How to damage your books

She was handsome in spite of her efforts to be handsomer.

Ring Lardner, The Love Nest

Ring Lardner

Efforts to enhance can sometimes detract. What's true of people, as observed in Ring Lardner's great line, can also be true of books, as Ian C. Ellis observes in Book Finds. Specifically what Ellis says is, "(O)ften the most damaging things that happen to books are things people do to enhance the book for themselves."

Ellis makes his living buying and selling used and rare books, so he looks at books a little differently than most people who buy and read them. To most people, books are products to be used and then, when they have served their purpose, disposed of. They don't regard books as investments the way Ellis does.

Indeed, most books make poor investments. Most new books, like new cars, are worth much less after you take them home. After the passage of 10, 20 or even 50 years, they will be worth even less. What you do to such books while you own them probably won't matter much. For some books, however, perhaps just a fraction of one percent of all books published, the "damaging things" Ellis writes about can seem tragic, at least to those like him who care deeply about books.

So what kind of things, things intended to enhance but instead damage, is Ellis talking about?

One thing is putting your name in a book, unless you happen to be the author or somebody famous whose name will inflate its value. If you let others borrow your books, writing your name in them or adding a bookplate seems sensible. It will be harder for the borrower to forget where a book came from when it has your name on it. But 50 years down the road, if that particular book happens to be a rare first edition, it will be worth much less because of that name. (If you must write your name, do it in pencil.)

Other things written in books by owners (as opposed to authors) devalue that book for subsequent owners. Even when I see a book I want at a library sale or a garage sale, I will be less likely to buy it if I see it has been written in, underlined or whatever. Collectors of rare books are even less likely to shell out big money for a book in such condition.

Many people, when they give a book as a gift, will clip the price off the dust jacket. It's kind of silly, especially if they paid much less to buy the book from Amazon or wherever, but it has long been considered good manners not to have prices attached to gifts. Yet pristine jackets, more than anything, give used books value. By clipping the price off a book, you actually show bad manners by damaging your gift and potentially decreasing its value.

Other things readers might do to damage their books, while seemingly improving their lives, is to mark their places by turning over corners of pages or placing an open book face down for an extended period of time. Improper storage also damages book. They need to be upright on a shelf, neither too tightly or too loosely, in a room that is neither too damp or too dry.

Of course, because so many people damage their books, the value of rare first editions rated Very Fine or Fine, the two highest grades of condition, is inflated because there are so few of them around. And that's how people like Ian C. Ellis make their living.