Recently I discovered that a copy of
one of my early poetry chapbooks is available for sale through a
couple of online rare/out-of-print bookselling sites. It's listed
variously as a "signed first edition" and as "collectible."
At first I was highly amused to see my work classified in such ways,
but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the
descriptions are accurate. The book is collectible; it is not
available in brick-and-mortar stores or even on my website. The
print run is exhausted and there will be no more editions
unless...well, that's for a different post. It's at a collectible
price, too, which is more to the point, or more the point I wanted to
make here. The seller is asking twelve times the cover price. Now, having worked once upon a time as an assistant to a rare book dealer and as a clerk in a store selling rares and firsts, I can say that the markup is appropriate for what is being sold, especially from the perspective of the collector and the dealer. It's not overpriced for a small saddle-stapled color-cover deluxe pamphlet-format early chapbook of poems by a mid-career poet, especially in view of its rarity and its condition. Better yet, it's signed. I did sign it. Its provenance is solid. All told, the price is actually quite reasonable! But the strange thing is--the uncomfortable thing is--that if the book were still available I would be selling my author's copies for the cover price and postage, as I sell other items on this site. Probably the most immediate conclusion to be drawn from that is that I undervalue my work--or my older work, at least. Ca va; that may be so. On the one hand, I wish I could have a chunk of that markup. Poetry chapbooks are not usually royalty-generating publications, so that was never an option for this particular volume. Just so we're clear: the seller is actually perfectly entitled to sell the book, just as I am entitled to sell my own work. This is, after all, my life and my livelihood--as it is the same for the seller. But I got $5 for the copy of the book that this dealer sells for exponentially more. How do I reconcile my support of the secondary market, and for open-distribution or free published work, with my need for and right to fair compensation for creating that work? I want my work to be seen/heard/experienced, so greater distribution meets that goal even if it occasionally deprives me of financial compensation. Does the exposure make up for that loss? Is there another less direct benefit to me? Or is this pure and simple exploitation? Although this situation is a first for my poetry, I've seen it before with my visual art. It is the mechanism by which the traditional art market functions--buy a work at low cost (from a dealer, from an artist) and sell it at a higher price to someone else. A piece of art is (in the market) just some other unit to price to move at a profit. Even some alternative markets work from this sort of transaction, although sometimes the price is not so profit-driven. Here's a factually-based idea of how my stuff might come to the secondary art market--that is, come to be sold to someone else by the person who bought it from me. Let's say I sell a small painting through a gallery at which I participated in a group show, having priced my pieces so affordably that they are very attractive to potential purchasers. The pricing strategy resulted in significant sales (in fact I was the only artist whose work sold) and I was able to earn some income from my efforts, even if individual pieces sold for quite small amounts. People went home happy, with real art they could afford. I went home happy, having been paid something for my work and seen it enjoyed by so many people. Now let's say that one of my collectors, four years later, was laid off, and sold one of my pieces from that show--at a 500% markup--to pay for rent. Am I going to begrudge the collector the ability to pay rent? Of course not--the money paid for the piece helped me pay my own rent at the time! Do I wish there was a way I and other artists could get a bit off every subsequent sale of our work? Sure. Who wouldn't? Not all resales are hardship choices, of course. Professional art dealers and art speculators are not part of the above example; they have other things going on, and some of the practices of their profession do need to be examined. Exploitation does exist in the art and book market, no question. Some of the very assumptions and systems in play are exploitative by nature. Alternatives are emerging and are continuing to grow--we are making them, trying new ways to live. But that's not the end of the discussion, because looking at my own life and work, I see that I depend on secondary markets myself! I can't position myself as being beyond this system of exchange, nor deny my own complicity in it. I am a voracious reader and book collector, and I recycle books as part of my own art practice. I am hip-deep in the used-book market, both as a purchaser and, at various times, as a seller. I would not be able to be the artist I am if I were prohibited from buying and selling used and out-of-print books and ephemera. And I too have made rent in tough times by selling off some beloved, collectible books. None of their authors benefited economically from those transactions. Nothing about this is simple. There is an indirect economic benefit to me, though, in being collectible. I can take that information--and the markup--into consideration when pricing my own work. Doing so reflects the awareness that there is interest in what I do, that I have an audience, and that the audience is growing. I've grown too--I've kept working and experimenting, and I've continued to make work that pleases and challenges not only myself but others. Some of those intangible benefits add up to tangible ones--perhaps right now, perhaps at some future point. There's no protein, shelter or BTUs in intangible benefits, but they do count. And even if art of all sorts is work, and work deserves (requires!) compensation, there are many paths to fairness. I don't have the answers--just a hell of a lot of questions and a few experiences. |
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