example, that the only hardcover edition of Poul Anderson's Dancer From Atlantis was the SFBC edition, so if you want that one in h/c, you perforce needs must buy the SFBC publication.

Like some earlier posters, I'm not a collector of rare books or first editions, though I have a few. I just want good copies of things I want to own. I have a number of book club volumes. The worse thing with some of them, for me, is the poor print quality. As my eyes get older, readable typeface & print quality gains priority. It's common now for me to open a book in a store, take one look at the pages, and put it back for this reason.

So I tend to avoid some book club copies because of print quality, and tend to avoid first editions because of price, but I'll buy either if it's something I really want and have had trouble finding.

The poor quality is one reason why Book Club books often are not books that retain value. Even in cases where they are a First Hardcover edition. I saw very little demand for these books when I had a shop. They are more something for the completest collector, or someone who has to have a hardcover book. I saw some Book Club 1st Hardcovers priced high, but I did not see many actually selling. Even to the point where a later trade hardcover would bring a much better price.

>31 Bernarrd: Oh, I agree that most BC books are of lesser quality, by and large, and consequently don't bring much. Still, some find them of interest, especially if they sport a d/j by Frank Frazetta (SFBC)!

There have been a few book clubs that did not print their own editions, however, but sent regular trade editions to their members at a reduced price. Quite a few years ago, I was a member of one such, the Natural Science Book Club (now defunct), and the books members received were simply the regular trade editions with nothing to mark them as having come from a book club. But this was the exception and not the normal practice.

>32 Glacierman: That is one reason why completest collectors will buy book club editions. Both to have "everything" and to have different dust jacket art. But in my experience most collectors do not want to pay much for book club issues. They are collected as extra material for the collection.

In the early days of book clubs you will see books that were trade issues with a Book Club dust cover, or maybe a Grossett & Dunlap or A. L. Burt Jacket. I have not seen a lot of this type of thing, but I have seen enough to think these are not all just jackets married to different books. I have to assume that Trade issue books were bought in volume and put in the resellers jackets. I think a few examples of this type of thing are in the E.R. Burroughs Bibliography.